Tips for eCommerce SEO
The bread and butter of your business is your product detail page
An eCommerce website needs to have exceptional content to boost traffic and improve sales. Hence, a product description is critical because people like to post reviews, look at pictures and read specifications. After reading the product’s description the individual will decide if he should buy or not.
On-site search, as well as links to external sites are also recommended because people like to find out everything about the product they’re about to purchase. When creating an eCommerce website, it’s best to have an appropriate categorization like brand name, model, number and name. People like hierarchic pages where products are listed after color and size.
Granular queries, product comparison, feed-driven affiliate and on-site search are also important for your pages.
Optimization is critical and every detail counts because thus, you’ll ensure benefits for each and every product on the website.
How can you improve search performance for your product pages?
First of all, the description of the product and the <title> tag should work very well together. Make sure every word on every page is spiderable.
Working with developers who are fully aware of what they’re doing is also imperative because they will help you emphasize your text better and get rid of unimportant SEO elements. Avoid utilizing out-of-the-box, unaltered product descriptions and make sure that protocols are developed on smart keywords.
A product’s primary page is important because it manages upper-level brand, keywords and item structure.
Crucial Classification
A product’s classification can make or break an eCommerce website. Learn how to organize if want to provide a better browsing experience for your potential client.
It’s fairly simple to make your site appealing for buyers. Try to keep things as simple as possible by opting for product category display (taxonomy) on pages. Afterwards, make sure you consider organizing your product in a hierarchy (ontology). The end result will be a breadcrumb website, well organized and easy to browse through.
The internal linking architecture will be the outcome, where lower-level pages will support main keywords in upper-level pages. When the linking is correct, keywords like “17inch laptops” and “14inch laptops” will both support the same keyword, namely “laptops”.
In addition, a classification after a specific model will also be required. “Dell Laptops” for example will all be labeled under the same brand name.
A hierarchy for a categorized product can be extremely elaborate. When it comes to simple categorization, keywords are elementary. Keyword and synonym variation should be taken into account for every category level.
When the page contains valuable support content, an upper-level category will be ranked so much better. If you’re thinking to use product URLs in your product creation method, you might want to be careful because sometimes even a correct classification can seem dangerous.
You can opt for the following 2 examples Nikon D-7000 camera if you want to find out more:
/Camera/DSLR/High-Res-Video/Nikon-D7000/
/Camera/DSLR/Nikon-D7000/
Having a product live under a single URL is your best option. One category and one page will avoid duplicate content tremendously. Our preference lies with the following format:
http://store.inmarketingwetrust.com.au/Nikon-D7000-Camera/
Duplicate content is everywhere
eCommerce websites are frequently flooded with duplicate content because of the category-based URLs on products.
Category-based URL addresses are one way of duplicating content on an e-commerce website. Fundamentally, duplicate submissions are triggered because product detail pages are used several times especially for on and off-site locations. Duplicate content is also spotted when 2 pages with different categories have similar product listings.
Check out these 2 examples about content duplication. Moreover, you’ll also have some great strategies meant to help you avoid duplication.
1. URL Parameters
If you want to assign a source attribution to your product make sure you add an URL parameter. When an external link from an affiliate is direct, duplicate content happens almost instantly. The main job of parameters is to track down internal click paths, promotional banners and on-site search results.
When the content management system is not checked, it can come up with moulds of duplicate content through parameterized URLs.
If you can deny parameters do it because the probability of duplicate content is extremely high if you choose to work with them. In situations when you are obliged to utilize parameters make sure you take into account a 301 redirection, <link rel=”canonical”>. or check out some handling dashboards of Yahoo and Google.
2. Product placement on affiliate websites
Most eCommerce websites think it’s fairly common to provide feeds to other affiliate websites with their products. Despite the genius marketing idea, you’ll risk having the exact same product page display on several sites, thus leading to duplication.
You can opt for alternative descriptions of your product so as to ensure the uniqueness of the main website. However, it’s perfectly true that 2 versions of the same product description and title take time and money.
A useful strategy would be to opt for user-generated content like reviews which will guarantee genuineness for product pages. You should constantly stay up-to-date because there are numerous ways to end up with duplicated content. Verify main webmaster tools of search engines and always have your very own analytics methods to reduce copied content.
On-site search engines are still search engines
It’s just incredible how terrible on-site search engines can be. Even major eCommerce websites don’t pay too much attention search engines. Nobody seems to care that if you want to find a product on a certain website you can’t even if you hit the on-site search button. This strategy can be extremely pricey and marketers are just not willing to invest.
Whatever the cost, on-site search is critical because it makes the website active and keeps it on top. A, optimal internal search engine comes with the eCommerce website and it’s not that complicated to understand.
A solid search engine doesn’t come cheap but it’s worth the money if you want to enjoy a successful business in the long run. You can convince your superiors that an adequate on-site search engine is necessary with utilizing some analytics strategies. But remember, It’s never a good idea to opt for cheap search engines.
Conducting simple queries is the primary maintenance task of website, weather good or bad. Great results are only produced when search engine results are tweaked and observed.
There should be a sample set made up of keywords seen from exterior search engines, brands, products, SKUs and queries taken from website search analytics.
Sometimes you might experience slow traffic to your website, as well as poor classification that might lead to performance changes in external engines. What you can do is to modify back settings and come up with greater results. For some people this technique might seem useful practice because it allows you to manipulate the algorithm.
For boarder SEO support, site search is a gold mine. If with external metrics you can only observe key phrases, with internal search you’ll have the chance to see a range of user queries. Here’s what you can find:
- what are the most utilized keywords by your website visitors
- which keywords are the most active and which ones provide paid search efforts and messaging on landing web pages.
- which keywords lead to exists ( what kind of product do you have, what’s the value, etc)
- The amount of time invested to experiment with on-site search engines
Social eCommerce
Social eCommerce is all about media advertising, marketing activities and exploit opportunities meant to benefit marketers. The keyword universe of a web page can be enriched with reviews and comments from others.
Constant content maintenance will make a website seem reliable and high quality for major search engines. When a website is spidered frequently, chances for better ranking will grow tremendously. The most important feature of a website is to have fresh articles.
You content can be easily broadened with the help of social medial locations. Make sure to consider inbound links and you’ll manage to increase traffic through interlinking. A first approach to create inbound links is through social media activities that concern your brand directly. Additionally you can generate legitimate links to websites with similar products without having to pay them.
Make the sharing of reviews and products on your webpage plain and simple. Bring direct links from other locations to your site through forums and blogs, widgets and other sharing mechanisms. don’t make an obsession over links with 302 redirects and try to make people talk about you in order to boost traffic and increase sales.
SEO can be maximized tremendously when you have a social media team who is dedicated to the business. The value of search optimization will be increased.
Keyword stuffing is not in trend anymore. Keep the content fresh and easy to read. Thus, the product will seem even more appealing.
It’s critical to make use of meaningful keywords as anchor text that leads to others sites. Don’t give an external link to words like “view” or “more” because nobody will click that. However, If you offer a hyperlink to the “view more about..” people will get curious.
Don’t forget about image optimization. Now images are popping in standard SERPs and thus, they need to be optimized as well. Alt texts attributes for every product is elementary. When you populate your content with your product’s name people will want to know at some point more about the brand.
Internal Search optimization is required for eCommerce SEO. When someone finds your site in Google for example, they will also want to find an easy product within the internal search engine of your web page.
Brand Landing Page Creation will guarantee an optimized landing page for each and every single one of your products.
Link Title Attributes must be used for your site’s anchor text. Proper title attributes like “<a href=”page.html” title=”keywords here”>” will give search engines information concerning the content of your pages.
Yield Track Page will determine your site’s effectiveness. All you need to do count your unique keywords and divide them with the web pages that are indexed in Google. The yield of a page is a metric that measures you’re your “tail”.
eCommerce is commonly linked to search engine optimization, URL rewriting, product description and product names. However, you should also pay close attention to internal site search.
After you’ve struggled for so long to bring people to your site, why not ease their job and also give them a simple search site for a better location of your products?
Returned results need to be relevant. When people want to find something on a certain website, let’s take Amazon for example, they need quick and satisfactory results from the first time. Otherwise, they might move on thinking that the product wanted is not listed.
Relevance is compulsory and nobody likes to search something numerous times because it gets annoying.
The Amazon system is extremely smart regarding its on-site search engine. After I’ve typed “Ricky Gervais” the system has immediately offered to correct my spelling. And even if there were 0 results on the Amazon website, they still provided me with extra options. Everything is automated and thus, the possibility of dropping out and looking someplace else is reduced.
You must never forget the purpose of your business. Selling a product should be your first priority. Although, on sites like Amazon displaying a high ranking product first is common, when you’re specific enough about a product the website will not hesitate to display exactly what you want, even if that item has bad reviews.
Can you use this for your personal SEO campaign? When utilizing PPC make sure to advertise only products that are in-stock. Thus, you’ll immediately observe which of your items are best selling. When you don’t have a certain product, or you have it but it’s outdated, try to send a converting URL to a relevant web page. New URLs to original content is a great marketing strategy.
These strategies can be applied in numerous ways, but you should always remember your goal. Bring organic traffic to high converting products and generate more sales instantly.
Mind your users and make sure your landing pages are of the highest quality. Otherwise you’re not going to convert your organic traffic effectively.
Often times you might think search engines are not that fond of eCommerce sites. And in certain situation they have all the right in the world to reject them especially when products don’t have descriptions or the internal linking is poor. Numerous eCommerce websites provide copied content and little information about their products.
Thus, it’s perfectly normal for search engines to reject them. Check these tips to optimize an eCommerce website properly:
1. Stay Away from Company Description of a Product
Although it’s tempting to copy/paste a product’s description from its company’s site, don’t do it. The best you can do it to re-write the original content and make it unique.
2. Keyword Field Creation for Product SEO
Come up with your own database. Build a keyword field and include it in the meta tags, title tags and body. And remember, people don’t always search by brand, they also search by keyword.
3. Concentrate on Singular Term Keywords
Choose a keyword and oscillate around that word to build a strong SEO field just like in step 2.
4. Category and Product URL
Don’t insert useless ID’s in your URL and stick to mandatory keywords that will help your website rank higher.
5. Page Rank Source
Don’t bury your product’s catalog and use friendly SEO rollovers to increase products on a certain page.
6. Title Tags Must be Unique
Don’t repeat your keywords over and over again, and try to use them in a different way. For example, a titled tag looks so much better when you only use “XYZ Travel” and not the full keyword “XYZ Travel Agency and Vacations”.
7. Meta Tags Uniqueness
Every product should have a unique description on each page. Thus, you’ll stay away from duplicate content.
8. Unique Meta Tag Description
Place product description in meta tag to ensure unique content.
9. Reviews for your Products
Generate content from your customers because they’re all unique and they will contribute to your site’s originality.
10. Wise PR
Main SEO pages should receive the most PR flow by restricting less important links. Use Javascript links or you can form submission links.
11. Contextual Link Usage
Search engines are not that familiar with page information. Thus, you should link a paragraph from your site to a relevant web page using an anchor text that’s properly optimized.
12. Stay away from Session IDs within URLs
Numerous eCommerce platforms make use of session IDs that are intended to create infinite duplicate content. You can avoid this by utilizing a certain type of cloaking meant to spider URLs without session IDs.
13. RSS Feed Creation
A product feed is critical for a Google Base because it grabs free backlinks that will go straight to your product page.
14. Tag your Product
Tagging has become pretty common in social media. Let your customers tag your products and you’ll manage to build keywords you’ve never considered before.
15. File Name Page
Keyword rich file page names are ideal. For instance, www.yoursite.com/keyword-phrase-here.html offers a lot of useful information for Googlebot.
16. iframes is great for Duplicate Content
Placing a product description that is not unique within an invisible iframe boarder will not get you penalized for duplicate content.
17. Project Description Links
Link two products and make up rich keyword links for smart product discretion.
18. Navigation must be Crawl-able
Navigation structures based on CSS or JavaScript are to be avoided because they don’t allow spiders. Additionally, they’re not dependent on form based navigation and SEOs cannot chase after them.
