SEO for ecommerce in 2026: how to rank an online store without taking on Amazon head-on

1. The reality: competing with Amazon and what can be won

Let's start with the data. According to CNMC's Household Panel, published in June 2026, in the latest online purchase with a parcel Amazon took 47.8%, international platforms such as AliExpress, Temu or Shein about a quarter, and stores with a physical shop 13%.

Clicks are also concentrated at the top. The European Commission published in 2017, in its Google Shopping decision, figures that remain one of the few official references: the top ten generic results get about 95% of clicks, the first about 35% and the first on page two about 1%. The data is old, from before AI summaries, but it explains why being on page two is almost useless.

Where it makes sense to fight:

1. 01Specific searches. «Women's wide-fit trail shoes for overpronation» before «shoes».
2. 02Categories where you know more. Google asks for content with its own point of view and first-hand reviews, and a marketplace does not have that.
3. 03Your brand. People who know you search for you. Looking after that search costs almost nothing.
4. 04Local. If you have a physical shop, the Business Profile and Maps are an advantage many purely online stores lack.
5. 05Buying guides. Someone comparing has not yet decided where to buy.

Is an own store worth it if Amazon weighs so much? According to Eurostat, 91.97% of Spanish companies with ten or more employees and web sales use their own site or app, and 35.93% a marketplace. Only 16.46% of the value of those sales goes through marketplaces. They are not mutually exclusive, and your own store is the only place where you set the rules.

Does regulation help? Somewhat, but not you directly. The European Commission fined Google €460 million on 23 July 2026 for favouring its own services in search, under the Digital Markets Act, but that measure mainly protects services competing with Google, not an individual store.

2. What goes wrong when buying in Spain: your best content list

This is the table nobody cites, and it is official. Eurostat asked people who had bought in the last three months in 2025 what problems they had:

Each row is something a store can fix and explain on its pages: real delivery times, guarantees on the product page and a clear way to complain. Google says in its guides to create content useful to people, and a reliable delivery time is. The Baymard Institute adds that 60% of 1,032 respondents look for the returns policy on the product page.

And free shipping is the norm: 83.2% paid nothing for their last parcel, according to CNMC. If you charge for shipping, say so from the start. 40% of those who abandon a cart do so because of costs shown at the end, according to Baymard.

3. Structure: categories, links and URLs

Google has a full guide for online stores, and its first idea surprises many: it generally does not infer structure from URLs, but from links. The more internal links a page receives, the more important it considers it. These are its main recommendations:

1. 01Menu → categories → subcategories → products. And link every product you want indexed. Googlebot does not usually use your internal search.
2. 02Real links. <a href> tags, not JavaScript events on other elements.
3. 03Best sellers near the home page. Google suggests linking them from the home page or blog.
4. 04One URL form. The same in internal links, sitemap and canonical. And each indexable page with a self-referencing canonical.
5. 05No temporary parameters in internal links, such as session or tracking ones.
6. 06Empty categories with noindex. If the store removes them automatically, consider a 404.

Pagination and «load more»

• Each page with its own canonical. Never point them all to the first, and forget rel="next", which Google no longer uses.
• One URL per page, such as ?page=2, linked with <a href>.
• Careful with infinite scroll. Crawlers do not click buttons or trigger what needs user action. If you use it, also leave crawlable links.

Variants: size and colour

Google asks that each variant can be identified with its own URL, such as /t-shirt/green or /t-shirt?color=green, and that opening it shows the correct image, price and availability. If you use optional parameters, the canonical is the URL without the parameter. For markup there is ProductGroup, and AggregateOffer should not be used to describe variants.

4. Filters: a store's biggest hole

A category with size, colour, brand and price filters generates thousands of combinations. Google warns they can create infinite URL spaces, with two harms: overcrawling and slower discovery of what matters.

The practical approach: decide which combinations deserve their own page because people search for them, such as «women's trail shoes», and leave the rest out. Those chosen pages work better as real categories, with their own text and links.

Does crawl budget affect you?

Less than people say. Google aims its guide at sites with over a million unique pages changing weekly, or over 10,000 changing daily, or with many URLs under «Discovered: currently not indexed». It clarifies these are estimates. For a 2,000-product store, budget is not usually the problem, unless filters multiply the URLs. And one detail: noindex does not save crawling, because Google has to request the page to see it.

On sitemaps: up to 50,000 URLs or 50 MB per file, and lastmod only if it reflects a real change. Google ignores priority and changefreq.

5. Product pages that sell and rank

According to Baymard, which analysed over 155 large US and European stores in 2025, only 38% have a decent or better product page on mobile. These are the most repeated failures:

Manufacturer descriptions and AI

Google has published no rule on manufacturer descriptions copied in a store. What exists are loose pieces. It treats copying merchant descriptions and reviews with no added value as thin affiliation, and its AI answers guide asks for non-commodity content with its own point of view. A reasonable conclusion is not hard: if your page says the same as a hundred others, Google has little reason to choose you.

And using AI to write them? You can, with conditions:

• Mass-generating pages with no added value is scaled content abuse, and so is taking feeds and only swapping synonyms or translating.
• Google asks you to review everything generated, including titles, meta descriptions, structured data and alt text.
• In Merchant Center, AI-made titles and descriptions are declared with structured_title and structured_description, and generated images must keep their tag.

What usually adds more than a long text

• Real measurements, size guide and own photos with a size reference.
• Delivery time and shipping cost in view.
• Guarantee and returns on the page, because people look for them and in Spain they are hard to find.
• Answers to the questions people really ask you.
• Real customer reviews and replies to negative ones.

6. Product data and Merchant Center

Many stores think Merchant Center is only for ads, and it is not. It serves free listings, which can appear in the Shopping tab, Search, Images, Lens and YouTube. Spain and Colombia are on the country list, and you do not need to pay for ads. Google recommends doing both, structured data on the page and a feed in Merchant Center.

Things that have changed and are worth knowing

• FAQ rich results. They stopped appearing on 7 May 2026.
• Reviews. Since July 2026, structured data rules expressly exclude fake and undisclosed incentivised reviews.
• Store stars. An organisation gets no stars for reviews it controls about itself, even with a third-party widget. A specific product can have them.
• Loyalty programmes. That markup does not yet show in Spain or Colombia.
• Pros and cons. They are for editorial review pages, not store product pages.
• Content API. It reached its end in August 2026 and its replacement is the Merchant API, although some Google guides still name it. If your integration uses it, review it.

A detail that avoids rejections: price and availability must match between your page and Merchant Center. And sales are marked with the active price in price and the original in a UnitPriceSpecification with StrikethroughPrice.

7. Out of stock, discontinued, seasonal and migrations

If you are launching a store, a little-known Google tip: if you start with out-of-stock products, do not disable the add-to-cart button, because Google may use it to check the final price, taxes and shipping.

8. Speed: the part that can be measured

Google recommends good Core Web Vitals, without saying how much they weigh in rankings: LCP up to 2.5 seconds, INP under 200 ms and CLS under 0.1, measured at the 75th percentile of visits. The effect shows most clearly in sales:

The most common causes in a store are heavy images, too many apps or plugins and third-party scripts. Every app you add to sell more can cost speed.

9. Shopify, WooCommerce and PrestaShop: what to watch

No platform ranks better by itself. What changes is how much control you have and what you can break. If you are torn between them, we have a guide on how much an online store costs, with what each one charges.

10. What changes with AI

AI Mode is already available in Spain and Colombia, and Google says its answers can include listings and product information. Its recommendations are much more sober than what is usually sold:

• It is still SEO. The page must be indexed and able to show with a snippet. And the site must be included in Search Console's generative AI control, which is the default.
• What Google says you can ignore: LLMS.txt and «special» markup, which its search does not use, chunking content or rewriting for AI.
• What it does recommend: keeping Merchant Center and the Business Profile up to date, with structured data matching visible text, and own content with first-hand reviews.
• What it bans: creating content for every query variant in order to manipulate. That is scaled abuse.
• To measure: Search Console has a generative AI performance report.

Other assistants, such as ChatGPT or Perplexity, follow other rules. We cover them in how to appear in ChatGPT.

11. What the law limits on prices, reviews and content

A store's SEO touches texts with legal consequences. These are the points that almost never appear in an SEO guide:

It is not a theoretical risk. In a European sweep published in 2022 of 223 websites, the Commission and consumer authorities concluded that at least 55% could be breaching the rules on reviews. What the law requires on terms, returns and guarantees is covered in our guide on how much an online store costs.

12. Links: what can turn out very expensive

A store receives constant offers of cheap links. For Google, paying with money, products or favours for a link that passes authority is spam, unless marked as sponsored or nofollow. Sending a free product in exchange for a link counts too. It can end in a manual action, and Spanish law also requires identifying advertising.

What usually works without risk is having something worth linking to: a real buying guide, own data, a tool, or the suppliers and brands you already work with. And a sponsored link is not banned, but it is marked as such.

13. What it costs and how long it takes

Google gives no timeline for stores. It only says in general that some changes show within hours and others in several months. A new store with no brand in a competitive category will take far longer than one already selling with technical problems to fix.

14. What about Colombia?

Google's side is the same, with two practical differences. Merchant Center free listings are available in Colombia, and shipping setup is not mandatory as it is in Spain. If you sell to several countries, Google asks for a separate URL per currency, hreflang between versions and no redirecting by IP, because most of its crawling comes from the US.

The market supports SEO work: online sales reached COP 145.4 trillion in 2025, according to the Colombian E-commerce Chamber. And since Colombians mostly pay with PSE, the national bank transfer system, it should be visible on your product pages, along with other payment methods.

On the legal side, Law 1480 of 2011 bans misleading advertising (art. 30), makes what is advertised binding (art. 29) and requires stating the total price and promotion conditions (arts. 26 and 33). We found no equivalent to the 30-day rule or a Superintendency instruction on fake reviews, but an invented review sits badly with that law.

With us, monthly SEO starts from COP 1,410,000 a month and an online store from COP 6,490,000, as indicative prices. We work remotely, and can travel if needed.

15. Where to start

1. 01Look at Search Console. What is indexed and what is not. Many URLs under «Discovered» is usually the first clue.
2. 02Control the filters. Choose which combinations deserve a page and block the rest.
3. 03Tidy categories and links. Every important product a few clicks away.
4. 04Enable Merchant Center and check the data matches the site.
5. 05Improve your 20 best-selling product pages. Before rewriting a thousand.
6. 06Review strikethrough prices and reviews. Make sure they comply.
7. 07Decide what to do with out-of-stock and discontinued products, and always apply it the same way.
8. 08Measure speed with real data, on mobile.
9. 09Write buying guides for what you sell and know.