Ever since I took to the Internet and started my own online ecommerce business, I have been receiving ‘requests for proposal' from other ecommerce websites all over the Internet. The main application behind any ecommerce store, also known as the shopping cart can either be an off-shelf product or it can be a proprietary product, custom developed by your web programmer. In my case, I took assistance from a very reliable source - Devix Corporation - a well established ecommerce service provider.
No matter how your ecommerce website is powered, there are certain features that should be looked for in order to ascertain whether or not you have the right to optimize your site, giving it the opportunity to rank at a good position in the major search engines.
Many ecommerce website have applications with in-built SEO friendly features, but many other sites do not have such applications. Therefore, if you are planning on starting your own e-shop, make sure your applications have the following SEO friendly features:
• Make sure your Application allows for Unique Title Tags: In my vast experience of ecommerce sites, I have realized that there is nothing worse than coming across an ecommerce website where all the title tags are the same. Since title tags are one of the most important factors to how your pages rank on search engines, it is of utmost importance to have unique tags that are relevant as well for each page. Not only should your application allow for unique title tags, but it would be an added bonus if they could be automatically generated based on the product name or category. Be smart and combine good keywords when forming your product titles and category names. Provide keyword phrases that people are looking for but at the same time don't forget to include the model number so that they find the correct product.
• Make sure your Application allows for Unique Meta Description Tags: It is true that search engines still recognize Meta description tags. While most of the organic search listings contain a small snippet of text extracted from the page listed, search engines do not generally use the Meta description tag as a factor to determine positioning, while preferring to display them only once in a while. Therefore, you should look for an application that allows you to add your own special Meta description tags or you could look for an application that automatically forms tags from the first Para of the content that describes your product or category. This comes in handy especially when you have thousands of products.
• What kind of Navigational Structure should your Site have: Depending on whether your websites navigational structure is textual or graphical, you could utilize one of these two options - (i) alt attributes behind a hyperlinked graphic, or (ii) anchor text in a textual link - which can both be used for SEO purposes. Both these formats help to define the web pages that they are linking to. Knowing the right way to navigate can help you plan your SEO strategies.
• How to Create a Site Map: If you ecommerce website contains pages that can be accessed through navigation, you will need to create a site map that provides a categorized style of access to every main section of your website if not to every page. If you have thousands of products, then you'll probably not list each and every one of those on a single site map. You can provide access to their categories and then create additional site maps to help search engines find your interior pages. If your ecommerce application automatically provides this service, all the better for you - especially if you have a large product database.
• Are your URL's SEO friendly: Do you know what your website URL's look like? Do they contain ID's that keep changing every time you visit your site? Do they contain an endless babble of variables? In such cases, they likelihood of them getting indexed by search engines is very low. Ideally, your ecommerce application should automatically generate search engine friendly URL's.
So there you go - some of the things to look for in your ecommerce website application. If your application does not have these features, then you can get it to be programmed in that way.
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