Marketing Ecommerce Products with SEO/SEM – On-Site Optimization

On-site optimization is a key element to any ecommerce website hoping to get traffic from search engines. Generally, search engines use software or robots that view your website. These robots then have to determine what your website is about based on what is on it. The problem is that if your website is not optimized properly it could land unfound in search engines or maybe even in search results that will never generate any buyers for you.

First, we must look at what a keyword is. Essentially, it can be a single word, but is typically a group of words that people might search for to find your website relevant to what they want. So for example, you may have an ecommerce website that sells curtains. A possible keyword would be “curtains for sale”. This might be a term that people would search for in order to find your website. I am not saying that this is a definite good keyword because you need to do research to determine if people even searching for that, how much competition, or if there might be better untapped keywords out there that you could rank easily for and convert into sales.

So now that we know that you have to have a keyword for on-site optimization, you may be asking yourself, “How does this relate”? Generally, it relates in every way because you will be using your keywords throughout your website. Let me give you a perfect example, the Title of your page is very important to robots. It is intended to be a brief overview of what your website is about. This title is the text that appears at the top of a browser but is generated through a tag in HTML within the section. If your title is “Welcome to my awesome curtain website” then you might rank well for “awesome curtain website” which probably has little traffic and is not relevant to you actually selling curtains.

Now here is the kicker, you do not want to use the same keyword on every single page. You should perhaps use your best selling and most popular items in the keyword on your front page as well as the actual page selling those items. However, if you also sell curtain rods or drapes on a different page, you can change that title and use a different keyword for that page. Google actually recommends this and you may hurt yourself if you simply throw a single keyword around everywhere possible. You must have a title and use keywords that are relevant to what is on that page.

Where else other than the title can I place a keyword?

There are numerous places that robots will look. Below are a few places that I would highly recommend using your keywords at.

#1: H1 HTML Tags – H1 tags are HTML tags that help outline a page. For example, when you were in English class you probably had to have an outline. Google prefers that you do the same thing on your own websites. H1 is generally an overview of what is below. The next level would be H2, which should contain contents of H1. H3 is generally the lowest level that website will go and it should be the littlest details. Below is a brief outline based on previous examples of a curtain ecommerce website.

H1 – Curtains for Sale

H2 – Ruffled Curtains

H3 – Pink Ruffled Curtains

H3 – Purple Ruffled Curtains

H2 – Straight Curtains

H3 – Pink Straight Curtains

H3 – Purple Straight Curtains

#2: Within the Content of Your Website

The robots these days are quite complex. They actually read what you have on the website including your entire content. The words on the page about having curtains for sale should indicate that you do have “curtains for sale”. You should have that placed somewhere in your content and you should make easily visible. At the same time there has to be a balance, your content should flow naturally and you should avoid placing your keywords in areas where it does not make sense or read well. The goal is to help your website visitors at the same time find what they are looking for.

Please note that Google claims to have roughly 200 things that they judge a website on to see where it fits best. Many of these are based on what you have on your website. While I just touched the surface on other places to use keywords, there are numerous other techniques that you may find beneficial for your website. Generally, if you follow the rules of placing keywords that are relevant Google and other search engines will reward you.

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Basic SEO Guide for Ecommerce Websites

This is yet another topic that deserves a book to be written on it. The problem is that I can not recommend a book. In fact, this industry changes so quickly as Google tweaks their algorithm it is difficult to determine what the most important factors are. However, I will try to point out those that very few people will dispute as the big ones. Others are there just for your benefit to be aware of.

First off, there are two major categories in SEO. There is on-site SEO and off-site SEO. Generally, most everyone will start with the on-site SEO because you want Google to recognize what your website is about. If they do not, then how are you ever going to rank for a keyword? These spiders that crawl your website will be looking at several different attributes on each page to determine where it needs to go and how relevant it is to specific searches done at Google’s website.

Another note worth mentioning: What is a keyword? A keyword is basically an elaborate name for what people might search for when trying to find your website. I have been using a motorcycle website as an example throughout, so I’ll continue to do that. People could search for “motorcycle”, but they might also search for “buy motorcycle”, “black motorcycles”, “Harley Davidson motorcycle for sale”. All of these would be keywords, or probably more properly could be said to be key phrases. However, they are generally all referred to simply as keywords. Note below that almost all on-site SEO has to do with is placing good quality keywords throughout your website where Google’s robots, spiders, or software might be able to determine what your website is about.

On-Site SEO Factors

1: The Title of the Page

2: The keywords used throughout the text on the website.

3: What keywords are used in H1 tags.

4: Keywords used in your domain name

5: Keywords used in the URL of a webpage.

6: Meta Keywords

Off-Site SEO

1: Links Pointing to Your Website

This is without a doubt one of the keys to having your website listed in the search engines results page for specific keywords. Google likes to look at what others are saying about your website to determine what it is about. For example, if someone is a huge fan of a unique motorcycle, and you have it for sell, they may link to your website with “unique motorcycle” as the text that people would click on to get to your website. This text is called anchor text and Google will see that link as a simple “vote” for your website to appear higher than others for that keyword. In short, these are commonly referred to as backlinks.

2: Quality of the Websites linking to your Website

Those linking to your website should also have some form of importance. For example, there are many websites with loads of outgoing links to many websites. Google does not want to give these websites as much weight in their “vote” in comparison to a link from Harley Davidson’s official website or something along those lines.

3: The Age of Your Website

I listed this as an off-site related issue but really it doesn’t fit in either category. This is a simple issue that the search engines will evaluate. This is not to say that it is the most important factor, but many older websites will naturally rank higher than new websites that have more backlinks. I am not sure why this occurs, but many would say that it does. Yahoo definitely puts more weight on this than Google does.

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