The following is a guest post by Joseph Eitan of Photo Paper Direct. The post provides invaluable SEO tips on how to optimise an ecommerce site. And Joseph should know because he’s been selling photo paper online since 2002.
Website optimization is the process of increasing the number of website visitors originating from the search engines through unpaid (aka organic) search results. For an e-commerce website, optimizing for organic traffic is essential as a long term marketing strategy because the traffic is free (unlike sponsored ads for example). Here are 7 advanced e-commerce website optimization tips you should pay attention to:
Tip 1: Write your own content
Many website owners will result to copying and pasting a product description straight from the manufacturer’s website. By doing so, they are likely causing a classic content duplication issue because other websites have done the same. Take the original description and add your own words to standout.
Tip 2: Don’t spread products over many pages
Instead of having many pages for one product, look to ensure each product has one quality page which you can optimize (instead of optimizing many pages which are the same product). If you have the same product under multiple categories avoid this situation:
- www.sitename.com/category-1/product-1
- www.sitename.com/category-2/product-1.
Instead have your products reside in the root directory such as www.sitename.com/product-1/ so you are able to place the product under multiple categories, but it will only have one URL. Look the categories job as a mapping tool for the product.
Tip 3: Use the page metadata wisely
Stuffing the page title and description metadata with all your keywords won’t improve your ranking. Instead, optimize each page around one term by placing the most important keyword first and use the description field as a call to action. This is essential for e-commerce websites, therefore look to automate this process if you have many SKUs. For example, look to deploy the following logic :
- Page title logic: <product title/keyword> | <brand> (could also work by placing brand first)
- Page description logic: <first line description>. <call to action>
Tip 4: Think product continuation
As an e-commerce website your bread and butter are the long tail product pages. Therefore, when products are out of stock, discontinued or replaced think long and hard what’s going to happen to the original product page. Chances are, this product might have some back links pointing to it and maybe good ranking. If you simply remove the product you are missing out and will have to start from scratch so look to:
- Out of stock: Keep the product live, but add an informative message which will indicate when the product is back in stock.
- Discontinued: Redirect the product using a 301 server redirect header to the product’s category or redirect to the replacement product.
- Replaced: Redirect the product using 301 server redirect header to the new product.
Tip 5: Look at page loading speeds
Aside from the optimization implications of getting pages to load quickly, it also has an effect on conversion rates. While normally loading tweaks are done by developers, as a website owner you could look at basic loading optimization tweaks such as saving your images as jpeg, placing less products in one page, upgrading your hosting package etc. If you’re looking to get more technical try the new Google Speed Test tool.
Tip 6: Improve content to image ratio
Often overlooked, quality content has a profound effect on your organic search ranking. Where to start from? Look to improve your product description by providing additional information which your competitors don’t. I find it useful to look at our support emails and add any information which was missing. You could also look to create product guides, create a blog or even offer a web based version of your newsletters.
Tip 7: Adopt a simple site architecture
If some of your products are not indexed, you might have a website architecture problem which you’ll need to sort out first. A simple site architecture build will allow the search engines to find your pages as it’s normally based on www.sitename.com/category/sub-category/ = www.sitename.com/product-1/. If website architecture is a problem, but you are unable to fix it quickly, try introducing an XML site map which will ensure the search engines find all your pages.
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Guest post by Joseph Eitan founder of Photo Paper Direct an online store selling photo paper and large format media.
{ 10 comments… read them below or add one }
not sure if this classifies as SEO (i think it does), as a consumer i find that customer reviews are quite good in terms of product conversion. if i read that other people have positive experiences with the product or even negative, it is influential in making a purchase decision. however, it only works if there are enough product reviews.
to add to my comment, having customer reviews helps in the 1st point and 6th point – having unique content for products.
That’s an interesting question Matt. Technically, I doubt anyone would classify customer reviews as an SEO technique. I’d link it to conversion related practices, providing greater proof that the product is ok.
But the fact is that when people write product reviews, they are creating new content for the page. And I’ve definitely seen that content indexed in Google before. So I guess in a way you could consider it an SEO tactic.
Hi James, would you say an ecommerce site with those product/user reviews pages will more likely to rank higher in the SERPs than one without them?
Hey Sammy. Product/user reviews aren’t necessarily going to make a site rank higher for high volume keywords. But I suspect they will generate more low volume/long tail keywords based upon the specific content users enter. So while you may not see a discernible difference in rankings, over time I’d expect to see an increase in organic traffic (presuming the user review system is actually used by customers).
Very useful article..!!
I’m working on an e-commerce website right now. So, these tips will come in handy..!!
Thanks, James & Joseph..!!
@Daniel – Most of your thanks should be directed towards Joseph. I simply published it. He delivered the insights and intellectual property.
I think you’re completely on the money with the recommendations about creating a flat site architecture and keeping the products to the one page.
I’ve been amazed by some of the online fashion retailers making their potential shoppers work to order their designs. If it’s too much effort visitors leave and shop elsewhere.
But I’m a believer in what’s good for people is good for search engines and vice-versa.
This ideas of adding content such as testimonials and support Q&A to the products is something that would put a retailer ahead of their competitors too as so few do it.
I found this detailed article about ranking factors based on a survey of SEO experts really interesting so hopefully you will too: http://www.seomoz.org/article/search-ranking-factors#on-page-keyword-specific-ranking-factors
All the best,
Belinda
Good tip on site loading speed. It not effects usability and conversion, but its now being factored in as ranking factor in the search engines.
Its so hard trying to find a quality search engine optimisation business nowadays, just
going to do it myself I think
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