eCommerce SEO Mistakes to Avoid in 2025

Did you know that just by making a few simple changes to your e-commerce store that could be the difference between being found on Google or not? And with over 8 billion searches every single day, you don’t want to miss out on that free and organic traffic to your e-commerce website, especially when it keeps flowing over and over.

In this article, you will learn, how to use few ecommerce dos and Don’ts. Three simple do’s and don’ts that you can use to start driving more organic free traffic to your website early.  We talk about how to generate highly converting profitable traffic to your online store, to your e-commerce store, especially if you’re a small business. 

Every business is turning to eCommerce platforms and making them available for all sizes of audiences. As eCommerce continues to grow, the importance of eCommerce SEO cannot be overstated. Did you know that 93% of all online experiences begin with a search engine? With the vast majority of online traffic coming from search engines, it is essential for eCommerce businesses to prioritize their search engine optimization (SEO) efforts. 

What is ecommerce SEO?

E-commerce SEO (search engine optimization) is a free method of making your website more visible on search engine results pages (SERPs) for long term. If your website ranking on the top of SERPs than you need to continue to analyze and monitor your SEO results, because competition in ecommerce business is very high in market.

However, despite the importance of eCommerce SEO, many businesses make critical mistakes that can harm their rankings and impact their sales. In this article, we will cover the top eCommerce SEO mistakes to avoid and best practices to follow to improve your online visibility and increase sales.

Technical SEO mistakes

Before tackling on-page SEO issues, it's crucial to first fix any technical problems on your website. If you’re making these technical SEO mistakes, search engines may penalize you and rank your site poorly.

1. Neglecting site speed

Page speed is a key ranking factor for Google. If your pages take too long to load, it can hurt your position in search results. Low website speed leads to bad user experience and decrease engagement rate with your website.

Solutions:

Optimize images: Use Compress images and utilize responsive image techniques to serve appropriately sized images for different devices.

Eliminate render-blocking resources: Render-blocking resources are elements, typically CSS and JavaScript files, that hinder the rendering or display of a webpage. By optimizing CSS & JavaScript we can eliminate render-blocking resources.

Enhance Core Web Vitals:

Largest Contentful Paint (LCP): Optimize server performance, prioritize loading of critical resources, and optimize CSS & JavaScripts. A good LCP score is 2.5 seconds or less.

Interaction to Next Paint (INP): Remove or optimize JavaScript, avoid layout thrashing & Optimize images. A good INP score is equal to or less than 200 ms.

Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS): Set explicit dimensions for images and ads, avoid inserting content above existing content, and ensure fonts load without causing layout shifts.

Remove unnecessary plug-ins: By removing unnecessary plug-ins of your website can improve your website speed and lead to better user experience.

Reduce redirects: Excessive redirects can lead to slower page load times, frustrating users. Minimizing redirects ensures a smoother, faster browsing experience.

Use Google Page Speed Insights Tool to check the loading times of your pages for free.

2. Poor site structure

A poor site structure can make it difficult for both search engines and users to navigate your website. A bad site structure is one of the quickest ways to lose potential customers. If pages on your site are more than three clicks away from each other, things tend to get jumbled and customers get lost. A confusing domain name, complicated site structure, and menus that aren’t intuitive cause customers to look elsewhere for desired products.

Solutions:

·  Group relevant products together: Make it easy for users to find similar items by organizing them into clear categories. This not only helps visitors find what they’re looking for faster but also helps search engines understand the content of your site.

·  Create a user-friendly navigation menu: Keep your navigation simple and intuitive. Users should be able to find their way around your site without confusion.

·  Focus on UX (User Experience) and UI (User Interface): Design your site with the user in mind. A clean, easy-to-navigate interface, combined with a smooth user experience, helps visitors stay on your site longer and encourages conversions.

·  Link to applicable pages from the homepage: Make sure important pages on your site are easily accessible from the homepage. This can include popular products, services, or content that you want to highlight, ensuring both users and search engines can find your key pages quickly.

3. Not prioritizing mobile SEO

User experience is a critical aspect of eCommerce SEO. Make sure your website is not slow, easy to navigate, and is responsive on mobile devices. All these features can significantly impact your website’s search engine ranking and user engagement.

Solutions:

AMP Pages: Create AMP (Accelerated Mobile Pages) to improve mobile load times, enhance user experience, and boost SEO by delivering faster, lightweight content.

Test page load speed on mobile: Since mobile networks can be slower than desktop connections, make sure your pages load quickly on mobile devices. Slow load times on mobile can drive visitors away.

Check for responsive design: Ensure your site adjusts to fit the screen size of any device. Text should be readable without zooming, and buttons should be easy to tap without accidental clicks.

4. Neglecting Schema structured data markup

Schema structured data markup is code that helps search engines understand your content. It will improve visibility, enhance search results with rich snippets, and boost click-through rates(CTR). It also helps voice search and provides clear information to users.

Solutions:

Implement product schema: Using product schema markup allows you to display important details like price, availability, and product descriptions directly in search results. This can make your listings more attractive and informative to potential customers.

Utilize review and rating schema: Utilizing review and rating schema allows you to display star ratings & reviews of your customer to increase trust and engagement. Rich snippets featuring star ratings can significantly improve CTR.

Add breadcrumb schema: Implement breadcrumb schema to enhance navigation paths in search results. This makes it easier for search engines and user to understand your website structure.

Use structured data testing tools: Use Google’s Rich Results Test and Schema Markup Validator to ensure your markup is correctly implemented and eligible for rich results. Address any errors or warnings promptly.

 

On-page SEO mistakes

1. Low-quality content

The helpful content update is important for ecommerce SEO as the main source of traffic for your website. Without quality content, powered by SEO, you will get no organic traffic. Content is valuable in attracting new prospects and retaining loyal customers, but SEO makes your content visible in the SERPs.

Solutions:

Avoid Duplicate content: Avoiding duplicate content is essential for maintaining good SEO and ensure search engines to index your pages without confusing. SO Use canonical tags properly, ”noindex” tag, write unique content & implement unique meta tags for each pages.

Avoid Short content or Thin Content: For ecommerce store content is a key factor. So, write your website content long and explain your products properly and engaging.   

Use Keyword-stuffed content: Keywords in content play very important role for SEO ranking. Use your main primary keywords in your content with proper frequency that improve your ranking in SERPs.

2. Neglecting Keyword Research

One of the biggest mistakes eCommerce retailers make is neglecting keyword research. Keyword research is the foundation of any successful SEO strategy, as it helps you identify the search terms and phrases your target audience is using to find products like yours.

Read this blog – Why keyword research is important for SEO

3. Not using XML sitemaps and robots.txt effectively

XML sitemaps and robots.txt files help guide search engines through your ecommerce site. XML site helps search engines navigate the website & robot.txt file guide search engine crawls your website pages. So, Neglecting both can misguide search engine and impact on crawling & indexing.

Solutions:

Create and update XML sitemaps: Create XML site including all important pages of your website and submit on google search console. Update your sitemap on regular basis whenever you add new page on your website.

Optimize robots.txt files: Optimize robot.txt file on regular basis so that search engine bot can easy crawl your webite.

4. Neglecting Meta tags optimizations

Meta tag optimization is crucial for eCommerce websites. These tags, including the title tag, H1 tags and meta description, play a key role in how your site appears in search engine results and influence user click-through rates (CTR). It will improve Search Visibility, Click-Through Rates, Rich Snippets & user experience.

Solutions:

Use keywords in Meta tiles

Use keywords in meta description

Use meta tags in products pages

5. Improper canonicalization

Improper canonicalization can lead to several negative effects on your ecommerce website. Canonicalization helps search engines understand the preferred version of a webpage when multiple versions exist. Improper canonicalization can lead to duplicate content issues.

Solutions:

·  Use Canonical Tags Correctly: Ensure that each page with duplicate or similar content has a canonical tag pointing to the preferred URL. This tells search engines which version of the page to index and rank.

·  Avoid Multiple URLs for the Same Content: Make sure your website doesn’t generate multiple URLs for the same page (e.g., with session IDs or tracking parameters). Set up redirects or use URL parameters correctly in Google Search Console to handle these variations.

·  301 Redirects for Duplicate Pages: If you have duplicate pages that are no longer needed, set up 301 redirects to the preferred version of the page. This helps consolidate link equity and guides users and search engines to the correct URL.

Off-page SEO mistakes

Not Paying Attention To High-Quality Link Building

Importance of backlinks in SEO is a ranking factor and ignoring high-quality backlinks might result in bad SEO results. It is critical to remember that providing high-quality content that naturally gets backlinks from respected websites can yield incredible results.

On the other hand, generating do-follow forum backlinks for your website can amazingly benefit your website ranking on higher grounds.

Solutions:

Create High Quality Backlinks: Create backlinks on high DA & PA website with proper hyperlinks of your keywords. Neglect high spam score with better website traffics.

Create backlinks to relevant domain: Always create backlinks with same niche referring domain.

Prioritize backlinks to key pages — such as the homepage, category pages, and product pages. Invest in backlink strategies, but don’t underestimate the importance of them happening organically when you generate quality content. 

Not investing in a social strategy

E-commerce social media strategy can help improve your online store's visibility in search results and drive sales. A social marketing strategy is one of the top ways ecommerce businesses can grow their brands, but many businesses are too focused on keywords and neglect this other marketing strategy. You need more than just an eye-catching logo. You need a strategy that ensures people will see your branding in the first place. Social media is a great way to drive traffic to your ecommerce store. It’s also one of the more popular methods for promoting brand awareness. 

Wrapping It Up 

eCommerce SEO is a complex process that requires careful planning and implementation. If you can successfully avoid these common mistakes, you will be able to reach higher in the search rankings. The abovementioned best practices can help you simplify things, improve your search rankings, attract more organic traffic, and increase your sales and revenue. For more related SEO Blogs visit Weekly Info.