SEO for ecommerce Tips

[freddo]

Just trying to implement as many techniques as possible to give my site the structure it needs to be successful in ranking/sales conversion.

Just came across an article on the multiple categorization of products: http://www.web-design-talk.co.uk/245/multiple-categorisation-seo/

and am thinking of implementing it. Anyone have any other good tips for SEO on an ecommerce site?

If anyones interested
Here's my site: www.misteliquid.co.uk

 

[keyideas]

Generally e-commerce website having dynamic functionality and for each product you need to optimize that so you need some dynamic optimization techniques, so that each category is optimize properly

 

[JamesM]

It's VERY basic advice, good advice, but basic...

One of the most important SEO factors when it comes to ecommerce is sorting out the session ID's.

 

[Curious]

Unique content - make sure your notusing stock text anywhere.

 

[Prestige-SEO]

Correct images tags
Unique Procuct Content,
Correct Website Structure
Corrent <h1,h2> tags etc.

 

[bbrij87]

Unique content and static pages having keywords in them will do the trick for you.

 

[upsite]

Unique content = crucial. Especially after so many eCommerce websites got hit with Panda. Also avoid 'thin' pages that lack content.

 

[jhardy2008]

5. Dynamically update title tags
Where a keyword appears in a title tag can impact how well it ranks. My site was ranking number 10 for the search “SEO Consultant” and my title tag looked like this:

Atlanta Internet Marketing | Atlanta Web Design | Atlanta SEO Consultant

All though I had a top ten ranking for “Atlanta Web Design”, I was not getting the type of clients that I want from that search. So, I changed my title tag to “Atlanta Internet Marketing | Atlanta SEO Consultant”. The next day my ranking jumped to number six for “SEO Consultant”.

When I work on an ecommerce store, I build a script that counts the number of times a page receives a visit from a specific keyword and then automatically adjusts the title tag to put that keyword first. Over time, the best keyword will win out and garner the most traffic.

4. Link within the active window of your site
To usability experts, the active window is the content part of the site that users most interact with when browsing. All though they may use navigational menus to get somewhere, they are expecting to see the answer to their question in the active window.

Google also realizes that you are going to put your most valuable information in the active window and puts more emphasis on this section. You have probably already heard that very little value is passed through footer links. That is because very few people read the footer and web masters do not put their best content there. This tactic goes along the same thought process.

When writing content for FAQ pages or categories link to other key pages with keyword rich anchor text. These links will pass more Page Rank than your sidebar and header navigations.

3. Use up sells/cross sells to spread Page Rank
Create sections within your product pages that link to other products. This way you can continually pass Page Rank to your most important pages, the ones where customers actually buy your product.
Another added benefit is that your potential customer is presented with an additional navigational option besides using the back button. This is especially important if she has landed on the product page from a search engine and has not seen the category page.

2. Link directly to product pages from the home page
The further a page is away from the home page, the less of the domain’s authority it receives. So, if a product is in the bottom of a category, the search engine bot may have to go four or more pages deep to find and index the page.
Deep linking directly to product pages from the home page will pass strong amounts of Page Rank directly to the pages that matter most. Couple this with adding up sell products to those pages, you can canvas several hundred product pages with strong domain authority.

I usually link out to around 150 products from the home page using different lists such as “Most Popular Products” or “Our Recommended Products”. People like lists, and they like being told what to do and what to buy. If you set your home page up correctly with this tactic, you can also increase conversions.

1. Get user generated content with product reviews
It can be a daunting task and cost big bucks to write thousands of unique product descriptions. However, if you can get your users generating this content for free, you will see your long tail traffic increase tremendously.

Source: webmasterformat.com/blog/top-5-tips-for-ecommerce-seo

 

[SearchBlogger]

I'd agree, unique product descriptions are very important - there's a blog post about it on Search Engine Journal

 

[gowebbaby]

Generally Link URL and Canonical is true SEO in ecommerce.

 

[nathanial]

good tips.
The main thing is that when you do SEO, you have to concentrate not on your online shop, but on products.
f.e. if you have "Shoes shop" optimize your shop not for keyword Shoes shop, but better go for Womens shoes, Kids soes, Adidas shoes, because people mostly search products not shops

 

[zigojacko]

Prevent duplicate content by blocking search engines from crawling your ecommerce filters.

There are a number of ways this can be done but just by directing this in your robots.txt is pretty simple.

For example:

Disallow *?price=*
Disallow *&price=*
Disallow *?colour=*
Disallow *&colour=*
Disallow *?size=*
Disallow *&size=*

The above example makes use of the wildcard which ensures any URL's that contain the specified filters (wherever in the URL structure) will be blocked from being crawled by spiders. Any instances of the same content but filtered by price and/or colour and/or size will not also be conflicting against the original and most authoritative version of the product.

You may also want to check out my signature link which has a ton of other ecommerce tips.