Finding the Right Ecommerce Platform for SEO

How to Find the Best Ecommerce Platform for SEO

Search engine optimisation (SEO) is a common concern for online businesses. Yet, it’s easy to think of SEO performance as something largely tied to the way you build your site and structure your content.

In reality?

The right ecommerce platform for SEO can make a huge difference, as not all platforms are alike in capabilities. Yet, you also want to ensure the ecommerce platform you choose can do more than bolster search engine results, as those results mean little if the platform doesn’t help potential customers have a great experience.

Fear not, for the top ecommerce platforms are typically capable of handling SEO while providing a great foundation on which to build your online store.

Considerations before finding an ecommerce platform for SEO

Your ecommerce store is one-of-a-kind. Being so, there are a number of things to consider before diving in and exploring ecommerce platforms themselves.

Importance of organic marketing.

Organic marketing is important to most businesses to some degree. But, not all ecommerce businesses have SEO strategies and rankings as their top priority.

Think about your own business and ask yourself:

• Do you get a lot of organic traffic already?

• Is your digital marketing strategy mainly organic?

• Is your budget struggling to support paid efforts?

• Are your products complex, requiring education? (If so, organic is a great route.)

Again, whether you’re a small business or international and thriving, organic marketing is well-worth the investment. But, if it’s not a huge part of your business and you tend to do better with paid, extensive built-in SEO features aren’t going to be as big of a priority.

Psst. Curious about content marketing and organic? Check out the latest ecommerce marketing trends here.

Catalogue size and complexity.

In general, the bigger and more complex your product catalogue, the more complex the SEO.

Consider this: With every product page, you have to manage:

• Product descriptions and keyword optimisation

• Meta tags and general metadata/schema markup

• Ongoing keyword research for products to ensure they’re relevant

• Monitoring search engine rankings for every product and keyword

• Updating product descriptions/titles anytime something changes

For an advanced SEO guru, the above is a lot to manage. For a beginner? It’s virtually impossible.

With the right ecommerce platform for SEO, you can run bulk edits and wrangle much of the above tasks. This will only make it easier to handle SEO for your ecommerce website, and open the door to preparing your product pages for agentic AI, which is increasingly important.

Site complexity.

Much like your catalogue, the more complex your site, the harder it is to stay on top of dominating the search engine results pages (SERPs).

If you have any of the following, you could require an ecommerce platform capable of more complex SEO:

• Tons of product categories

• Products assigned to multiple categories (like “shoes” falling into a general “shoes” and “men’s shoes” or “women’s shoes” categories)

• A need for multiple landing pages

• Customised checkout

Even if you lack any of the above, you might be hoping to enable some of this functionality. Without the right ecommerce platform, the above could either be impossible, or require numerous third-party SEO tools and the like to accomplish.

Keep in mind, any time you have to incorporate more and more third-party tools, you’ll likely require more technical expertise. You also run the risk of falling into a plug-in puzzle, hindering your site speed and damaging the user experience.

In-house technical resources.

Some platforms are more user-friendly than others. Think about your in-house resources and whether you can realistically manage technical SEO, handling structured data, and more.

If you lack in-house expertise and can’t afford a third-party agency to assist, you’ll want to prioritise finding an ecommerce platform that comes with more built-in guardrails, SEO plug-in support, SEO-friendly templates, and beyond.

Must-Have SEO Ecommerce Platform Features

Okay, we’ve established all the nasty stuff that can make SEO a real headache. Beyond dark magic and hiring an SEO wizard, can anything help?

Put down your wand, and take note of the following SEO ecommerce platform key features that can make life a whole lot simpler.

URL control.

Full control of URLs is a core SEO capability to look for, as URLs play a pivotal role in getting your ecommerce site organic traffic and rankings.

Without the right URL control, online visibility can suffer, as search engines will struggle to crawl and index your site properly. To prevent this, look for an ecommerce platform that offers the following features, or supports them via integration or plug-in.

Customisable URL structures.

With customisable URLs, you can create clean URLs that are both easier for you to identify, and easier for search engines to understand.

For example, with control over the URL structure, you can create keyword-focused URLs like /running-shoes/mens, rather than a generic one like /product?id=4821.

Automatic canonical tags.

Finding a platform that auto-generates canonical tags can prevent duplicate content issues common in ecommerce — stemming from faceted navigation, numerous product variants, subcategories, and so on. The platform should also support manual overrides of canonical tags as you see fit.

301 redirect control.

URLs can and will change, whether on account of a product update, category restructure, or complete site migration. Your platform of choice should have a tool for managing 301 redirects, which allow you to preserve link equity and prevent dead ends for site visitors and crawlers alike.

301 redirects are an especially large ranking factor. If a crawler hits a broken link, you essentially sever that connection and all the SEO/rankings that went with it. It’s a lot like walling over the entrance to a department in a store, and then wondering why customers aren’t making any purchases.

Faceted navigation.

Faceted navigation allows site visitors to refine their search. For many online stores, this is foundational to a great user experience, especially if numerous product types and variants are offered.

For instance, with faceted navigation your customers can narrow a search by choosing shoes, Puma, size 10, Grey. For the URL, with proper faceted navigation, this ends up looking like:

-Examples to tweak: 

/shoes?color=grey

/shoes?color=grey&size=10

/shoes?color=grey&size=10&brand=puma

Without proper handling of filtered URLs, faceted navigation can create thousands or even millions of URLs that hurt SEO, page speed, and overall site load times. Not to mention, as your product catalogue grows, a lack of proper faceted navigation can hinder scalability.

Site indexation controls.

You don’t want Google and other crawlers checking every page of your site, as some are private, duplicate, and so on. Site indexation controls facilitate this, letting you point crawlers in the right direction.

There are two core pieces to this puzzle, and most ecommerce platforms should support them:

• Sitemap.xml: Your platform should easily facilitate sitemap generation, which acts as a guide for crawlers, telling them which pages to check or index.

• Robots.txt: With the robots.txt file, you can tell crawlers which pages to ignore and not index.

Again, most ecommerce platforms will support the above file types, as they’re foundational to SEO. But, not all platforms will make it easy to control and customise them, which can make them harder for non-technical users and become an increasingly large headache as you scale.

Metadata customisation.

Metadata isn’t directly tied to rankings like some of the other elements mentioned, but it’s still going to influence performance metrics.

An ecommerce platform should make metadata management mayhem-free with support for:

• Page titles: Page titles are the first thing people see on the SERPs, so getting them right plays a big part in driving traffic.

• Meta descriptions: Right below page titles you’ll find the meta descriptions, which should accurately pitch the article and help drive clicks and play a small part in your conversion rates.

• Bulk editing controls: Whether you already have a large library of content and pages or will in the future, bulk editing controls make it easy to quickly update page titles and descriptions en masse.

It’s easy to treat metadata as an afterthought, but it’s still important to presenting your content and getting people through the digital door. The right ecommerce platform should make it easier to manage, and easier to shower with the attention it deserves.

Schema management.

Your ecommerce site is rife with structured data, all of which should be made all the more manageable with proper schema management functionality.

Your ecommerce platform should help wrangle in:

• Product schema: Price, SKU, availability, item variants, and more should be quick to update and bulk edit with your platform.

• Content schema: Articles/blogs, landing pages, product pages, home page, and other content types should also be easy to update with your platform.

• Breadcrumb schema: Breadcrumbs help crawlers/search engines understand and wander through your site. Your platform of choice should help with this, automatically generating the appropriate schema.

Schema isn’t the most exciting thing in the world, but it’s important to your SEO and overall visibility. Finding a platform that makes it easier to handle with care is well worth the search.

Mobile optimisation.

Mobile devices might be small, but the market is anything but: mobile users drive 78% of online shopping. If your site isn’t optimised for mobile? People will find a site that is.

Your ecommerce platform should facilitate a mobile-first approach, providing:

• Mobile-responsive themes/pages: Responsive pages will automatically format to fit a user’s device, giving them a better overall user experience.

• Strong performance: Your chosen platform should have strong mobile performance, with fast-loading sites across mobile devices.

• Mobile-friendly site nav: A responsive theme should include mobile-friendly navigation, but this isn’t always the case. Make sure an ecommerce platform supports this.

You’ve worked hard to get your brand where it is. Don’t let mobile be the thing that keeps you standing still.

Content SEO.

Your site, if it doesn’t already, will have tons of content: articles, landing pages, FAQs, videos, and more. The right platform will make it easy to make this organic gold shine, whereas the wrong one will keep it buried.

Find an ecommerce platform that offers:

• Rich content support: Rich snippets show up on Google like metadata with a flashy hat. These snippets can show product ratings and really stand out, so finding a platform that makes it easy to offer the right schema to support them is a huge plus.

• Optimised landing page templates: Whether built-in or something you can develop once via a headless commerce approach, your platform should make it easy to quickly stand up optimised landing pages.

• Rich media: Via the ecommerce platform’s native CMS or through an integration, your platform should let you add in images, videos, and other media types, and make it equally easy to update the alt text.

On-page SEO is arguably one of the biggest pieces of SEO, and one you can often have full control over without the same technical expertise required for back-end SEO matters. With a great ecommerce platform, it should be even more accessible.

Features for large organisations.

For large organisations and enterprises, there are some additional features to keep an eye out for:

• Bulk editing: Large organisations have large catalogues and large websites, so bulk editing of metadata and product catalogues is a must.

• API support: You’ll want API support for automation, for both SEO-related matters and workflows beyond it.

• Headless/composable commerce: With a headless or composable commerce platform, you can easily connect your favourite tools under one roof. This makes it easier to utilise the best SEO tools, automate, and maybe even rule the world.

• Staging environments: Staging environments are helpful for organisations of all sizes, but especially for larger orgs that plan on running numerous campaigns. With a staging environment, you can safely test out various templates without the risk of going live and hurting your SEO.

While the above features are beneficial to smaller organisations, they’re vital for those with large, complex workflows and catalogues.

Top 5 Ecommerce Platforms for SEO

There are countless ecommerce platforms available, many of them with their own strengths and weaknesses. Where SEO is concerned, most platforms deliver the bare minimum. You need one that does more. One that makes organic growth easier, not harder and more laborious than it already is.

The following are some of the best ecommerce platforms for SEO.

BigCommerce.

BigCommerce offers an all-in-one ecommerce platform, with numerous built-in features and support for more than 1,200 integrations and apps. Offering a truly composable commerce experience and low/no-code development, you can make BigCommerce fit your brand, not the other way around.

Key SEO Features of BigCommerce.

Where SEO is concerned, BigCommerce has a number of unique features that help businesses drive visibility while maintaining ownership of their organic efforts.

• Fully customisable URLs: Other platforms, like Shopify, force certain url prefixes like /collection/ and /products/, which limit targeting efforts.

• Automatic sitemaps: Ensure crawlers get an accurate picture of your site with automatic sitemaps.

• Built-in 301 redirects: Integrated redirects make it easy to point new links in the right place.

• Native schema markup: Full, built-in schema markup allows you to accurately fill out product data, page markup, and more without the need for an integration.

• Full metadata control: Present your pages in the right light on Google with built-in metadata control.

It’s worth noting all of the above is built-in, requiring no plug-ins. Much of the above is possible with other platforms if you utilise a plug-in, but this requires updating the plug-in as needed, or having to switch if support is dropped.

Where BigCommerce is strongest.

BigCommerce offers more foundational and advanced SEO functions out-of-the-box than many platforms at a similar price point.

With extensive built-in tools for SEO and multichannel, along with unique B2B functionality, you can avoid juggling plug-ins and third-party tools.

Weaknesses of BigCommerce SEO.

Tools alone don’t make for great SEO. Your business still needs a solid SEO strategy in place to fully benefit. BigCommerce can also be a lot to handle for extremely small, start-up companies. (Fortunately, we offer extensive guided support options.)

Who is BigCommerce ideal for?

Businesses of all sizes can benefit from the built-in SEO features of BigCommerce. That being said, the scalable platform is especially great for mid-market, large, and enterprise businesses needing multi-region support.

Adobe Commerce (Formerly Magento).

Adobe Commerce, the open-source artist formerly known as Magento, is known for delivering an enterprise-grade ecommerce platform backed by a household brand name.

Because Adobe Commerce is known for such a large-scale platform, it should come as little surprise that it has a number of SEO strengths that landed it on this list.

Key SEO Features of Adobe Commerce.

Adobe Commerce supports:

• Advanced URL control: With support for both top-level and category URLs, you can take a strategic approach to your site and catalogue structure.

• Enterprise-level features: Handle metadata, sitemaps, URLs, and more at a high, scalable level with batch control.

Where Adobe Commerce is strongest.

The extreme level of control available with Adobe Commerce makes it highly capable for those knowledgeable of SEO.

Weaknesses of Adobe Commerce SEO.

The freedom of Adobe Commerce SEO is a double-edged sword. Much like a house of cards, the more you tinker with it the more likely it is to fall apart. This is especially true for organisations lacking the in-house developer support required to take full advantage of the platform.

Who is Adobe Commerce ideal for?

Adobe Commerce’s support for large, complex catalogues and sites and high level of SEO customisation make it a great fit for enterprise companies with extensive in-house technical expertise.

(Interested in comparing Adobe Commerce to BigCommerce? You can see how their capabilities stack up by visiting BigCommerce vs. Adobe.)

WooCommerce.

WooCommerce is a well-known open-source ecommerce platform that runs on WordPress. Known for being accessible and quick to set up, the platform also excels at SEO in a number of ways. (It does run on one of the biggest CMS platforms in the world, after all.)

Key SEO Features of WooCommerce.

Both the open-source and WordPress-based nature of WooCommerce enable it to have some impressive SEO strengths:

• Extensive plugin support: WordPress is home to a lot of plugins. More than 65,000, to be exact. That includes a large amount of SEO-based plugins, all of which power more control and ownership of organic growth and metrics.

• Built-in content platform: WordPress is known for being a great blogging platform as much as it is a general site platform. WooCommerce sites can benefit from this, easily posting optimised content using an intuitive builder.

Where WooCommerce is strongest.

WooCommerce’s biggest strengths are its open-source and content-based foundations. Being open-source, those with technical expertise can make the platform bend to their will. And for companies looking to lean heavily into content, the WordPress tie-in is tough to beat.

Weaknesses of WooCommerce.

The plugins that make WooCommerce a Swiss Army knife, also make it difficult to scale and price out. Plugins can have varying degrees of compatibility and support, and pricing can fluctuate. Combined, this makes it difficult to do any forecasting and grow.

Who is WooCommerce ideal for?

If you’re already on Wordpress and scalability hasn’t been an issue, WooCommerce can make for a great launch pad. 

(If you’re torn between choosing WooCommerce or BigCommerce, or considering switching, check out our comparison page.) 

Squarespace.

Squarespace was once known for offering beautiful site templates. The company is still known for this, but now, it also offers ecommerce.

Pretty templates and intuitive site building weren’t the only things that made Squarespace popular. The platform also has some impressive SEO chops.

Key SEO Features of Squarespace.

Squarespace made a name for itself by prioritising ease of access. The SEO features of the platform are in the same vein, making SEO accessible:

• Mobile-optimised templates: Every template offered by Squarespace is optimised for mobile, making it pretty much guaranteed your site will look great on the go.

• Auto metadata generation: AI-powered tools can generate page titles, descriptions, and other metadata to streamline the optimisation process.

Where Squarespace is strongest.

The design-first mindset of Squarespace makes it easy for brands to quickly launch a site that looks professional right out of the gate. The lack of reliance on plugins is an added strength, giving users a cleaner experience.

Weaknesses of Squarespace.

The same simplicity that makes Squarespace easy to use also limits what it’s capable of. For those looking to take full control over SEO, Squarespace is lacking when compared to many other platforms.

Who is Squarespace ideal for?

Squarespace is a great choice for those in the creative space, visual brands, and smaller businesses looking for a clean, simple SEO experience.

Wix.

Wix, much like Squarespace, is all about the site building experience. And, like Squarespace, Wix now offers an ecommerce solution, largely powered by AI.

Key SEO features of Wix.

Wix takes a similar approach to Squarespace, providing a number of built-in tools that provide a simple, user-friendly SEO experience:

• Google readiness: Many praise how easy it is to set up Google Search Console and Google Analytics with Wix, allowing you to quickly track key metrics.

• Beginner friendly SEO: Wix offers a guided checklist to SEO, making it easy for optimisation newcomers to dive right in and start working toward organic visibility.

Where Wix is strongest.

Between the platform’s site builder and the guided SEO experience, Wix excels at offering an experience that’s truly friendly to newcomers.

Weaknesses of Wix.

Wix lacks the advanced SEO capabilities of some platforms. The ecommerce platform itself also has more guardrails, making it difficult to tweak checkout flows, integrate your favourite tools, and scale.

Who is Wix ideal for?

Not to sound like a broken record, but those interested in Squarespace could also look to Wix. Beyond individuals and small businesses, Wix is also an ideal choice for those wanting simplicity over all else.

The final word

There’s no single “best” ecommerce platform for SEO. At the end of the day, it’s really about what’s best for your business and its unique needs and resources.

But, if you’re looking for a platform that not only excels at SEO, but can continue to expand and grow right along with your ambitions?

Look no further than BigCommerce.

BigCommerce contains all the great SEO features mentioned earlier, but also supports multi-store management, more than 20 payment gateways, robust automation throughout marketing and various business workflows, and more.

Organic growth and SEO takes time. That doesn’t mean it has to be hard. See how BigCommerce can give you complete control over your ecommerce journey.

Ecommerce Platform for SEO FAQs