8 Common SEO Mistakes and How To Avoid Them in 2026

Even businesses with great products can struggle to gain visibility if customers can’t find them online. That’s why search engine optimization (SEO) is an important part of ecommerce growth. It can improve search engine rankings, increase website traffic, and attract shoppers actively searching for your products.

Small SEO mistakes can have a significant impact. The SEO company Backlinko found that the top organic result in Google earns an average click-through rate of 27.6% and is 10 times more likely to be clicked than the tenth result. Falling just a few positions in search results can lead to fewer visitors and potential customers.

Most SEO mistakes are fixable—and correcting them can improve where your pages rank and make your store easier for shoppers to navigate. Here are common SEO mistakes ecommerce businesses make and how to fix each one.

Common SEO mistakes

• Ignoring search intent
• Poorly optimizing metadata
• Using duplicate or thin content
• Neglecting internal links and site structure
• Failing to manage redirects and broken links
• Ignoring image optimization
• Skipping structured data
• Prioritizing search engines over customers

Some SEO problems develop as you add products, publish content, and redesign pages; others come from targeting the wrong keywords or writing for search engines instead of shoppers. Here are eight common SEO mistakes and tips for how to correct them.

Ignoring search intent

Search intent is the reason behind a user’s search query, and creating content that doesn’t match that intent means your page won’t rank well for it and won’t satisfy readers who do land on it. Because Google displays results that best fit what the searcher is trying to do, a page with the wrong intent may struggle to compete, no matter how well-written it is. 

Intent typically falls into one of three categories: informational (seeking knowledge), commercial (comparing options or looking for broad categories), and transactional (ready to buy). 

For example:

• Someone searching “how to choose a cast iron skillet” likely wants an informational blog post (informational intent).

• Someone searching “best cast iron skillet brands” may want a comparison guide (commercial intent).

• Someone searching “12-inch cast iron skillet” likely wants a product page (transactional intent).

“The classic mistake is a page-intent mismatch: trying to rank a product page for an informational ‘how-to’ keyword, or expecting a general blog post to convert for a super-specific product search,” says Kyle Risley, senior SEO lead at Shopify. “Another is only chasing ‘buy now’ keywords and neglecting the goldmine of informational and comparison terms that attract customers earlier.”

How to fix it:

Start with keyword research and identify the intent behind each target keyword. Matching content to search intent helps search engines understand the purpose of a page and improves the likelihood of ranking well.

Tools such as Semrush and Ahrefs can help you uncover what customers are searching for. To gauge intent, use these tools to look at the pages already ranking for a keyword. If the top results are blog posts, for example, the query is informational; if they’re “best of” roundups, it’s commercial; if they’re product and collection pages, it’s transactional. 

Poorly optimizing metadata

Metadata or meta tags are information about a web page that helps search engines understand its content. Your title tag (the large clickable headline in search results) and meta description (the short summary on search results) are often the first things shoppers see in search results. 

A shopper reads these to decide whether your page will match their query. When these elements are missing, duplicated, or poorly written, that decision becomes harder and the searcher has less context about what your page includes and whether they should click. 

Common issues include:

• Duplicate title tag and meta description combinations

• Titles that don’t include the target keyword

How to fix it:

Good metadata can improve click-through rates and can contribute to stronger SEO performance over time. Every page should have a unique title tag and meta description. 

You can edit your title tags, meta descriptions, and image alt text (an image description for search engines and screen readers) in the Shopify admin’s SEO settings.

When writing metadata, include the primary keyword naturally, clearly describe the page’s content, and give users a reason to click through from search results with a call to action.

Using duplicate or thin content

Duplicate and thin content are two common SEO mistakes that can hold an ecommerce store back in search.

Duplicate content is when the same or very similar text appears on multiple site pages—for example, identical product descriptions. This makes it difficult for search crawlers—which scan and discover your web pages—to understand which page has unique value, making it difficult to compete in search rankings. 

According to Semrush, duplicate content within your own pages can cause pages to compete with one another in search results while diluting backlink power and wasting “crawl budget” (the limited time and resources search engines have to explore your site).

Thin content is when a page exists but has little information, such as a product page with a one-line description or a blog article with only two to three hundred words. This makes it difficult for search engines to understand what a page is about and doesn’t signal high-quality or helpfulness—two important ranking factors. 

How to fix it:

For thin content, the goal is to create quality content that helps shoppers make purchasing decisions. Create original product descriptions that explain features, benefits, use cases, and common customer questions. You can also strengthen content quality by adding:

• FAQs

• Product specifications

• Customer reviews

• Comparison information

For duplicate content, surface overlapping pages using Google Search Console’s Pages report. Then, consolidate similar pages or rewrite similar content so that each page is distinct. 

Neglecting internal links and site structure

Strong site structure builds logical connections between products, collections, and blog content. It helps both visitors and web crawlers navigate your store and understand the relationship between pages. Without a clear structure, important pages may receive less visibility from search engines.

Common issues include:

• Weak navigation

• Orphaned pages (pages that aren’t linked to from anywhere else on your website)

• Missing internal links (links that connect pages within your website)

How to fix it:

Start with navigation. Your main menu should surface important collections within one or two clicks of the homepage. Avoid deeply nested dropdowns that bury pages.

From there, build contextual connections to improve navigation and avoid orphaned pages. Optimizing your site structure means linking blog posts to related products, products to relevant collections, and collections to supporting content to build contextual relevance between them. 

For example, in their recipe and cooking articles, cookware brand HexClad naturally links to the cookware products it uses or discusses, allowing readers to move directly from educational content to the relevant product.

To find the pages that are missing those connections, check a tool like Ahrefs or Screaming Frog. They’ll flag URLs with few or no internal links pointing to them, which are the ones to prioritize.

Failing to manage redirects and broken links

Website changes can create serious SEO problems if they’re not handled properly. When businesses rename products, remove pages, or migrate domains without creating redirects, they can generate broken links and lose valuable traffic.

“I’ve seen a lot of brands that fail to redirect a lot of the URLs from their old domain to the new one, resulting in a lot of dead links in Google searches,” JJ Follano, cofounder of the sustainable retailer Zero Waste Store, says on an episode of Shopify Masters. “You can potentially lose a lot of the traffic that you’ve gained from your prior branding.”

How to fix it:

Create redirects whenever you change URLs, remove pages, consolidate content, or change domains. Shopify’s built-in URL redirect tool allows you to update the old URL to the new destination, helping preserve traffic and rankings after site changes.

Also, regularly review your site for broken links, redirect chains (when a URL redirects through multiple intermediate URLs before reaching its destination), and missing pages. Tools such as Google Search Console and Screaming Frog can help identify these issues before they affect search performance. 

Fixing these issues helps preserve rankings and ensures visitors reach the correct web page.

Ignoring image optimization

Images can contribute significantly to ecommerce SEO by helping search engines better understand a page’s content and by creating additional opportunities to appear in image search results. However, many stores upload images with generic file names, overly large file sizes, and missing alt text.

According to Google, poor image optimization can also reduce visibility in Google Image Search, since file names and alt text are the primary signals Google crawlers use to understand what an image depicts.

How to fix it:

Use descriptive file names before uploading images. For example, instead of “IMG1234.jpg,” use “stainless-steel-water-bottle.jpg.” Add descriptive alt text that explains the image for both accessibility and SEO purposes, such as “Reusable stainless steel water bottle with bamboo lid.”

Also, optimize the file size using an app such as TinyIMG or Avada AI SEO Image Optimizer. These can help automate image compression, alt text generation, and other image optimization tasks. 

This helps search engines understand image content and improves accessibility for users.

Skipping structured data

Structured data, also known as schema markup, is labels added to a page that explicitly tell search engines things like “this is the price” or “this is the star rating.” When added, Google can display these directly in search results, known as rich results, helping your listing stand out. 

Common structured data opportunities include:

• Product page details (pricing, availability)

• Reviews and ratings

• Shipping details

• FAQs

How to fix it:

Add structured data to key pages. In Shopify, you can either add it manually using schema.org’s schema generator, or with an app like SearchPie or Schema Ninja.

Prioritizing search engines over customers

It’s easy to slip into the habit of writing for search engines instead of the people you’re trying to reach. Inserting as many keywords as possible onto a page is called keyword stuffing, and it can lead to awkward writing that is difficult to read.

Modern search algorithms like Google’s are designed to prioritize helpful, reliable content created for people rather than content designed primarily to manipulate rankings. They also use natural language processing (NLP) to understand a page’s context, not just exact-match keywords. 

That means a page demonstrates topical depth by including related topics that a reader would naturally expect, including subtopics, related terms, and natural language, not the same keyword repeated multiple times.

How to fix it:

Focus on creating content that serves customers first by answering questions, solving problems, and helping shoppers make informed decisions.

Weave keywords naturally into headings, product descriptions, collection pages, and blog content while prioritizing clarity, accuracy, and helpfulness. Include related terms and phrases that help search engines better understand a page’s topic where relevant. Aim for sufficient topical depth by addressing the common questions shoppers have before they buy.