Who it is for
Online shops of every size in Northamptonshire: heritage footwear and leather goods makers, clothing and gift retailers, food and drink producers, trade and industrial suppliers selling from units on the county's estates, and bricks-and-mortar shops that have added a web store. If people buy from your website, or research there before calling, ecommerce SEO applies.
Why shops are different
A brochure site might have thirty pages. A shop can have thousands, most of them generated automatically by filters, variants and pagination. That creates problems a small site never sees: duplicate content, crawl budget wasted on near-identical URLs, and category pages that never rank because their signals are split across many versions.
Shops also face strong national competitors. A Northampton brand selling chelsea boots is up against department stores and marketplaces, so it has to be sharper about which searches it can realistically win.
What is included, step by step
1Keyword and category mapping. We map search demand to your category structure. Searches such as "men's brown brogues" or "steel toe cap boots" usually deserve their own category or subcategory; very narrow combinations usually do not.
2Technical audit for ecommerce. Faceted navigation, parameter handling, canonical tags, pagination, out-of-stock and discontinued products, internal search pages, and site speed on product templates.
3Category page optimisation. Useful copy above or below the products, clear headings, internal links to related categories and buying guides, and title tags that match how people search.
4Product page optimisation. Unique descriptions, specifications, sizing and care information, good images with descriptive alt text, and Product structured data with price, availability and reviews where genuine.
5Content that supports buying. Size guides, care guides, comparison pages and "how it is made" content that answers questions during research and earns links.
6Internal linking. From guides to categories, between related categories, and from best-selling products to new ones.
7Ongoing monitoring. Indexing, rankings by category and revenue from organic search.
Platform notes
| Platform | Common SEO issues | What we usually do |
|---|---|---|
| Shopify | Duplicate product URLs through collections, limited URL control, app bloat | Fix internal links to canonical URLs, remove unused apps, improve templates |
| WooCommerce | Plugin conflicts, slow hosting, thin tag and attribute archives | Consolidate plugins, noindex thin archives, improve hosting and caching |
| Magento / Adobe Commerce | Layered navigation creating huge URL counts | Control crawlable filters, tidy parameter handling |
| BigCommerce | Faceted search duplication, default page titles | Set rules for facets, write custom titles |
Out-of-stock and discontinued products
How you handle products that are gone matters. A temporarily out-of-stock product should usually stay live with a clear message and alternatives. A permanently discontinued one should redirect to the closest replacement or category if there is one, or be removed cleanly if there is not. Getting this wrong creates either a site full of dead ends or a pile of broken URLs.
How long it takes
Technical fixes on a shop can show results within weeks, especially if indexing problems are holding back categories. Content and authority improvements take three to six months to show fully. We plan around seasonal demand so pages are ranking before the busy period, not during it.
What drives the cost
- Number of products and categories
- Platform and how much template access we have
- Whether we write category and product copy or you do
- How many technical issues need fixing first
- How competitive the market is nationally
Common mistakes
- Indexing every filter combination
- Leaving category pages with no text at all, or a wall of keyword-stuffed text at the bottom
- Deleting discontinued products without redirects
- Relying entirely on paid shopping ads and ignoring organic
- Launching seasonal pages a week before the season starts
How we measure it
Organic revenue and transactions in analytics are the main measure, broken down by category. We also track category rankings, indexed product counts and click-through rates from search results.
What the first month looks like
We start with a crawl and a review of how your categories, filters and product variants are indexed. Most shops have one or two structural problems that hold back everything else, such as thousands of filter URLs being indexed or products only reachable through internal search. Fixing these comes first. We then map search demand to categories and agree which pages to improve before the next busy season.
For smaller shops, the biggest single win is often simply writing proper copy for the ten most important categories and linking to them clearly from the homepage and main navigation.
Related services and reading
Ecommerce SEO leans heavily on technical SEO and SEO content writing. For an honest starting point, begin with an SEO audit. Footwear and leather businesses in Kettering and Northampton may find our piece on what shoemakers can teach us about SEO useful.
Frequently asked questions
Should every product have a unique description?
Ideally yes, at least for your main products. Start with bestsellers and the products with the most search demand.
Should filter pages be indexed?
Only those that match real search demand, such as a colour or style people actually search for. Most filter combinations should not be.
Do you work with Shopify?
Yes, along with WooCommerce, Magento and BigCommerce.
What happens to out-of-stock products?
Temporary ones usually stay live with alternatives; permanently discontinued ones are redirected to the closest replacement or category.
Can SEO replace Google Shopping ads?
Not entirely, but strong organic visibility can reduce your reliance on paid ads and improve margins.