Are You New to Ecommerce? 6 Key Basics You Can Use Right Now

Tip One What is the best way to make your ecommerce site search engine friendly? Keep in mind that the basics of search engine optimization (SEO) are the same for an ecommerce site as they are for a government site about sidewalk renovation. SEO is generally considered to have two basic categories, on-page (or on-site) and off-page (or off-site), and this is especially important for you as an online merchant. Your on-site optimization generally concerns your content, and content includes articles, product descriptions, menu names, sub-menus, headlines, and anything else that has text. On-site optimization also includes your site architecture, meaning the organization of your categories, products and pages. Off-page, or off-site optimization generally concerns quality and number of back links pointing to your site’s pages.

Tip Two With regard to search engine positioning, it is generally considered that the more incoming links you have, the better your chances of being in the top ten listings for your keywords. Good links are ones that are relevant to your own page and which link back to your site using text that makes that is obvious and relevant to your site. Google generally considers old links better than new links, and so the older a link, the more power it has to push you up in the search engines. In Google’s opinion, if a link withstands the test of time it is has to be relevant or else both parties would have removed the link after not seeing any positive action by Google.

Tip Three One very important method to build traffic and influence search engine positioning is to build relevant content on your page. Be sure that your page reflects the key words. Using HTML text wherever you can will help both search engines and your visitors to determine the relevance of your site. Using large graphics means the search engine cannot read your site. While they may look nice, they will not improve your search engine rating. That relevant content should include building on your text references. If your key word is collecting, consider offering an alternate key word of collectors. This can keep your site from being eliminated by some engines as redundant.

Tip Four: There are many different ways of increasing the amount of traffic to your website, but most have one weakness in common, and that is you usually only get one chance to put your sales message in front of the customer. Autoresponders can be an invaluable resource in building a community base of buyers. An autorepsonder allows you to publish a newsletter you can send out to your list of visitors who sign up. In this way you have multiple opportunities to essentially ask your visitors to buy from you.

Tip Five Many of the content decisions for your website will be done with instinct. You need to be sure the content flows naturally. Natural flowing content leads easily to other issues. One subject should flow into the other seamlessly. The same is true with the placement of other website functions. When you are writing, consider the placement of submit” buttons or other links on the page. This can help you develop content that looks great on the page as well as sounds great to the reader. If a piece feels unnatural when it’s being written, it will likely look uncomfortable to the reader and will be a disaster on your website.

Tip Six Use the power or press releases. The press release is both an SEO and traffic strategy. The press release itself will bring traffic. Even an off-line press release done through a local paper will influence SEO because the search engines respond to traffic. However, your Internet press releases–in addition to traffic–will themselves provide back links to your site and so can be important, especially when they rank well for your site’s keywords. Press releases can also appear as news items on Google and Yahoo!. For that reason, although you can do press releases yourself for free, it might be worth spending the money to have a firm who guarantees a spot on Google News do your press release.

Learn how to use SEO for ecommerce and discover great tips on product sourcing for home business.