Ecommerce SEO checklist: 30 steps for an online store in Bulgaria

In short: ecommerce SEO is the work that gets your categories and products into Google and AI assistants for the words buyers type. It has four parts: clean technical setup without duplicates, categories and products built around real searches, meta descriptions that win the click, and content AI search can quote. In CloudCart, the sitemap, canonical tags and noindex on filters run by themselves in every plan.

This guide is by the CloudCart team, the Bulgarian ecommerce platform, for stores selling in or from Bulgaria and across the EU, including stores with a Bulgarian and an English version. The CloudCart facts come from the platform documentation and the SEO and blog, migration and AURA pages.

What ecommerce SEO is

SEO (search engine optimization) helps a search engine crawl your pages, understand them and rank them above a competitor's. The rules are the same as for any website. The difference is scale: a service site has 10 to 20 pages, a store has hundreds of categories, thousands of products and thousands more URLs created by filters and sorting.

So ecommerce SEO works on four levels: technical (one URL per page, a fast site, a map of every product), categories (the pages that catch searches like "women's running shoes"), products and meta texts (titles and descriptions that answer a specific search) and content for AI search (GEO), which ChatGPT, Gemini and Google AI Overviews quote. A store in Bulgaria has a fifth: language. Bulgarian buyers search in Bulgarian, expats and EU buyers in English, and each language needs its own pages and hreflang tags.

Ecommerce SEO checklist: 30 points

In the order of the work, with where CloudCart does it for you or where you do it in the admin.

#	Point	In CloudCart
1	Store on a paid plan, open to crawlers	Automatic once the plan is paid
2	Your own domain with HTTPS	Let's Encrypt app issues and renews the certificate
3	Canonical tag on every page	On by default: Marketing → SEO
4	Noindex for filters and sorting	Automatic; threshold in Deindex Filtered and Sorted pages
5	Different meta on page 2, 3, 4	Automatic, with "Page" in front
6	sitemap.xml with products and images	Automatic, updated within an hour
7	Sitemap: line in robots.txt	You: Marketing → SEO → Robots.txt
8	Cart, checkout, account out of the index	Automatic
9	Store added to Search Console	You: Apps → Google Search Console
10	LCP up to 2.5 s, INP up to 200 ms, CLS up to 0.1	Hosting is CloudCart's; images are yours
11	One keyword per category	You, from your keyword map
12	Short URLs in Latin letters	URL handle on each category and product
13	Category meta title with the keyword first	Category editor
14	Intro above products, text below them	Category description
15	Indexed filters only where people search	Parameter threshold from 0 to 5
16	Breadcrumbs down to the product	Built into the theme
17	Product meta title up to about 60 characters	Product → SEO Configuration
18	Meta description of 140 to 155 characters	SEO Configuration, with the ShopperPen AI bar
19	Your own description, not the supplier's	Aura Studio or an AI assistant drafts it
20	Specifications table	Product properties
21	Images with descriptive alt text	Apps → Image Health
22	Real reviews	A product reviews app
23	Out-of-stock product keeps its page or gets a 301	Marketing → SEO → 301 Redirects
24	Product structured data	Depends on the theme: check in the Rich Results Test
25	Meta for home page, brands, blog	Marketing → SEO → Meta
26	Blog posts linking to categories	Blog on the same domain
27	Direct answer in the first paragraph	You, in your texts
28	llms.txt in your own words	Marketing → SEO → Llms.txt file
29	Hreflang between Bulgarian and English versions	Automatic with the Multilang app
30	Permanent 301 for every changed URL	By hand, with * or from CSV

Important: point 1 is the most common reason a new store does not show in Google. A store on a trial or expired plan returns Disallow: / in robots.txt whatever you wrote there. Once the plan is paid, the block lifts by itself.

What CloudCart does for you and what is left to you

Technical SEO is built into every CloudCart plan, with no plugin:

• Sitemap. /sitemap.xml indexes separate maps for products, categories, brands, pages and posts, up to 1,000 URLs per file, with each product's main image. A new product appears within an hour.
• Canonical. Every indexed page points to itself, with gclid, fbclid and utm_* stripped.
• Filters and system pages. Filtered and sorted category pages get noindex, follow; cart, checkout, account and login are always noindex.
• Changed URLs. A renamed product, category, brand, page or post redirects from its old URL with a 301 for 30 days.

What stays with you: keywords and texts, meta descriptions, the Sitemap: line in robots.txt, Search Console, permanent redirects after the 30 days, llms.txt and the Product structured data check. Test one product URL in Google's Rich Results Test; if no Product snippets are found, write to support@cloudcart.com.

How to find keywords for your store

A keyword is the phrase a buyer types into Google. Every important phrase should have exactly one page in your store that answers it best.

1. Start from your categories. Type each category name into Google and note autocomplete and "People also ask".
2. Research each language separately. For buyers in Bulgaria, check the Bulgarian phrase, not a translation of the English one: volume, competitors and word order differ.
3. Check volume. Google Keyword Planner and Google Trends, with the location set to Bulgaria or each target country.
4. Add what you already rank for. Search Console → Performance. Queries at positions 5 to 15 are the fastest win.
5. Split by intent and map it. "Women's sneakers" is a category, "travel mug 470 ml stainless steel black" a product, "how to choose running shoes" a blog post. Keep a table of keyword, page, status; if two pages compete, merge one into the other with a 301.

Category page SEO: the pages that bring the most traffic

Categories outlast products, so they usually bring the most organic traffic. A good category has a meta title with the keyword first ("Women's running shoes | Store name"), a 1 to 2 sentence intro above the products, a longer text below them with how to choose and 3 to 4 questions, subcategories for keywords with their own searches, and links from the blog and products with descriptive anchor text.

When to index a filter

The "red" filter in "Dresses" creates a page for "red dresses", a phrase people search. To let it into Google:

1. Open Marketing → SEO. Find the "Deindex Filtered and Sorted pages" card.
2. Turn it on and set "Parameter value" to 1. Pages with one filter stay indexed; two or more get noindex. The maximum is 5.
3. Save. Sorting by price counts as a parameter; ad parameters and the page number do not.

How to optimize product pages

Check every product in the order of the CloudCart product editor:

1. Name. Brand, model and main feature: "Travel mug 470 ml, stainless steel, black", never an internal code.
2. Description. Your own 3 to 4 sentences at least: who it is for, what it solves, what is in the box. Supplier text is on many stores, and Google shows only one of them.
3. Specifications and images. A table of size, material, weight, plus alt text such as "black leather crossbody bag, front view". Apps → Image Health scores the catalog out of 100 and suggests alt text; 50 credits a month are included.
4. SEO Configuration. The card at the bottom shows a Google preview with meta title, meta description and URL handle.

Out of stock? Keep the page if the product returns. If not, set a 301 in Marketing → SEO → 301 Redirects: type "Product" to a new model, or type "Category" to the category. These redirects are tied to the item and follow it if you rename it.

How to write a meta description that wins the click

The meta description is the text under the title in Google. It does not lift rankings directly, but it decides whether the searcher clicks you. The formula: keyword at the start (Google puts it in bold), the benefit, one concrete fact such as price or delivery time, a call to action, 140 to 155 characters. For Bulgarian buyers, office and parcel locker delivery with Econt or Speedy, the main Bulgarian couriers, is a strong fact to mention.

Weak	Strong
"Sneakers. Best prices. Buy now!"	"Women's running shoes: 48 models from 6 brands, sizes 36 to 42. Delivery within 24 hours and returns within 30 days."
"Travel mug TM-470-SS."	"Travel mug 470 ml: keeps coffee hot for 7 hours, spill-proof lid. €24, delivered tomorrow to an Econt office."

Where to write it: products in SEO Configuration, where the ShopperPen skill of the CloudIO app can draft it from product data (you confirm with "Keep"); categories and brands in their editors; the home page, Contacts, Brands and Blog in Marketing → SEO → Meta, saved per language and theme. For a large catalog, the SEO Spinner app fills meta texts from a template such as {Buy|Order} {$name} from {$vendor} for {$price}, with a preview before "Finalize", with no limit on any plan per the pricing table.

SEO for a store in Bulgarian and English: hreflang

Google ranks each language version separately, so each needs its own URLs, meta texts and keywords. A browser translation widget does not help: Google does not index it.

In CloudCart, a second language is a language store created with the Multilang app (Apps → Multilang → Stores → "+ Add language site"), with its own addresses, translated products and meta fields, currency and domain, while the catalog comes from the main store.

• Hreflang is automatic. Every page points to its other language versions and the main store gets x-default, following Google Search Central on localized versions.
• Each version gets its own domain or subdomain, such as en.mystore.bg, after starting on cloudcart.net.
• Rewrite, do not just translate. Multilang machine-translates meta fields. For your best-selling pages, rewrite them around the phrase people search in that language.

Each language store has its own plan; copying and AI translation are in CC Master. Details are in the guide to the multilingual online store.

Technical SEO: the admin settings step by step

1. Canonical tag. Leave it on unless a custom theme already adds one.
2. Pagination word. "Page" for an English store; the Bulgarian word in a Bulgarian store.
3. Robots.txt. Add Sitemap: https://your-domain.bg/sitemap.xml. Never write Disallow: /, which hides the whole store.
4. Search Console. Apps → Google Search Console, paste the meta tag verification code, then submit the sitemap in Search Console.

Speed: Google measures Core Web Vitals on real visitors. Hosting and code are shared by all CloudCart stores, so improvements reach everyone. Your part is resized images and few third-party scripts. Test a product and a category in PageSpeed Insights.

Internal links and backlinks to your store

Link your best-selling categories from the menu and home page, every product to its category and 4 to 8 similar products, and blog posts to categories with text like "see all running shoes". The safest backlinks come from real relationships: a manufacturer listing you as a retailer, local media, a blogger review. Bought links break Google's spam policies. Pazaruvaj, a Bulgarian price comparison site, brings buyers while rankings grow.

GEO: how your store appears in ChatGPT, Gemini and AI Overviews

GEO (generative engine optimization) is SEO for AI answers. According to Pew Research Center, users clicked a result in 8% of visits with an AI summary and in 15% without one. The click goes to quoted pages. In our study of 42 merchant searches on Google.bg, an AI Overview appeared for 41, and in 8 of 14 full answers no quoted source was in the organic top 3: AI quotes the most direct answer, which gives smaller stores a chance.

1. Direct answer in the first 40 to 60 words of every category, post and page.
2. Questions as subheadings, the way people write to assistants.
3. The same facts everywhere: price, delivery and returns match on product pages, the delivery page and llms.txt.
4. Specification and comparison tables, which AI takes almost word for word.

How to write llms.txt in CloudCart

llms.txt is a proposed Markdown file at /llms.txt. In CloudCart it is in Marketing → SEO → Llms.txt file; empty, it publishes only the store name, home meta description and contacts. Write your own, in each store's language:

# Example Coffee
> Specialty coffee beans roasted weekly in Sofia. Delivery within 24 hours with Econt and Speedy.

## Pages
- https://examplecoffee.bg/category/coffee-beans: coffees by origin
- https://examplecoffee.bg/page/delivery: delivery prices and times

It takes up to 65,536 characters, goes live within 5 minutes and is public, so leave out internal notes. More in the guide to the AI online store.

How to keep rankings when you change platform

Rankings are lost when old URLs return 404. The fix is a 301 from every old URL to the new one, kept for at least a year (Google Search Central, site moves). What the importers from WooCommerce, Shopify and Magento move is in the guide to importing into CloudCart.

1. Collect old URLs from the old sitemap.xml and Search Console → Pages.
2. Build a CSV of old and new URL: product to product, category to category, never everything to the home page.
3. Import in Marketing → SEO → 301 Redirects → Import redirects: up to 100 on Baby Pack, 2,000 on Starter Pack, unlimited from CC Pro. Use * for groups such as /old-shop/brand/*.
4. Check ads. gclid, fbclid and utm_source, utm_medium, utm_campaign pass the redirect; utm_term and utm_content do not.
5. Submit the new sitemap and watch Search Console for 404s for two weeks.

In a real CloudCart project, 13,418 old URLs got a 301 in 30 minutes with 0 errors. Platform steps are in the guide to migrating from WooCommerce without losing SEO.

Ecommerce SEO audit: a one-hour check

1. Index. Search site:your-domain.bg. Far fewer results than pages means Google misses part of the catalog; far more means filters and duplicates.
2. Pages report. In Search Console, check 404s, "crawled, not indexed" (often identical texts) and duplicates.
3. Near the top. Queries at positions 5 to 15, and pages with many impressions but CTR under 1%: improve their meta titles.
4. Speed and structured data. PageSpeed Insights on mobile and the Rich Results Test for one product.
5. Sales from search. In CloudCart Analytics, "Sales by traffic source (referral)" and "Landing pages by sales" show SEO in euros.

How long ecommerce SEO takes and what it costs

Nobody can guarantee a timeline: technical fixes and meta texts usually show within weeks, category texts in 2 to 3 months, competitive keywords in 6 to 12. Compare Search Console every 4 weeks.

The tools are in every CloudCart plan, from Baby Pack at €14/month billed annually, excluding VAT, with no SEO plugin to buy. The work on keywords and texts you do yourself, with an AI assistant or with an agency. Before hiring one, ask for an audit with specific URLs, a keyword map per language, a goal in orders, and confirmation that Search Console stays yours and no links are bought.

Frequently asked questions

Questions about SEO for your CloudCart store? Write to support@cloudcart.com.