A Beginner's Guide For Ecommerce SEO Site Audit in 2024

What is an Ecommerce SEO Site Audit?

For any eCommerce site, having appealing product pictures, a smooth user experience, and thousands of positive reviews are all amazing feats that increase the chance of visitors making their next purchase. However, if your website is slow, has broken links and buttons, is marked "not secure" by Google, and the pretty product images take forever to load, it will make visitors want to quit instantly. Average website visitors will only wait 3-4 seconds before deciding to leave the site, and you'll lose a potential customer. Believe it or not, Google will also check your website for the issues mentioned above to ensure that the websites that get ranked on top of the search results are in top shape for future visitors. To prevent these issues, you'll need to do a doctor's checkup for your site. In SEO, we call that: Site Audit.

A site audit is like a health checkup for your website. It involves a thorough examination of various elements, like site speed, mobile-friendliness, accessibility, security, and much more, that affect your site's performance and visibility on search engines like Google. By conducting a site audit, you can identify any issues that might be hindering your site's ability to retain customers and rank well in Google search results.

What Does a Site Audit Scan For In Ecommerce Sites?

The auditing process varies based on the tool you use, but in general, they are broken down into a few categories. Note, you do not have to fix all the problems on your site if you do not have time. There are some that you can prioritize, such as security and mobile-friendliness.

Technical SEO

• Website Speed and Performance: Checking page load times and overall site speed.
• Mobile-Friendliness: Ensuring the site is optimized for mobile devices.
• Crawlability: Verifying that search engines can crawl and index the site effectively.
• Site Architecture: Evaluating the structure of the website and its internal linking.
• XML Sitemap: Ensuring the presence and accuracy of the XML sitemap.
• Robots.txt: Checking the robots.txt file to see if it's blocking important pages from being indexed.

On-Page SEO

• Meta Tags: Reviewing title tags, meta descriptions, and header tags for relevance and optimization.
• Content Quality: Assessing the uniqueness, relevance, and value of the website content.
• Keyword Usage: Ensuring appropriate and effective use of target keywords throughout the site.
• URL Structure: Checking for clean, descriptive, and SEO-friendly URLs.
• Image Optimization: Ensuring images are optimized with appropriate file sizes, alt tags, and descriptions.

User Experience (UX)

• Navigation: Evaluating the ease of navigation and the user journey on the site.
• Design and Layout: Ensuring the design is appealing and the layout is user-friendly.
• Interactivity: Checking for interactive elements that enhance user engagement.
• Call-to-Actions (CTAs): Reviewing the effectiveness and placement of CTAs.

Security

• HTTPS: Ensuring the site is secure with HTTPS.
• Vulnerability Scans: Checking for security vulnerabilities and potential threats.
• Privacy Policy: Ensuring a clear and accessible privacy policy is in place.

Off-Page SEO

• Backlink Profile: Analyzing the quality and quantity of backlinks pointing to the site.
• Social Signals: Reviewing the site's presence and activity on social media platforms.

Analytics and Tracking

• Google Analytics: Ensuring Google Analytics is correctly set up and tracking relevant data.
• Conversion Tracking: Checking for proper setup of conversion tracking tools.
• Goal Completions: Reviewing the goals and conversions tracked on the site.

Content Audit

• Duplicate Content: Identifying and addressing duplicate content issues.
• Content Gaps: Finding opportunities where new content could be beneficial.
• Content Freshness: Ensuring content is up-to-date and relevant.

Accessibility

• ADA Compliance: Ensuring the site meets accessibility standards for all users.
• Alt Text for Images: Checking for descriptive alt text for images to aid screen readers.

These elements of your website affect all areas of your website. However, as mentioned earlier, not all of them need to pass the audit. I'll provide some of the essential ones that massively impact your score later in the blog.

Why Is a Site Audit Needed For an Ecommerce Store?

The reason for good site health comes from Google's search algorithm and principles. It is important for Google to show users a search result filled with quality websites (where site audits come in) with relevant and useful content (on-site SEO content optimization). Your job as an eCommerce site is to ensure that you pass Google's site audit so, at least from a site performance standpoint, you are qualified for ranking on top.

What Happens If I Do Not Audit My SEO Ecommerce Site?

If you choose not to do a Site Audit and figure out any potential issues that might be harming your ranking and user experience overall, it'll be like not going to your physical checkup often and later discovering a disease that could've been prevented a lot earlier. Without a Site Audit, you'll never know what kind of problems your site has and why it is not ranking on Google, even though you've written SEO-friendly content. In short, your site will slowly rank lower and lower in search results.

How To Do An Ecommerce Website SEO Audit

If you are reading this blog, it's very likely that you are relatively new to SEO (welcome!) and you're looking to get started with the first step of an eCommerce SEO Audit. You might not yet have a companion SEO tool that you'd like to use to do all your SEO tasks with. Well, let me introduce you to Stevie AI: The first SEO tool designed for beginners (particularly eCommerce owners).

Click here to get Stevie AI for free - no credit card required

To do a Site Audit on Stevie AI, all you have to do is enter your URL, select the pages you'd like to crawl (crawl = scan), and click on "Generate." It's that simple. Then, Stevie will provide you with quite a lot of data about your site, including the majority of the elements mentioned earlier (such as accessibility, security, etc.).

What Do I Do with the Site Audit Data?

You might not be familiar with most of the data and terms, but worry not—Stevie can help you with it. On top of your report, there's a "Chat for Insight" button that will bring you to a chat screen where you can ask questions to Stevie, whose database is backed by the site audit you just did as well as a library of the most up-to-date SEO knowledge.

Some example questions are:

• What are some of the most urgent issues I need to fix?
• What does "Alt text" mean?
• How do I add Robot.txt using WordPress?
• How do I turn my website from http to https?

Stevie will be able to provide you with step-by-step guidance on how to implement these changes so you can complete your eCommerce site optimization without leaving the platform!

Some of the Most Common Issues Found in a Site Audit for eCommerce

• Slow Page Load Times: High-resolution images, unoptimized code, and excessive use of plugins can slow down your site, affecting both user experience and search engine rankings.
• Broken Links: These can frustrate users and prevent search engines from properly indexing your site.
• Duplicate Content: Common in eCommerce sites, especially with product descriptions, duplicate content can confuse search engines and dilute your SEO efforts.
• Missing or Poor Meta Tags: Incomplete or poorly optimized title tags, meta descriptions, and header tags can hinder your site's visibility in search results.
• Thin Content: Pages with little or no valuable content provide a poor user experience and are less likely to rank well.
• Poor URL Structure: Complicated or non-descriptive URLs can confuse users and search engines alike.
• Missing Alt Text for Images: Alt text helps search engines understand the content of images and improves accessibility.

If you want to know how to fix these issues, you can always ask Stevie through the report, or anywhere on the bottom right side of the page when you're using Stevie AI.

Conclusion

In conclusion, a Site Audit is essential for your eCommerce site. It's the first step toward bringing in free traffic to your site through Google, where your target customers are actively looking for a product like yours. If you have any questions about SEO or would like to set up a free SEO course, please email [email protected], and a team member at Stevie AI will hop on a call with you to help you with optimizing your eCommerce site. This marks the beginning of your SEO journey. Good luck!