5 SEO Mistakes That Cost E-shops Thousands Daily

E-shop SEO Is Different

Most SEO guides (including my SEO guide for business owners) are written for business websites or blogs. E-shops have completely different problems, thousands of product pages, filtering, seasonal inventory, duplicate supplier descriptions.

Let's look at the 5 most common mistakes I see in Czech e-shops.

1. Duplicate Product Descriptions

The most widespread problem. Your supplier sends a product description and you upload it. But 50 other e-shops selling the same product use the exact same description.

Why it's a problem: Google doesn't penalize a copied description, but out of pages with the same content it usually shows only one. If 50 e-shops have identical descriptions, it picks the one it considers most trustworthy, probably not you.

How to fix it:

• Rewrite at least your 30-50 best-selling products in your own words
• Focus on what the customer cares about: how the product helps, who it's for
• Add unique elements: own photos, video reviews, product FAQ
• Start from products with the highest revenue, a smaller part of the catalogue usually brings most of the sales

That this is not a marginal problem is what my measurement showed: in a sample of 30 Czech e-shops, only 48% of the readable homepages had a canonical link. Details and data in the study 30 Czech e-shops vs. AI crawlers.

2. Filter URLs in Google Index

E-shops have filters, color, size, price, brand. Each filter combination creates a new URL. If you let Google index all combinations, you have thousands of pages with similar or identical content.

How to fix it:

• Mark filter URLs you don't want indexed with noindex, or point their canonical to the main category
• Don't combine that with robots.txt: blocking stops crawling, so Google never sees the noindex or canonical on the page. Use robots.txt only for combinations that shouldn't be crawled at all
• Strategically index only filters with high search volume (e.g., "red dresses" might make sense as a standalone page)

3. Thin Category Content

A typical e-shop category: name, 3-word description, product list. From Google's perspective, that's an almost empty page.

How to fix it:

• Write a 200-400 word category introduction
• Add FAQ with 3-5 category-specific questions
• Display subcategories for internal linking
• Place text below products, users see products first, text is a bonus for Google

4. Missing Product Image Alt Texts

Surprisingly many e-shops have image alt texts like "product-image-1" or none at all.

How to fix it:

• Descriptive alt text: "Red women's running shoes Nike Air Zoom Pegasus 41, side view"
• No keyword stuffing
• Automate: most platforms can generate alt texts from product names

5. Slow Checkout and Product Pages

Speed of the entire e-shop matters, but checkout and product pages are critical.

Common culprits:

• Unoptimized images (5 MB instead of 200 KB)
• Too many scripts (live chat, remarketing pixels, analytics)
• No lazy loading
• Large unused CSS/JS bundles

How to fix it:

• WebP images with correct dimensions
• Lazy loading for below-fold images
• Critical CSS inline, rest async
• Defer non-essential scripts
• Target: above 80 on mobile in PageSpeed Insights

How to Detect These Problems

1. Duplicate descriptions: Copy the first sentence into Google with quotes. Found on 10+ sites? Problem.
2. Filter URLs: Search site:yourshop.com inurl:? in Google.
3. Thin content: Open a category and count words (excluding product names). Under 100 = problem.
4. Alt texts: Right-click image → Inspect. If alt="" or missing, fix it.
5. Speed: PageSpeed Insights, score under 50 on mobile = urgent.

Priority Order

1. Filter URLs (immediate technical impact)
2. Speed (affects conversions and SEO)
3. Duplicate descriptions (start from bestsellers)
4. Category content (start from top 10 categories)
5. Alt texts (can be done in bulk)

Need help with your e-shop SEO? I offer an SEO audit specifically focused on e-commerce. Get in touch and I'll take a look. See how an audit works in practice in What an SEO Audit Reveals. For a complete technical checklist, read Technical SEO Checklist.