Setting up shop online has become the new gold for most businesses (big and small). The appeal of selling to a global market is convincing, and there’s the promise of “passive earning” with your ecommerce store running automatically. But then, as with all glittering opportunities, getting started is not as easy as it’s made to look. For one, if you want to set up shop online, you need the right ecommerce platform. And once you click search on Google, you’re quickly bombarded with a sea of options – all claiming to be the best of the best.
While there’s no denying that most of these options will help you set up an ecommerce store, only a few can guarantee visibility. The internet is a sea of options – not just for you, the seller, but for your potential customers. You’ll need to stand out, and that goes beyond having a fancy web store design or even listing amazing products. Your best bet is to optimize your store for visibility on search engines. This is where SEO, a.k.a. search engine optimization, comes in.
What is SEO for eCommerce?
First off, SEO (search engine optimization) is a technical process that involves improving a website’s visibility on the internet. Basically, it ensures that internet users can easily find a website when browsing. Usually, SEO involves adjusting the website’s content and keywords to reflect what users typically search for. It also involves structuring the website for ease of use, responsiveness, and easy finding through backlinks. When a website is easy to use, has the right amount of content, keywords, backlinks, and is secure, it easily gains visibility on search engine result pages (SERPs).
For eCommerce, SEO typically involves enriching your online store and product descriptions with the right keywords. Technical issues like backlinks, product catalogs, and payment channels must be designed for the customer’s ease. Back it up with an insightful blog, and the website would indeed be “search engine optimized”. While this may be a handful for a store owner, it’s often best to get help from an SEO agency.
Things to Look for in eCommerce Platforms for SEO
When picking an eCommerce platform for your online store, you should prioritize SEO. According to Cybernews review, the best eCommerce website builders are known for five key features:
- Integrated SEO tools
- Ease of navigation with multiple payment channels
- High responsiveness with standby support
- Web security
- Scalability
Top 5 eCommerce Platforms with SEO
Following the key features that are essential for choosing the right eCommerce platform for optimizing your web store on SERPs, here are the top five eCommerce platforms you should consider:
Shopify
Shopify remains a popular choice for small to medium-sized businesses. Thanks to its user-friendly interface and comprehensive suite of SEO tools, it’s the ideal choice for building a web store that’ll easily rank on SERPs. Shopify also comes with a built-in blog for content marketing, and customizable meta tags that are highly effective for reaching the right audience. Further technical SEO features, like a customizable URL and fast page loading times, position Shopify as one of the best SEO eCommerce platforms.
Wix eCommerce
Wix is another popular choice for small to medium-sized businesses thanks to its simplified interface and SEO services. Wix prioritizes ease, and that’s why its drag-and-drop feature is perfect for customizing your eCommerce store. Wix takes SEO eCommerce to the next level with its Wix SEO Assistant, which is packed with advanced SEO tools. Besides ease of listing products on Wix, users can customize their web store’s meta tags for better visibility on SERPs.
BigCommerce
BigCommerce is a top contender in eCommerce. It doesn’t just serve small to medium-sized businesses, but also large enterprises. Scaling with BigCommerce is a strong possibility since it comes with integrated tools that can be adopted depending on the scale of your business. BigCommerce offers a handful of tools that are designed to optimize each product page and improve your web visitors’ user experience with seamless navigation, recommendations, and multiple payment channels.
WooCommerce
WooCommerce is the go-to eCommerce platform for those who started their web journey on WordPress. By default, WooCommerce allows for seamless integration with WordPress websites. With WooCommerce, you can enjoy having both an eCommerce store and a competitive WordPress website/blog at your disposal with no extra cost. This seamless integration ensures that your eCommerce store ranks independently and also benefits from your WordPress website/blog’s SERP ranking.
Just like WordPress, WooCommerce packs a ton of plugins for easy customization of your web store – and they’re mostly free. It also has a suite of SEO tools to improve visibility and assist with product marketing.
Squarespace
Squarespace etches its name among the top eCommerce platforms due to its minimalist and easy-to-use interface. With over a hundred customizable templates, there’s definitely a store design that’s perfect for your brand. Thanks to its simplistic interface, Squarespace is mobile-friendly, which makes it rank higher on SERPs since 90% of shoppers shop from the comfort of their phones. Its blogging capabilities also ensure that you can organically generate traffic to your eCommerce store while publishing insightful content.
Conclusion
There’s no denying that there are amazing options for building an SEO eCommerce store. But, the fact remains that there’s no ultimate all-in-one SEO eCommerce platform. Apart from the price variations on the platforms, the level of customization and services rendered by each platform differs.
While some are ideal for small to medium-sized businesses, you’d ultimately need to pivot if you want to scale. As such, it’s best to prioritize choosing an eCommerce platform that fits into your budget and preference. Some are easier to work with than others, and some offer key services that you need to pay to access. Since you can’t really get an all-in-one SEO eCommerce platform, prioritize scaling and ease of website migration.