How to close your ecommerce site and not kill your SEO ranking

How to close your ecommerce site and not kill your SEO ranking.  Many of ecommerce businesses are closing for pandemic “lock downs” .

When you do this you need to be careful not to kill your hard earned organic SEO.

Important thing is to keep in contact with your customers and keep them informed and allow them to help you.

Here is a checklist of items to check.

1. Use your cookie messaging to add a Pandemic messaging. Although its not a cookie message you are not adding a new popup  to the screen to notify customers. Popups can effect ranking.
   1. ref ( https://www.searchenginejournal.com/ads-interstitials-supplemental-content-seo-visibility/306385/ )
   2. ref ( https://seo-hacker.com/pop-ups-negatively-affecting-seo/ )
2. Disable Add to cart buttons
3. Replace add to cart button with a remind me when you re-open button. This should then bee linked to your news letter management system in a separate or new list.
4. Suspend all your google ads ( if you cannot ship there is no point in running the ads.  right ? )
5. Make sure its not possible to add to cart from the following views.
   1. Home Page
   2. Category Listing
   3. Search Results
   4. Customer Account Area
   5. Cross Sells

Not that your business is closed you can use the time to do the following that will help you when you re-open

1. Do that upgrade you have been putting off for years
2. Update all the product images ( https://www.practicalecommerce.com/How-to-Take-Gorgeous-Product-Photos )
   1. If you need some good advice on this call Paddy Barker in www.Barkerphotographic.ie ( disclaimer Paddy is a client of ours )
3. Update all meta descriptions with calls to action. ( https://www.searchenginejournal.com/meta-product-descriptions-ecommerce/256547/ )
4. Add to product descriptions, dont destroy, but add to.
5. Record Product Videos.
6. Do some detailed statistics and reporting to analyise your business and profitability.
7. Prune that email list that is only getting a hit rate of 5% !
8. Look at all the manual tasks and invest some time automating these.
   1. Logistics
   2. Order Processing
   3. Stock Updates
   4. Sales to Accounting
   5. Automated reports on daily sales
   6. Automated alerts on low stocks
   7. Automated alerts on items starting to move fast
   8. Automated reports on daily visitors
   9. Automated reports on Keyword ranking
   10. Automated uptime reports and down time alerts
   11. Look at using a ecommerce fulfilment service instead of storing stocks, employing staff and all the overheads that come with this. ( call Julie Colclough in Eurobase – https://euro-base.com/contact-us/ +353 (0) 51 379 755 ) ( disclaimer euro base are a client of ours )

Do not do the following

1. re-categorise all your product with out doing 301 redirects
2. replacing product descriptions
3. copying content from suppliers and replicating it on your own site
4. embark on a massive re-platform without doing lots of homework.

This is a 1 time in your life opportunity to get your ecommerce house in order and make it a real lean machine.

Funding sources for Covid19 aid

If you require help with any of the above please call us on 01 5242100 and ask for Sean.