Making Ecommerce SEO Work for You

Are search engine rankings important for me? If your site relies on customer traffic provided from Internet search queries, then the answer is “yes!” If you are an ecommerce merchant with an online shop, and you expect the Internet to funnel potential buyers, then again, “yes,” you need to pay attention to search engine ranking. Search engines are sometimes compared to free markets where the best site rises naturally to the top. I think we are all aware that free markets are not truly free and are in fact influenced by many different factors that are not “natural.” This is true with search engines, as well. Sites occupying high search engine position do not necessarily rank well just because they are the best but because they meet the requirements of the search engine algorithm that allows higher ranking. What this means is that you, as a site owner, can influence and to large degree where your site appears in the search engine pages.

Although no SEO company can guarantee a high ranking for your site, here are some tips for raising your search engine ranking. Using these tips will not get you to the top unless your site is the best out there, but they will at least help put you into the positioning that you seek. After all, the internet is somewhat like a free market. You will naturally flow into the place that you deserve if you meet the requirements of search engines algorithms, and many search engines try to insure that you do not rise above or fall below this position. This is why they are so strict, and this is why you must keep yourself on good terms with them.

Search engine optimization is often broken down into on-page and off-page optimization. It is a general rule of thumb that content is the single most important on-page (or on-site) factor. There is sense to this as the content not only tells the search engines what your site is about but also, and more importantly, you potential buyers. As an ecommerce site owner, much of your content will be devoted to product descriptions. Many ecommerce sites are merely shopping carts with a minimum of textual description. This is fine; such site can and do become successful, but your product pages are a perfect opportunity to provide highly relevant content. Product descriptions should be natural and written for people. If possible, I suggest that the descriptions be 2 to 3 hundred words. However, you must use your common sense; it may not be possible for every description to be 300 words. Some may only require 150 words. The point is to make the best use of opportunities to give the search engines (and your visitors) meaningful content. Your keywords and phrases should appear in the product category, product headline, and once or twice in the brief description.

From the perspective of a search engine, only the text elements of your site count as content. Search engines do not register or “see” graphics, and for you this means that you want to be sure that all search engine important content is in text, not in a picture displaying words and phrases. If your site uses many images, as yours might if you have an ecommerce shopping cart, you can get search engine benefit from those graphics by using the Alt tag. The Alt tag is part of the coding that only the search engine sees, and it allows you to include a keyword rich description with your image. If you have never heard of this before, you can see an example by going to a site such Yahoo! or Google and holding the mouse cursor over an image. You will notice that a tiny text box pops up with a description. It is the Alt tag that allows the inclusion of the text, and search engines to respond to this bit of content. Adding text to the Alt tag is very easy, and almost any WYSIWYG html editor will allow you to do this automatically.

The key text elements to be aware of include your site title, article titles, product description titles, menu names, headlines, and any category listings, as well. Keeping in mind that your text should be as natural as possible, you want to try and include your main keywords where it is appropriate. This accomplishes two main objectives–first, it allows your visitors to use your site efficiently and second, it accurately informs the search engines about your site. I also suggest that you pay attention to your site’s organizational structure. As with any site, you want your ecommerce site menus and categories to accurately, efficiently, and logically move the search engines and your human visitors around your site. With respect to your human visitors, you want your product pages to be as few clicks away from the main page as possible. The faster your visitors can get to your product pages, the better.

Speaking of links, the general consensus of the SEO community is that the number and quality of back links pointing to your site is the most important aspect of SEO. You can focus back links on the main page of your site, on your site’s internal product pages, or on other sites that themselves have back links pointing to your domain. The power of links is so great that you can actually have a page or domain that is badly organized with hardly any or zero significant content and still rank well if you have a sufficient number of links even if those link are of low quality. Although on-page SEO is important and standard practice, the anchor text of the links pointing to your site carries much greater weight and punch than just on-page textual optimization by itself.

Although both on-page and off-page optimization are important, please take away from this an inkling of the power of back linking. The goal of your SEO strategy is to make your ecommerce site rank as high in the search engines for as many of your keywords as possible. The reason you want this is to allow as much natural, targeted traffic to your site as possible. By targeted traffic, I mean visitors who are already interested and looking for the products you sell. There are many sources of back links. Some of the most common include, article directory submission, site submission to search engine directories, RSS feed submission, social bookmarking, submitting pages to social news sites such Propeller or Digg, publishing on social blogging platforms such as Tumbler, creating profile links on forums and other sites allowing profiles pages. There are many such sources of links; how you link and how you use back link can greatly influence your site’s position in the search engines and amount of natural traffic it receives.

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