Once upon a time, e-commerce sites were limited to giants of the ’90s—Amazon, 1-800-Flowers, eBay, and all things e-commerce from the Bob Saget and this Windows 95 Guide era. Now, with so many build-it-yourself options like Shopify, BigCommerce, and Squarespace, the basics of SEO for e-commerce are dramatically changing. Meanwhile, the needs of custom-built websites are also shifting; gone are the days when every URL that ended with a long string of something .com/w89gm79sal;712wi-blah-blah-blah was acceptable.
I like to think of building an e-commerce site for SEO as the equivalent of In-N-Out Burger’s “secret” menu: You can customize like crazy, just as long as you know how to ask (Animal style anyone?). Let me explain. Buried in the recesses of many e-commerce websites are options to increase sales and conversions simply by optimizing them with the best possible SEO tactics that suit your needs. REI, for example, offers hundreds of products—each with its product description, metadata, customer reviews, Q&A, and sometimes a custom product video…
