Step by Step Bigcommerce SEO – Search Engine Optimization Help
Dan Kogan
- October 8, 2013
BigCommerce is a very SEO friendly eCommerce platform. It offers you all the features to help with on-page SEO optimization. If you’re trying to get higher rankings for your Bigcommerce store, there’s a lot involved that needs to be considered for your Bigcommerce SEO strategy. In our earlier post we discussed about implementing Google publisher tags with your BigCommerce store , today’s post is more focused on making your website SEO friendly. Lets proceed with some of the major eCommerce SEO changes required for your website.
Adding Link in your XML sitemap from robots exclusion file :
While designing the website it is a good practice to submit your XML sitemap to Google using your Google webmaster account. It is important to link it with your robots exclusion file.The following step will complete this task :
1. Login into your BigCommerce Control Panel by using the admin details to login.
2. Click on Tools tab and select edit robots.txt file using drop-down menu.
3. Scroll and locate the list of pages which are already in the robots.txt file
4. Click on the blank spot below the last entry and enter the following on its own line
Sitemap:
domainname/xmlsitemap.php
5. Save all the setting to complete this.
While designing the website it is a good practice to submit your XML sitemap to Google using your Google webmaster account. It is important to link it with your robots exclusion file.The following step will complete this task :
1. Login into your BigCommerce Control Panel by using the admin details to login.
2. Click on Tools tab and select edit robots.txt file using drop-down menu.
3. Scroll and locate the list of pages which are already in the robots.txt file
4. Click on the blank spot below the last entry and enter the following on its own line
Sitemap:
domainname/xmlsitemap.php
5. Save all the setting to complete this.
Adding “no-follow” Tag for BigCommerce Footer Link
Just like many other eCommerce platforms BigCommerce also has their own link in the footer of templates with a copyright line. You are not required to give credit to the creators or BigCommerce. You can either remove the label or it is recommended to add nofollow tag on this link, this can be done using the following steps:
1. Inside your BigCommerce Control Panel click on Design tab. Click on the button “Browse Template Files”.
2. A new tab will appear on the browser all the template files will be displayed. The left column will show a list of all the template files you are using,.
3. Locate the file Footer.html and click it and find the line of code %%GLOBAL_PoweredBy%%
4. Replace the code using the following – powered by BigCommerce and click “save” to complete the steps.
Just like many other eCommerce platforms BigCommerce also has their own link in the footer of templates with a copyright line. You are not required to give credit to the creators or BigCommerce. You can either remove the label or it is recommended to add nofollow tag on this link, this can be done using the following steps:
1. Inside your BigCommerce Control Panel click on Design tab. Click on the button “Browse Template Files”.
2. A new tab will appear on the browser all the template files will be displayed. The left column will show a list of all the template files you are using,.
3. Locate the file Footer.html and click it and find the line of code %%GLOBAL_PoweredBy%%
4. Replace the code using the following – powered by BigCommerce and click “save” to complete the steps.
Delete “sitemap” link from footer of your template.
Keeping the sitemap in the footer is not recommended from an seo perspective as it links to many indexable pages which should not be shared with google. So here are the steps to remove this link:
1. Inside your BigCommerce Control Panel click on “Browse Template Files.”
2. All of the templates should be visible here , locate the file Footer.html and click on it.
3.Search and delete the following line of code : %%SNIPPET_SitemapLink%%
4. Save and Exit to make the changes live.
Keeping the sitemap in the footer is not recommended from an seo perspective as it links to many indexable pages which should not be shared with google. So here are the steps to remove this link:
1. Inside your BigCommerce Control Panel click on “Browse Template Files.”
2. All of the templates should be visible here , locate the file Footer.html and click on it.
3.Search and delete the following line of code : %%SNIPPET_SitemapLink%%
4. Save and Exit to make the changes live.
Block the sitemap page using robots exclusion file
As we have removed the sitemap link from the footer of our website, there is another step required to inform google that do not index sitemap page, this can be done using Robots.txt file.
1. Inside your BigCommerce control panel click on tools tab and edit robots.txt file.
2. At the end of this file, enter this line disallow: /sitemap/ and save this text file to complete the steps.There are many other SEO recommendation that could improve the visibility of your website, we will keep you posted with best practices that are recommended for BigCommerce store. In addition to that you always need to make sure that your website remains SEO optimized and brings more business to you.
As we have removed the sitemap link from the footer of our website, there is another step required to inform google that do not index sitemap page, this can be done using Robots.txt file.
1. Inside your BigCommerce control panel click on tools tab and edit robots.txt file.
2. At the end of this file, enter this line disallow: /sitemap/ and save this text file to complete the steps.There are many other SEO recommendation that could improve the visibility of your website, we will keep you posted with best practices that are recommended for BigCommerce store. In addition to that you always need to make sure that your website remains SEO optimized and brings more business to you.
Make sure to visit our Bigcommerce SEO section for new updates, or to contact one of our Bigcommerce experts.
Dan Kogan
