E-commerce SEO in Belgium: selling without depending on advertising

By Timothy Jacqmin — Co-Founder, Nexuro Digital · August 2026

TL;DR

• Most Belgian shops depend on paid advertising to sell. E-commerce SEO is the only lever that lowers acquisition cost over time instead of raising it.
• The most common mistake: betting everything on product pages. Category pages are what capture the volume ("men's hiking boots"), while product pages only capture exact-reference searches.
• Three technical problems weigh down the majority of shops: filters and facets generating thousands of pointless URLs, duplicate content from supplier descriptions, and out-of-stock products handled by plain deletion.
• New in 2026: AI assistants and generative shopping experiences read your product structured data (brand, GTIN, price, availability). A clean feed is no longer just a Google Shopping matter, it is a visibility matter full stop.
• At Nexuro: Official Odoo Partner, €80/h excl. VAT, free audit — and an e-commerce site designed as a system wired to stock and CRM.

In Belgium, an online shop fights on three fronts at once: marketplaces occupying the top positions, large French or Dutch players targeting the same vocabulary, and a market split linguistically in two. The result: many Belgian merchants end up living 80% off Google Ads and Meta, with profitability eroding every year.

Organic search is the way out of that dependency. It is slower and more technical than on a brochure site — but it is the only channel where cost per visitor falls as volume rises.

Why e-commerce SEO is not classic SEO

A brochure site has twenty pages; a shop has thousands, generated automatically, and that scale changes everything. The problems are no longer editorial, they are structural.

Three major differences:

• URL volume. Filters, sorting, pagination, variants: a 500-product catalogue can produce tens of thousands of URLs. Google will not crawl all of it — you have to choose what it sees.
• Duplicate content by default. Supplier descriptions are identical across every reseller. A copied product page gives no reason to rank you above the others.
• Catalogue instability. Products appear, disappear, change price. Every badly handled deletion is a dead link and a lost position.

Category pages: where search is won

In a shop, most demand is expressed in categories rather than products: people search for "men's hiking boots", not "Salomon X Ultra 4 GTX size 43". Exact-reference searches exist, but they come from buyers who already know what they want — often after seeing the product elsewhere.

A category page that ranks contains:

1. A heading and a title tag built on how customers actually phrase things, not on your internal nomenclature. If your customers say "merino wool jumper", do not title it "Fine knits FW26".
2. A useful introduction — 150 to 300 words that genuinely help people choose (criteria, sizing, uses), placed at the top or bottom depending on the design but always readable.
3. Internal linking to relevant sub-categories and filters, as crawlable HTML links (not JavaScript alone).
4. Clean pagination, with indexable, consistent URLs.
5. Additional guide-type content — a sizing guide, a comparison, frequently asked questions — giving the page value the competitor does not have.

It is the first workstream in every e-commerce audit we run: the general method is described in SEO audit: the complete method.

The three technical traps that sink Belgian shops

1. Filters and facets. Every filter combination creates a URL. Without rules, Google crawls thousands of near-identical pages and dilutes its crawl budget on nothing. The base rule: only index the combinations matching genuine demand ("red dress" yes, "red dress, size 38, in stock, sorted by price descending" no), and neutralise the rest through canonical tags, noindex or crawl rules depending on the case.

2. Supplier descriptions. Rewriting 800 product pages is unrealistic for an SME. The right approach is hierarchical: first rewrite the 50 products driving revenue and the 20 already receiving visits, then standardise the rest with differentiating blocks (uses, advice, compatibility, customer reviews). Customer reviews are, in that respect, free unique content.

3. Out-of-stock or deleted products. A page deleted without a redirect is a 404 and a negative signal. The rule: temporarily unavailable product → keep the page live with an alternative and a back-in-stock alert; permanently withdrawn product → 301 redirect to the successor product or its category. Never a bare deletion.

Two fundamentals sit on top of that: load speed (decisive on mobile, where most visits happen) and an internal search engine that works — the latter being above all a goldmine of information on what your customers look for and you do not yet sell.

Product structured data: the new playing field

Now that AI assistants and generative shopping experiences have settled into the buying journey, your product data no longer just displays a price in Google: it decides whether you are visible at all.

Schema.org's Product markup, correctly filled in, has become the common foundation of Google Shopping, rich results and whatever generative engines can cite. The fields not to neglect:

Two absolute rules: markup must always reflect what is visible on the page (a marked-up price differing from the displayed price breaches Google's guidelines), and it must be synchronised automatically with your stock. That is exactly what a shop built on an ERP allows: stock, price and product page are one single piece of data.

On the wider logic of AI citability beyond products, see SEO vs GEO.

Content that sells: beyond the catalogue

An e-commerce site publishing nothing but product pages forgoes all pre-purchase demand — the moment where the decision is actually made. "Which bike size to choose", "difference between merino wool and cashmere", "how to maintain an oiled wooden floor": these searches attract buyers in the consideration phase, and they are far less contested than transactional queries.

Three formats work particularly well in e-commerce:

• The buying guide per category, linked to the matching category page.
• The comparison between two options your customers genuinely struggle to choose between.
• The product FAQ, fed by the real questions your customer service receives — a seam of content most shops leave sleeping in an inbox.

And if you also have a physical outlet, the Google Business Profile listing remains a major lever: see optimising your listing.

The Belgian case: bilingualism and marketplaces

Two local realities to build in from the start:

• The market is split linguistically in two. A French-only site forgoes the Flemish market, which is the country's largest e-commerce pool. Genuine pages per language, correct hreflang, keywords researched separately — machine-translating the catalogue is not enough.
• Marketplaces occupy the top of the SERP. On generic product queries you are competing with international platforms. The answer is not to face them head-on but to play where they are weak: niches, expertise, advice, local service, ranges they do not list.

What it costs, and where to start

The budget for an e-commerce SEO engagement depends on catalogue size and the technical state of the shop. Belgian models and ranges are detailed in how much SEO costs in Belgium. At Nexuro it is €80/h excl. VAT with itemised work, and a free initial audit.

The order of work that produces the best results:

1. Technical audit: crawling, indexing, filters, speed, structured data.
2. Reliable measurement: full e-commerce tracking, otherwise you steer blind. See measuring your marketing's real ROI.
3. Category pages: headings, content, internal linking.
4. Top products: rewriting the pages that matter most.
5. Pre-purchase content: guides and comparisons.

If your shop runs on Odoo — or if you are considering migrating to it — search, stock and CRM can be treated as one system rather than three tools to synchronise. We set out that approach in Odoo e-commerce: building an online store that actually sells, and our Bshirt case study shows the result on a real catalogue.

For a picture of where your shop stands, we run a free audit. See also our page SEO agency in Belgium.

FAQ

Does SEO really work for e-commerce?

Yes, and it is often the only channel whose cost per visitor falls over time, unlike paid advertising. It does demand more technical work than a brochure site, because a shop automatically generates thousands of URLs that have to be disciplined. First results generally appear within three to six months, starting with categories and long-tail queries.

Should I optimise product pages or category pages first?

Category pages, in the vast majority of cases. That is where search volume concentrates, because customers look for a type of product before looking for a precise reference. Product pages only capture brand and exact-model searches, generally made by buyers who have already seen the product elsewhere.

How should filters and facets be handled for SEO?

By indexing only the combinations that match genuine search demand, such as a frequently searched colour or size, and neutralising all the others through canonical tags, noindex or crawl rules. Without that discipline, Google crawls thousands of near-identical pages, dilutes its crawl budget and ends up ignoring your important pages.

What should I do with out-of-stock or discontinued products?

If the unavailability is temporary, keep the page live, state the status clearly, offer alternatives and a back-in-stock alert: the page then keeps its history and its positions. If the product is permanently withdrawn, put a 301 redirect in place towards the successor product or, failing that, its category. Deleting without a redirect creates a 404 and a lost position.

Is product structured data mandatory?

It is not mandatory in the legal sense, but it determines whether your products appear in rich results, in Google Shopping and, increasingly, in AI assistants' answers. Two conditions apply: the marked-up values must match exactly what is displayed on the page, and they must be synchronised automatically with your stock and prices.

Do I need a French and Dutch site to sell in Belgium?

If you are targeting the whole Belgian market, yes: Flanders is the country's largest e-commerce pool and a French-only site forgoes it. That means genuine pages per language, correct hreflang tags and keyword research carried out separately in Dutch, since purchase phrasings do not translate word for word.

How can I compete with marketplaces on Google?

Rarely head-on for generic product queries, where their domain authority is overwhelming. The strategy that works is to occupy the ground they cover badly: niches, ranges they do not list, expert advice, buying guides, service and local presence. That is also where a brand gets built, which a marketplace will never let you do.

Sources

1. Google Search Central — Product structured data best practices: https://developers.google.com/search/docs/appearance/structured-data/product
2. Google Search Central — Large site owner's guide to managing crawl budget: https://developers.google.com/search/docs/crawling-indexing/large-site-managing-crawl-budget
3. Schema.org — Product: https://schema.org/Product
4. Google Search Central — SEO Starter Guide: https://developers.google.com/search/docs/fundamentals/seo-starter-guide