eCommerce & SEO

9 Tips to improve the SEO for your eCommerce site. Some are simple - all are important.

Search engine optimization (SEO) is work.  When you add eCommerce to your site there are unique challenges to overcome in your SEO planning.

Below are Nine (9) tips to help you tackle your SEO for your e-commerce site.  Rank higher in search engines and get more visitors, customers and sales for your online store.

1. FOR EACH PRODUCT - Create Unique Content and for the Product Categories

Unique and interesting content shows Google that a page is relevant, authoritative, valuable, and helps it rank higher. Be sure the content is well written and can persuade more of your visitors to make a purchase.

Do not copy the manufacturer's description. Write your own description.  The result is candy for Google. Google's Farmer/Panda Update of 2011 favors sites with original content.

2. Take time to find out what shoppers are actually looking for

Keyword research is an important task to learn the words you should be using to describe your ecommerce productsl. You can find out how many people search for a particular keyword per month, and even check more specifically for your own region, with Google's keyword tool.

3. Create specific description about product Categories

Some people may be searching for specific product names like "Ford F10 Pickup."  More people are searching for broad keyword phrases like "Pick Up Trucks."

Creating category pages for these broad keyword phrases - as well as product-specific pages within each category - boosts your SEO and will gather a larger audience searching for your eCommerce products.  And of course, using category descriptions will help the shopper turning them into buyers.

4. Line your pages with key word relevant anchor text

Link to other products or categories within the text on your site. Be sure to use anchor text with relevant keywords. This helps search engines find and index other pages on your site. The links and anchor text also boost the linked pages' SEO and help them rank higher for words you use in your anchor text.

5. Add sharing links to popular social media sites

Mentions and posts on social media sites will help your SEO.  In addition, more people will see your products with links back to your eCommerce site.  Install social sharing buttons and tools for Facebook, Twitter and Google+ on every product. Be sure they stand out and easy to see.

6. Backlinks

Backlinks (links on other sites back to yours) have always been one of the most important items search engines consider when creating page rank. Getting those backlinks is not always easy.

Step #1 - Interesting/Unique content is the first step, because few website owners want to link to a sales page, or a boring. A blog is a great way to add link worthy content.

7. Stay away from duplicate content

E-commerce sites tend to give visitors the option to sort a list of products by various parameters like price, or product ratings. While sorting is useful for people, it can be a nightmare for your SEO, because it usually means you are essentially creating multiple pages with the same content, just in a different order. Search engines can see these pages as duplicate content, and therefore less valuable. This in turn can dilute the SEO of these pages.

The easiest way to fix this is to tell Google about the sorting through Webmaster Tools.

8. Use Search Engine Friendly (SEF) URLs

The URLs on your eCommerce site are another way to help your e-commerce site's SEO.  If the page about red dresses has a URL like http://www.mydomain.com/red-dresses.html, tells Google what the page is about.  Compare this to a URL that would look like this: http://www.mydomain.com/page?id=59274974, Google gives a boost on URL content.

9. Let Visitors Leave Reviews

Reviews are another piece of unique content, and search engines love unique content.

Plus, reviews can help visitors decide to pull out their credit cards to purchase your product.



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