Search
engine optimization (SEO) is critical to eCommerce success. It is one of the
most competitive landscapes in search and many businesses are fighting for
space on page one for their products. If you’re a new eCommerce site, or an
eCommerce site that wants to start doing SEO, this article is for you.
1. Lots of Unique Content
Unique content is important for any web
site, but it seems to be missing from many eCommerce sites. Look through your
site and opportunities to place content on pages including home pages, category
pages, and customer service pages. You should have high quality articles
written for your domain too about your business. Starting a blog is another
great way to start generating content for your domain.
2. Optimized Product Pages
Getting product pages to rank high on
search engines is SEO gold for eCommerce sites. Make sure you are writing your
own content for these products and not using the manufacturers’ descriptions.
If you use the manufacturers’ description, it will be the same content many
other sites are using and have no search value. Do keyword research and find
out what the best terms are to describe your products and include it in the
title and product description.
3. Optimized URLs
The URLs that eCommerce platforms
automatically generate are generally not great for SEO. You want to make sure
that the keywords for products or product categories are contained in the URLs.
Also try and get the key terms you’re trying to rank on as close to the
beginning of the URL as possible.
4. Unique Title Tags
With the large amount of pages
eCommerce sites contain, it can be hard to keep track of all the meta tags and
sites often duplicate a generic title tag by default across many pages. To win
on SEO, eComm sites should make sure each page has a unique title tag and the
title contains the page’s key words.
5. Reviews
Product reviews from customers are a
great way to generate original and organic content for your pages. Encourage
customers to review your items on the page or maybe with an email after they
purchase. You’ll also need to make sure that the reviews can be read by search
bots. Google and many other search engines don’t read dynamically generated
content. If your reviews are dynamically generate, there are some services that
can generate SEO friendly formats.
6. Social Widgets
Social metrics on pages can help them
rank high. Make the products on your eCommerce site easy to share with social
media share buttons. Configure your pages so the information in passed
correctly to the social sites like the product name and image.
