AI & Automation
Personas
Ecommerce
Time to ROI
Medium-term (3-6 months)
OK, so last year I landed this ecommerce client with over 3,000 products and a massive problem. Despite having quality products and decent traffic, their organic visibility was basically nonexistent. Less than 500 monthly visits for a store with thousands of SKUs - something was seriously broken.
The main issue? They were making every classic ecommerce SEO mistake in the book. And I mean every single one. It was like they'd taken a "how not to do ecommerce SEO" guide and followed it step by step.
After completely overhauling their approach and fixing these fundamental mistakes, we went from under 500 monthly visitors to over 5,000 in just three months. But here's the thing - most of these mistakes are so common that I see them on 90% of ecommerce sites.
In this playbook, you'll learn:
The 7 most damaging SEO mistakes ecommerce sites make
Why following "best practices" often leads you astray
My systematic approach to diagnosing and fixing SEO issues at scale
How to implement solutions across thousands of products without going insane
The workflow that took us from 500 to 5,000+ monthly visits
This isn't theory - this is what actually worked when I had to fix a broken ecommerce site from the ground up. Let's dive into what I discovered.
Industry Reality
What every ecommerce owner has already tried
If you've been running an ecommerce site for more than five minutes, you've probably heard all the standard SEO advice. Install Yoast, optimize your product titles, write meta descriptions, add alt text to images. The usual suspects.
Most ecommerce SEO guides will tell you to focus on:
Product page optimization - Writing unique descriptions for each product
Category page structure - Creating clean URL hierarchies
Technical basics - Page speed, mobile responsiveness, schema markup
Content marketing - Starting a blog to drive traffic
Link building - Getting other sites to link to your products
And you know what? This advice isn't wrong. These things do matter. The problem is that everyone focuses on the obvious stuff while completely missing the fundamental structural issues that are actually killing their organic traffic.
Most ecommerce sites I audit have decent product pages but terrible information architecture. They have beautiful designs but broken internal linking. They optimize individual pages while ignoring how those pages work together as a system.
The real issue isn't that ecommerce owners don't know about SEO - it's that they're optimizing the wrong things first. They're trying to polish individual pages while the foundation is crumbling underneath.
I learned this the hard way when I realized that following standard ecommerce SEO checklists was like rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic. You need to fix the structural problems before the tactical optimizations matter.
Consider me as your business complice.
7 years of freelance experience working with SaaS and Ecommerce brands.
When this client reached out, they were frustrated. They'd spent months working with an SEO agency that had optimized hundreds of product pages, written blog content, and even done some link building. The technical audit came back clean. Everything looked good on paper.
But their organic traffic was still terrible. Under 500 monthly visits for a store with over 3,000 products across 8 different languages. The math just didn't add up.
The first thing I did was forget everything about "best practices" and just dig into their actual data. What I found was a classic case of optimizing tactics while ignoring strategy.
Their product pages were technically fine - good titles, decent descriptions, proper schema markup. But when I looked at how Google was actually crawling and indexing their site, I found massive structural problems that no amount of individual page optimization could fix.
The site had been built like most ecommerce sites - designed first, then SEO added as an afterthought. The navigation was built for human browsing, not search engine discovery. The URL structure made sense to customers but created nightmares for crawl efficiency.
Most importantly, they were treating their website like a traditional brochure site when it needed to be treated like what it actually was - a massive content library with thousands of potential entry points.
This is when I realized that most ecommerce SEO problems aren't technical problems - they're architectural problems. You can't fix architecture with tactics.
Here's my playbook
What I ended up doing and the results.
OK, so here's exactly what I did to turn this around. Instead of trying to optimize individual pages, I treated this like a complete system redesign. The goal wasn't just to improve rankings - it was to build a scalable SEO architecture that would work across thousands of products.
Mistake #1: Treating Every Product Like an Island
The biggest problem was that each product page existed in isolation. No strategic internal linking, no category-level optimization, no content hierarchy. I implemented a systematic internal linking strategy where every product connected to relevant categories, related products, and broader topic clusters.
Mistake #2: Ignoring Search Intent at Scale
They were optimizing for product names instead of how people actually search. I rebuilt their entire keyword strategy around actual search intent, mapping thousands of long-tail keywords to specific products and categories.
Mistake #3: Manual Content Creation
Trying to write unique descriptions for 3,000+ products manually was impossible. I built an AI-powered content system that could generate unique, SEO-optimized content at scale while maintaining quality and brand voice.
Mistake #4: Broken Site Architecture
Their site structure was built for browsing, not discovery. I redesigned the information architecture to create clear content hierarchies that both users and search engines could navigate efficiently.
Mistake #5: Missing International SEO Strategy
With 8 languages, they had duplicate content issues and no proper hreflang implementation. I created a systematic approach to international SEO that actually worked at scale.
Mistake #6: No Content Automation Workflow
Every new product required manual SEO work. I built automated workflows that could handle new products, updates, and optimizations without human intervention.
Mistake #7: Focusing on Individual Pages Instead of User Journeys
They optimized pages in isolation instead of thinking about how users move through the site. I mapped out complete user journeys and optimized for paths, not just destinations.
The key was building systems that could work at ecommerce scale. One-off optimizations don't work when you have thousands of products and multiple languages to manage.
System Thinking
Instead of optimizing individual pages, I redesigned their entire SEO architecture as an interconnected system where every element supported the others.
Scale Solutions
I built automated workflows that could handle content generation, optimization, and updates across thousands of products without manual intervention.
Intent Mapping
Rather than optimizing for product names, I mapped actual search intent to specific products and categories based on how people really search.
Proven Process
I developed a repeatable methodology that could be applied to any large-scale ecommerce site facing similar structural SEO problems.
The results speak for themselves. In just three months, we went from under 500 monthly organic visitors to over 5,000. But more importantly, we built a system that continues to scale.
The traffic increase was consistent across all 8 languages, with some markets seeing even better performance than others. Google started indexing over 20,000 pages that had previously been invisible.
But here's what I found most interesting - the biggest gains came from fixing the structural issues, not from individual page optimizations. Once we got the architecture right, the tactical improvements became much more effective.
The automated content system is still running, generating optimized content for new products and updating existing pages based on performance data. The client went from spending hours on SEO for each new product to having it handled automatically.
Most importantly, this approach created a competitive moat. While competitors are still manually optimizing pages one by one, this client has a system that scales with their business growth.
What I've learned and the mistakes I've made.
Sharing so you don't make them.
Looking back on this project, the biggest lesson is that ecommerce SEO problems are usually system problems, not page problems. Here's what I learned:
Architecture beats tactics - Fix the foundation before polishing individual pages
Scale requires automation - Manual optimization doesn't work for thousands of products
Intent matters more than keywords - Optimize for how people actually search
Internal linking is underrated - Most sites waste massive link equity by not connecting content strategically
International SEO is complex - Don't underestimate the technical requirements
User journeys over individual pages - Think about paths through your site, not just destinations
Systems create competitive advantages - Build workflows that scale with your business
The biggest mistake is treating ecommerce SEO like traditional website SEO. Ecommerce sites are content systems that need systematic approaches, not one-off optimizations.
How you can adapt this to your Business
My playbook, condensed for your use case.
For your SaaS / Startup
For SaaS companies with product catalogs or service pages:
Audit your site architecture before optimizing individual pages
Build automated content workflows for scale
Map search intent to your actual product offerings
For your Ecommerce store
For ecommerce stores ready to scale their SEO:
Start with structural audits, not page-level optimization
Implement systematic internal linking strategies
Build automation workflows for content at scale
Focus on user journey optimization over individual page metrics