• Link popularity: To enhance the ranking of your e-commerce website, ensure that it is well linked from other websites. Links are like votes, the more you get the better you will rank but its not just an issue of quantity, quality carries a much greater weight and one good quality link can improve your rankings significantly above hundreds of bad quality links. Whenever possible, solicit links from different websites. In fact, a website with links belonging to a wide variety of different IP addresses is a good example of an effective ecommerce SEO tactic.

• Relevant links: Search engines, especially Google, ranks websites that are linked from relevant websites higher than the ones which are just randomly linked to from other websites. The greater the number of relevant sites linking to your ecommerce site the higher your search engine rankings will be.

• Appropriate anchor text: SEO traffic can be enhanced by ensuring that the anchor text of your website’s external link has the main keywords. For instance, if you want to improve your rank for the keyword ‘burglar alarms,’ ensure that the link that directs the SEO traffic to your website uses the keyword ‘burglar alarms’. Vary your anchor text amongst your main key phrases and so not include any other irrelevant content in the anchor text link.

• PageRank (PR): Getting links to your website from high PageRank sites enhances the credibility and importance of your website and pushes your rankings up. This is because PageRank is passed from one page to another, so a page with 10 links on it will pass one tenth of the link juice to the pages it links to. If you have a link from a site with a high PageRank (PR6 or 7) and you are one of very few links on that page you will receive a lot of juice. This is a good link, actually a great link! If you have a link on a page that is PR1 or PR2 and your site is one of 100 listed then you will receive nothing of value from that. The higher the PageRank of a page the more authority it is considered to have, the more valuable the link and the harder it is to get a link from it. Note that PageRank is not passed through a nofollow link.

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Simplicity rules in the world of e-commerce websites. Customers tend to prefer a website where products are just two to three clicks from the home page. A flatter and well-networked website structure also improves your page rank because page rank from your higher level pages passes more easily to your deeper product pages.

Also, if your website features a variety of brands, create a well-optimized landing page for all the brands. This ensures that customers are informed about different products that are offered under a particular brand.

Try incorporating a product feed to keep customers updated about the latest offerings. You can also use them to boost your SEO traffic by submitting the feed to content aggregators. XML-based product feed is accepted by Google Base as are other formats. Gradually, your website with start to feature in Google Base searches which provides another avenue for good quality traffic. Such product feeds are also ideal for getting increased free back links to your product pages.

Next time we will be looking at Off-page Optimisation tips for ecommerce website owners.

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To name your page files, always use keyword-rich text. For instance, a page file named www.yourecommercesite.com/keyword-phrase.html is more effective than a URL with numeric variables such as www.yourecommercesit.com/?ID=1234567.

Title Tags

For title tags, be precise and concise and never stuff the tags with extra keywords. Avoid including repetitive content in all tags. For instance, if your e-commerce site sells furniture only emphasise your primary terms in your home page title tag. Do not try to list all the different kinds of furniture you sell.

Google only indexes 10 words in your title and the SERPs (Search Engine Results Pages) only display 64 characters.

Meta Tags

Unique meta tags is a very important component of ecommerce SEO. To develop a search engine-friendly retail website, ensure that the product pages have different titles and descriptions targeting different primary and secondary key phrases. Although it might not instantly improve web results, it will certainly save you from the penalty associated with duplicate content. Also, do not stuff your meta tags with keywords that are not relevant to that specific page.

Meta Tag Description

The meta tag description is often the description that appears on the SERPs so this should be writing to attract your target audience into your website. It should also contain your target phrases but be written in a compelling way. This aspect alone can increase your click through rate.

Next time we will talk about the importance of user friendly features on an ecommerce website.

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Enhance this collection gradually to gain considerable authority in your specific sector and specialism. To command impressive web results, try to be a one-stop resource centre for your buyers.

For sustained results, update your resource centre regularly. This may also include posting customer feedback or other user-generated content such as reviews. This will boost web results, improve customer loyalty and makes the site more sticky.

While adding new pages, remember to incorporate product specific keywords in the title tags, on-page titles and page description. This will enhance your chances of capitalising on the long tail of search which will increase your traffic and conversions – making more money through your website is what its all about at the end of the day.

Next time we will talk about file names and meta tags for ecommerce websites.

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Avoid Duplicate Content

Getting large numbers of products ranking in the search engines is a crucial component of e-commerce SEO. However, do not be tempted to copy the product specifications from the manufacturer’s website – if you do you will run the risk of duplicate content issues. Remember that duplicate content is a big problem on your own site, so if a product comes in 4 different sizes and you have 4 product pages with exactly the same descriptions apart from the one element of size, this will look like duplicate content to the search engines.

To get around this problem, rewrite the product description in an interesting and easy-to-read format. For increased SEO traffic, master the art of writing keyword-rich product descriptions and link your product pages with similar products. This strategy helps you to tap into long-tail keyword searches. You can also utilise blog posts to promote and sell your products.

If you must have repetitive content that appears on every page, place it in an iframe with an invisible border. This ensures that search engines do not penalise you for duplicate content.

Use Keywords or phrases in your Anchor Text

Use appropriate and highly targeted words for anchor text – these are the words that form the text in the hyperlink to another page. For instance, when you connect a product category page to its individual product pages, ensure that the anchor text is not limited to “View” or “click here.” Such vague terms do not help the search engines understand the theme of your website.

Our next blog post will be all about optimising pictures and images for SEO traffic; another important factor for ecommerce website owners.

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Planning your Ecommerce SEO strategy

Effective SEO strategy planning is vital prior to designing an ecommerce website. Unfortunately, many companies overlook the SEO element while designing an ecommerce website. They start thinking about SEO feasibility only after developing a beautiful website. As a result, they can end up with needing a significant site redesign to fulfil the SEO requirements.

Always design your website after planning your ecommerce SEO strategy. This will save you valuable time and money, and help your website reach and maintain those coveted top Google positions. Don’t forget though competition is fierce, and you still need to keep a visually appealing site with first rate functionality to secure those sales conversions! Here are some factors to bear in mind:

Ecommerce SEO tips part 1 – Choose your Ecommerce and shopping cart software wisely

Today, the vast majority of e-commerce websites are designed with open source or low-priced shopping cart programs. Such software can adversely affect a website’s search engine-friendliness if you are not familiar with the functionality you need to make SEO work. Even popular shopping cart software, such as Miva Merchant* and OS Commerce, require third party add-ons to implement SEO-compatible features. Low cost ecommerce solutions, although profitable in the short run, can have an adverse effect on your business in the long run.

While developing an ecommerce website, companies should remember that customers depend on search engines to find products to buy. Hence, to attract increased volumes of SEO traffic, companies need to use search-engine friendly ecommerce software. While choosing software, ensure that it is designed to boost the display of your product pages in the search engine results pages (SERP) when a visitor types in a relevant search query.

Several ecommerce software systems use session IDs (without cookies) in website URLs. This can cause search engines to crawl through an unlimited amount of duplicate content which of course causes them a problem and means your site can’t be indexed properly. To prevent this, use an alternative method that helps connect URLs to Google’s spider, without the requirement for session IDs.

Avoid using long query strings in the URLs of your product pages. The URLs should only include the necessary keywords and should not be populated with unwanted IDs or other characters. If you are not willing to use software to rewrite all URLs, consider minimising the number of variables used in the URL.

UPDATE:
Thanks to Andy from West Florida Components (see comment below) for pointing out the mistake in the article. I’m afraid a draft version of the post was published by mistake before it had been checked fully. We do apologise to all for the error.

*MIVA Merchant 5.0 DOES have built-in SEO features including search engine friendly URL’s.

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How Consumer Search Behaviour Works

Let’s take the example of Jason who wants to buy a lawn mower and consider his search behaviour as an average online consumer. First Jason might search for “lawn mowers” to research the options that are available. “Lawn mowers” is a popular search term and it would be great to hold that number 1 position for that search term but its most likely that Jason is not ready to buy yet, he is just researching. He won’t just look at one website, he will look at at least 2 or three sites and he’s looking to gather information in order to refine his search.

His next search might be to add another word to his search such as “electric lawn mower” or “petrol lawn mower” and he may be looking for reviews at this point. More and more consumers are turning to user-generated content in the form of reviews and recommendations in order to inform their decisions. Jason’s research leads him to favour a particular brand and so his search term becomes “Qualcast electric lawn mower” so that he can consider the different models and which would best suit his needs.

The final stage of Jason’s search is when he has decided exactly which model he wants and this is the most important search because now he is ready to buy. His search term is “Qualcast Suffolk Punch electric lawn mower”, this is a long tail search because it contains more than 3 words and is not a popular search term that is used often – it is gold to the supplier who comes top of the search engines for this term at the point Jason wants to buy.

Think about your own search behaviour, isn’t this fairly typical of what you do yourself?

Steps you can take to optimise for the long tail:

As a site owner, whether you have an ecommerce website or a brochure site you can benefit from your long tail visitors. Your ecommerce sites should have every level of pages optimised including the deep product pages – ensure you have a mix of specific and generic search terms and that your titles and descriptions are unique. On-page descriptions should also be meaty and interesting with lots of relevant information and benefits and of course a competitive price.

At Strategy we research the “money phrases” for your site because this is where you will make most money. We want to get you increased traffic at every level of your site and above all increased conversions – check out our Pay-Per-Results Search Engine Optimisation Services which include usability studies to increase sales.

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Here are some tips to get your website ready for Christmas:

• Have Special Offers on your home page – not too many to overwhelm people but enough for them to see that these are great deals.  Think of offering loss-leaders and products that will encourage sales of additional products.
• Have Featured Products on your home page – these get indexed by the search engines quickly and attract more attention from browsing visitors.
• Make your Delivery Policyvery clear – free delivery under X £££s and say how many days it will take to arrive. At this sensitive time of year make it very clear what is your last date for ordering to ensure delvery by Christmas
• Can your Images be improved? Great images sell product, its a fact!
• Make sure shoppers can easily find your Returns Policy – it will give them confidence that you have their interests at heart.
• Make your shop window Seasonal – the same way that shop windows in high streets are decorated for Christmas your website shop front can do the same to inspire that seasonal spirit.
• Customer Service is essential, especially as the big day approaches - make sure people feel they can get the support they need.  A phone number is ideal and online support is also effective for demonstrating that your website is attended.  We recommend Provide Support for this.

It may sound obvious but do your visitors know what you sell?  I have seen many ecommerce websites that sell such an eclectic mix of products that its really not clear where they are positioned.  You have only 3-5 seconds to make a good impression and grab your customer’s attention so don’t confuse them with anything – keep it really simple.

Good luck for the coming season – CapGemini recently predicted that online sales in the UK will increase by 60% in the three months up to Christmas so this is definitely the time to be paying attention to your online marketing strategy.  Give us a call on 0845 838 0936 if you are interested in driving more traffic to your website this season – there is a very good chance we can help you quickly.

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