Why Consider a Demandware SEO Consultant?
When it comes to complex ecommerce solutions, Demandware may take the cake. This makes SEO for Demandware exceptionally difficult. However, there’s no reason to be intimidated in the system. That’s the beauty of ecommerce SEO. It is not a matter of what the platform provides, it is more about what Google wants to see in a website. Understanding the nuances of both Google and the Software are where a Demandware SEO consultant is helpful.
In short, Google wants the following:
- A website it can crawl
- Content that is relevant to the searchers
That’s it.
The rest of this page, we will be taking consideration specifically to Demandware and some of the key elements that need to be considered when performing SEO for Demandware.
Demandware is now Salesforce Commerce Cloud. What does that mean?
The power of an amazing ecommerce platform like demandware joining forces with a powerhouse like Salesforce can only benefit online retailers.
Enterprise level retailers now have the benefit of the infastructure of the world’s best CRM tool, which has it’s benefits. Our team of technical specialists are familiar with the nuances of Salesforce as well as the complexities of ecommerce SEO. This includes an advanced knowledge of Javascript as well as other proprietary methods used by Salesforce.
These technical nuances certainly have a set of limitations on SEO, however, winning is possible.
SEO For Demandware Consideration 1: Crawlability
Like most ecommerce platforms, crawlability and avoiding duplicated content needs to be top priority. By default, there are some challenges with the default URL structure which makes crawlability hard for Google’s webcrawler.
Most of these challenges can be fixed using the rel=canonical tag (in MOST cases). The key here is giving credit of the content to one page. The rel=canonical tag does this because it’s a way of saying to Google “Hey, this is the main page for this, we know this is duplicated.)
Demandware SEO Consideration 2: 404’s
It really should be no surprise that Google and 404 errors are a recipe for SEO disaster. While this is true for any website, Demandware needs special attention in this department.
Google has gone on record stating that they “understand” 404’s are going to happen in ecommerce due to expired products and etc. However, that doesn’t mean we should settle for a sub-par crawl experience.
Key elements to make sure you have built in to your site are the following:
- Make sure that your 404 page is returning a 404 header response. A common mistake is that the page does not return the 404 header response. When this happens, it is hard to track when a page is missing.
- When you fix a page, be sure to make a conclusive decision on the future status of a page. If a product is temporarily out of stock, for example, a 302 redirect may be sufficient. If the product is permanently “gone”, a 301 redirect may be more appropriate.
SEO for Demandware Consideration 3: Analyzing Crawl Performance
Due to the setup of Demandware, accessing crawl information is impossible.
This makes use of Google Search Console important. This will be how you are seeing how crawlers are accessing your website and this will also give clues on how to improve accessibility and etc.
All in all, Demandware is an absolutely amazing solution for ecommerce businesses. Like all platforms, there are limitations, but an ecommerce SEO consultant with experience can help you navigate those limitations.
SEO for Demandware is Tough.
Let us know if we can help.