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.
[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.
- 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.
- 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.
- 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.
- 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
- 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.
