There are a number of ways to market a website to attract targeted visitors, yet many online store owners are at a loss as to how to achieve this important preliminary step to closing sales. Volusion is a leader in ecommerce solutions for online businesses, and the company's Chief Operating Officer Clay Olivier shares with EcommerceBytes Insider some effective search engine optimization techniques.
Ecommerce websites need online exposure in order to profit, and in recent years, many online store owners have turned to search engine optimization (SEO) as a means of getting their products in front of interested shoppers. Search engine optimization refers to the process of crafting the code and content of web pages such that they are more likely to appear in the search engine result pages (SERPs) when users enter related search queries into Google, Yahoo, MSN or another engine.
In today's trying economic times, an increasing number of businesses are focusing on search engine optimization as a means to attract qualified traffic, with one recent survey suggesting that 36% of businesses put SEO at the top of their marketing to-do lists in the midst of this economic downturn.
One common mistake in building a site is failing to approach its structure and content from the perspective of the search engines. If you want your site to appear in the listings calculated and returned to users by the major search engines, adhering to their quality standards and guidelines should be a no-brainer. After all, the search engines have no obligation to you or anyone else to list a site in their search results; they simply want to deliver the best and most relevant results to their users. As you work on your web pages, bear in mind that search engines:
- Aim to provide results that deliver the highest value to users.
- Want to provide the results most relevant to user searches.
- Must be able to index the code of web pages before either of the above can be accomplished.
That said, it follows that optimizing your ecommerce site for search engines revolves around:
- Building high quality content that is valuable to users.
- Making the content of the site as relevant to its subject as possible.
- Ensuring that search engines can index each important page of the site.
Creating Value through your Content
Making your site a valuable destination for information related to your industry is great for users and search engine marketing, and will help you sell by establishing credibility. Providing real value through unique content can also earn links from relevant sites, bringing long term SEO benefits. Here are a few tips for building value through content on an ecommerce site:
- Include unique, informative text content on each page.
- Install a blog and post regularly, focusing on the interests of your target market.
- Enable customer reviews of your products and include them on corresponding product pages.
- Provide downloadable tools that appeal to your target market.
- Add interactive features such as a forum or social platform.
- Utilize a frequently updated "News" section. Bonus: Be the first to report news, or make news yourself!
Avoiding unscrupulous SEO techniques is also important to the quality of an online store. Building up a great online reputation takes time and work, but begging Google for forgiveness after you have engaged in unethical SEO practices is much worse. If someone calls or emails you out of the blue with promises to "get you X number of links in X timeframe" or to guaranteeing to "get your site to #1 on Google," beware. Even if the cold caller can deliver on the promise, there's no guarantee it will be through ethical means that will not eventually get your site penalized or banned. Better yet, beware of any "SEO" who cold calls or contacts you out of nowhere - why can't they get clients a more legitimate way, like through the natural search results using their own so-called SEO techniques?
Be creative with building value. Anything you can do to make your ecommerce site superior to the competition is worthy of consideration.
Optimizing for Relevance
Remember, search engines rank individual pages when a user performs a search, not complete sites. Search engine spiders use text from your code and content to help determine the subject of each page. Therefore, each page of your site should contain keyword phrases and language relevant to the subject of that page to increase the chance that the page will appear in search results for related queries.
The home page of the site should have text content describing the site and/or the company using terminology relevant to the overall offering. Likewise, category pages should contain text describing the types of products that can be found in that category, while product pages should utilize informative, original product descriptions, not generic descriptions from the manufacturer that are likely duplicated on other sites. Some common sense is in order here - searchers are more likely to find your product page for Yellow Fuzzy Slippers if you include the words "yellow fuzzy slippers" on the page.
Using descriptive Title Tags and Meta Keyword and Description attributes on each page of the site will help make each page unique while making it more relevant to its topic. Each page should contain its own unique Title and Meta Tags reflective of the subject matter on that page. Utilizing descriptive anchor text for interlinking among pages of your site will also help search engines ascertain the topics of the pages being linked. Avoid non-descriptive anchor text such as: Click here to view our products. Instead, use descriptive anchor text like: Browse Handmade Soaps Now.
If you have any control over any inbound links to pages of your site, it is also best for them to contain anchor text relevant to the target page.
Indexing Considerations
A clean navigational hierarchy makes it easier for search engines to find interior pages of a site. The most important pages of the site should be linked directly from the home page, which in the case of ecommerce stores usually means linking to the top level category pages, the "About" page and the "Contact" page (at least).
If you use an online shopping cart that automatically generates pages, ensure that the pages and URLs created are search engine friendly. Many of the more robust shopping carts have search engine friendly features or plug-ins that give you control over Title tags, Meta Tags, URL structure, page content and the like, so utilize these features to the fullest. You will also need to ensure that search engines are not hindered from crawling your site by redirects, cookies or session IDs. Each page should have a static URL, meaning you should be able to paste the URL of each product page into your browser and arrive at the page every time.
Search engines analyze hundreds of factors in determining how web pages are ranked for search queries. Even when you are doing everything right, notable improvement in search engine visibility will take time. The age of your site as well the pages linking to it also play a role. Focus on building your site into a unique, valuable resource over time, and you will be well on your way to search engine success.
