When it comes to eCommerce SEO, there are a lot of important ranking factors, including site speed, URL structure, page titles/content, and sitewide HTTPS.
1. Wix.
Most online store owners struggle with SEO and rely on paid Facebook and Google ads to generate interest in their products.
Wix has a free SEO tool called Wix SEO Wiz. Wiz analyzes your eCommerce site and automatically provides a personalized SEO plan with a checklist to improve your Google rankings.
This includes optimizing your SEO titles and meta descriptions, adding alt text, and indexing tools to get your pages ranking faster. Wix and Google collaborated on this feature and Wix users can see their pages in search results immediately after using this tool.
2. BigCommerce.
My second pick for the best SEO is BigCommerce. Here’s why:
With site speed, you want to make sure your eCommerce host loads your site content quickly on mobile and desktop. Even a 100-millisecond delay in load time can drop your conversion rate by 7%.
Use tools like GTMetrix and Google PageSpeed Insights to check your eCommerce site speed regularly.
Second, image compression is another critical factor in site speed. Images that take a long time to load increase page load times, which impacts user experience and SEO. BigCommerce is the only eCommerce platform to give merchants Google AMP on both product and category pages, as well as automatic image compression with Akamai Image Manager.
Regarding the URL structure, BigCommerce features the best default URL format.
For example, as highlighted earlier, www.rebelpeak.com/camping/blue-tent is the best format to follow in the order of domain, category, and product. They allow you to do this, while other platforms like Shopify force you to keep their structure, including the static “/collections/,”/pages/,” and “/products/.” This URL structure is not ideal for SEO, so BigCommerce wins in this regard and is a great pick.
What Are the Best Free Ecommerce Platforms?
If you’re looking for a free or open-source eCommerce platform, you can find many readily available. When researching different eCommerce frameworks to use, it’s essential to ask yourself a few different questions:
- Are you interested in self-hosting?
- How much web development experience do you have?
- How much creative control do you want?
- Would you rather pay a small fee every month to have everything wrapped up in one package?
I would personally go with a paid option over an open-source system because the small fee will save you a ton of time and development costs. Open source platforms have some limitations. What you gain in flexibility, you lose in simple hosting, maintenance and security, and dedicated support also Best Ecommerce Platform for SEO.
What Are the Best Ecommerce Platforms for Small Business?
Small businesses running online need uptime guarantees, security, PCI compliance, usability, and performance. If your business depends on eCommerce sales, your requirements will be more stringent than one individual selling online.
When it comes to B2B eCommerce platforms, there are also a lot of dependencies on your platform’s user access levels, shipping methods, tax calculations, and invoicing software. You need a solution that is easily managed by multiple users and minimizes the time to complete orders.
After all, the more time you save on compliance, shipping, and fulfillment, the more time you have to market your business online.
Here are my top picks for the best ecommerce platforms for small business:
1. Wix.
Wix is best for businesses selling online because of their nice-looking templates and easy-to-use software. You can manage everything from one simple dashboard so it’s best for non-tech savvy users.
2. 3dcart.
3dcart is a great choice for small businesses because of its ease of use and SEO features. Local small businesses will benefit from their clean URL structure and easy access to selling products online. Plus, they have an excellent support team available via chat, phone, and email.
3. Shopify.
Shopify is another good ecommerce platform for small businesses for similar reasons. They are super intuitive and easy to use – almost any small business owner should be able to build and manage a site on Shopify. With automatic shipping and tax rates, they save business owners time.
Additionally, if you need to learn how to use POS systems, Shopify is a great choice. They integrate with many top point-of-sale systems for omnichannel retailers with both physical storefronts and online stores.
What Are the Best Ecommerce Platforms for Dropshipping?
Dropshipping software must easily integrate with wholesalers, connect your inventory across platforms, and automate shipping.
When you hook up your online store to a wholesale supplier, the first thing you need to check is that inventory levels automatically sync between platforms. The last thing you want to happen is someone orders a product on your site that’s out of stock with your wholesaler.
Here are my choices for the best platforms for dropshipping:
- Wix
- Shopify
- BigCommerce
What Are The Benefits of Using an Ecommerce Platform?
‘If your business is not online, your business will run out of business.’
This statement by Bill Gates turned out to be prophetic — the ecommerce market is now massive and continues to expand with time.
According to a recent study, over 50% of Americans prefer to shop online. Ecommerce isn’t going anywhere and you can get a slice of that profit with a simple website.
However, you need an attractive and engaging website if you’re looking to gain customers.
So let’s look at all the benefits of building your ecommerce store, and how it can successfully drive your business.
1. Easy Scalability.
When you run a traditional brick and mortar retail shop, it’s difficult to cater to an audience that is geographically very far away.
Unless you become very successful, and operate like Walmart and other industry leaders, setting up multiple outlets in different areas become too expensive.
Naturally, it’s not very easy to do that for a small or medium-scale retailer, since it is exceptionally cost-intensive.
However, using ecommerce platforms, small and medium businesses can now target and reach out to a global audience, and scale up to many times their original size.
Most platforms let you set up your online store for between $15 and $50 per month, with the most common price being around $30.
Being online essentially makes the whole world your oyster, and you don’t need to target a particular neighborhood and restrict yourself to a specific area. With a broader reach, your sales will get a boost, and profitability will increase in the long run.
Ecommerce platforms help you achieve scalability by delivering fast-performance and impressive shopping experiences anywhere.
2. Excellent Customer Support.
Customer experience plays a big part in the annual revenue of any business. In fact, it is one of the most indicative yardsticks of a competitive company.
Even if you’re using a pre-designed template to build your website, you might run into an issue every now and then.
It can be anything — you might struggle with slow website speed or face errors with a webpage.
However, every single eCommerce platform offers customer support to help you with these issues.
For example, Bigcommerce provides 24/7 chat, email, and US-based phone support for technical issues and the best ecommerce platform for SEO.
They also have a premium services team, devoted to making your business excel and help you solve any technical issue to might face. And this can make all the difference.
With this type of support and flexibility, your business won’t slow down because of technical issues.
3. Social Media Integration.
More than 3 billion people in the world use social media – a huge market to tap into.
Plus, shopping behaviors are changing and more users are ready to purchase products via social media.
Ecommerce platforms easily integrate with Facebook, Instagram, and Pinterest so that you can sell your products wherever your audience is.
Therefore, it’s essential to focus some attention on social media engagement.
For example, let’s take a look at Bigcommerce is the Best Ecommerce Platform for SEO.
Their platform integrates with social media platforms like Facebook, Instagram, and Pinterest right from the BigCommerce control panel, syncing your inventory for you, and making the backend sales with little work required.
4. Built-In eCommerce Marketing Tools.
eCommerce Marketing Tools like Social media integration will lead you to where your target audience is, but it isn’t the only marketing you should do. After your website is up and running, you need to identify what your customers want to buy with the right marketing tools.
Ecommerce platforms help you do that by providing numerous in-built marketing tools. These tools provide you with all the essential data and analytics to help you draw a roadmap for future sales.
Take Squarespace, for instance:
It helps drive traffic to your website with its powerful marketing tools and also measures your success quantitatively with its advanced data analytics tools.
Built-in newsletters, exit-intent pop-ups, coupon codes, and promotions are just a few of the marketing features at your disposal.
5. Best Ecommerce Platform for SEO and Plugin for WordPress + WooCommerce.
Pretty much every eCommerce platform provides basic to advanced SEO features. These features enhance your search engine visibility and manage everything from sitemaps to meta titles, descriptions, keywords, and more.
If you’re used to running sites on WordPress, you can try out WooCommerce for solid SEO results.
For example, WooCommerce is integrated with some of the best SEO-related WordPress plugins that you can help you optimize your website and make it appear higher in the search engines.
Some of the SEO tools include:
- Yoast SEO
- MonsterInsights
- All in one SEO pack
- Google XML Sitemaps
- W3 Total Cache
- BZ Lazy Load
- SEO Optimized Images
- WordPress SEO
Additionally, the Best Ecommerce Platforms for SEO like BigCommerce and 3dcart provide great SEO support out of the box.
Tips And Strategies For Using eCommerce Platforms.