What brings traffic to your online store or eCommerce Website?

Firstly  Search Engine Optimization (SEO). And the second one is “Which Ecommerce platform is Best for SEO”.

SEO is a brilliant way to generate traffic for your ECommerce website. It’s the most popular digital marketing technique to maximize the number of visitors on your website.

Having an SEO friendly website is not enough to rank high in Search Engine results. However, definitive SEO features provided by eCommerce platforms play a very important role.

It’s the job of the eCommerce platform to provide all the necessary and advance SEO features. It doesn’t matter what type of platform you have selected.

If your platform cannot provide the necessary built-in SEO features – to manage the On Page and Technical SEO work, then its complete waste. You could have a great looking website, but it will not be SEO ready- to rank high in Search Engine result.

Benefits of SEO friendly Website

As a business owner, founder, chief executive officer, chief of marketing and Vice President of marketing, you already know what is SEO and how important it is. You’ve undoubtedly hired an affordable SEO service or agency to develop inbound strategy, uplift your website’s ranking, and do the technical SEO, On-Page SEO, and link building.

But have you done your research about – Which eCommerce platform is best for SEO? OR have you received any advice from your SEO agency on this topic?

There’s no doubt that good SEO strategy with On Page and Off Page SEO work can help you generate tons of traffic which will help you grow your online business and increase online sales. According to the article posted on SearchEngineJournal, “Implementing strong SEO on brand’s website and digital properties is always going to be beneficial” Great built-in SEO features of eCommerce platforms will help you perform better Technical and On Page SEO work.

Fashion Nova is an online store selling women fashion products in America since 2006. They understand the importance of SEO and rank for 41000+ keyphrases organically.

Finally, it proves that they have worked very hard to achieve this result!

Very interesting figures!

For the reason, I thought to check which eCommerce platform they are using. I found that they built this massive website on the hosted platform – Shopify. Shopify’sbuilt-in SEO features made it easy for their SEO team to work efficiently and implement SEO techniques.

Source – Builtwith.com

What does this mean? If you don’t have a strong Commerce platform which can provide you with built-in SEO features, you will not rank higher in Search Engine results.

Before I give you the ultimate list of best SEO friendly eCommerce platforms, let me explain you this first.

What is the eCommerce platform?

In Technology, eCommerce platform is a software technology solution to build an online storefront. This platform can be made of different programming languages such as PHP, Java and on modern technology stacks like MEAN or MEARN.

It facilitates the process of buying and selling products on the internet through electronic money transactions. Probably allows you to manage and display products and its features.

Source – amazon.com

Most important elements of eCommerce platform

There are a few important and must have features which you must consider with SEO built-in features:

• Payment integration options
• Design and customization options
• Security
• Content management
• Online documents and support
• Updates and feature upgrades

Now, that you have some understanding about the eCommerce platform, hence you will be able to select the best.

Let me now give you the list of best eCommerce platform for SEO:

• WooCommerce
• Magento
• Shopify
• BigCommerce
• OpenCart

1. WooCommerce

Woocommerce is one of the highly customizable eCommerce platforms available.

Actually, it’s an extension to the WordPress content management system. Statistics by built with shows that it is one of the most popular and widely used eCommerce platforms.

Compatibility of available WordPress SEO plugins with WooCommerce makes it best eCommerce platform. It is an open source CMS backed by a strong community of developers.

Here is the list of some best SEO related plugins available for WooCommerce:

• Yoast SEO
• MonsterInsights
• All in one SEO pack
• Google XML Sitemaps
• W3 Total Cache
• BZ Lazy Load
• SEO Optimized Images

All the basic SEO features are totally free by these plugins, which I guess should be sufficient at the early stage of your online business. However, you can unlock advanced options by upgrading to paid version anytime.

WordPress SEO plugins are not limited to the above list. You can always look for new and popular plugins on WordPress official portal.

2. Magento

Magento is an end to end fully managed eCommerce platform.

It’s the 3rdmost popular and widely used eCommerce platform in the market. Backed by Adobe it is very agile and user-friendly.

Yes, it is also open source. The community edition is free for everyone. Just like WordPress Magento also have a strong community of developer and solution providers.

Search Engine Optimization is very important for Start-ups or Small online businesses. Keeping this in mind, Magento comes with strong SEObuilt-in features for best SEO practices. However, the same features can be extended for medium and large online stores.

Here is the list of some best SEO extension available for Magento store:

• SEO Content Optimization by ReloadSEO
• Magento SEO Suite Pro extension v9.5.2
• Advanced SEO Suite by Mirasvit
• Free Magento SEO Extension by Creare
• Ultimate SEO Suite by AheadWorks v1.3.8
• SEO Suite
• SEOSpace Ultimate Magento Extension
• Canonical URLs Magento Extension by FMEAddons v1.1
• Advanced SEO by Activo
• SEO Suite Ultimate
• Layered Navigation SEO
• Advance Sitemap
• SEO Rich Snippets
• MSemantic SEO for Rich Snippets

Similarly WordPress, Magento also allows installation and configuration of extensions. Both free and paid versions of SEO extensions are available on Magento Extension marketplace.

3. Shopify

Shopify is a cloud-based hosted eCommerce platform launched to empower independent and small online stores. However, now Shopify is available for custom eCommerce needs and for large online stores.

It’s the 2nd most popular eCommerce platform. Despite being a hosted solution, Shopify is popular because of its feature of no limit sell. It is very affordable and comes with different pricing plans.

Shopify Apps are like extension or plugins to extend its functionalities. Likewise to WordPress and Magento, Shopify also has its own marketplace for Apps.

There are many SEO related Apps available to enhance your store with SEO features.

Some of the best SEO Apps of Shopify are:

• Plug in SEO
• Smart SEO
• SEO Image Optimizer
• SEO Meta Manager
• Ultra SEO
• Super Reviews

Rather You can always explore and find out the best option which fits your requirement by visiting the Shopify App marketplace.

4. Bigcommerce

Bigcommerce is another cloud-based hosted solution available for both small and enterprise online stores just like Shopify.

It also comes with built-in SEO features and implementation of advanced SEO features are also very easy. SEO documents and articles provided by Bigcommerce will make even more easy for you to understand the implementation process.

Bigcommerce also has its own app marketplace just like other eCommerce platforms which we discussed above. However, there is no need for any extra SEO Apps but still, if you want to fill the gaps you are always free to check the available SEO Apps. 

5. Open Cart

OpenCart is a free and open source eCommerce platform to download and modify.

You can find all On Page SEO features pre-built inside the Admin Panel of OpenCart. Technical SEO work can also be done easily from inside the Admin Panel.

Source – OpenCart.com

Source – OpenCart.com

As it is free there are almost no support options available. You will need to hire a professional developer or you should have some programming knowledge to tweak the codes at some point for SEO.

Conclusion

Now you have the list of 5 best eCommerce platforms for SEO. In conclusion, I will highly encourage you to use any of them for your online store.

Using the above platforms you, your SEO team or SEO agency whom you hired will be in a position to perform better Technical and On Page SEO.

The great thing about the above eCommerce platforms is that they are highly customizable, trusted and being used by several online stores on the internet.

Above all platforms have a strong community of developers and solution providers. They have a marketplace to facilitate the enchantments of features by adding external paid and free plugins/Apps/Extensions.

What’s your review about the list which I provided in this blog? Let me know your thoughts in a comment.