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How We Fixed 1,200+ Crawl Errors and Increased Organic Revenue by 78%
A mid-sized ecommerce retailer selling outdoor gear and camping equipment approached The Buy Reviews with a concerning trend. Their organic traffic had plateaued despite adding new products and publishing blog content. New product pages were taking weeks to appear in search results, and existing pages were losing rankings. They suspected technical issues but lacked the internal expertise to diagnose them.
Client Background
The client had over 5,000 product pages, 200 category pages, and a blog with 300+ articles. Their website was built on Magento 2, a powerful but complex platform that required ongoing technical maintenance. They had no dedicated SEO or development team focused on technical health.
The Challenge
The client faced numerous technical SEO obstacles:
- Over 1,200 crawl errors reported in Google Search Console
- Slow page load speed (mobile score of 32 on Google PageSpeed Insights)
- Poor mobile usability on category and product pages
- Duplicate content issues from faceted navigation and URL parameters
- Missing or incorrect canonical tags
- No structured data for products, reviews, or breadcrumbs
- Indexation of low-value pages (filter pages, sort pages, pagination)
- Broken internal and external links
- XML sitemap outdated and missing new products
The client needed a comprehensive technical SEO audit and remediation plan to fix underlying issues and restore organic visibility.
The Solution
We conducted a multi-phase technical SEO audit and implemented fixes across the client's Magento 2 website.
Phase 1: Comprehensive Technical Audit
We used a combination of tools (Screaming Frog, Google Search Console, Ahrefs, Lighthouse) to identify issues across five categories:
Crawlability & Indexation
- Crawl errors: 1,247 4xx and 5xx errors
- Orphaned pages: 89 pages with no internal links
- Blocked resources: robots.txt blocking CSS/JS files
- XML sitemap: missing 450 product pages, included low-value parameter URLs
Page Speed & Core Web Vitals
- Mobile LCP: 4.8 seconds
- Mobile FID: 150ms
- Mobile CLS: 0.25
- Desktop scores slightly better but still below thresholds
On-Page & Structured Data
- Missing canonical tags on 1,200+ pages
- Duplicate meta descriptions on 800+ pages
- No product schema on any product page
- No breadcrumb schema
- Missing alt text on 3,500 product images
Internal Linking & Site Architecture
- Depth to product pages: up to 7 clicks from homepage
- No breadcrumb navigation
- Thin category pages with little unique content
- Broken internal links: 245
Server & Security
- No CDN (Content Delivery Network) implementation
- Outdated PHP version
- Missing HTTPS redirects for some legacy pages
- Large, unoptimized images
Phase 2: Prioritization & Remediation Plan
We categorized issues by impact and effort:
| Priority | Impact | Effort | Issues |
|---|---|---|---|
| High | High | Medium | Crawl errors, canonical tags, indexation of low-value pages |
| High | High | Low | XML sitemap, meta description fixes |
| Medium | Medium | Medium | Page speed, structured data |
| Medium | Low | High | Deep internal linking restructure |
Phase 3: Implementation of Fixes
Crawlability & Indexation Fixes
- Fixed or removed 1,047 broken internal links
- Set up 301 redirects for 200 removed product pages
- Updated robots.txt to allow crawling of essential resources
- Added noindex tags to filter and sort parameter URLs (e.g., ?color=red, ?sort=price)
- Removed low-value pages from XML sitemap
- Submitted updated sitemap to Google Search Console
Canonical Tags & Duplicate Content
- Implemented canonical tags on all product and category pages
- Set up parameter handling in Google Search Console
- Rewrote 800 duplicate meta descriptions to be unique
Page Speed & Core Web Vitals
- Compressed and served images in next-gen formats (WebP)
- Implemented lazy loading for below-fold images
- Minified CSS, JavaScript, and HTML
- Moved to a faster hosting provider with CDN
- Reduced LCP from 4.8s to 2.2s, meeting Google's threshold
Structured Data
- Added Product schema to all product pages (including price, availability, reviews)
- Added BreadcrumbList schema to all category and product pages
- Added Organization schema to homepage
- Validated all schema using Rich Results Test tool
Internal Linking & Site Architecture
- Added breadcrumb navigation to all product and category pages
- Created hub pages for top-level categories with descriptive content
- Reduced average click depth from 7 to 3
- Added related product sections on product pages
- Fixed 245 broken internal links
Mobile Usability
- Made font sizes legible on mobile (minimum 16px)
- Ensured tap targets were adequately spaced
- Fixed viewport configuration
- Mobile usability errors in Search Console dropped from 187 to 0
Phase 4: Ongoing Monitoring
We set up monthly technical SEO monitoring for:
- Crawl errors and indexation status
- Core Web Vitals and page speed
- Structured data validation
- Broken link detection
- XML sitemap freshness
The Results
The technical SEO fixes delivered significant improvements across all key metrics within six months.
| Metric | Before | After (6 months) | Improvement |
|---|---|---|---|
| Crawl Errors (GSC) | 1,247 | 42 | -97% |
| Indexed Pages (Low-Value) | 8,500 | 5,200 | -39% (removed) |
| Mobile Page Speed Score | 32 | 88 | +56 points |
| Core Web Vitals Pass Rate | 18% | 94% | +76% |
| Product Pages with Schema | 0% | 100% | +100% |
| Avg. Click Depth to Product | 7 clicks | 3 clicks | -57% |
| Organic Traffic | 18,000 / month | 31,000 / month | +72% |
| Keyword Rankings (Top 3) | 45 | 112 | +149% |
| Organic Revenue | $210,000 / month | $374,000 / month | +78% |
The client's organic traffic increased by 72%, and organic revenue grew by 78% within six months of completing the technical fixes. New product pages began indexing within days instead of weeks. The site passed Core Web Vitals assessment, removing a potential ranking penalty.
Key Takeaways
This technical SEO case study illustrates several important lessons for ecommerce businesses:
- Crawl errors kill indexation. Fixing over 1,200 crawl errors and removing low-value pages from the index allowed search engines to focus on important content.
- Canonical tags prevent duplicate content. Faceted navigation (filters, sorting) created thousands of duplicate pages. Canonical tags consolidated link equity.
- Page speed directly impacts rankings and revenue. Improving mobile LCP from 4.8s to 2.2s correlated with a 78% increase in organic revenue.
- Structured data enables rich results. Adding product schema resulted in rich snippets (reviews, pricing, availability) that improved click-through rates.
- Internal linking distributes authority. Reducing click depth from 7 to 3 helped link equity flow to deep product pages.
- Technical SEO is not a one-time project. Ongoing monitoring prevents new issues from accumulating.
Why This Ecommerce SEO Case Study Matters
This ecommerce SEO case study demonstrates that technical SEO is the foundation of all other SEO efforts. No amount of content or backlinks can compensate for a site that search engines cannot properly crawl, index, or render. For ecommerce websites with thousands of pages, technical health is especially critical.