Learn/SEO-Tips-for-Ecommerce-Sites
Revision as of 23:35, 7 December 2011 by Aliza Earnshaw (talk | contribs)
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11 E-commerce SEO Tips
Search engine optimization (SEO) isn't easy for any website, and e-commerce sites have some unique SEO challenges to overcome.
These tips will help you tackle your e-commerce site's SEO so you can rank higher in search engine results and get more visitors, customers and sales for your online store.
#1 Create unique content on each of your product and product category pages.
- Interesting, unique content tells Google a page is valuable, and helps it rank higher. Well-written content can also persuade more of your visitors to actually pull out their credit cards.
- Don't just copy the manufacturer's description of the product. Write your own description so that Google sees it as valuable, unique content. Google's Farmer/Panda Update of early 2011 favors sites with more original content.
#2 Find out what shoppers are searching for most.
- Keyword research is an invaluable way to discover the words you should be using to describe what you sell. You can find out how many people search for a particular keyword, and how competitive it is to rank for that keyword. [NOTE: The competitive info is actually about AdWords bidding, not about organic rankings.]
- For more info on choosing the right keywords, read Keyword Research Is Key to Online Success.
#3 Create pages for the categories people are searching for.
- Some people may be searching for specific product names like "Nikon D90," but odds are more people are searching for broad keyword phrases like "Nikon digital camera" and "digital SLR cameras." Creating category pages for these broad keyword phrases, as well as more specific pages for products like the Nikon D90, helps you capture a bigger group of people searching for what you sell.
- Giving searchers pages with all your products in that category could really help you rank in Google and Bing for what they're searching for. Plus, these category pages also help visitors find what they're looking for so they can move down the buying funnel from researcher or browser to buyer.
#4 Interlink your pages using good anchor text.
- Link to other products or categories in the text on your site. Be sure to use anchor text with relevant keywords. This will help search engines find and index other pages on your site, and the links and anchor text will help the linked-to pages' SEO so they rank higher for the right words.
- Plus, the people reading the text have relevant links to click to take them to other products they might be interested in. You want to keep people on your site, and help them find what they want.
#5 Allow people to share your products on social media sites.
- Social media mentions help your SEO. Plus, it gets your product seen by more people.
#6 Get valuable backlinks.
- Backlinks (links from another site to yours) have always been one of the most important factors search engines look at when deciding how high to rank a web page. Getting backlinks isn't easy, especially for e-commerce sites.
- Adding interesting content to your website beyond product and category pages is the first step, because few websites will want to link to a boring page or a page where you're directly selling something. A blog is a great way to begin adding link-worthy content.
- For much more info on getting backlinks, check out our articles about link building.
#7 Avoid duplicate content issues.
- E-commerce sites tend to give visitors the option to sort a list of products by various parameters like price, popularity, average review. While sorting is useful for people, it can be a nightmare for your SEO because it usually means you essentially have multiple pages with the same content, just in a different order. This can be seen as duplicate content to search engines, and this confusion can dilute the SEO of that page.
- This isn't a simple thing to fix, but the easiest thing you can do is let Google know in Webmaster Tools. For more info on solving this problem, read #3 here.
#8 Use descriptive URLs.
- The URLs on your site are another opportunity for you to optimize your site. If your page about blue widgets has a URL like http://www.example.com/blue-widgets that reiterates to Google that the page is about "blue widgets" and should probably show up in search results for that keyword phrase. However, if the URL is http://www.example.com/page?id=59274974 that doesn't tell Google - or anyone - anything.
- For more information about SEO-ing your URLs, read Improve your URLs for Better SEO.
#9 Let visitors leave reviews.
- Reviews are another piece of unique content, and search engines love unique content.
- Plus, reviews can help a visitor decide if they really want to pull out their credit card and buy that product.
#10 Include a sitemap to help Google find all your pages.
- If Google finds a page and thinks it has valuable content, it will index it so it can show up in search results.
- For instructions, read Creating an XML Sitemap or HTML Sitemap.
#11 Update your website's content regularly.
- The Google Freshness Update of November 2011 favors content with fresher, changing content.
- Tweak your website's content and/or add new content from time to time so so your website doesn't look stale. Adding a blog to your website, and writing a blog post every so often about your industry is a great idea.
- Allowing visitors to post reviews is another way to passively get fresh content for your site.