Tag: ecommerce seo

6 Tips to Help You Get Started with Ecommerce SEO

Tip One What is the best way to make your ecommerce site search engine friendly? Keep in mind that the basics of search engine optimization (SEO) are the same for an ecommerce site as they are for a government site about sidewalk renovation. SEO is generally considered to have two basic categories, on-page (or on-site) and off-page (or off-site), and this is especially important for you as an online merchant. Your on-site optimization generally concerns your content, and content includes articles, product descriptions, menu names, sub-menus, headlines, and anything else that has text. On-site optimization also includes your site architecture, meaning the organization of your categories, products and pages. Off-page, or off-site optimization generally concerns quality and number of back links pointing to your site’s pages.

Tip Two Search engines always try to give users whatever they can find that is relevant to their search. You have to realize that most search engines don’t work by moving the good stuff towards the top: instead, they try to push the bad stuff towards the bottom, and hope that what’s good will ‘float up’. Content is King and it can get you good search engine rankings easily if it’s written properly and sprinkled with the appropriate keywords. This not only brings visitors to your site but also feeds search engine spiders and crawlers. Good content is not only key to good search engine optimization but essential for your business because your success relies on response from human visitors.

Tip three: A basic understanding of search engines can be invaluable in driving customers to your site. Google’s search engine is based on page rank, a complex algorithm that was revolutionary when it was invented. This page rank is the primary reason that Google is so popular. The Page Ranking technology that Google has created and the evolutionary steps that Google has taken to increase the strength of its algorithm has made it a search engine giant that has assumed a major role in the success of ecommerce merchants. Basically, Google checks the number of links to each site in its database, and treats them as ‘votes’. By understanding how Google and the other search engines rank sites, you can influence the position and prominence of your site in the search engine pages.

Tip Four: There are many different ways of increasing the amount of traffic to your website, but most have one weakness in common, and that is you usually only get one chance to put your sales message in front of the customer. Autoresponders can be an invaluable resource in building a community base of buyers. An autorepsonder allows you to publish a newsletter you can send out to your list of visitors who sign up. In this way you have multiple opportunities to essentially ask your visitors to buy from you.

Tip Five Many of the content decisions for your website will be done with instinct. You need to be sure the content flows naturally. Natural flowing content leads easily to other issues. One subject should flow into the other seamlessly. The same is true with the placement of other website functions. When you are writing, consider the placement of submit” buttons or other links on the page. This can help you develop content that looks great on the page as well as sounds great to the reader. If a piece feels unnatural when it’s being written, it will likely look uncomfortable to the reader and will be a disaster on your website.

Tip Six Use the power or press releases. The press release is both an SEO and traffic strategy. The press release itself will bring traffic. Even an off-line press release done through a local paper will influence SEO because the search engines respond to traffic. However, your Internet press releases–in addition to traffic–will themselves provide back links to your site and so can be important, especially when they rank well for your site’s keywords. Press releases can also appear as news items on Google and Yahoo!. For that reason, although you can do press releases yourself for free, it might be worth spending the money to have a firm who guarantees a spot on Google News do your press release.

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More SEO Ecommerce Traffic Tips

How do you optimize your site for ecommerce? Keep in mind that the basics of search engine optimization (SEO) are the same for an ecommerce site as they are for a government site about sidewalk renovation. SEO is generally considered to have two basic categories, on-page (or on-site) and off-page (or off-site), and this is especially important for you as an online merchant. Your on-site optimization generally concerns your content, and content includes articles, product descriptions, menu names, sub-menus, headlines, and anything else that has text. On-site optimization also includes your site architecture, meaning the organization of your categories, products and pages. Off-page, or off-site optimization generally concerns quality and number of back links pointing to your site’s pages.

With regard to search engine positioning, it is generally considered that the more incoming links you have, the better your chances of being in the top ten listings for your keywords. Good links are ones that are relevant to your own page and which link back to your site using text that makes that is obvious and relevant to your site. Google generally considers old links better than new links, and so the older a link, the more power it has to push you up in the search engines. In Google’s opinion, if a link withstands the test of time it is has to be relevant or else both parties would have removed the link after not seeing any positive action by Google.

The number one Internet marketing plan for drawing customers into your website is the use of a blog. A blog is a continual updated online journal on your personal views or news related subject matters. People that read your blog are constantly aware of your ideas and thoughts, especially those concerning your business and products. The benefit of promoting your company through a blog is the fact that the search engines love blogs. Fresh new content and a few good keywords thrown in will push you higher up on the engine rankings. People will see it and more customers will click to your site.

Try to select unique key words that have not occurred to your competitors. Optimize for your most profitable key words. How many sales does the key word generate? How much profit is made for each of these sales? Make sure that the key words are very relevant to your site so that people who find your site through your key words will not immediately leave. Try to assemble a list of key words that covers your site very will so that you are not leaving anyone or anything out. As an ecommerce merchant, your keywords will concern your products. In this case, you want to find out the words and phrases people use when they search for the products you are selling.

The content of a page is the primary thing that a search engine will look at when considering your site, and you should devote your on-page SEO efforts to the text as search engines do not even recognize images, videos or any other graphic content. Make sure that all of your important words and phrases are text and not part of an image. Content includes all the elements that a search engine reads as text, including the meta tags. Meta tags are part of the html coding and visible only to search engines and never to visitors. Some meta tag information, such as keywords, page titles, and descriptions can be helpful for SEO. Generally, however, ecommerce content will largely concern your product descriptions. For this reason, it is important to include the search terms people use to search for your products in the product descriptions, headlines, categories, and menu items. You want to do this with common sense so that your site appears professional and well written. It is helpful if product descriptions are 2 to 3 hundred words.

Use the power or press releases. The press release is both an SEO and traffic strategy. The press release itself will bring traffic. Even an off-line press release done through a local paper will influence SEO because the search engines respond to traffic. However, your Internet press releases–in addition to traffic–will themselves provide back links to your site and so can be important, especially when they rank well for your site’s keywords. Press releases can also appear as news items on Google and Yahoo!. For that reason, although you can do press releases yourself for free, it might be worth spending the money to have a firm who guarantees a spot on Google News do your press release.

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categories: ecommerce seo,ecommerce traffic,product sourcing for home business,ecommerce

Key Tips for Understanding How to Rank Your Ecommerce Site

Search engine rankings are an essential factor to consider when you have a website that needs more traffic. If your website doesn’t have a good position in the rankings then no-one will find it, so you need to make sure that your website is ranked highly enough to be seen. The other important quality to getting high traffic to your site is having a nice arsenal of links. The more links that you have to your site the more traffic you will get, but also, the more links to your site the more search engines like your site. Keeping a nice supply of links pointing at your site requires similar precautions and practices as getting high search engine listings.

I think it is fair to say that no SEO firm can absolutely promise you a number 1 position in Google, Yahoo! or Bing (the three major search engines). There are a number of different factors at play, one of which is the amount of competition for a particular ranking and the skill of the SEO going after the ranking. However, with persistence, it is not unrealistic to increase your page rank and also occupy a number 1 position for many of your search terms. Although search engines have some characteristics in common with a free market, I don’t think it is true to say that your site will just flow naturally into its “rightful” position. For that reason, if ranking is important to you, I advise at least paying attention to some basic tips to manage your sites positioning.

Search engine optimization is often broken down into on-page and off-page optimization. It is a general rule of thumb that content is the single most important on-page (or on-site) factor. There is sense to this as the content not only tells the search engines what your site is about but also, and more importantly, you potential buyers. As an ecommerce site owner, much of your content will be devoted to product descriptions. Many ecommerce sites are merely shopping carts with a minimum of textual description. This is fine; such site can and do become successful, but your product pages are a perfect opportunity to provide highly relevant content. Product descriptions should be natural and written for people. If possible, I suggest that the descriptions be 2 to 3 hundred words. However, you must use your common sense; it may not be possible for every description to be 300 words. Some may only require 150 words. The point is to make the best use of opportunities to give the search engines (and your visitors) meaningful content. Your keywords and phrases should appear in the product category, product headline, and once or twice in the brief description.

When determining an SEO strategy, it is important to be aware those search engines do not “see” graphic elements. In other words, devote your attention to optimizing all text elements and avoid the use of words and phrases in images if you want those words to be recognized by the search engines. Do not misunderstand this to mean that you should avoid images. Images and video are great, especially for an ecommerce site because you want to make your products as real as possible. One way to combine images with text is to take advantage of the Alt tag. The Alt tag is part of the coding of the site and allows you to add a text description (with your keywords) to the image. For an example of how this works, go to site such as eBay and put your mouse cursor over an image. A tiny text box will pop up with a brief description. That is the Alt tag at work. If you site uses many graphic elements and minimal text, use the Alt tag to add (not stuff) additional keyword relevant descriptive text.

The key text elements to be aware of include your site title, article titles, product description titles, menu names, headlines, and any category listings, as well. Keeping in mind that your text should be as natural as possible, you want to try and include your main keywords where it is appropriate. This accomplishes two main objectives–first, it allows your visitors to use your site efficiently and second, it accurately informs the search engines about your site. I also suggest that you pay attention to your site’s organizational structure. As with any site, you want your ecommerce site menus and categories to accurately, efficiently, and logically move the search engines and your human visitors around your site. With respect to your human visitors, you want your product pages to be as few clicks away from the main page as possible. The faster your visitors can get to your product pages, the better.

This next point is probably more important than anything written so far. There is a general consensus in the SEO field that links from other sites leading back to your site are potentially more powerful in terms of SEO than any other factor. Back links are those words and phrases that you click on that take you to some other site. The exact words and phrases you click are called “anchor text.” For the purposes of ecommerce SEO, you want the anchor text of your back links to include keywords and phrases and are highly relevant to your site and products. To give you an idea how powerful this is, it is possible to force a site that has virtually no content on it to rank well on the basis of back links alone. You can actually “trick” the search engines to do this with a sufficient number of back links. Now, you as an ecommerce owner are not interested in tricks; what I want you to understand is that your SEO strategy should include the creation and acquisition of back links.

Although both on-page and off-page optimization are important, please take away from this an inkling of the power of back linking. The goal of your SEO strategy is to make your ecommerce site rank as high in the search engines for as many of your keywords as possible. The reason you want this is to allow as much natural, targeted traffic to your site as possible. By targeted traffic, I mean visitors who are already interested and looking for the products you sell. There are many sources of back links. Some of the most common include, article directory submission, site submission to search engine directories, RSS feed submission, social bookmarking, submitting pages to social news sites such Propeller or Digg, publishing on social blogging platforms such as Tumbler, creating profile links on forums and other sites allowing profiles pages. There are many such sources of links; how you link and how you use back link can greatly influence your site’s position in the search engines and amount of natural traffic it receives.

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Key elements of Ecommerce Search Engine Optimization and Traffic Development

Customer traffic is vital to any commercial website, and as an ecommerce site owner this is no less true. As important as product research and product supply is to the success of your business, you need targeted traffic to stay solvent. By targeted traffic, I mean visitors who are already interested in and possibly already wanting to buy what you have to sell. The three major search engines, Google, Yahoo!, and Bing can be an invaluable source of free traffic if you pay attention to certain basic principles of search engine optimization (SEO). I don’t want to suggest that you rely only on search engine traffic, but there is no reason not to take advantage of what they have to offer.

Assuming that you have your product or products, supply sources, and your website designed and coded or otherwise figured out, it is now time to work the search engines into your marketing plan. There really is no one-size-fits-all template for search engine optimization (SEO), and there can be numerous aspects to take into consideration when designing an overall approach. However, there are some basic strategies and principles common to all SEO approaches. These include what we call on-page and off-page optimization.

On-page, or on-site optimization generally refers to the content on your site, and how you use the keywords and phrases on your site. Although your keywords will include product names, they will also include the specific search terms people type into the search engines in order to find your products. Content means all text elements and excludes words and phrases in images, as search engines cannot “see” images. However, keep in mind that your site must appear natural for human visitors and your content must, as well, be natural and easy to read for human visitors. Proper use of meta tags can also help the search engines understand and rank your site accurately. Meta tags are coding that search engines see but that visitors do not. The title, keyword, and description tags allow you to enter a title, list of keywords, and description that only the search engines see.

The most important content for our purposes will be your keywords and phrases, articles, products descriptions, blog posts, and customer comments and testimonials. A well optimized page will show the keywords in menu names, category listings, headlines, titles of articles and product descriptions. You will use the content as an opportunity to position your keywords and phrases for best search engine exposure. How you present your keywords in your product descriptions, blog posts and so forth allows you to shape not only how the search engines see and respond to your pages but also to address the needs and wants of your potential buyers.

Off-page optimization generally concerns the number and quality of links pointing back to your site from either other websites or from your own internal pages. Back links are possibly the most important element of SEO, and while a site with excellent on-page optimization has a definite advantage, with enough back links you can force an excellent page rank regardless of content. As an ecommerce site owner, back links can play a key part in focusing search engine attention on your pages and content. You can actually control this by choosing the sites you link back from, the kind of anchor text used, how you use link networks, and where you point your back links. Practical ways of backlinking include mass publication of RSS feeds, mass publication of videos across many video publishing sites, submission of articles to directories, use of social publishing platforms such Squidoo and Hubpages. Proper use of social bookmarking and social news sites is also effective in producing back links when done on a large enough scale.

Many online marketers now establish a business presence on sites such as Linkedin, Facebook, Myspace, and Twitter. These allow easy, network access to thousands of potential customers and a potential source of back links to your sites. You do have to spend the time to build a presence that people can trust. To some degree you accomplish this by the quality of content you publish. People will know you by your words. If they like what they find, they will follow you to your principle site.

Social bookmarking sites allow you and others to make bookmarks back to your site’s pages, articles, and social networking content and anything else you want to create a link back to. These in turn allow the search engines and human visitors easy access to your site and networking pages. Another source of back links is the use of Squidoo, Hubpages and other free hosting, such as Tumblr, Plaxo, WordPress.com, and Blogger.com to build sites and blogs that point to your main ecommerce venture. You can then, in turn, use social bookmarking to also bring attention to these web properties. This article really only scratches the surface of your possibilities. Whatever you do, don’t be halfhearted and haphazard. Decide which strategies fit your business model and pursue those with a vengeance. Don’t bother with the others unless you decide that they can be productive for your business. Remember, business success requires persistence over the long term.

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categories: ecommerce seo,ecommerce traffic