Store SEO: start.

An online store with 3,000 products and a lawyer's website with 15 pages are promoted by different rules. A store has thousands of URLs, filters multiply copies, and product cards repeat the supplier's description. If you start by buying links, the budget will be wasted: the robot will not reach the sections that matter.

Below is the order of work we follow when doing SEO for an online store. It will be useful both to those running the project themselves and to those comparing the SEO services of different agencies.

How store SEO differs from a regular website

The main difference is scale. Promoting an online store means managing thousands of similar pages, where a mistake in one template is repeated everywhere.

Many pages

A catalog of 5,000 items with colors, sizes and sorting options easily produces 50,000 URLs. The robot allocates a limited budget to crawling, so SEO promotion of a website this size starts with the question of where that budget goes.

Filters and duplicates

Duplicates in an online store are most often created by filters: each combination of parameters creates a new URL with almost the same list of products. The search engine merges them or shows a page other than the one you are promoting.

Categories

A category gathers broad queries like "men's sneakers" and usually brings the bulk of organic traffic.

Product cards

A product card catches precise queries with the model and SKU. There are fewer visitors, but they have already decided to buy.

Step 1. Catalog structure

The right structure for an online store means a separate page for each group of queries and a path to any product no longer than 3-4 clicks. An experienced SEO specialist first collects the semantics, then distributes them across sections.

Categories and subcategories

A subcategory is created if there is demand for it. "Kitchen faucets" and "Grohe faucets" are different pages, each with its own search volume. No queries means a filter is enough.

Navigation

The menu, "similar products" blocks and links from texts distribute weight between pages. SEO for a catalog is half thoughtful navigation.

Breadcrumbs

The chain "Home → Faucets → Kitchen" shows the visitor where they are. With BreadcrumbList markup, it is displayed in the snippet instead of the URL.

Internal links

From a category, link to neighboring subsections; from a product card, link to the parent section. Anchors are covered in detail in the article on on-page website optimization.

Step 2. Category optimization

Optimizing product categories gives the fastest traffic growth: these pages answer queries with purchase intent. Three things are needed: a heading that matches the query, useful text and unique meta tags.

Headings and texts

The H1 matches the main query: "Kitchen faucets," not "Our products." A text of 1,000-2,000 characters is placed below the listing and answers the buyer's questions: how to choose, how long delivery takes in Moscow and the regions.

Meta tags

For hundreds of sections, the title and description are generated from a template; for the 20-30 most profitable ones, they are written by hand to raise CTR.

What to write

The snippet should explain what is being sold and why it is worth clicking on your result:

• in the title, the query, a commercial word and what sets you apart: "Kitchen faucets - buy, 400+ models";
• in the description, the range, the "from" price, delivery, warranty;
• the number of products, if it is inserted automatically;
• the store name once, at the end.

What to avoid

Do not repeat a word three times, do not copy the title into the description and do not leave identical meta tags on filters and pagination.

Step 3. Product cards

SEO specialists take on product cards after categories: individually they bring little traffic, but together they form a "long tail" of precise queries.

Unique descriptions

The description answers the questions a customer would ask a salesperson in the store. For a hundred bestsellers it is written by hand; for the rest, a template based on the specifications will do.

Photos and specifications

Specifications are presented as a table. Photos get an alt attribute, are compressed to 100-200 KB and served in WebP.

Supplier duplicates

The manufacturer's text is used by dozens of stores. The search engine will choose one, usually the largest, and the rest will drop out of the results.

How to rewrite

Add what the supplier does not have: compatibility, what is included, answers from the support chat. Since March 2025, Yandex has considered AI-generated texts without expert proofreading to be of low value, so a draft from a neural network is checked by a person who knows the product.

Step 4. Filters and facets

Filters and facets are both a source of junk and an underrated resource. Combinations with demand are opened as landing pages, and the rest are blocked.

Which filters to index

Brand, color, material, purpose: thousands of people search for "gray corner sofas." Such a page needs its own URL, H1, meta tags and a short text.

Which to block

Nobody searches for a "from - to" price, availability or combinations of three parameters. They will not bring traffic, but they will eat up the crawl budget.

robots.txt

The Disallow directive for parameters like ?price= prevents them from being crawled. In Yandex Webmaster, this is complemented by the "GET parameter settings" tool.

Canonical

If a filter page should work but not be indexed, it gets a canonical pointing to the parent category, backed up by internal links.

Step 5. Pagination and sorting

Pagination in a store is needed by people, but ?page=2 pages look almost identical to a search engine. They are left open for crawling but are not allowed to compete with the first page.

How not to create duplicates

The category text is kept only on the first page, and "- page 2" is added to the title on the following ones. Sorting changes the order without creating indexable URLs.

What to block

Sorting, "grid" or "list" view, choosing the number of products per page. Pagination itself is not blocked, otherwise part of the range will drop out of the robot's view.

rel=canonical

A pagination page has a canonical pointing to itself, while a sorting page points to the main URL of the section.

noindex

The noindex, follow meta tag is placed on internal search, comparison and favorites: the page leaves the index, and the links keep working.

Step 6. Technical problems of a store

A technical error in a store is replicated across thousands of pages, so it is fixed before texts are written. The full list of checks is in the article on technical website audits.

Speed

The Core Web Vitals benchmarks: LCP up to 2.5 s, INP up to 200 ms, CLS no higher than 0.1 for 75% of real visitors. Lazy loading of photos and caching help.

Mobile version

Google evaluates a website by its mobile version. If filters are not visible on the phone, both rankings and sales drop. Techniques are collected in the article on mobile optimization.

Cart

The cart is blocked from indexing but checked on all devices: a product is added in one tap, without reloading.

Checkout

A name, phone number and address are enough, with registration optional. Abandoned orders worsen behavioral signals.

Where to start if time is short

Start with the 10-20 categories that bring in most of the revenue, and with indexing errors. This kind of website SEO optimization pays off faster than rewriting all the product cards.

Priorities

The plan for the first month:

1. block junk filter and sorting URLs;
2. check that categories are in the index and return a 200 code;
3. fix the H1 and meta tags of profitable sections;
4. add texts to the main categories;
5. open filters with real demand.

Quick wins

This is what fixes that bring growth within 3-6 weeks are called. IndexNow speeds up recrawling: it immediately notifies Yandex and Bing about changed URLs.

Categories

Find sections in positions 11-20 in Webmaster and improve their H1, title and subcategories. Alice AI answers take sources almost exclusively from the top 10, so SEO promotion of these pages pays off twice.

Product cards

Give your 50 best-selling products a unique description, a specifications table and 5-7 photos.

Conclusion

How to promote a store in search: first structure and the technical side, then categories, then product cards and filters. Without this base, SEO promotion turns into patching holes, and SEO optimization of individual product cards does not pay off.

The price of website SEO promotion depends on the number of categories, the CMS and the competition, so it is only fair to calculate the estimate after an audit. Before you order SEO promotion, find out who will edit the catalog templates and what the price of website SEO optimization is at the start. You can order website SEO promotion from epic name. in stages - that is how we worked with the MedTorg 21 online store - and you can also order website SEO optimization separately, without monthly support. The scope of work is on the SEO promotion page.