E-commerce SEO shares a foundation with any other site — crawlability, page speed, structured content — but catalogs introduce a specific set of technical problems that don't come up on a typical marketing site. This checklist covers both.
1. Fix Crawlability Before Anything Else
- Submit an accurate, up-to-date XML sitemap and reference it in robots.txt
- Make sure robots.txt isn't accidentally blocking category or product pages
- Check for orphaned pages with no internal links pointing to them
- Confirm your canonical tags point to the correct, preferred URL version
2. Handle Faceted Navigation Carefully
Filtered category URLs (color, size, price range) can generate thousands of near-duplicate pages if left unmanaged, diluting crawl budget and creating duplicate content issues. Use canonical tags pointing back to the base category, and consider noindexing filter combinations that have little standalone search value while keeping them crawlable for usability.
3. Decide a Policy for Out-of-Stock and Discontinued Products
Deleting a product page the moment it's out of stock throws away any SEO equity it built up, and can create broken links from external sites or search results. A better approach: keep the page live with clear out-of-stock messaging and related product recommendations, and only redirect or remove it if the product is permanently discontinued.
4. Implement Structured Data Properly
Product schema (price, availability, reviews where genuine) helps search engines display rich results, but it needs to accurately reflect what's on the page — mismatched or fabricated structured data can trigger manual penalties. Add Organization and BreadcrumbList schema site-wide, and Product schema on every product template.
5. Get Category Page Content Right
Category pages are often the highest-value SEO real estate on an e-commerce site, but many stores leave them as bare product grids with no unique content for search engines to understand. A short, genuinely useful description above or below the grid — not stuffed with repeated keywords — gives the page something substantive to rank on.
6. Don't Neglect Mobile and Speed
Google indexes the mobile version of your site by default. If your mobile experience is stripped-down or slower than desktop, that's the version being evaluated. See why website speed matters for SEO and e-commerce for the performance side of this in more depth.
7. Monitor, Don't Just Launch and Forget
Technical SEO isn't a one-time setup — new products, discontinued items and platform updates constantly introduce new issues. Regular crawls (monthly at minimum) catch broken links, duplicate titles and indexing problems before they compound.
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Ethikode Team
Written by the Ethikode team — the developers, designers and marketers who build and grow websites and online stores for our clients.
