Want to grow your e-commerce business quickly? Search engine optimization (SEO) is one of the most efficient ways to get in front of your ideal customers and earn sales on autopilot, no recurring expenses required. If you host your store on BigCommerce, you’re in the perfect position to take advantage of the platform’s powerful SEO features and plugins.

However, optimizing a BigCommerce site isn’t as easy as dumping a list of keywords into a few fields and pressing publish. BigCommerce SEO requires a careful blend of strategies and consistent implementation before your business can rise to the top of search engines. 

This guide will cover the basics of BigCommerce SEO to help get you started. We’ll dig into:

• Why SEO is Important for BigCommerce Sites
• The Top SEO Strategies for BigCommerce
• BigCommerce SEO Features
• The Top SEO Plugins for BigCommerce

By the end, you should know exactly which steps to take to increase your business’s visibility and exceed all your sales goals.

Why SEO is Important for BigCommerce Sites

If your e-commerce business is new on the scene, investing time and money into your BigCommerce site’s SEO is the key to scaling quickly and flying past your competition. 

That’s because of all online marketing strategies, SEO has among the highest return on investment. Once you set up your site’s SEO and start ranking at the top of search engines, you can start passively earning sales from organic traffic without the recurring expense of paid ads.

How you set up your site’s SEO makes all the difference. There are several strategies, features, and plugins that, when used together, can get your site in front of more customers.  

The Top SEO Strategies for BigCommerce Sites

BigCommerce recommends several strategies to get your SEO to work harder for your business. Below are just a few to get you started. 

Keyword research

Choosing a keyword to rank for is the first and perhaps most important step to SEO success. It can also be the toughest step. Luckily, this guide from BigCommerce digs into the basics of keyword research. 

On-page SEO

The keyword you chose during your research should appear in multiple places on each page of your site. For example, if your keyword is daschund gifts, the URL of your category page should look something like this:

Other places the keyword should go are:

• In the page’s title tag
• In bold within the page text
• In image alt text where appropriate
• In the metadata, aka the description of the page that shows up in search engines

Technical SEO

Site speed, user experience, and mobile-friendliness are all important for improving your search engine ranking. If you have a slow site loading time or if users leave your site after only visiting for a few seconds, your ranking could take a beating. The best way to address this issue is in how you designed your site, which may require the expertise of an experienced site developer. 

Link building

Every time an external site has a link that points to your e-commerce site, your search engine ranking gets a boost. 

In addition to the strategies described here, you should consider site architecture and content marketing as part of your overall SEO strategy. Analyzing your SEO with tools like Google Analytics or Ahrefs is also a must.

The Top SEO Features for BigCommerce

BigCommerce comes equipped with several features to help you implement many of the SEO strategies we’ve discussed. These features include:

• Metadata - Page titles and descriptions that show up in search results
• Image Alt Tags - Descriptions that search engines read to know the content of images
• Mobile Optimization - Adjusts websites to fit different screen sizes
• Product Filtering - Groups products in a way that is easy for search engines to read
• Microdata - Information like ratings, prices, stock levels that can appear on search results
• 301 Redirects - Automatically sends users to a new URL if the old one changes
• CDN (Content Delivery Network) Systems - Helps files load faster by adjusting to how users are accessing sites
• HTTPS - Adds a layer of security that protects data for the business and customers

The Top SEO Plugins for BigCommerce

Plugins can help take your SEO strategies to the next level. To see what plugins are available for BigCommerce, check out the e-commerce Apps Marketplace by clicking the Apps button in the left sidebar of your store’s admin page.

Below are three standout SEO plugins for BigCommerce to get you started:

1. FavSeo

FavSEO is the most popular SEO plugin in BigCommerce. This comprehensive tool includes:

• A dashboard that gives a bird’s eye view of a site’s SEO
• An editor that allows you to easily update page titles and meta descriptions for products, pages, brands, blogs, and categories
• A tool for checking a site’s URL optimization against competitors by generating a ranking score
• A keyword suggestion tool
• Analytics for measuring page speed

2. ReloadSEO

ReloadSEO works with your text editor to help optimize your copy as you write it. The tool gives feedback that tells you exactly how optimized your text is and highly actionable suggestions for improvement.

 

With ReloadSEO you can also improve your keyword quality score in Google Ads, which can lower the cost per click (CPC) of any ads you run.

3. ProSEOTracker

ProSEOTracker is comparable to FavSEO. It sets itself apart is by letting you monitor data from Google Ads or listing crawl errors from the Google Search Console.

Take Your BigCommerce Site’s SEO to the Next Level

Ranking at the top of search engines can help scale your e-commerce business quickly. However, developing an SEO strategy and implementing it on BigCommerce’s intricate platform can be a drain on your time and resources—even if you manage to do it correctly. 

That’s where Group 8A comes in. We specialize in SEO strategy and implementation for BigCommerce sites so your business can rise to the top of search engines and make as many sales as possible. 

The best part? With our interest-free financing plans, you can get a fully customized site with mobile optimization, keyword research and implementation, features that enhance user experience, and more, all of which will perfect your SEO and launch your business to the next level.