How do you do SEO for an ecommerce site?

Short answer

Work from the structure down. First make sure Google is indexing the right pages and not thousands of filter combinations. Then make categories carry the broad terms, decide facet by facet what gets indexed, link authority to the categories that need it, and only then spend on product copy and content. Most stores do it in reverse.

The usual advice for store owners is a list: write unique product descriptions, add alt text, start a blog, get backlinks. None of it is wrong. It is just in the wrong order, and on a store of any size the order is most of the strategy.

Step 1: find out what Google has actually indexed

Open the page indexing report in Search Console and compare the number of indexed pages with the number you would expect: categories, plus products, plus a few information pages. If Google has indexed five or ten times more URLs than that, the extras are almost always filter combinations, sort orders, tag pages or internal search results.

That gap is the first thing to fix, because it decides where Google spends its attention. On one store I audited, 659 tag pages were competing with the category pages the store actually sold from. I wrote that case up as 659 tag pages competing with the real categories.

Step 2: make categories carry the head terms

Category pages should rank for the broad searches: “women’s running shoes”, “oak dining tables”. Product pages should rank for specific ones: the model, the brand plus product, the exact item. On most stores I audit it is the other way round, because category pages carry no text, weak titles and few internal links.

Fix the titles and headings to match how people search. Add a short, useful introduction that helps someone choose. Link to the most relevant sub-categories. Make sure the category structure reflects search demand rather than how the warehouse is organised.

Step 3: decide what to do with every facet

Filters are useful for shoppers and dangerous for SEO, because every combination can become a URL. Take each facet in turn and decide:

Index it if people genuinely search for it. A brand within a category often qualifies.
Let it be crawled but not indexed if it is useful for shoppers but has no search demand of its own.
Keep it out of crawling if it multiplies endlessly, like price ranges combined with sorting and size.

Blanket rules fail here. Indexing nothing loses good landing pages. Indexing everything floods the index.

Step 4: set rules for variants and stock

Decide once, as policy, what happens to colour and size variants, products that go temporarily out of stock, and products discontinued for good. Colour rarely deserves its own indexed URL; size almost never does; model or capacity often does.

For out-of-stock items coming back, keep the page live and say so. For discontinued items, redirect to the closest equivalent or the parent category. Redirecting everything to the homepage is the common mistake; Google tends to treat that as a soft 404, and the page’s value goes nowhere.

Step 5: fix internal linking

On large catalogues, internal linking is the cheapest lever and the least used. Your homepage and your best-linked pages hold most of the site’s authority. Make sure it flows to the categories that need to rank: from the main navigation, from related categories, from popular products back up to their category, and from blog posts into the catalogue.

Google discovers most pages by following links. Its own explanation of search says pages are found when Google extracts a link from a known page to a new page, with sitemaps as a secondary route. A product reachable only through the sitemap is at a disadvantage.

Step 6: then products and content

Now improve the product pages that can realistically rank: the ones people search for by name, with search volume and margin worth chasing. Write useful descriptions for those, and leave the long tail of low-demand products on manufacturer copy until there is a reason to change it.

Use the blog for questions buyers ask before they buy, and link every post into the categories and products it discusses.

Step 7: then links

Links still matter, and they matter most once the structure can use them. Earning links to a store whose authority is wasted on filter pages is pouring water into a sieve. Fix the structure, then build links to the pages that can turn them into rankings: usually categories and genuinely useful guides.

How to deploy without losing track

Change one thing at a time where you can, and note the date. Template changes across thousands of URLs take weeks to be recrawled, so if you change five things at once you will never know which one helped or hurt. Watch indexation numbers first, then impressions on the category pages, then clicks and revenue.

If you only have time for one of these steps this quarter, make it the first. Knowing what Google has actually indexed changes every decision after it, and it costs nothing but an hour in Search Console.

If your store has more pages than anyone can manage by hand, my ecommerce SEO service works in exactly this order and writes every recommendation as a rule your developers can apply by template.