6 Great Tips to Make Ecommerce SEO Work for You
Tip One: Social media is not only exceedingly popular, but it has become an integral part of online culture and business practice. Social networking as SEO development strategy is here to stay. The use of social sites may not be right for every business, but every business owner needs to be aware of the presence and importance of social media and the part that it can play in business. I don’t want to suggest that you go out and create profiles on Facebook, linkedin, or Twitter just because they are there. However, if you are running an online ecommerce shop that relies on communication with customers and potential customers, you need to find out if sites such as these could be of use in funneling new and repeat business to your site. For example, if you specialize in one-off, hard to duplicate items of vintage clothing, a service such as Twitter might be of real value to your current and potential customers in letting them know the moment new items come into your shop. If part of your service involves delivery, Twitter could be useful in letting customers know when you will be in their area.
Tip Two With regard to search engine positioning, it is generally considered that the more incoming links you have, the better your chances of being in the top ten listings for your keywords. Good links are ones that are relevant to your own page and which link back to your site using text that makes that is obvious and relevant to your site. Google generally considers old links better than new links, and so the older a link, the more power it has to push you up in the search engines. In Google’s opinion, if a link withstands the test of time it is has to be relevant or else both parties would have removed the link after not seeing any positive action by Google.
Tip three: A basic understanding of search engines can be invaluable in driving customers to your site. Google’s search engine is based on page rank, a complex algorithm that was revolutionary when it was invented. This page rank is the primary reason that Google is so popular. The Page Ranking technology that Google has created and the evolutionary steps that Google has taken to increase the strength of its algorithm has made it a search engine giant that has assumed a major role in the success of ecommerce merchants. Basically, Google checks the number of links to each site in its database, and treats them as ‘votes’. By understanding how Google and the other search engines rank sites, you can influence the position and prominence of your site in the search engine pages.
Tip Four Try to select unique key words that have not occurred to your competitors. Optimize for your most profitable key words. How many sales does the key word generate? How much profit is made for each of these sales? Make sure that the key words are very relevant to your site so that people who find your site through your key words will not immediately leave. Try to assemble a list of key words that covers your site very will so that you are not leaving anyone or anything out. As an ecommerce merchant, your keywords will concern your products. In this case, you want to find out the words and phrases people use when they search for the products you are selling.
Tip Five: With specific regard to ecommerce, if your site is more than just a shopping cart and has other sections not devoted to ecommerce, it is important for the e-commerce section to appear to be integrated into the rest of your site. You should have clear links to your store on each page of your website, and the design of the store itself should be consistent with what has gone before. In other words, the various sections of your site should be as seamlessly integrated as possible. One of the keys to a successful site is a clear and simple design that effortlessly guides your visitor from first contact on the Home page to the sales pages and through the buying process with minimum confusion. Never sacrifice simplicity and function for cleverness. Make the buying process as simple as possible
Tip Six Use the power or press releases. The press release is both an SEO and traffic strategy. The press release itself will bring traffic. Even an off-line press release done through a local paper will influence SEO because the search engines respond to traffic. However, your Internet press releases–in addition to traffic–will themselves provide back links to your site and so can be important, especially when they rank well for your site’s keywords. Press releases can also appear as news items on Google and Yahoo!. For that reason, although you can do press releases yourself for free, it might be worth spending the money to have a firm who guarantees a spot on Google News do your press release.
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