When people spend enough time in a marketing or digital marketing atmosphere they start to learn the lingo and are able to fluently talk with their peers about projects and campaigns within their field without any risk of miscommunicating. The issue is that once someone spends TOO much time within the marketing field they may forget that not everyone understands the same jargon as they do.
The words “BigCommerce SEO” probably mean very little to someone that doesn’t have a background in digital marketing. At 1Digital®, we don’t expect everyone we work with to already be a BigCommerce SEO expert. In this guide, we will go over the basics for anyone who’s completely new to the world of BigCommerce or SEO
What is BigCommerce?
You can’t learn about BigCommerce SEO unless you first know about BigCommerce, so let’s start at the beginning. BigCommerce is a business that provides an eCommerce platform as part of a SAAS delivery model. SAAS stands for “system as a service” and means that their eCommerce software is licensed under a subscription-type basis. Essentially, BigCommerce is an eCommerce store builder that powers thousands of online businesses around the world.
If your eCommerce shop is already utilizing BigCommerce’s SEO services, then you’re a step ahead of the game. If you haven’t already it’s important to familiarize yourself with BigCommerces’s many different features. Here are just a few of the many beneficial BigCommerce
Customizable Design Themes – When using BigCommerce you have a collection of themes available at your fingertips that makes a design for your eCommerce store that much simpler. The innovative platform allows a business to design with ease, but it also makes integration easier for an outside agency to help with design and development on your eCommerce site.
Abandoned Cart Saver – This feature is one that most BigCommerce users brag about. It allows a way for you to recover lost sales. You can decide whether or not you want emails to go out once a customer abandons their cart. The customization is endless. Create a message that fits your company’s aesthetic.
What is SEO?
Here at 1Digital® Agency, our team of eCommerce experts live and breathe SEO, so there’s no one better to answer the question of “what is SEO”. SEO stands for search engine optimization. In the most basic of terms, SEO is the process of making your website more easily visible on search engines like Google.
To succeed in any competitive online market it is essential to rank as highly as possible. Without visibility, no potential customers will be able to find your site. Even a well-built and smooth-running eCommerce store will not translate to sales if people are searching for items that you sell and your competitors’ sites are at the top of the ranking. This is what makes SEO so crucial for any eCommerce business.
The SEO Process
Obviously, the process that leads to higher Google results is a bit more complex than just magically gaining a higher rank. SEO involves a strong team of experts to truly succeed. Extensive research goes into choosing the keywords that your target market is searching for and which searches will lead to the highest ROI for your company. It’s a constant dance between what searches can get people to your site and which clicks to your site will result in sales.
When working with a professional BigCommerce SEO agency, the next step after keyword research and keyword selection would be content creation. At 1Digital®, off-site content is created by knowledgeable and experienced writers to keep a professional tone while matching the company’s aesthetic. They are then used to build backlinks so that Google acknowledges you like a website that’s worthy of higher rankings.
This offsite content combined with an efficient and component team and onsite blogs for your eCommerce website make for a winning combination. We have a hands-on team that will work through every step of the process with you, so if you read through this article until the end don’t be concerned.
Does BigCommerce Work Well With SEO?
You’ve made it this far, so you’re probably wondering, “what does BigCommerce have to do with SEO”. SEO and BigCommerce go hand-in-hand. The BigCommerce platform is ideal for SEO because of the many helpful features that it offers. This is where many believe that BigCommerce takes the edge over their major competitor, Shopify.
One of the many features that BigCommerce offers is based on SEO and SEO management. This can help immensely with an SEO campaign. Many other eCommerce-based platforms don’t have something as innovative as this. Without proper experience and knowledge of the inner workings of SEO, it still may be difficult to maneuver, but a qualified BigCommerce SEO expert can easily make the difference.
The Importance of Working with a BigCommerce Partner
At 1Digital® Agency, we are a certified BigCommerce partner. This means we are well-versed with BigCommerce and its tools. If you are using BigCommerce for your business then we already have a good idea of how things are going from a development standpoint. As a BigCommerce SEO company, we have the skills to provide more than just SEO work for our clients. When it comes to design and development, we have a history of success for our clients.
Working with a well-rounded BigCommerce SEO agency will come in handy for any issues or hiccups that arise over the course of your campaign. Because we specialize in BigCommerce SEO, design, and development, the transitional learning period is nearly non-existent when working with companies that are using the BigCommerce platform. Our experience with BigCommerce definitely gives us a major advantage.
1Digital® Agency is a BigCommerce SEO company that is well-versed in all things BigCommerce and all things SEO. If you are interested in increasing your google search rankings but don’t know where to begin feel free to reach out to us on our site or at 888-982-8269. We are excited to use our knowledge and experience, and offer our Bigcommerce SEO Services to help your company grow.
What BigCommerce Actually Gives You for SEO
Beginners often hear "BigCommerce is good for SEO" without anyone explaining what that concretely means. The platform's real SEO advantages are specific and worth knowing before you start. You get full control over page titles and meta descriptions on products, categories, brands, and content pages; clean, editable URLs with automatic 301 redirects generated when a URL changes (which prevents the broken-link and lost-ranking problem that sinks many migrations); built-in support for structured data on products so listings can show price, availability, and review stars; native handling of canonical tags to manage duplicate-content risk; and a built-in blog on the store's own domain. None of these require a developer to enable — but all of them require someone to actually use them correctly, which is where most beginner stores fall short.
A Beginner's BigCommerce SEO Checklist
If you are starting from zero, work this list in order rather than at random:
- Set a unique title and meta description on every category and top product. Default, duplicated, or empty tags are the most common beginner mistake and the easiest to fix.
- Write real category-page copy. Category pages target your highest-intent commercial searches; a bare product grid with no text rarely ranks against a competitor whose category page actually explains the selection.
- Replace duplicated manufacturer product descriptions with original copy on your most important products. Identical copy across many stores is a classic reason product pages fail to rank.
- Enable and configure product structured data so eligible listings can earn rich results.
- Use the built-in blog to answer the buying questions customers ask before they purchase, and link those posts to the relevant category and product pages.
- Submit your XML sitemap to Google Search Console and watch the Coverage and Performance reports — this is how you see whether the work above is being found.
The Faceted-Navigation Trap (Even Beginners Should Know This)
One technical issue trips up almost every growing BigCommerce store: product filters generate large numbers of parameter URLs that can become duplicate, thin pages competing with each other. You do not need to solve this on day one, but you should know it exists, because past a few hundred products it quietly suppresses rankings. The fix is deciding which filtered views have real search demand (treat those as proper landing pages) and keeping the rest out of the index — a decision worth getting expert input on before the catalog gets large.
Frequently Asked Questions
Is BigCommerce better than Shopify for SEO? Both are capable; BigCommerce exposes more native SEO controls without paid apps, but the build and ongoing work matter far more than the platform choice. A neglected store on either platform loses to a well-run store on the other.
How long until SEO works on a new store? Technical and on-page fixes can move things within weeks; content and authority compound over months. SEO is durable, not instant.
Do I need an agency for BigCommerce SEO? Not for the checklist above — a careful owner can do it. The point where expert help pays off is faceted navigation, migrations, and competitive content strategy, where mistakes are expensive and hard to see.
BigCommerce gives a beginner a strong SEO foundation, but a foundation still has to be built on. If you want the work done correctly from the start, the certified BigCommerce SEO team at 1Digital® Agency handles strategy, on-page, technical, and content end to end.