Ecommerce sites have a specific set of SEO problems that a generic audit checklist tends to miss entirely — mostly stemming from product variants, filtering, and category structure. This checklist covers those specifically; pair it with the broader marketing audit checklist for everything else.
Faceted navigation checklist
- Filter and sort combinations (size, color, price range) aren't generating large numbers of separately crawlable, indexable URLs that dilute crawl budget.
- Canonical tags on filtered views point back to the main category page, unless a specific filtered view genuinely has its own search demand worth targeting.
- Pagination on category pages uses proper rel attributes or a clear canonical strategy, not creating a chain of thin, duplicate-feeling pages.
Product and category duplicate content checklist
- Product descriptions aren't copy-pasted verbatim from manufacturer feeds — identical descriptions across many competing retailers produce zero differentiation for search engines to reward.
- Near-identical product variants (same item, different size/color) are consolidated under one canonical URL rather than each generating a separate, thin indexable page.
- Category pages have genuine, unique intro copy rather than being differentiated only by the product grid.
Structured data checklist
Productschema is present on every product page, with accurate price, availability, and review/rating data kept in sync with the actual page content.BreadcrumbListschema reflects the real category hierarchy, helping both search engines and AI answer engines understand site structure.- Out-of-stock products return an accurate
availabilityvalue rather than silently showing as in-stock in schema while the page itself says otherwise.
Out-of-stock and discontinued product checklist
- Discontinued products that still have search demand redirect to the closest current equivalent rather than 404ing and losing accumulated rankings and links.
- Genuinely out-of-stock (but still sold) products stay live and indexable rather than being removed, since removing them loses both rankings and the chance to capture the visitor for a similar item.
Site search and internal linking checklist
- Internal site search result pages aren't indexable, since they typically produce large volumes of low-value, near-duplicate URLs.
- High-margin or strategically important products are linked from category and related-product modules, not relying entirely on search to surface them.
| Ecommerce-Specific Issue | Generic Audit Catches It? | Fix |
|---|---|---|
| Faceted navigation URL explosion | Rarely | Canonical to main category, block low-value combinations |
| Manufacturer-feed duplicate descriptions | Rarely | Write unique descriptions for at least top-selling products |
| Discontinued product 404s | Sometimes | Redirect to closest current equivalent, not a hard 404 |
Ecommerce SEO issues compound quickly because of sheer page volume — a pattern affecting thousands of product pages is a much bigger deal than the same pattern on a handful of pages, which is why this checklist exists as its own pass inside SEO & Search Growth work for ecommerce clients.
FAQ
What SEO issues are specific to ecommerce sites?
Ecommerce sites face SEO issues that generic audits often miss: faceted navigation generating enormous numbers of crawlable low-value URLs, duplicate product descriptions copied from manufacturer feeds, thin near-identical variant pages, and discontinued products 404ing instead of redirecting to a current equivalent — all of which compound quickly given the typical page volume on an ecommerce site.
- Faceted navigation and product variants are the two most common sources of ecommerce-specific technical SEO problems.
- These issues scale with catalog size, making them disproportionately costly on larger ecommerce sites.
Should out-of-stock products be removed from an ecommerce site?
Generally no — if the product will be restocked, keep the page live and indexable rather than removing it, since removal loses accumulated rankings and links; for genuinely discontinued products, redirect to the closest current equivalent rather than returning a 404, which preserves both SEO value and the chance to capture the visitor for a similar item.
- Removing a page entirely (404) forfeits accumulated rankings and backlinks with nothing to show for it.
- A redirect to a relevant current product is almost always better than a dead end for both users and search engines.