An Ultimate Guide to Choosing the Best ecommerce Platforms for SEO 

No secret selling products and services online requires an eCommerce platform. So, if you want to open an online store, the first step is to look for a fast, flexible, and scalable platform. For eCommerce SEO services, your preference should be to choose one that manages websites, marketing, and sales and improves conversions.

Choosing the best eCommerce platforms for SEO is unquestionably a hard start, as so many options are available in the market. For that reason, we have done some deep research and compiled a list of SEO-friendly eCommerce platforms that are trusted by millions of online retail businesses.

Why Choose SEO-friendly Platform for Online Stores?

An SEO-friendly eCommerce platform helps you manage and increase conversions and appear in Search Engine Results Pages. Whether you’re starting your first store or your 10th one, such a platform significantly impacts your business.

Choosing the best eCommerce platform for SEO is a hard start with so many options in the market. Also, regarding SEO, some platforms are better than others. Therefore, we have done some deep research and compiled a list of top eCommerce platforms for SEO.

Best eCommerce Platform for SEO

• BigCommerce
• Magento
• Shopify
• WooCommerce
• Squarespace
• Volusion

List of the Best E-commerce Platforms for SEO?

Every platform has its own advantages and disadvantages. Choose one that best suits your specific needs.

BigCommerce

BigCommerce is one of the best online store creation platforms that features robust capabilities in search engine optimization (SEO), hosting, marketing, and security, catering to businesses ranging from small startups to large enterprises. With its powerful tools and customizable features, BigCommerce SEO ensures that your online store is optimized for maximum visibility and effectiveness in driving traffic and conversions.

Features:

• Mobile-friendly
• Built-in 301 redirect features
• SEO-friendly URLs
• Access to edit your txt file
• 40 different payment methods
• Customization and Functionality
• Unlimited file storage, bandwidth, and products
• Single-page checkout
• Less downtime, Omni Channels
• Product Videos, Coupons & Gift Certificates
• Bulk Pricing, Ratings & Reviews
• Product Swatches, Customer Groups & Segmentation
• Persistent Cart, Strong SEO Performance, B2B Edition,

Magento

Magento is another eCommerce platform on the list because of its fully customizable feature, sitemap enhancements, tools for structured markup data optimization, independent navigation links, customizable H1 Tags, integrated content pages, specialized checkout process, and more.

Features:

• Robust and feature-rich
• 1-Click Selling Apps
• Pricey Themes, Easily Slowed Down
• Drag and drop capabilities
• Analytics insights, Page editing
• Multiple, detailed permissions
• B2B negotiation, Multi-source order
• Inventory management

Related: Magento SEO: The Ultimate Guide for (2024)

Shopify

Shopify is great for beginners who want to set up their first eCommerce website. It integrates Google Analytics into your website to monitor traffic, leads, and conversions. It allows custom metatags creation, blog features with editable tags, organized site structure, free hosting, and CDN for images to help improve SEO.

Features:

• Fast Loading & Easy To Use
• Excellent for Dropshipping
• Weak at SEO/Content Marketing
• Customer Profiles Creation
• Payments Acceptance Anywhere With Shopify POS
• Exploit the Power of Discount Codes.
• Shopify-Facebook Integration
• Live Chat, Auto-Calculate Shipping Prices for Each Customer

Also Read: Digital Marketing Tips for Your Shopify Store

WooCommerce

WooCommerce is among the best SEO-friendly e-commerce platforms because of its features like URL customization, built-in 301 redirects, mobile-friendliness, built-in blogging, and text editing.

Features:

• Seamless WordPress Integration
• Built-in Blogging Feature
• Remarkable Flexibility
• Large Library of Extensions
• In-Built Payment Process
• Smooth Integration with Marketing Tools
• Products Sorting & Rating
• Unlimited Products and Product Photos

Also Read: WooCommerce SEO Tips to Boost Your Ranking

Squarespace

Squarespace is also in the race among top eCommerce platforms for SEO with 100 flexible templates, blogging capabilities, mobile responsiveness, and support from users in the Squarespace community.

Features:

• Easy to set up, great for simple stores
• Stunning Template Designs
• Limited Ecommerce Integrations
• Limited Payment Gateways
• Inventory management
• Automatic emailing, Configuring sales taxes
• Custom color palettes, flexible layouts
• Unique background art creation tool
• Built-in photo editing capabilities
• Video and background banners

Volusion

Volusion is SEO-ready due to features like URL customization,  301 redirects, keyword research, content optimization, and blogging.

Features:

• Great On-boarding
• Recurring Payments Included
• SMB Friendly, Lacks Up/Cross-Selling
• Slower Load Times
• Manage Returns
• Subscription-Based Products
• Modern Checkout Solution
• Manage Customer Accounts

How Ecommerce Platforms Impact SEO?

Most eCommerce and web design platforms have ample features that let you optimize your eCommerce stores for search engines like Google, Bing, MSN, Yahoo, and other search engines.  Since SEO involves several factors (speed, user experience, meta tags, and more), search for an eCommerce platform that excels with all of them.

Sadly, some eCommerce platforms include only basic, automated SEO tools. So, you’ll need more advanced tools to compete with other brands.

For instance,

A few eCommerce platforms automatically create page titles, metadata, and URLs, depending on your product title and category. They don’t allow you to customize your content. This can adversely affect SEO performance because people are reluctant to search for the creative name you gave to your product. Instead, they use something specific like “shoes for long-distance walking.”

This being said, you need an eCommerce platform that has the quality to supersede the automated metadata and allows you to customize independent SEO elements to target what people are searching for!

Some free eCommerce platforms give you no option to override this. They compel you to pay more for the best SEO features. Therefore, choosing the best eCommerce platforms for SEO right from the beginning is important.

What to Look When Finding the Best Ecommerce Platform for SEO?

Top eCommerce platforms mean you can create the perfect storefront for your business on a relatively modest budget, expand your services and offerings, use built-in tools to engage your customers and prioritize customer service to support customer loyalty, conversion, and retention.

Here’s how to find the best eCommerce platform for SEO to drive more leads and improve conversions.

• Ownership Costs: All platforms have a monthly fee and processing costs. Check their licensing fees, any commission-based costs, hosting costs, maintenance costs, etc.
• Plugins & Integration: Check features like Customer Loyalty Programs, Payment & Shipping, 3rd Party Digital Tools (CRMs, ERPs) Accounting (to get updates about sales, taxes, revenues, and profits), and Email Marketing (to contact customers).
• Themes & User Experience (UX): See built-in themes and customizable UX to deliver the best possible user experience to turn browsers into buyers.
• Speed & Scalability: Evaluate platform performance and scalability. Confirm how many customers the platform can handle at peak traffic times and how it scales horizontally and vertically.
• Product Management System: Scan functions like bulk product upload (CSV, Excel files), categorization, wish list, product comparison, recently viewed, shipping options, sorting, price range, color, size, and location.
• Platform Security: Inspect if the eCommerce provider has the necessary security protocols like an SSL certificate, Level 1 PCI compliance, and authentication of data sources.
• Payment Gateways Support: Consider multiple payment gateways (Stripe, PayPal, Braintree, Amazon Pay, Square, BlueSnap) and support for safely moving funds from customers’ bank accounts to your own.
• Personalization: Make sure the eCommerce platform shows shoppers your products based on age, sex, location, interest, personality, lifestyle, recently viewed items, current searches, or previous purchases.
• Mobile-friendliness: Take a look at whether the design of the eCommerce platform you have chosen supports smooth customer journey, navigation, layout, and general user experience, on smartphones.
• SEO Friendliness: See what SEO capabilities are included, like options to update metadata, add canonical tags, create a custom domain name, access to robot.txt file, customize URL structures, update XML sitemap and integrate Google Analytics.
• Order Management System: Check ERP and CRM through API integration or plugin installation. Also, features like tracking, email notifications, and shipping service API should be considered.

Key SEO Factors for the Best Ecommerce Platform

Key factors that play important roles in how well eCommerce stores rank in the SERPs (search engine results pages):

• Navigation Links Some eCommerce platforms auto-generate Navigation links. For the best SEO experience, select one that lets you customize navigation links.
• Page Titles: Choose an SEO eCommerce platform that offers full functionality to create custom page titles. Maybe you need some basic coding ideas, or you can ask your developer to complete this simple task for you.
• Custom Page URLs: Reputable eCommerce platforms allow the creation of URLs using keywords for the best SEO practice. They let you change the page URL in some way.
• Custom Meta Descriptions: Avoid going with a platform that auto-generates Meta descriptions. Ensure you can create custom descriptions relevant to your products or services to let visitors click on your page.
• Custom H1 Heading: The best eCommerce platform for SEO empowers you to customize H1 tags as per your business requirements to show the most important text on your page.
• Canonical URLs: Make sure the platform you choose allows you to add or edit a canonical URL for an individual blog post, landing page, or website page to keep things “clean.”
• Social Sharing buttons: Check social sharing buttons to let visitors share your site, products, and blog posts on popular social networks. If your platform doesn’t have these buttons, install a plugin or look for a different template.
• Auto XML Sitemaps: Maintaining an XML sitemap for eCommerce is quite difficult. Select an eCommerce platform that automatically generates an XML sitemap whenever a new page is added to or removed from your website.
• 301 Redirects: It’s a command to redirect a browser or search engine from one URL to another. Some eCommerce platforms, like Shopify, have a tool to complete a redirect. While a platform like WooCommerce requires a plugin for this.

What Makes the Best Ecommerce Platform for SEO?

SEO is an important element in online marketing. When building an online store, ensure your eCommerce platform supports all the features to apply SEO best practices.

But what makes an eCommerce platform great for SEO? Get the answer below.

• Page Load Speed: Site speed is important. Ensure the eCommerce platform allows image optimization, minification, caching, and compression to improve site speed. 
• Taxonomy Options: The taxonomy options help create brand and category pages and organise groups of posts and custom post types that can drive valuable traffic to your site. 
• Customizable HEAD Sections. Many things (like structured data markup, meta robots tags, canonical tags) can be placed in a web page’s HEAD. Use a platform that allows you to add whatever you want to the HEAD section of each individual page. 
• Indexing Control: The best eCommerce platform for SEO gives webmasters control over what’s being indexed and what’s not by providing a so-called “canonical tag”. This leads to preventing substantial SEO problems. 
• Content Features: Ensure that you’re free to add as much content as you like to any product page or category to attract a lot of organic traffic. That positively impacts conversion rates. 
• Mobile Optimization: A great eCommerce platform for SEO offers a mobile optimization feature which lets your products fit on any mobile screen size. 
• Meta Descriptions: Meta descriptions impact the click-through rate. The best SEO-friendly eCommerce platform helps you create your own meta descriptions, unlike those that auto-generate based on product descriptions and categories. 
• Customization without Developers: Choose an eCommerce platform that enables you to quickly make any architectural changes to the website without help from a developer. You should be able to create and upload well-optimized content by providing a solid framework from which they can work. 
• Product Descriptions: A good platform for eCommerce stores lets you write unique and sufficient product descriptions without restrictions because default descriptions by eCommerce platforms are usually fairly short and duplicate. 
• Built-In SEO Tools: The right eCommerce platform for SEO allows easy implementation of page titles, meta descriptions & SEO-friendly URLs. It facilitates easily managing your SEO through sitemap generation, canonical URLs, 301 redirect management, and Robots.txt editing.

Conclusion

SEO is the factor in keeping your online store ranked high on search engines. It’s undeniably the best tool to promote your eCommerce business without spending huge amounts.

Do not worry if all of this seems overwhelming.

Try Shopify’s 14-day free trial first. This eCommerce platform has you covered when it comes to SEO. You can also try two or three platforms based on what you think suits your business plan and SEO strategy.

• Research 203 platforms a bit deeper
• Sign up and go for free trials
• Install the software on a test domain
• Spend time to see how these platforms are working

Based on your experience, you can easily choose the best SEO eCommerce platform most suited to your business.

We would appreciate it if you share with us the list of eCommerce platforms you have tried and which you think is the best eCommerce platform for SEO.

Additional Read: 10 Things to Consider Before Switching Ecommerce Platforms