Ecommerce SEO Audit

When I start an [Ecommerce SEO](/ecommerce-seo/) audit, I don't open Screaming Frog first. I open Google Analytics and export a list of product pages sorted by revenue. For a client with 500 products, the top 50 generated 80% of revenue. Audit those first. Check title tags, meta descriptions, headings, product schema. One product had a title tag reading 'Blue Running Shoes – Size 10 – Men's – Sale – Free Shipping'. That's keyword-stuffed and not helping. I rewrote it to 'Men's Blue Running Shoes | Lightweight & Breathable | Brand Name' and traffic to that page increased 30% in six weeks. Then move to indexability: go to Search Console, Pages report. If 200 pages are crawled not indexed, check internal links. Fix by adding relevant cross-links from high-authority category pages. Also check faceted navigation: use robots.txt to block filter parameters. I link to [technical SEO for ecommerce](/technical-seo-for-ecommerce/) for deeper guidance on crawl optimisation. Then examine Core Web Vitals: run Lighthouse on top 5 product pages. If LCP is >2.5s, compress images or lazy-load below-fold. I shaved 0.8s off LCP by converting hero images to WebP and serving different sizes for mobile. Finally, validate structured data using Google's Rich Results Test. I found one client missing 'availability' markup on 2,000 products; adding it increased organic clicks by 15%. The order matters: revenue data first, then crawlability, then on-page, then speed. Skip the homepage audit – it rarely drives conversions.

The biggest trap in an ecommerce SEO audit is treating every URL equally. Faceted navigation is the culprit. A Magento store I worked with had 24,000 filter combinations generating 24,000 near-identical URLs. I blocked them all with a robots.txt disallow for /?filter= and cut crawl waste by 70%. Use canonical tags or noindex on sort pages. For platform-specific advice, see [Magento SEO](/magento-seo/). Another watch-out: pagination. If you have category pages with paginated URLs like /category/page/2/, use rel=prev/next or ensure "View All" is available but canonical to first page. Some [Shopify SEO](/shopify-seo/) setups mishandle this by leaving paginated pages indexable. Third watch-out: not checking mobile vs desktop versions. Google uses mobile-first indexing, so check mobile page for content parity. A client had a product description that was 500 words on desktop but collapsed to 50 words on mobile with a 'Read More' toggle. Google saw the mobile version and ranked it lower. I made the full description visible by default on mobile. Fourth watch-out: ignoring review schema. If you have product reviews, markup them. But be careful: if you use aggregation, ensure the average rating matches displayed. I found a site with 4.5 stars marked up but the actual reviews averaged 3.2. Google flagged it as invalid markup and dropped rich results. Speed regressions are common after theme updates. Always check Core Web Vitals after any code change. When choosing a platform, consider which [best ecommerce platform for SEO](/best-ecommerce-platform-for-seo/) gives you control over these elements.

Early in my career, I audited every page with the same rigour. That was a waste. For a Shopify store, I'd spend hours on an expired product page that hadn't sold in three years while the bestseller had a missing meta description. I learned to prioritise by revenue. Another mistake: I used to rely solely on Screaming Frog for duplicate content detection. But it misses content differences from JavaScript-rendered elements. I now also view the page with JavaScript disabled to see what Google sees. A client's product page loaded its description via JavaScript. Google couldn't render it during indexing, so the page was treated as thin content. I moved the description into static HTML and saw rankings improve within a month. Third mistake: I ignored pagination entirely until I discovered that a client's category page had 20 paginated parts. I had been optimising only page 1. After consolidating with a 'View All' option and fixing canonical tags, the full category started ranking. For more on this, see [SEO for product pages](/seo-for-product-pages/). Fourth: I thought all structured data errors were equal. But a missing 'availability' field in product schema means Google won't show the product in shopping results. One client had 2,000 products without 'availability' markup. Adding it took two hours and increased organic clicks by 15%. Now I always run a structured data validation tool first, before touching any other on-page element. The biggest lesson: admit what you don't know, and test your assumptions.