BigCommerce is one of the most technically capable e-commerce platforms on the market today, but most storefronts never tap into its full search engine optimization (SEO) potential. While basic SEO tactics like keyword optimization and meta descriptions matter, there’s much more to do to differentiate your digital shop.
More advanced techniques can turn a well-built store into an organic traffic powerhouse. By combining structured data, strategic content architecture, and fine-tuned technical elements, you can create a site that’s faster and easier to crawl. And that allows your odds of earning rich search results to effectively skyrocket.
If you’ve been looking for ways to get noticed, you’re in the right place. Here are some upper-level BigCommerce SEO strategies to help you maximize your visibility, performance, and conversions.
Leverage Akamai Edge Controls for Speed Gains
BigCommerce’s integration with Akamai’s enterprise content delivery network (CDN) offers powerful tools for reducing latency and improving Core Web Vitals. You can use these tools to adjust cache headers, fine-tune time to first byte, and optimize asset delivery to make your pages load faster. And since Google uses speed as a ranking factor, these improvements will help with both search visibility and conversion rates.
But that’s not all. When potential customers visit your site, they expect a nimble, responsive experience, so increasing the speed of your digital store with Akamai’s CDN will help you meet consumer expectations and reduce your bounce rate.
Implement Custom Crawl Rules to Protect Indexation
A wasted crawl budget can drag your site down in the rankings, but BigCommerce allows custom robots.txt configurations and x-robots-tag headers to selectively block less valuable pages. The idea is that you are “directing” the crawl budget that’s allocated to your site to focus on the most useful pages.
Controlling what search engines index ensures that Googlebot focuses on category and product pages that drive revenue, as opposed to getting lost in duplicate URLs or non-essential pages.
Inject Schema Markup Through Handlebars Templates
BigCommerce’s Handlebars templating makes it possible to hard-code JSON-LD structured data directly into page templates. By adding product, review, offer, and breadcrumb schema, your store can increase its eligibility for rich snippets and product carousels in search results.
Of course, you need to be able to tell whether your schema markup is working, and fortunately, Google’s Rich Results Test offers a simple, free way to ensure it is all clean and fully optimized. Make sure to periodically recheck your schema markup to verify that it is still up-to-date and complete; doing so will help you stay atop the rankings and increase your odds of getting noticed by your target audience.
Audit and Rewrite URL Structures
An overly complex URL structure can hinder both search rankings and user trust. Thankfully, BigCommerce allows custom URL rewrites to maintain short, descriptive, keyword-rich paths. Regular URL audits help identify and eliminate auto-generated or redundant URLs, and redirect mapping preserves SEO equity when changes are made.
Much like crowded aisles and disorganized shelves in a physical store will cause customers to get lost, complex URLs have the same effect on BigCommerce sites. Admittedly, rewriting a large number of URL structures can be incredibly tedious, which is why many BigCommerce businesses opt to outsource the task.
Flatten Site Architecture for Faster Crawling
Search engines reward sites that make important pages accessible with fewer clicks from the homepage. On BigCommerce, you can reduce crawl depth in the following ways:
- Refining navigation menus
- Improving internal linking
- Avoiding unnecessary subcategory layers
These changes represent another step aimed at decluttering your BigCommerce store so that Google (and other search engines) can more efficiently discover and index your most important, high-value product and category pages: the pages that drive the most revenue for your business.
Optimize Category and Product Templates for SEO
Customizing category templates to include descriptive text, internal links, and smart pagination improves keyword targeting. These enhancements drive more qualified traffic to product detail pages in addition to allowing crawlers to flow through your content more easily, which is always beneficial for your rankings.
Product templates benefit from trust-building elements like FAQs, structured data, and clear pricing, but don’t feel as though you have to revamp all of your pages all at once. You can group your category and product pages into clusters and update them in phases to help make things more manageable and reduce the risk of major delays.
Enhance Internal Linking to Distribute Authority
Internal links pass ranking signals from higher-ranked pages to less authoritative ones and help search engines understand the relationship between pages. On BigCommerce, you can add cross-links between related products, category hubs, and buying guides.
Strategic anchor text ensures relevance while helping shoppers discover more of your catalog, but make sure not to go overboard. You should include a reasonable number of internal links on each major page, and remember that linking higher-ranked pages to lower-ranked ones can help make the latter more visible.
Monitor SEO Performance With Technical Tracking
The success of your SEO strategy depends on ongoing measurement and iteration. Tools like Screaming Frog, GA4, and Google Search Console can track crawl patterns, indexation rates, and Core Web Vitals performance. Review that data weekly to identify what’s working and where you can improve.
Once you pinpoint a problem, make some incremental adjustments and reassess performance the following week. You don’t want to change too much at once, though, as you’ll be unable to determine which updates delivered the desired results; instead, make a few targeted upgrades, analyze, and repeat until you’ve optimized your storefront.
Ready to Unlock the Full Potential of Your BigCommerce Store?
Mastering the basics of BigCommerce SEO sets you up for long-term success. But once you’ve addressed those elements, you’ll need to turn to greater techniques to keep ascending in the rankings.
Advanced BigCommerce SEO demands technical precision and a deep understanding of how the platform interacts with search engines. The right optimizations can increase organic traffic and improve the user experience.
Net Profit Marketing specializes in custom-built BigCommerce SEO strategies that address technical, structural, and content-driven improvements. With them, you’ll increase your visibility, protect indexation, and ultimately see more sales from your BigCommerce site. Contact Net Profit Marketing today to schedule a tailored audit for your store.
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