Ecommerce SEO guide for UK shops

Start with categories

For most online shops, category pages bring more search traffic than product pages. People search for "women's waterproof walking boots" far more often than a specific model number. Your category structure decides which of those searches you can compete for.

Good categories:

• Match how customers think and search, not how your warehouse is organised.
• Have unique names and URLs.
• Include a short, useful introduction, such as how to choose, sizing advice or materials, without pushing products below the fold.
• Link to closely related categories.

Google's ecommerce guidance covers how it understands shop structures and is worth reading in full.

Product pages that stand out

Many shops use the manufacturer's description, which means hundreds of sites have the same text. That gives Google no reason to prefer yours.

Make product pages more useful than the competition:

• Write your own description, starting with what the product is and who it's for.
• Add the details buyers check: dimensions, materials, compatibility, care instructions, delivery times and returns.
• Use your own photos where possible, from several angles and in use.
• Show genuine customer reviews.
• Answer common questions on the page.

You don't need to do this for every product at once. Start with best sellers and high-margin lines.

Filters and faceted navigation

Filters for size, colour, price and brand help customers but can create thousands of URL combinations. Search engines may spend time crawling pages like "red, size 9, under £50, sorted by newest" that nobody searches for.

Google's guidance on managing faceted navigation covers the options. In practice:

• Decide which filtered pages deserve to be indexed, usually ones matching real searches like "brown leather sofas".
• Give those proper, static URLs and unique content.
• Keep the rest out of the index with canonical tags, or stop them being crawled where appropriate.

This is one area where it's worth getting expert advice, because mistakes can hide important pages or flood the index with junk.

Pagination

Long categories split across several pages need each page to be crawlable with ordinary links. Google's guidance on pagination and incremental loading explains how to handle "load more" buttons and infinite scroll so products further down aren't invisible to search.

Out-of-stock and discontinued products

• Temporarily out of stock. Keep the page live, say when it's expected back and offer alternatives.
• Permanently discontinued with a clear replacement. Redirect to the replacement.
• Discontinued with no replacement. Either keep the page with useful information and links to similar products, or let it return a 404 or 410 status.

Don't redirect every discontinued product to the home page. Google may treat that as a soft 404, and it frustrates shoppers.

Structured data and Merchant Center

Product markup can help Google show price, availability and reviews in results. Google's product structured data documentation lists the required and recommended properties.

Google Merchant Center lets you submit product data for free listings in the Shopping tab and other surfaces. Keeping your feed accurate, especially prices and stock, matters, because mismatches with your site can lead to products being disapproved.

Site speed and mobile

Shop pages tend to be heavy: large images, review widgets, chat tools and tracking scripts. Each one adds load time. Check your main templates in PageSpeed Insights and remove apps or scripts you no longer use. Most shoppers browse on phones, so test checkout on a phone, too.

Content beyond products

A blog isn't essential for a shop, but buying guides and how-to content can help when they answer questions shoppers have before they buy. "How to measure for curtains" or "choosing a road bike size" are good examples. Link them to the relevant categories.

Product titles and URLs

Product titles work best when they follow a consistent pattern customers recognise: brand, product name, key variant and size. "Barbour Beadnell waxed jacket, olive, size 12" tells a shopper and a search engine exactly what's on the page. Keep URLs short and readable, and avoid changing them when you edit a product. If your platform adds category folders to product URLs, check that a product sitting in two categories doesn't end up with two live addresses. Where it does, make sure one canonical version is set and that internal links point to it.

Checks to run each month

• New products have unique titles and descriptions.
• No important categories have been accidentally noindexed or emptied.
• Search Console shows no big rise in "Crawled, currently not indexed" or "Duplicate" pages.
• Merchant Center has no new disapprovals.
• Redirects are in place for removed products and categories.

Common mistakes

• Indexing internal search result pages.
• Every product in multiple categories with different URLs and no canonical.
• Thin category pages with nothing but a product grid.
• Seasonal categories deleted each year, losing any visibility they'd built. Keep the URL and update it instead.