5 SEO Features Your Ecommerce Platform Needs To Have

Driving customers to your website, is extremely important for an ecommerce business.

There's no question that it can be incredibly tiring to find the best ecommerce software for your business.

With all of the different choices out there it can be an overwhelming experience.

Especially if you're a business owner who isn't entirelysure what you should be looking for in the first place.

Here's some good news. We've made things easier for you!

Here's a run down of all of the features you should be on the hunt for when looking for ecommerce software, as well as how these features will help benefit your business.

SEO Features Every Ecommerce Platform Should Have

1. Dynamic XML Sitemap Capabilities

This one will save you tons of time and a lot of headaches.

When you choose an ecommerce software that allows you to easily and instantly create an updated XML sitemap, you're going to be able to easily maintain your site from one single access point once it's set up.

This is incredibly important when it comes to ecommerce since you'll likely be moving, deleting, updating and changing products and services often. Having a dynamic XML sitemap allows you to do this effortlessly on your own.

Once you have your sitemap all up and ready to go, make sure that you submit your “new” site to Google and Bing Webmaster tools (and any other search engines that you think are relevant) so that they can immediately index your content and make sure that it shows up in the search engines ASAP.

2. Customized Meta Tags

A surprising amount of ecommerce software platforms don't allow users to change meta tags as far down as they need to go.

When it comes to having an online storefront, you need to have the ability to continually change your meta tags right down to the product level in order to really optimize your pages.

The last thing you want to do is choose software that only allows you to change the meta data for a product once.  There are a number of reasons why this is bad.

• You may want to make changes to meta description, meta tags, meta keywords to increase page rankings.

• You may want to make the meta tag more descriptive so it aligns with top keywords

• Make changes so you don't end up with duplicated content on your site (which could result in a penalty from Google).

3. Image Handling Capabilities

The best ecommerce sites out there allow image optimization.

Image handling is one option that you want to be on the hunt for. This feature ensures that your images will always keep the very same URL, regardless of what page they appear on. For example, if an image is on your homepage and on a product page, you can keep the same URL for both – something which will help you out big time when it comes to page rank).

4. Create Your Own Taxonomy

Nothing's worse than being stuck with a platform that forces you to use a set number of categories and sub-categories.

The best platforms will allow you to customize nearly everything on you storefront, including site layout.  By being able to create your very own categories and subcategories, you're then building an online store that makes sense for your brand.

You're creating a store that's easy to navigate. And one that will also promote lead engagement.  Apart from improving the user's experience, it will also benefit your store in terms of SEO.

5. Control Over Your URLs

The last feature that's always nice to have around is control over you URLs.

The more control you have over you URLs, the more SEO friendly your page will be and the less likely visitors and leads will be met with annoying “404” page errors.  Whenever you move or delete a page, you can quickly and easily put redirect URLs in place to guide leads to the right spot.

No one wants to send their website visitors to a 404 page. If so, you might find that you're losing

Bonus: Analytical Tool Integration

Nothing's really worth doing in the online world unless you're able to get some stats and data out of it.

This is why when shopping for that ecommerce software, you need to choose one that can be easily integrated with any other sort of analytical or inbound marketing software, like HubSpot.