Starting SEO Within eCommerce Websites

The single biggest error- is copying the product description and photos right off the manufacturer’s website or the wholesaler’s website. The massive problem here- is plagiarism. In SEO speak, it amounts to duplicate content. As Google and other search engines crawl and index your page, they face the puzzle of who to attribute the authority to, when two identical or very similar pages appear on different domains, for the same topic or product. It’s very likely that the other website- the one which originally had the content- has the authority status- and so (if you copy their material)- your website is the bad one- stealing from someone else.

The Answer?

Write unique content. It’s always possible to say the same thing differently, while still sticking to the facts. User reviews add uniqueness to a page, so do user generated images of the product in use. Encourage people to participate in your marketing. You’ll also have the benefit of social shares, recommendations and onward encouragement to their friends.

Structure Your Product Categories

It makes sense to humans and search engine robots- if the products which belong in a category are found under that category. If it’s essential to have a product listed twice- then use the tag known as rel=”canonical” to tell the search engines which page they should consider as the ‘real’ page for that item. Magento has this facility within the admin interface, other platforms may need a teeny bit of help from your developer. If your menu drop downs look a little long for the perfect user experience, have the single item on the top, then present a list of sub menu utems on the category page itself, so that you’re not diluting the SEO relevance of every other page on your website by having links pointing to everywhere. An example would be a page from the main menu featuring jackets. Each of your 100 jackets has the full menu bar on the page which also features 100 different types of bicycles you sell. Suddenly- there’s a lot of repeated, non-related content (bicycle links) appearing on all the pages of your website, relating to jackets.

Embrace the Power of Images

Your online store’s content management system needs to have a way for you to be able to assign your own file name, alt text and title text to every image on your website. A descriptive file name tells people and search engines what the image is. This helps- because search engines don’t understand the content of images the way people do. Optimised images lend structure to a page. They provide another layer of opportunity to build relevance and authority- two critical ranking factors. Do everything you can to not copy the same images in the same format onto your pages as your competitors have on theirs.

Get SEO for Your Online Shop

Simply hit the contact button- and arrange a personal consultation, for the best SEO for an ecommerce website. We can optimise your shopping cart platform, and give you some valuable insights on how your choice of technology and design either streamlines the conversion process, or stops it dead.