BigCommerce SEO Features & Ecommerce Success Tips

BigCommerce's ecommerce platform includes some good out-of-the-box SEO features. Here's how you can use them and what else you can do with them.

Throughout the pandemic, online shopping and eCommerce adoption increased dramatically. Both the opportunities and the competition for online selling are greater than ever before.

And making sure you’re using the best eCommerce platform for your company’s needs is critical.

BigCommerce has most likely crossed your path, whether you’re just getting started or have an established store and are thinking about switching platforms.

It’s a popular choice among merchants who want SEO-friendly features right out of the box.

In this column, you’ll learn about BigCommerce SEO features and how to make the most of the available optimizations.

You’ll also find some additional tips and resources to help you optimize your BigCommerce store.

Let’s get started!

BigCommerce SEO Advantages

BigCommerce is a leading eCommerce software platform that offers everything a business, large or small, needs to start and grow an online store.

It’s a solid platform with an easy-to-use interface, great built-in features, and SEO capabilities.

BigCommerce includes built-in SEO features for your online store, such as:

Optimized URLs: For product, category, and other pages, these will be auto-populated with SEO-friendly URLs. You can also change your URL settings on the platform.

Unique URLs: BigCommerce ensures that each unique page has only one URL, ensuring that your online store is not harmed by duplicate content.

Microdata: Microdata, also known as “rich snippets,” is information that is automatically built into your website’s product pages to enhance search result listings with information such as ratings, pricing, brand, and stock levels.

301 redirects and URL rewrites: If you rename one of your products, the auto-populated URL will be updated to reflect the new product name. The old URL will be redirected to the new URL. Search engines can understand that you’ve made changes or moved pages in your online store thanks to automatic redirects and rewrites.

CDN: There are several things you can do to speed up your site, but BigCommerce’s unique content delivery network is always working in the background to ensure your site loads quickly for both shoppers and search engines!

USE BIGCommerce SEO FIELDS

Now, let’s take a look at how to use each of the SEO fields included in the BigCommerce platform, as well as some best practices for each.

URL Structure

URL structures can be customized for specific products, pages, and categories.

The BigCommerce platform uses an SEO-friendly structure by default, but you can customize the formatting of the URL structure to meet your specific business needs.

Most of the time, SEO Optimized (Short) suffices.

According to this helpful article, the URL structure should be simple to track, simple to maintain, simple to monitor, compatible with your CMS, and also compatible with your server.

BigCommerce can assist in making this happen.

Metadata

“Think of metadata as ads for your content,” says Loren Baker. What makes users want to click? What can you say to them? Use the meta to encourage clicks, which will result in traffic, which will result in even more traffic.”

“It is best practice to add meta descriptions to every page of your store, including products, content pages, blog posts, category pages, and the home page,” says BigCommerce.

If you want to target specific keywords, make sure to include them at the start of the description tag.

Keep in mind, however, that Google rewrites or creates its meta descriptions 70% of the time. The meta description that Google chooses or creates frequently includes content from the first few sentences visible on the page.

Keep this in mind as you write product descriptions.

Descriptions of Products and Categories

When you add or edit a product in the BigCommerce platform, you’ll find product and category descriptions in the Product Information section.

Search engines can find terms for search results thanks to the descriptive copy on these pages.

It’s an opportunity to incorporate the target keyword into your content while also sharing the compelling information and details that distinguish your brand from competitors.

Check out these 13 tips for writing effective product descriptions.

Keywords

Keywords are words and phrases in your page descriptions and metadata that are relevant to the content on a page and are an important component of both your SEO and paid marketing campaigns.

BigCommerce also includes this important SEO feature to help you understand your keyword density (how many keywords you’re using) and whether or not that density is a good or bad number for SEO success.

What BigCommerce cannot tell you is which keywords to use in the first place.

A solid keyword research process is required for this. How to Effectively Perform Keyword Research for Ecommerce by Maddy Osman is a great place to start.

Apps & Integrations for BigCommerce SEO

BigCommerce integrates natively with major players such as Google, Amazon, eBay, and Walmart Channel Cloud.

These apps and integrations will allow your eCommerce store to have a greater global impact while also opening up new revenue channels for your company.

This is significant because 73% of shoppers use multiple channels during their shopping journey.

These integrations allow you to reach a much larger audience and market to them.

More SEO Tips to Make Your BigCommerce Store Visible Online

Link Building

Links are extremely important in driving organic traffic to your eCommerce store via search engines, particularly in highly competitive industries.

Link building can be effective at driving more organic traffic to your online store and improving your rankings when combined with strong technical SEO foundations, on-page SEO, content, and user experience.

Our link building ebook will not only teach you effective link building strategies but will also show you how to succeed with the right strategy and goals in place.

Check out this article where Kevin Rowe discusses his specific link building strategies for eCommerce stores.

Promotion on Social Media

When you combine SEO strategies with your social media marketing strategy, you can increase engagement and drive new customers to your store.

You must be genuine and socially active. Avoid being overtly sales-y, but don’t be afraid to share offers that provide real value to your audience.

More information can be found in 11 Social Media Marketing Strategies for eCommerce Websites.

Content Marketing

Content marketing can be an extremely effective way to increase your search visibility and improve discovery.

However, if you create and optimize your content around the wrong topics, you will lose sales.

Check out these great examples of creative content that can resonate with eCommerce brands.

Technical SEO

Technical SEO is essential because it tells search engines like Google that you have a valuable website for customers.

Strong technical SEO can cause search engines to rank your website higher than the competition, as well as help, improve your customers’ experience.

The benefit of using a platform like BigCommerce is that their team is invested in keeping the platform as a whole technically sound, so you won’t have as many technical concerns as you would with your build.

Takeaway

Finally, if you’re looking for a dependable eCommerce software solution, BigCommerce is worth investigating.

It includes everything you’ll need to run your new or existing online store. BigCommerce goes above and beyond by providing you with SEO features as well as additional support and information in its knowledge base.

Need help with our free SEO tools? Try our free Backlink Maker, Backlink Checker, Broken Links Finder.

Learn more from SEO and read 3 Ways to promote your business online.

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