BigCommerce SEO Optimization: What You Need To Know

So, your eCommerce store runs on BigCommerce, a SaaS eCommerce platform used by over 60,000 merchants and 2,000+ mid-market businesses. First of all, great choice!

In our 14+ years as a full-service eCommerce agency, Groove Commerce has been an advocate for BigCommerce. We’ve found the platform to be ideal for growing brands looking to consolidate technical resources with SaaS.

BigCommerce SEO Optimization Solutions

Whether you’re relatively new to BigCommerce or have been using it for some time now, you may have run into an issue or two where you needed BigCommerce support. Our Custom BigCommerce Development team is here to help you proactively find solutions to technical challenges that may come your way.

BigCommerce SEO Optimization Integrations

As you may already know, BigCommerce integrates with external apps that can be found in the marketplace. Full of third-party applications, the marketplace not only helps merchants unite their website’s backend and front end, but it also helps them stay updated on custom features and functionality designed to improve UI and UX.

BigCommerce Givex Integration

If your eCommerce store falls into the restaurant industry, apparel industry or any other industry that uses gift cards, then this integration will benefit you. Although BigCommerce has native gift card functionality that enables merchants to sell gift cards, a third-party tool is necessary to sell physical, in-store gift cards on your website - if in-store gift cards are used in your POS.

Our team constructed the Givex Integration for BigCommerce to allow merchants to sell both physical and e-gift cards online. It also lets customers make purchases online (as well as in store) with the gift cards. This is a huge win for merchants that have a physical store in addition to their online store.

BigCommerce AS400 Integration

eCommerce stores operating in a B2B environment may face challenges with accurately tracking inventory and filtering through orders. Worry no more; we built this BigCommerce AS400 Integration so that merchants can connect their BigCommerce store to their AS400 ERP. What does this mean?

Integrating these two things lets both the merchant and the customer see accurate inventory and product availability. With this integration, the website’s front-end displays the true in-stock number of a SKU. Products in inventory update automatically, so you can say goodbye to the backend headaches. All orders must be placed through BigCommerce (rather than through sales teams), which creates a central point of transaction and eliminates manual transaction discrepancies.

BigCommerce SEO Optimization Challenges

Improving organic search presence really helps to increase website traffic, leads and conversions. Use BigCommerce SEO best practices and the platform’s built-in features to optimize both your content and website.

Below are some common issues merchants encounter, and often turn to BigCommerce support for, when trying to improve their organic search rankings.

Limited Blog Functionality - BigCommerce SEO Optimization

Every BigCommerce store has a built-in blog set by default. This sounds helpful in theory; however, the platform’s blog functionality is not a valuable SEO factor. The built-in blog automatically publishes posts on a subdomain, which means that the blog does not help to improve your site authority or the trustworthiness of your domain as it would for a blog published on the domain.

The majority of Groove Commerce clients that host their sites on BigCommerce prefer to host their blogs on other CMS platforms, like Wordpress or HubSpot.

Slow Site Speed - BigCommerce SEO Optimization

Want to increase your site speed? The fact that you’re already using BigCommerce is a great start because it has an average response time of ⅓ of a second. Here are some tips to follow if you need help:

• Use 72dpi and 1250px for photos
• For automatic redirects, navigate to Admin > Server Settings > 301 Redirects
• Use a content delivery network
• Don’t use too many third-party apps

We dive further into each of these points in this BigCommerce Site Speed Solutions blog.

410 vs 404 Errors - BigCommerce SEO Optimization

A 410 error presents itself when a person navigates to a web page or URL that is permanently unavailable on that server. In other words, the link no longer exists and won’t ever exist again.

A 404 error, on the other hand, means that the page is not found. The web page exists on the server, but the server is unable to find what lives on that page. This could be due to a few things:

• Your web page is linked to another site with an incorrect link
• Your web page is removed or unpublished
• You change the permalink

Although neither of these errors are ideal for BigCommerce SEO Optimization purposes, it’s better to have a 410 error than a 404 error on your site. It’s important to note that BigCommerce does not allow eCommerce websites to create 410 web pages, but the platform does allow 404s.

If you see a 404 error, use a 301 redirect to fix the issue. A 301 redirect automatically redirects those who land on a page with a 404 error to the correct page. This means users can still enter the outdated URL, and the 301 redirect will send them to the right page.

Conclusion

We hope these insights help you optimize your website and improve KPIs. If you need additional BigCommerce support or want to analyze BigCommerce pros and cons for your eCommerce store, reach out to Groove Commerce through the form below. We’d love to learn more about your business and partner with you to build, design and grow your eCommerce store.

P.S. If you want some BigCommerce inspiration, check out some of our favorite BigCommerce websites.