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12 Steps for E-Commerce Content Audits Using Free Tools With Preeti Gupta

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Today, we are joined by Preeti Gupta, an SEO consultant and the founder of Packted.com.

Preeti is the Founder and SEO of Packted, based in India, which helps websites older than two years improve their online presence through user-friendly SEO. Prominent in the SEO community, Preeti was recently featured on The SEO Mindset Podcast and will be speaking at the BrightLocal SEO for Good in September 2024.

Preeti’s expertise has earned her mentions on Search Engine Land, Search Engine Roundtable, Women in Tech SEO, Moz, SEOFOMO, and more. She focuses on User-Friendly SEO and creates content across various platforms to share her knowledge.

About This Episode

In this episode, Preeti will share her expertise in conducting a content audit for e-commerce projects using free tools. She will guide us through the essential steps to identify and address technical issues, improve website performance, and optimize content for better search engine visibility.

Preeti will also delve into practical tips and techniques for:

  • Determining the goals of an SEO audit and understanding relevant metrics.
  • Utilizing free tools to extract valuable data and insights.
  • Addressing common SEO issues such as canonical tags, content length, internal linking, and page speed.
  • Leveraging structured data and metadata to enhance image search traffic.
  • Implementing effective strategies for handling out-of-stock products and ensuring unique, high-quality images for e-commerce pages.

This episode is perfect for SEO professionals and e-commerce business owners who want to learn how to efficiently conduct an SEO audit and implement actionable strategies to boost their website's performance.

This episode is for you if you’re curious about the following:

  • How to conduct an SEO audit for e-commerce projects using free tools.
  • Strategies to improve website performance and search engine visibility.
  • Practical tips for handling common SEO issues and enhancing user experience.

👉🏻Watch the whole video on our YouTube channel

Connect With Preeti

Visit her website

Connect on LinkedIn

Find Preeti on Mastadon

Follow Preeti on X/Twitter

Her Template (make a copy): Content Audit Template for E-Commerce Websites

Host — Oleksandra Khilova (connect on LinkedIn)

Other episodes you’ll enjoy:

How to Use AI for SEO Daily Tasks | Podcast with Tom Winter

Loved this episode?

Leave us a comment on YouTube. Tweet and tag us @collaboratorpro, @sashakhilova, and @ilovechoclates_!

Episode Transcript

To save you time and provide the most valuable information concisely, we offer a transcript of this podcast episode, highlighting the most essential points, tips, and cases.

Oleksandra Khilova (hereinafter "OK"): Hello, guys! Today, we have an interesting guest, Preeti. She is a founder and SEO consultant at Packted.com. Hello, Preeti. Thank you for joining us!

Preeti Gupta (hereinafter "PG"): Hello, Oleksandra Khilova. How are you doing? 

OK:Thank you for joining us. Today, we have an interesting topic. We will discuss essential steps on how to audit your e-commerce project using free tools.

I think it's an interesting topic, especially for beginners or mid-level SEOs who don't have much experience in e-commerce. That is because the e-commerce niche is a little bit different from others. Today, we want to share our knowledge on how you can do it easily and quickly using only free tools.

PG: I have this whole thing broken down into some pieces. I'll begin by discussing the first step: determining the goal of your audit. The initial question to ask yourself is, 'Why?' Why are we doing all of this in the first place? You know, why do we want to perform the audit?

There could be multiple reasons why you want to do an audit. Some would like to deal with technical stuff like indexing, crawling, and that sort of thing. 

The others can involve improving your website’s conversion rate, traffic, or content, which we are doing today. 

And there could be other goals, too. You can literally have any goal in mind. But just know one thing: the goal you make up for yourself will determine the kind of metrics that you will be tracking and the things you would like to fill out in the sheets that I will share with you later. So this is the first part. 

The second part is understanding those metrics and picking up the tools you want to use to get this data. As I've said earlier, the metrics will depend on the goal. So, as our goal is to improve our content, we will look at certain metrics like views and engagement rates. I'll show you later.

PG: For that, I guess I will want to share the screen. So, the first thing is an order template that I will share with you. 

The first thing here is to add the URLs. 

The First Slide From the Presentation by Preeti Gupta

These are the two things we will do later. First, we will start with your pages' URLs. Enter your sitemap URL into a sitemap extractor and get a list of all your website's URLs. Copy and paste them here. I find this very helpful.

The next is the content length. It is very debatable in the whole SEO space.

The Second Slide From the Presentation by Preeti Gupta

That is because we expect our content to be more than 1,500 words long. However, my goal with content length is to understand how many words we’ve used to cover this topic. After analyzing, going to SERPs, and checking all content and your user intent, you might find the content length too short and not properly helping the user.

So, you may want to increase the length of your content.

PG: Or if the content is too long, and the user doesn't really want to read it, you may want to cut down on the length. That's why I included it. The next thing is a page type. As you see in the dropdown, there are different pages. You may want to assess all the product and landing pages.

The Third Slide From the Presentation by Preeti Gupta

But if we are just doing the blog post and you don't want to include any other pages on your website, you can just delete them from here. The next thing is the funnel stage or type.

You can categorize content as top, middle, or bottom of the funnel. 

Or you can use detailed steps, as shown in Ahrefs. So, this is something you can do, or you can just take it in the form of the top or middle of the funnel. Or you can add things like awareness, consideration, and decision sort of things. The idea is to understand how much content we have for each funnel stage. We want to ensure we have content for every stage, not just the top of the funnel.

The Fourth Slide From the Presentation by Preeti Gupta

OK: I'd like to ask you a question about this template. Looks nice, but I'm wondering how I can extract the content links with one click.

PG: I think you can use tools like Ahrefs, which also shows the number of words. Additionally, other SEO Pro extensions can tell you the content length.

The Fifth Slide From the Presentation by Preeti Gupta

We may want to cover that later because the priority depends on several factors. We'll come back to it.

The next topic is business potential. This is a score from 0 to 3 that you assign to your content, and it can help you understand its value. This concept is from Ahrefs. I'm not endorsing them, but it's useful.

The Sixth Slide From the Presentation by Preeti Gupta

PG: It is a great way to understand the business potential of a topic and your page. A score of zero means there is no way to mention your product. For example, if I provide SEO consultancy and talk about TikTok trends or how to buy the best chocolates, these topics don't make sense for what I offer. They might have high volume and low difficulty, but they are not related to my services.

PG: When I talk about SEO audits, as I am now, it's directly related to what I offer and would score a three. A score of three means our product is an irreplaceable solution to the problem. If you offer a service about backlinks, discussing topics highly related to backlinks would also score a three. The idea is to assess your content on a scale from 0 to 3, aiming for high scores like 2 or 3.

If you have many content pieces scoring zero or one, you might need to decide whether to keep, remove, or modify them. It will be determined in the action phase. This metric is very helpful, especially for product-led content.

Next are the SERPs. This must be done manually, even if you have paid tools. You should visit the pages and check for relevant information.

The Seventh Slide From the Presentation by Preeti Gupta

PG: The idea is to use your preferred search engine to search for topics related to the URL. Understand the page, noting any featured snippets or rich snippets, and observe anything that catches your eye. Check the questions in the "People also ask" boxes, the types of websites ranking, their authority, and if the topic requires high E-A-T (Expertise, Authoritativeness, Trustworthiness).

This step adds a different dimension to your audit, revealing insights you might not discover otherwise. It involves thoroughly examining the results page, noting key observations, and adding them to your audit. This process is very helpful and valuable.

OK: I have a question about the SERP. Sometimes, we have some kind of niche where we see a lot of Reddit, Quora, Wikipedia, or even Amazon or Walmart in the SERP. As for you, what do you think? Is this a signal of high competition or low competition in the niche?

PG: I think Reddit, Quora, and other forums are appearing for many queries after recent updates. This doesn't signal competition but indicates people are looking for real human opinions. They don't want polished content; they want to hear what others say. I experienced this with one of my articles. There was no Reddit or Quora in the SERPs when I published it, but they appeared after the helpful content update.

I tried incorporating a real human angle into my content by adding videos and other elements. It's not polished, but if Wikipedia appears in the SERP, it might indicate a competitive term or topic.

For the SERPs, I recommend searching in an incognito mode. Normal browsing can influence results due to your search history and location. If you have an international audience, use a SERP location changer or a VPN to understand and visualize what users in different locations see and the content available to them.

PG: These are the two things I want to add. Next, you may want to track the date published or last modified. If the content is less than six months old, you should not do anything with it. If it is older than six months, you can audit and understand it fully. For very old content (more than a year or two), check if user intent has changed. If the information is outdated, update the content with new sections, images, videos, or other supportive elements. This content refresh depends on the intent and what users want to see.

Eighth Slide from Preeti Gupta's Presentation

OK: I have a question about publication dates. It's an interesting topic for me. Sometimes, companies can't provide a real persona because their content editing team prefers to remain anonymous and often uses the services of freelance writers.

Is it okay to use a few options? First, not providing any author and simply stating that the article was written by the company as an entity. Second, stating that the article was written by the company but reviewed by an expert. Lastly, is it okay not to provide the date on the front end but include it in the structured data? Is this a mistake? How should we handle it correctly?

PG: I will start with the first question: Can you just write that the content is written by our company if you can't show it's written by a freelancer? Why hide that? If there's a legitimate reason, you can do so. But if not, I recommend adding the author's name, even if it's a freelancer. It's more relatable. Seeing a name like Aleksandra makes it feel like a real person wrote it, which helps establish E-A-T (Expertise, Authoritativeness, Trustworthiness). If you can't show the author's name, using the company's name is the second-best option. Many websites do this.

For the second question about structured data...

OK: Data and reviewed by?

PG: Okay. So, if I understand correctly, you want to know if you can include the date in the structured data but not in the article itself. Yes, you can do that. However, I would like to understand why you hide the date from users.

OK: Yeah, it's kind of typical technical mistakes and different workflows between the design team, developing team, and SEO team. For example, as an SEO team, we know that publishing the latest update date is quite important to us. And we can provide a task for the development team: “Please add this schema to our HTML document while you are doing some kind of work on your design and front end.” 

Sometimes, companies can't hire a developer to edit the front end due to limited time or budget. In these cases, is it okay to provide dates only in the schema?

PG: Yes, ultimately, the goal is to tell search engines when the content was published. For news content, it's important to show the date to users. For other content, showing the date to users depends on the topic. If you add structured data, the date can still appear in the SERPs, as search engines use that information. It's fine to provide dates only in the schema if editing the front end is a huge task.

OK: Thank you.

PG: Moving forward, we will talk about metrics. For this audit, I am using Google Search Console, Google Analytics, and Ahrefs Webmaster Tools, as these provide the most data. For Google Analytics metrics, I recommend creating a custom report to show all metrics in one place.

Here's the report I made for myself, named an SEO Audit. It includes all the pages, views, and metrics I wanted to track. You can do this and export the data to your sheet. I have another page that shows how to get the data from your sheet to this sheet. You can include views, new users, returning users, and engagement rates in one report and export it. Clicks data will come from Google Search Console.

PG: You can also export that data and add it to this sheet. When it comes to the primary traffic source, you’ll have to do it manually. It's important to see the traffic source for each page. Sometimes, a page intended to rank on Google gets traffic from YouTube or LinkedIn. Identifying this can help tweak your strategy.

Next are the meta tags, which you can get from Ahrefs Webmaster Tools. It's free if you have Google Search Console access. You can crawl your website and get a lot of data. It will show internal links and other metrics. You can add more columns as needed.

Ninth Slide from Preeti Gupta's Presentation

PG: You can add canonical tags, hreflang tags, meta titles, descriptions, and similar data. Create a report, export it, and add the data here. I found this very helpful.

For canonical tags, I have a story. When auditing a client's website, I discovered their CMS had an issue where all pages had the homepage as the canonical tag, which is not ideal. We fixed the issue after the audit.

For descriptions, I found that all pages had the same description, which is not ideal. Each page should have a unique description. There are also instances where multiple H1 tags are on a single page. You can note these and analyze what to do with them.

OK: I have a question regarding title tags and H1. I had a discussion with a colleague. He said the title should be unique and not duplicate the H1. My thought was that the title and H1 should be as similar as possible, not 100% unique, but very close. What do you think about this? Also, where should we put our keyword — in the beginning, middle, or end? There are many myths about titles and H1s. What's your opinion?

PG: It's a classic discussion point. Someone from Google discussed this during SEO Office Hours, but I don't remember the response. Personally, I usually keep the H1 and meta title the same on my website. Sometimes, I test different titles to see what performs better on SERPs. It's not necessary to match the H1 and title, but I find it simpler to do so.

For keywords, the best approach is to test and see what works for you. You can try placing the keywords in different positions on a few pages and monitor performance. In my experience, having the keyword at the beginning of the title works better. However, it's best to test and see what works for your website.

OK: I noticed that last year, it was popular to add domain names everywhere. Now, many websites use fewer domain names in their meta titles. What do you think about this? Should domain names be used, especially for blog pages? For e-commerce, it makes sense if your brand is a high-volume keyword. But what about blog pages? Is it important to include domain names? Often, domain names are auto-generated by plugins. Should we do something about this for blog pages? Should we use domain names?

PG: I know about the auto-generated domain names because I use WordPress and Rankmath, which automatically adds them to meta titles. I recall a popular SEO testing website did a test on this and found that not having the brand name in the title is better. I used to add my website's name in the title, but I don't anymore. It just takes up space and often gets truncated in the SERPs.

PG: So yeah, if your brand is super popular, you might want to add the brand name. Otherwise, I don't see any good reason to include it.

OK: Thank you.

PG: Now we are on the ‘focus topic.’ The focus topic is not something you add 25 times in your content just because it's your main keyword. The idea is to summarize what the page is about in a very short sentence or phrase. This doesn't need to be repeated in your content. In audits I've done, the focus topic often doesn't even appear in the content. It's a short version of what the page is about.

When auditing, let's say, 100 pages, this helps identify keyword cannibalization issues if multiple pages target the same topic. Based on the audit, you can decide whether to delete, redirect, or otherwise manage those pages.

Next are the links, both internal ones and backlinks. Ahrefs Webmaster Tools is good for this, as it provides backlink data.

PG: You can see all the backlink data in the site explorer and the backlink report. From the page explorer, you can get the number of in-links. The idea is to check how many backlinks and internal links these pages have.

Backlinks are something you can't control unless you're running a campaign or PR effort. For my website, I focus more on internal links, which are as important as backlinks. Internal links signify the importance of a page. Content clusters are a good way to improve internal linking. I recently did a content cluster for a client, and it improved internal linking significantly.

Export the data and see what to do with it. If a page has very few internal links, consider increasing the number of internal links pointing to that page.

PG: In this section, I'll talk about page speed, mobile friendliness, and notes. I've noticed in Google Search Console that increasing page speed for a specific template improves it for all pages using that template. For example, if your blog post template loads slowly, improving the page speed for that template will improve all blog pages. This means you only need to do the work once.

Mobile friendliness is generally not a major issue these days, as most websites are mobile-friendly. However, if your site isn't, you should add a yes or no to indicate this. If certain images or elements aren't appearing correctly on mobile, note that here.

OK: When it comes to page speed, we need to find patterns for different types of pages and determine the common mistakes on those pages. For example, issues could be image sizing, lazy loading, or small fonts—typical mistakes, especially on WordPress sites. Thank you.

PG: Yeah. This is true. On my WordPress website, a GIF caused the page speed to be 11 seconds. I converted it to a video, which improved the page speed. Last year, I implemented Cloudflare with help from a friend, and it really improved page speed.

For notes, I use them for things I can't add elsewhere. I also include resources, like links to documentation, explaining why certain actions are important. Anything interesting that doesn't fit elsewhere goes in the notes.

PG: The next section is about analyzing the site from a manual perspective and the user's point of view using the Google Search Quality Rater guidelines. I learned a lot from taking the Quality Rater test, which taught me many things.

The idea is to evaluate the page not just by numbers like backlinks, views, and engagement but also by how well it helps users and satisfies their intent. Questions about originality and uniqueness are very subjective, and different people might give different answers.

Even though it's subjective, this evaluation adds another layer to your audit. It helps you understand whether the page is actually helping your users. 

PG: There are tools available for this, such as this quality rater scorecard from Cyrus. I found this very helpful when I took the quality rater test. You can do this for each page to understand if it has high-quality content. You can also use GPT from Aleyda, which offers free access to ChatGPT. I have used it, and it is very helpful.

OK: I also use it. I also use it to brainstorm about the quality of my pages. It's quite helpful.

PG: Either use this or the scorecard or do this manually. Go through each page to understand its purpose. Why was this page created? Does it provide something helpful to the user, or is it harmful, like spreading misinformation? Understanding the purpose is important.

Next is user intent. Determine the intent behind the search query. For example, if someone searches 'what is SEO' and comes to your page, does your content fully satisfy their query? Are they happy with the information and have no further questions?

Tenth Slide From Preeti Gupta's Presentation

PG: Does your content satisfy user intent? If not, users will go elsewhere, and you will lose them. If multiple posts or pages on your site don't provide helpful content, users will form a negative opinion and never return, even if you rank number one.

Lastly, consider content quality. Evaluate your content from the quality perspective, as outlined in the Search Quality Rater guidelines. 

PG: Was this content produced with high originality? Is it unique? Was it made with enough talent, effort, or skill? For example, I did a study on how much SEO agencies charge in India, which took two months and involved making many charts. That kind of content is in-depth, unique, and requires a lot of effort and talent.

In contrast, simply generating an article with ChatGPT involves much less effort. There is a huge difference in the effort required for these two types of content.

Based on this thorough evaluation, you will understand what to do with each page. As you noticed, evaluating a single page is a long process with many factors to consider.

Now, we are finally at the action stage.

OK: So now we can set up reality, right?

PG: Now we will talk about action and priority. The action you take depends on the audit. Sometimes you may want to redirect a page because it's not helping users, and the other page has better stats.

I have added an action list here. You may want to rewrite the content and add more items based on your website: add sections, images, and videos, improve internal linking, delete some content because it is too long, delete the page if it's not useful, optimize the on-page elements like meta title, description, or schema markups, or expand the content.

The priority depends on how much impact this will have on your website and how important it is to your overall business.

PG: If adding more content to a page has a high impact and is very important for the business, you would assign a high priority to it. If it is important but not necessary, you may assign a low priority. Priority depends on several factors, and everyone has their own approach. Based on my experience, the two main factors are impact and business value.

You should give special attention to very important pages. For example, if you provide ten services, but two service pages bring most of your clients and have a lot of traffic, these pages are very important. The homepage is usually the most important page. If you improve these pages, consider the impact and assign a priority accordingly. If you assign high priority to everything, then nothing is a priority.

OK: Yeah, I think we can also use Search Console metrics to prioritize. Focus on pages already ranking in the first to 15th positions. Improving these pages can result in higher rankings, which is better than working on pages ranking on the fifth page. Let's focus on priority pages that already bring some traffic. It will be better.

PG: There are times when I have kept a page low priority because it is not important to the business, and improving it wouldn't have much impact. Resources are also a consideration, as improving a page may take a lot of effort from the content or developer team.

Based on all these factors, you will get an idea of what to do with the pages. You may want to add videos, infographics, images, or anything that improves the user's experience. This in-depth audit also gives me an idea of how to approach things moving forward.

PG: Based on business potential, I see many pages scoring 0 or 1. I want to create content directly related to my service and show users how I can help them. I may also focus on more bottom-of-the-funnel content if we lack it or improve existing pages.

Additionally, you can repurpose content topics and the content itself for other channels. For example, writing about an e-commerce content audit can be turned into a text post with images, a video, or a live talk. Repurposing ideas in different formats can be very effective. An audit like this gives you ideas on how to handle your content.

OK: Yeah, it's a good tactic for your link-building campaign. For example, if we write an article about how to choose the best dark chocolate for diabetics, we can use this specific topic and our expertise to focus on our link-building campaign. Distribute it to get quality links, matching the page intent with guest posts or other link-building efforts. Use specific anchors in those articles while distributing them.

I will work with your template on how to deal with pages that should be deleted but have external links. What strategies can you recommend for handling these pages?

PG: I think it depends on the quality of the backlinks on those pages. If the backlinks are not the best, you can delete the page. If the backlinks are authoritative and high quality, delete the page and redirect it to a relevant page on your website. Also, don't forget to change all internal links to point to the correct page since the original page has been deleted and redirected.

OK: If you don't have a relevant page, you can redirect the blog article to the homepage or a service page. This is useful if you don't have another relevant blog article.

PG: In that case, redirecting to the homepage is not the best option. If I visit an e-commerce site for chocolates and a product page redirects to the homepage, it would be frustrating and confusing. If you need to delete a page with poor backlinks, just delete it and add a 410 status code. If you want to keep the page and redirect it, use a category page instead of the homepage.

OK: Yeah. Good point. Redirecting to the homepage is not the best option. Try to choose the most relevant pages. You can check your Google Search Console via queries. Just type the query and find relevant pages that rank for that keyword. For example, on an e-commerce site, you might have product pages, category pages, blog articles, or blog categories. Choose the best match for the redirect.

Next, if your e-commerce page is good but the product is out of stock, it's a common mistake to delete the page. When the product is back in stock, creating the page again doesn't make sense. What recommendations can you give for this situation?

PG: If a product is out of stock but the page is good, it can cause a soft 404 error. The page loads, but the product is unavailable, so it has no use and is treated like a 404 page.

If the product is permanently out of stock, you have two options. First, redirect the page to another relevant product page or category page if the page has authority from backlinks and you want to preserve that equity. If you don't have a relevant page or the product is not coming back and has no authority, delete the page and add a 410 status code.

PG: If a product is temporarily out of stock, leave the page as it is. The product will be back later, so let the product page remain indexed. If possible, add a date to the page indicating when the product will return. This informs users of the expected availability. You can also include an email address field with a 'Notify Me' button so users can be notified when the product is back in stock. Don't redirect or delete the page if it is temporarily out of stock.

OK: If your product is out of stock for a short time, you can provide a block with internal links to similar products or other modifications of the product. Also, check your schema. Ensure your developer sets up the schema to change automatically when a product is out of stock or back in stock.

Especially for an e-commerce project, when you have thousands of pages, you don't, as a CEO, you don't have the ability to check it every time or every week. So, please ask your developers while you are doing some kind of schema, meta titles, and meta tags to keep focus on that. Things should be done automatically, depending on the back end and catalog statuses.

OK: The next question is, do I need to keep my images for e-commerce unique? It's a common question. It's a long story. I would like to say it depends. What do you think about it? 

PG: No, I wouldn’t say it depends. I would simply advise keeping the images unique. I’ve often seen that when you search for a product, the images from the manufacturer and other sites selling the product are the same. It’s not a good user experience. For example, if I search for a product on Amazon and see generic images, I might doubt the legitimacy of the product.

PG: It happens a lot. From personal experience, unique images enhance user trust. For example, sites with actual product photos—like clothes on models or close-ups showing fabric—offer a better experience. Sometimes, online images can be misleading; the product might look a certain size in the picture but be different when received.

OK: Yeah. I can add a few good tips and bad tips.

Good Tip: Many websites use metadata for images, including IPTC metadata. If you’re dropshipping and using images from competitors, be careful with IPTC metadata to avoid DMCA penalties.

Bad Tip: Years ago, we used Amazon product images and asked our designer to change the color of flowers and the grass, and alter the weather in the background. We also mirrored the image and changed the sizes of the elements. This worked, but it’s not a recommended practice. For better results, use stock images with free licenses, buy images, or pay for custom images.

OK: For example, you can hire someone on Upwork to take photos of your products. It’s not expensive and helps keep your images unique. To increase image traffic quality, use IPTC metadata and provide a schema for your images.

A common mistake is only providing structured data for the first image in a carousel. Instead, mark up each image and its dimensions. While this may involve a lot of schema code, it’s beneficial for image search traffic.

Recent updates include a feature on Android phones where you can take a photo, circle an object, and ask Google what it is. Structured data helps search engines understand the context of the objects in your images.

PG: Damn! I have learned a lot of new things today.

OK: What are the most typical issues? Why are they important, and how to deal with them? I think it's a long question to discuss, but maybe you can highlight the most frequent issues you face in your experience.

PG: So the most common issues I have found are canonical tag issues. For example, internal links might point to the non-slash version of a page, but the canonical tag uses the slash version.

OK: Yeah. Classic.

PG: This is very classic. As you said, it's something I've seen on many websites.

OK: Because of developers. Sometimes, they forget slashes in their scripts and overlook them at the end. 

PG: This is a common issue. The best way to fix it is to change the internal links to the correct version. Another issue is internal redirects caused by canonicalization problems, such as going from slash to non-slash or HTTP to HTTPS. Sometimes, URLs have capital letters or other inconsistencies that create internal redirects. Another common issue is cannibalization.

PG: Product pages and category pages often face cannibalization issues. Redirect those pages to the correct ones based on authority. Another very common issue is pagination, where every page in the series is canonicalized to the first page. It happens a lot.

OK: Why? Why?

PG: It's not just on e-commerce websites; I've seen it everywhere, including service-based, B2C, and B2B websites. The common mistake is canonicals pointing to the first page of the series. The fix is to add self-referencing canonical tags to each category page and not canonicalize them all to the home page.

OK: I can also add about cannibalization in e-commerce projects. A common mistake is creating blog pages within the same cluster as category pages. Blog pages often rank better due to more content, so avoid this.

For international websites with different languages, like English and German, there are letters with accents, such as 'ä.' It's crucial to avoid using these letters in URLs. Ensure that content managers and editors follow this rule and include it in their checklist.

OK: It was one of the first steps. I created many checklists for content editors, such as processes for creating alt texts and URLs. If you're working in-house, create an archive with useful tips for your team. It’s not feasible to manage every detail yourself, but sharing your expertise can reduce human errors. In e-commerce, many tasks follow a pattern with similar templates, so your role as a manager is to maintain structure and rules.

Thanks, everyone. I hope this is useful. Please leave your comments, subscribe to our channel, and follow Preeti. I’ll include her details in the comments below. Thanks, and see you in the next episode. Bye!

Rate us, comment, and share the podcast, please. I’m always looking for new ideas, topics, and guests.

Email us or DM us on LinkedIn. Thanks for reading & listening💙

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