January 19, 2017 by Diana Bocco

5 eCommerce Platforms for SEO

Want to set up an eCommerce platform but confused about your options? The perfect platform shouldn’t be too hard to find.

5 eCommerce Platforms for SEO

[guest post by Elizabeth Andal]

To help you sort through the jungle of confusion, we’ve compiled five eCommerce platforms suitable for SEO to kick-start your search for the perfect platform for your business.

Magento

Arguably the most popular and highly-regarded eCommerce platform you can get, Magento has several SEO-friendly features worth noting.

SEO Features:

  • 100% search engine friendly
  • Google Site Map
  • Search engine friendly URL’s
  • Full control of URL’s meta information (products, categories and content pages) through URL rewrites
  • Auto-generated site map for display on site
  • Auto-generated popular search terms page
  • Google Content API for shopping

Issues:

  • Limited number of products supported within system optimisation standards
  • Requires custom development through registered partners for best execution or further optimisation
  • Costly annual licensing, which jumps dramatically for the Enterprise-level
  • Hosting is difficulty speed is a huge issue for SEO because it negatively affects User Experience (UX)
  • Clunky CMS functionality making it harder to manage general page updates or additions

Woocommerce

Woocommerce is a platform that runs on WordPress. It can be utilised with plugins such as AIOSEO offering a parade of SEO features.

SEO Features:

  • Support for SEO on Custom Post Types
  • XML Sitemap support
  • Advanced Canonical URLs
  • Built-in API
  • Redirect attachment pages to parent post
  • Avoids the typical duplicate content found on WordPress blogs
  • Search engines are automatically notified about changes to your site
  • Titles are automatically optimized for search engines
  • Generates META tags automatically
  • Automatically optimized titles for search engines

Shopify

This platform boasts a unified platform to easily run your ecommerce business, coupled with a wide-range of SEO-friendly features.

SEO Features:

  • Editable title tags, meta descriptions and URLs
  • Editable ALT tags for images
  • Customisable image file names
  • Automatic generated sitemap.xml and robots.txt files
  • Automatically generated canonical URL tags

BigCommerce

Bigcommerce sets itself apart from the crowd by claiming to be a more affordable alternative to other platforms such as Magento, with no hosting, maintenance or update expenses.

SEO Features:

  • Search-optimized themes
  • Easily customize title, header tags, meta description, keywords and alt tags
  • Auto-optimized titles and page URLs
  • Customizable category pages and canonical product pages
  • URL rewrites
  • 301 redirects
  • XML sitemaps that auto-generate and feed to Google when your site changes
  • Editable robots.txt file
  • Lightning-fast page loads
  • Built-in blogging platform

Neto

SEO Features:

  • Customisable URLs
  • XML sitemaps
  • Meta-data
  • Canonical tags

Brighten your future with SEO

Whether you’re ready to kick-start your journey in eCommerce or are simply willing to make a few changes, ensuring your platform is compatible with SEO will hold nothing but benefits for you in the future. In such a competitive world, you need to be doing whatever you can to stay on-top of your game, so why not do everything possible to make sure that happens?

** About the Author: Elizabeth Andal is a copywriter with Matter Solutions, a full-service digital agency based in Brisbane, Australia.

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