Best Ecommerce Platform for SEO: 6 Ecommerce SEO Platforms

You’ve finally decided you want to build an ecommerce store for your company. You decide to conduct a search on Google and look for an ecommerce platform to host your site that also provides you with search engine optimization (SEO) services to help you rank in search results. As soon as you press ‘enter,’ you’re flooded with a sea of options.

Now you’re feeling overwhelmed — how do you figure out what’s best for your company?

Luckily, we’ve got all the answers you need. On this page, we’ll provide you with six of the best ecommerce platforms for SEO and share the pros and cons of each. Keep reading to find the right platform for your business!

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1. BigCommerce

Cost: $29.95-$299.95+ per month

First on our list of best SEO ecommerce platforms is BigCommerce. This platform is one of the leading ecommerce platforms for companies that want to build an online store. BigCommerce is extremely popular because it’s easy to use for people who don’t know how to code.

Let’s look at the pros and cons of this ecommerce SEO platform:

Pros of BigCommerce

There are a few positives that make BigCommerce one of the best SEO ecommerce platforms.

It’s flexible BigCommerce is valuable for ecommerce businesses because it’s flexible. When you don’t have experience building a site, you need something that will make it easy for you to create the site you need. BigCommerce is exceptionally flexible and doesn’t require any coding knowledge, making it an excellent option for you.

It’s SEO-friendly If you want to know how to choose the best ecommerce platform for SEO, start by looking for SEO-friendly features from ecommerce site builders.

Big Commerce offers many SEO-friendly features, including:

• Mobile-friendly design
• Built-in 301 redirects
• SEO-friendly URLs
• Edit access to your txt file
• And more

It’s customer-friendly BigCommerce is one of the best SEO ecommerce platforms because it’s customer-friendly. This platform offers numerous ecommerce website features that you can use to make the shopping experience better for your audience. For example, BigCommerce enables you to accept over 40 different payment methods, making it easy for customers to shop.

Cons of BigCommerce

Even the best ecommerce platform for SEO will have downfalls.

Here are two negatives to using BigCommerce:

Pages can load slowly A common complaint about BigCommerce is that pages on your site can load slowly. Slow-loading pages are detrimental to SEO because users don’t want to wait for pages to load. This drawback is something to consider because slow-loading pages lead to lower rankings, which means less traffic and sales.

Not to mention, slow-loading website cause $2.6 billion in revenue loss annually.

It can get expensive Another downfall of BigCommerce is that it can get expensive. Their Pro package only enables you to get up to $400,000 in sales per year, but for every $200,000 in sales beyond that, it’s an extra $150 per month. So, if your business happens to make over that threshold, you must opt for an Enterprise plan, which is more expensive.

2. Magento

Cost: $20,000+ per year

Next in the running for the best ecommerce platform for SEO is Magento. Magento is a fully customizable ecommerce platform that enables you to sell your products efficiently and effectively. Here are the pros and cons of using Magento:

Pros of Magento

So, what’s there to like about Magento?

It’s customizable Magento is a challenging platform, but it has one big pro to it: It’s fully customizable.

Since Magento is open source, anyone can make changes to it to build the site they need. If you need an intricate navigation bar or specialized checkout process, Magento gives you free rein to adapt as you need. Many companies like Magento because of the customization.

You get a basic outline for your website and can edit it to fit your business. It gives you the freedom to fully customize without having to start from scratch.

It’s SEO-friendly Since this ecommerce SEO platform is fully customizable, you can make it SEO-friendly for your business. You can add the necessary coding and alterations to your pages to help you rank in search results and earn more sales.

Cons of Magento

So, what’s there to dislike about Magento?

It requires coding knowledge If you don’t know coding, this is not the best ecommerce SEO platform for you.

Yes, Magento can be tailored to your liking, but you need to know how to do that. Without coding experience, you won’t have the means to build a custom site for your business.

It’s expensive The biggest drawback of Magento is the cost. Just to get the basic version of their product with limited features, the cost starts at $20,000 per year.

As you need more, the price goes up. You could potentially spend that same amount (or even less!) one time and get far more from a web design company, all while never having to lift a finger or learn any coding!

Read More: How Much Should a Website Cost?

3. Shopify

Cost: $29-$299 per month

When you search how to choose the best ecommerce platform for SEO, many people will tell you to focus on platforms that are easy to use so that you can build a website fast. Shopify is one of the many ecommerce platforms that are great for beginners setting up their first ecommerce website. Let’s look at why you’ll want to use Shopify as your ecommerce SEO platform.

Pros of Shopify

Shopify offers numerous benefits for your ecommerce business, including:

It offers a lot of plugins:  If you want to add features to your Shopify store, you can, with their large library of plugins.

It’s easy to use Shopify is one of the most user-friendly websites for setting up shop. This platform makes it easy for users to pick their template, add what they need, and launch their store.

It’s great for business owners that don’t know how to code.

It’s built with blogging in mind A critical component of SEO is blogging. This ecommerce platform has a built-in blogging feature that makes it easy for your ecommerce store to create and publish content. Blogging helps you get more shoppers on your site, so this is a great feature to have from an ecommerce SEO platform.

It’s Google Analytics ready As you search for the best ecommerce platform for SEO, look at the tracking features for each one.

Shopify is one of the best for tracking metrics on your site because you can integrate Google Analytics into your website for more accurate tracking. It allows you to easily monitor traffic, leads, and conversions for your business.

Cons of Shopify

While Shopify offers a great SEO benefit (blogging), it does have some pitfalls that relate to SEO.

You can’t edit your robots.txt files Your robots.txt file enables you to tell search engines which pages to crawl. Without control over this, it makes it difficult for you to ensure that Google crawls the right pages.

It also leaves you vulnerable to search engines overwhelming your site with too many requests and subsequently slowing down your page.

You can’t change your URLs Search engines use your URLs to understand the context or topic of your page. Shopify has a rigid URL structure, which means you can’t change your URLs. This pitfall is something to keep in mind, as custom URLs can help search engines understand your pages better and help users remember your site.

4. WooCommerce

Cost: Plugin is free, but there are other fees

If you’re familiar with WordPress, WooCommerce is a great option for your ecommerce business. This plugin enables you to turn your WordPress site into an ecommerce store. Let’s look at why you might want to use WooCommerce.

Pros of WooCommerce

WooCommerce offers numerous benefits for your ecommerce business.

It’s customizable If you decide to use WooCommerce, you can customize your site better than other ecommerce SEO platforms.

With hundreds of plugin options, you can build a site that works for your business and enables you to sell products effectively.

It’s got strong tech support Since WordPress is an open-source platform, people are continually working on it and tweaking plugins to make them better. As a result, if you use the WooCommerce plugin, you’ll have tons of support to ask questions and resolve issues.

It’s SEO ready WooCommerce is another platform built to help you rank in search engines. It comes with numerous SEO-friendly features, including:

• URL customization
• Built-in 301 redirects
• Mobile-friendliness
• Built-in blogging
• txt editing

Cons of WooCommerce

While WooCommerce sounds like a great option, there are a few drawbacks to using it.

It has a learning curve If you aren’t familiar with WordPress, you’ll find that WooCommerce has a bit of a learning curve. It requires taking time to learn WordPress and plugins, which can be frustrating if you just want to build your ecommerce store fast.

It requires downloading plugins for individual features Another hindrance that keeps WooCommerce from being the best ecommerce platform for SEO is that you must install individual plugins to get certain features on your site. You must find plugins that offer the features you need, which is time-consuming.

It also takes time to ensure plugins can work with each other.

5. Squarespace

Cost: $12-$40 per month

Another site that’s in the running for the best SEO ecommerce platform is Squarespace. Squarespace offers over 100 flexible templates that your ecommerce business can use to create your shop. Let’s compare the pros and cons of this platform.

Pros of Squarespace

Here’s what’s great about Squarespace:

It’s ready for blogging As we shared previously, blogging is a critical component of your site’s SEO.

Luckily, Squarespace offers blogging capabilities, so you can quickly start a blog for your ecommerce company and start driving sales for your business.

It’s mobile-responsive With 90% of consumers purchasing from a smartphone, you must have a site that looks and works great on mobile. If you use Squarespace as your ecommerce SEO platform, you’ll get a mobile-responsive site.

It’s got a great community Like WooCommerce, you’ll get great support from users in the Squarespace community. You can reach these people with any questions or concerns about creating your ecommerce site, as well as troubleshoot issues.

Cons of Squarespace

Here’s what may stop you from using Squarespace as your ecommerce SEO platform:

It doesn’t have great usability One of the biggest complaints with Squarespace is usability.

Many users noted it lacks essential features, like autosave or the ability to undo changes.

It isn’t suitable for big websites Squarespace lacks the ability to have a deep navigation hierarchy. So, if you sell a lot of products, you may not be able to organize them the way you want if you use Squarespace. Additionally, Squarespace does not support creating your site in different languages for international shoppers.

6. Volusion

Cost: $26-$269 per month

If you want to know how to choose the best ecommerce platform for SEO, look for easy-to-use site builders. Volusion is considered one of the most user-friendly ecommerce site builders. Volusion enables you to build an ecommerce-ready site to sell your products.

Let’s look at a few reasons to use Volusion, as well as reasons it may not work for your business:

Pros of Volusion

Volusion offers many great benefits, including:

It’s equipped for SEO Like many of the other platforms on this page, Volusion is SEO-ready. This platform offers numerous features that optimize your site for SEO, including URL customization and 301 redirects. Volusion is an excellent option if you want a site optimized for SEO.

It has tutorials The biggest issue with using ecommerce SEO platforms is that they don’t always provide you with instructions on how to build your site.

With Volusion, you’ll get tutorials to guide you through the process. Volusion makes it simple and easy for you to set up shop.

Cons of Volusion

Regardless of whether Volusion is the best ecommerce platform for SEO, it still has some downfalls.

It doesn’t have built-in blogging Blogging is critical for SEO, so Volusion omitting that feature from their website can make it a less than desirable choice. If you want to make blogging a priority for your SEO efforts, Volusion may not be the best choice for your company, as you’ll have to find a workaround to add a blog to your site.

It can be slow to load Some users report that sites created through Volusion tend to load slower, which can hurt your SEO efforts.

You want to deliver your products to your customers fast, so having a slow-loading site can stop leads from purchasing.

The best e-commerce platform for SEO isn’t a platform at all

Now that you’ve seen some top choices for ecommerce SEO platforms, you’ll want to pull together a list of what you like about each tool and notes about the migration process. Whether it’s Magento’s customization or WooCommerce’s blog-ready designs, there are a few features you need to have. Now, look at that list.

You may feel frustrated that you can’t get it all in one tool, but we’re here to tell you that you can have it all! The best ecommerce platform for SEO is not a platform at all — it’s an ecommerce web design company! Partnering with an ecommerce web design company allows you to create a custom package so you can get everything you need, whether it’s customization, a blog, or SEO-friendly design.

By partnering with an award-winning design company like WebFX, you can get everything you desire for your website. So, don’t settle for the best ecommerce platform for SEO — go bigger and better by working with an ecommerce web design company! Want to get an estimate for your website?

Use our free web design cost calculator to see how much it could cost you to build your dream ecommerce site!