Ecommerce SEO

SEO for ecommerce is similar to SEO for any site; but, since the goal of ecommerce is to sell products online amidst a LOT of competition, it is critical to get people to the right page of your site quickly. This can be accomplished with search engine optimization when each page is treated like a possible entry page.

Here are some tips to get you started with SEO for ecommerce sites.

Keyword Research and Implementation for Ecommerce

Keyword research is fundamental to all search engine optimization. By identifying the keywords that searchers actually use to find each of their products and using these as target keywords on the appropriate pages, ecommerce sites have a good basis for attracting customers.

Before a site is even developed, a domain name must be chosen. Since search engines use domain names as a factor in ranking websites in search results, it’s a great idea to include a keyword that describes your overall business here. Optimizing specific landing pages for keywords based on page content and keyword research is important too, as each page of an ecommerce site can be considered a landing page or entry page to the site.

One particularly effective way for utilizing keywords within your ecommerce site is to optimize category pages with plural keywords and product pages with singular keywords. Players looking for a particular baseball bat are more apt to buy if they are brought directly to the page of the product they seek. Those looking to gain more information about products are more apt to search for the plural term, and thus should be brought to the category page listing different products available.

Writing Content for Ecommerce Sites

Ranking high on SERPs (search engine results pages) is largely dependent on the quality and freshness of a site’s content. For this reason, ecommerce sites must find creative ways to include fresh content. One way to do so is through the creation of original product descriptions, rather than opting for the frequently used manufacturer’s descriptions. Having a blog or a news section is also a great, easy way for ecommerce sites to feature timely information.

Ecommerce URL Optimization

Any website that wishes to rank well in SERPs must be easy for search engine spiders to crawl. Implementing static pages for the homepage, product pages, articles, and even category pages, apart from your shopping cart, will make the majority of your website easier to crawl.

Implementing friendly URL structures is also key. A friendly URL is an easy-to-remember, keyword rich URL that is friendly to both users and search engine spiders. An example of a friendly URL is /find-domain-names/. An unfriendly URL often uses category and product specific numbers. An example of an unfriendly URL is /cat?173401/prod?482601/. Clearly the former is much easier to remember for the user, and allows search engine spiders to identify the page more readily through the keywords used in the URL.

Session ID’s are also used in ecommerce, leading to the creation of unfriendly URLs. It is important to stay away from session ID’s, as they ultimately create endless duplicate content through multiple session ID’s for every user, making crawling difficult and reducing the original content on your site.

Internal, Contextual Links and Ecommerce Sites

Contextual links placed in the body of product descriptions and articles, linking internally within the site, provide an excellent source of information for search engine spiders. Standard sitemaps, though necessary, do not provide a good description of what a page is about. A contextual link, on the other hand, utilizes keywords to link to other internal pages, thus offering a specific tie between that keyword and the destination page.

Ecommerce and RSS Product Feeds

Creating a product RSS feed for uploading to Google Base and other similar services is essential for ecommerce sites. An XML product RSS feed allows your products to appear in searches within the separate shopping section of many search engines. Such feeds can provide additional backlinks to your site while greatly increasing traffic.

Search engine optimization for ecommerce sites and all websites, for that matter, is the product of research, testing, measurement, and application. There are no set guidelines to top ranking results. If there were, search engines would not be a go-to source of information for users, as any company could easily buy their way to the top of the organic results. Utilize these tips and implement corresponding strategies to find what works best for your ecommerce site.