Guide to Boost Productivity for E-commerce Website with SEO Audits

If you have an E-commerce website with Shopify, it is worth noting that you need to perform audits for you to get a good return on investment. That includes if you are selling an app on Shopify too. If you check how an app is doing on app ranking tracker at Serpbook, and find that the performance is exceptional, there is something that you are not doing, and you need to as soon as now. That is an SEO audit.

What is the fuss about SEO audits? For one, you need to know that the fuss is absolutely called for. To strengthen your e-commerce website, doing audits will no longer be an option. There are so many benefits that can be derived from it. One is that you get to improve your domain authority, know how your competitors are doing and stay ahead of them, help you in creating the ideal strategies for improving your sales and conversions, understand the current status in regards to the health of your Shopify platform and so on. The list is endless.

For you to get the most out of it, you need to know how to use the audits to improve the performance of your e-commerce website. The following is a guide that will help you achieve that.

1.  Do a website crawl

For this step, you will be required to use an SEO crawler. It works the same way that Google bots do. Such tools will go a long way in giving you information regarding the current SEO setup and structure. You need to crawl your Shopify platform to ensure that it can be crawled by Google for the search engine to be of help. By so doing, you will have helped Google have a clearer picture of your website. How is that helpful? Well, at the end of the day, it will be easier for Google to help the users to find your website depending on the relevance of your content to their search queries.

2. Check if your website has been indexed by Google

Note that if your site has not been indexed by Google, it will weigh down its performance. It is therefore vital for you to confirm if it has been indexed during your audits. How do you do it? It is simple. All you need to do is to use a site: operator with a Google search. By so doing, you will get a list of all the pages that Google has indexed with the specific domain.

If the results are negative, then it only means that you have issues with indexing that need to be fixed. It is worth noting that if your site is not being indexed, then you will not be getting organic traffic. If your page or site is not being indexed, there is a high likelihood that Meta robots are being used in the tag or, disallow being used inappropriately. Your website has to be indexed for it to be ranked: which is necessary for the productivity of a site. It is for this reason that you need to check the indexing during your SEO audits.

3. Check for duplicate content

The other important thing that you need to do during your Shopify SEO audit is to check for duplicate content. Why is performing a content audit important? Well, you need to know that duplicate, and thin content will do absolutely nothing for your website. If anything, it will only hurt your SEO.

Thin content refers to the kind of content that provides no value to the users. Thin content can tarnish your brand image and destroy engage: which, as you may well know is essential when it comes to generating quality leads. Duplicate content, on the other hand, will lead to your site being filtered out. This is something that will interfere with the productivity of your site. Once you have identified the two, you have to fix them to boost the productivity of your site. It is as easy as merging the pages that have thin content to form one solid page and to use canonical tags to point multiple pages into one.

4. Check your page loading speed

Your page loading speed will determine the productivity of your website. Remember that great user experience is essential for site ranking and also conversions. A slow page loading speed could interfere with all of that. A slow page loading speed will increase your site’s bounce rate which is not a good sign. A high bounce rate implies that you are unable to provide the users with both good user experience and valuable content. If not careful, it will drive away traffic, and you will end up not making sales. What is the ideal page loading speed? Well, most visitors prefer a maximum of four seconds loading time, if it exceeds they will exit your page.

There are tools that you could use to run speed tests. On identifying the pages that have slow loading speed, you need to find ways in which you can improve. You can reduce redirects, enable compression, optimize your images and adjust the server response time.

5. Check if you are ranking for your brand name

There are many things that you could rank for, including keywords. The most important of them all is the brand name. You need to check whether your Shopify website is ranking for your brand name. If your brand name is generic, you could have trouble ranking for it. However, you need to put your best foot forward to out list the rest of the brands.

What happens if your site is not ranking for the brand name? There is work ahead of you. For one, you need to start running a PR campaign, make sure that you are on ‘Google My Business,’ be listed in the business directories, have a presence on social media platforms and link building.

6. Perform manual on-site SEO checks

A manual on-site SEO audit will give you deeper insight into the performance of your Shopify website. Why is it important to do an on-site SEO audit? In the process, you will be able to identify problematic areas that need fixing. Also, you will be able to keep your website updated on the latest developments in digital marketing: which is something that will give you an edge over the competition.

You can start by checking the pages with the most organic traffic. On pointing them out, you can go further ahead and look at the title tags, Meta description and subheaders have been used and assess whether they are the reason for the high click-through. By looking at such elements, you will be able to make better decisions in on-site SEO to improve the pages that are doing poorly when it comes to organic traffic.

7. Crawl errors

There is something else that could be undermining the performance of your Shopify website. That something is crawl errors, which is why you need to audit that. What are crawl errors? They occur when a search engine fails to find your page. What that means is that if a search engine cannot find your page, then the visitors cannot find your page too. This will affect the performance of your e-commerce website.

You need to find crawl errors and fix them. To find them, you can use the Google Search Console. If you do not have the search console, you need to set it up. Once it is ready, you will just log in and click on the “Crawl” submenu to check for the different types of crawl errors. The next step will be to fix them. You can still do it on Google Search Console depending on the kind of errors that you will come across.

8. Analyze organic traffic

Your Shopify website could be having both paid and organic traffic. It is essential that you regularly do an analysis of your organic traffic. The importance of organic traffic cannot be ignored as it has a significant role to play in the success of your e-commerce website. It is therefore vital that you stay updated on how your site is doing when it comes to organic traffic. Is it improving, changing or remaining standard? These are questions you will find answers to by performing an audit on your site’s organic traffic.

Not that organic traffic has quality leads that are more likely to convert; it also gives you permanent ranking and long term results. You, therefore, need to evaluate it to stabilize the traffic and make necessary improvements for you to boost the productivity of your e-commerce website.

9. Audit your keywords for site productivity

You must be already aware that sites can rank for keywords too. You, therefore, need to analyze your keywords to assess whether or not they are working for your website. The first thing you can do is to use analysis tools to check the pages that have been ranked for the keywords. Identify the type of keywords that have been used on the said sites.

Thanks to the audits, you will be able to point out the kind of keywords you should be using more and the ones that you should stop using. You can also go the extra mile and use the same tools to identify the keywords that your competitors are using and if they are working for their websites. Such information is what you will need when it comes to creating keywords for your content.

10. Audit your backlinks

Note that backlinks have a vital role to play in the ranking of a website. If used well, your e-commerce website will have a lot to benefit. However, it is also essential to note that not all backlinks will work for your Shopify platform. Some will do more harm than good. That is why you need to conduct an audit and prune them before they cause any more damage.

This kind of audit aims to identify any problems or opportunities that may arise from your backlink profile. It is through this that you will be able to point out links to spammy websites and whether or not there is a need to increase the backlinks. At that point, you will be able to identify the kind of publishers that you should be linking to in order to improve your e-commerce website’s traffic.

As you conduct SEO audits it is also crucial that you take care of the broken links. By fixing them, you will be fixing your website’s reputation too. It is very evident that SEO audits are vital for the success of a site. The guide provided above will go a long way in boosting the productivity of your e-commerce website.