A technical SEO checklist for online stores

Online stores have SEO problems that ordinary websites don't. Filters create thousands of near-identical pages, products go out of stock, and the same item can be reachable through several different addresses. If those issues aren't handled, good content and links have less effect than they should.

These are the technical checks we run first on every e-commerce site.

1. Can Google crawl and index the right pages?

• Check Google Search Console's page indexing report. Look for important category and product pages that are "crawled but not indexed" or excluded.
• Make sure your XML sitemap lists only pages you want in search: live products and categories, no redirects, no filtered views.
• Review robots.txt so it doesn't block your CSS, JavaScript or product images.

2. Are filters and sorting creating duplicates?

Colour, size, price and sort options can each create a new address for what is essentially the same page. Decide which filtered pages deserve to rank (for example "black running shoes") and give them proper titles and content. For the rest, use canonical tags pointing to the main category, and stop them being linked in a way that lets crawlers loop through endless combinations.

3. Does each product have one address?

Products that appear in several categories sometimes get a different web address for each. Pick one canonical address per product and use it everywhere: in menus, sitemaps and internal links.

4. Is the store fast on a phone?

Most shoppers arrive on mobile. Check Core Web Vitals in Search Console and test key templates (home, category, product) with PageSpeed Insights. The usual fixes are compressing and resizing images, loading below-the-fold images lazily, removing apps or scripts you no longer use, and reducing layout shift from banners and pop-ups.

5. Is structured data in place?

Product structured data (name, price, availability, reviews) helps Google show richer results. Add it to product pages, keep prices and stock in sync with what the page shows, and test with Google's Rich Results Test. Breadcrumb and organisation data are worth adding too.

6. Do internal links support your best pages?

Categories that matter commercially should be linked from the main menu and from related categories and products. Breadcrumbs help both shoppers and search engines understand the structure. Avoid orphan pages: products that nothing links to are hard for Google to find and value.

7. What happens when a product goes out of stock?

• Temporarily out of stock: keep the page live, show when it will be back and suggest alternatives.
• Permanently discontinued with a close replacement: redirect it to the replacement or the parent category.
• Discontinued with nothing similar: let it return a 404 or 410, and remove it from the sitemap.

8. Are titles and descriptions written for shoppers?

Template titles like "Product name – Store name" waste the most visible line in search results. Include what the product is and a key attribute people search for. Write unique descriptions for your top categories rather than leaving them blank.

Fix the foundations first

None of this is glamorous, but technical fixes often bring results faster than new content because they let existing pages perform. Once the foundations are right, category content, buying guides and links have a much stronger effect.

If you want us to run this checklist on your store, our SEO team can send you a prioritised list of fixes.