E-Commerce And SEO

How does an e-commerce helps in promoting a website in SE's? or the relationship between e-commerce and link popularity/SEO/Internet Marketing?

ecom sites usually suck when it comes to seo. Lots of duplicate content isssues because there isn't enough unique text. Keep in mind the SEs are interested in answering questions not making sales. Or at least, not making sales through your site.

But that's a discussion for another thread.

Take a look at solaswebdesign.net They create beautiful sites that are well-optimized even though they are ecom sites.

If you're searching for a specific product on the Internet via Google you should be able to find a 'product page' from which you can buy the item.

Links from websites, as well as blogs and press releases, to a 'product page' build product awareness. Google will recognize those links and your site's product pages should start ranking individually for the product searches. Soon after, you should begin to generate conversions from search engine results pages directly to product pages.

Not all e-commerce sites are developed poorly, although some are.

Eventually Google (or some powerful online brand) is going to add a pay-per-conversion system for e-commerce sites. When that happens you're going to see a shift in the industry.

There are issues to do with making many ecommerce stores compliant, as well as duplicate content, but these things can be overcome, and in fact work to your advantage.

easycommercestores.co.uk takes templates and pimp them so that they work better, and I'd cite my own ecommerce store as an example but I can't promote on the boards

I know this is an old topic but Im doing some research on optimizing an e-commerce site. How do you suggest optimizing a product page to be searched and found by search engines? Are there certain techniques that can be used to create optimized product pages? For a shopping cart with thousands of products, how do you determine which products to market? I have many more questions but I'll attempt to find the answers before posting questions.

This lot look good but how come they are co.uk but price in dollars?

I'm just guessing, but for the product pages, you can probably make use of targeted keywords to help optimize your page. Like if you're selling perfume, be sure to put the word "perfume" on your title and on the content, and don't forget the meta tags too.. Use keyword density, prominence and proximity to your advantage.

I agree with rmccarley that ecommerce sites don't help your web site regarding SEs. Ecommerce sites have a lot of duplicated content. Most of big ecom sites have URLs like webapp/wcs/stores/servlet/StoreCatalogDisplay?langId=-1&storeId=10151&catalogId=10551. If you plan to develop a SEO friendly ecommerce site try to avaoid such type of URLs.

E-commerce website are usually big dynamic template-driven sites with thousands of pages.

It can help under one condition. You have to optimize e-comm website as much as you can and make sure that all dynamic pages are3 accessible by spiders. In this case you can have thousands of optimized pages indexed by Google, Yahoo, MSN, etc. , so your chances to be found could grow really big.

Please check this thread for more info on seo for dynamic sites:

http://forums.seochat.com/search-engine-optimization-28/seo-for-large-dynamic-sites-142973.html

You optimize just like any other site.

But there are a few special issues you need to deal with:

1. Depth of pages.

The core of the site is generally the catalog. If you have categories and subcategories you are shifting the products further and further down the tree. I have noticed the further down the lower the PR. Tends to go like Home PR4 next level PR2 next PR 0. Most times product pages are PR0. And this has nothing to do with backlinks as it is on sites with none.

The ideal eCommerce site is one with no categories Next to that one level. One strategy is to have a site map, another is to list all products in your footer which looks very spammy.

The other is to make product listing pages heftier. As in provide product descriptions/excerpts in the listing to get more words on a page. Add a category description.

2. Product Descriptions

You need to write them out of context. As if no-one even knows what kind of site this is, let alone what category they are looking at. If it does not make sense on its own then its not optimized. So if you sell Jewelry and you are describing a bracelet, then don't just use a product name that same Gold with Diamonds. Go the whole nine yards and add "Bracelet".

Plus describe the damn thing. Pretend there is no picture. So use words to tell the customer what it looks like. And do it so it sounds good. Just like a food menu can make a Hot Dog sounds gourmet.

3. URLs

Deal with them. They may be okay but they may be too long. Some carts create revolting URLs. Just go look at the mess Volusion make of them. Ouch!

4. Duplicate Content

Often happens with products listed in more than one category. Check. Stop spiders from spidering duplicate products or make sure the content is not duplicate.

5. Internal links

Things like cross sell, upsell, also bought, features, new, sales, best sellers all provide opportunities for internal links to product pages.

6. Keywords

Try and optimize for a generic industry terms on home and other pages. Often next to impossible to do. Categories on category pages and products on product pages.

In general when people search for specific products they know what they want to buy and are doing price comparisons. Make sure your products show up.

Plus look at your results in the SERPs. Make sure the title, description and URL are all contributing to the call to action to click on the link.

And remember description can be tricky as it is not always the meta-description and sometimes not even the first sentence of the product description. So check, do some tests.

7. Backlinks

Backlinks at product level are almost impossible. Unless someone is blogging about a particular product or someone on My Space takes a fancy to it or it is linked to one of those sites where people list their favorite products I don't see how you can get a product level backlink. Most links are when people are stealing your damn images.

And that's my 2 cents worth.

Im very new to this and bought an xcart, you also get mods you can buy cheaply. This defeats the duplicate problem i believe. I never knew there was a problem with duplicate content until i read these boards.

When you have an ecommerce platform that takes SEO into consideration, the differences are drastic. Building individual static pages for each category and product can be tedious if done manually, but when a software can do it for you, the results are a very well structured SEO site.

Of course, you need to be familair with how to name your products and categories (as to make sure people are searching for those words). Whether you want to customize page names, titles, meta tags, or any other elements of that product's page, it can all be done.

Many SEO companies shy away from ecommerce because they don't have the tools to accomplish what they need to do. When you have the right tools, its not too difficult.

I recommend moving to Yahoo Stores. It is probably by far the best and most compatible shopping cart out there. Considering it is made by Yahoo, the second most popular search engine, it has helped one of my clients alot with natural traffic. They used to use x-cart and I moved them to Yahoo, their traffic has nearly doubled.

If your e-commerce software isn't designed to do well in search engines then you need to change your e-commerce software! If you're looking to improve your SEO, get an e-commerce software which is designed to rank well in search engines. Search engines shouldn't be able to tell the difference between an e-commerce site or a blog.

Starting a blog for the unique purpose of promoting an e-commerce website makes almost no sense when you can build links to your e-commerce site from directories and other blogs. Starting a blog means that you now have to do more work to sell things. You have to write more content and build links to two sites instead of just one. That's not a smart way to do business!

Buying an e-commerce software that is designed to rank well in search engines allows you to focus on promoting the e-commerce site.

Looks like a lot of great information was passed along here. Is the mod re-write still something to consider? Has anyone seen improvements experienced solely on a mod re-write?

Thanks for some great info gang!