SEO factors for E-commerce Sites

All e-commerce websites should be designed with search engine optimisation in mind. You need to make sure that your site gets results from the word GO.

This blog post aims to help with the above so if you want to take your e-commerce website more seriously, or are just starting a new e-commerce website, this blog post will help you through some SEO factors to consider and implement on your e-commerce site.

Product page requirements:

• Meta information – Are your title and meta descriptions unique and describe exactly what your product page is about? This can be time consuming but really worth it in the long run!
• h1, h2 and h3 tags – Is your page SEO friendly and structured well with one h1 tag?
• Images and any video optimised with keywords on pages. e.g product images automatically have ‘alt’ and ‘title’ tags when uploaded by a backend user.
• Social share buttons.
• Search engine friendly URLs – Are your URLs search engine friendly? e.g http://www.some-website.co.uk/shop/products/6836177-golf-bag-in-yellow.html should be http://www.some-website.co.uk/golf-bag-in-yellow.html. The shorter the URL the better, aslong as it says exactly what it is.

Seven Mistakes You Should Avoid In Your SEO Strategy

Here are seven mistakes you should avoid in developing your SEO strategy:

1. Using the Wrong Keywords

Customers find products by typing questions or queries into search engines. If your keywords don’t answer the questions that customers will be asking, then you need a new SEO strategy. You should take advantage of free tools for keyword research such as Google Keyword Tool, SEOmoz Term Extractor and Alexa for up-to-date accurate keyword trends.

The checkout process

Getting people to an e-commerce website is one thing, getting them to buy is another. Consumers are still faced with hurdles when it comes to online shopping – having to remember login details and passwords, entering strange letters into captchas, negotiating around complicated delivery charges and so on.
Analytics packages can help identify the barriers to conversion and to bring this to life Google Analytics have created a video around what buying a loaf of bread in the real world would be like if e-commerce principles were applied. It’s a bit over the top, but makes the point nicely!