Some SEO Tips for eCommerce
eCommerce sites can be heavily dependent on, and yet problematic for, SEO. Why, and what are good tips for solutions?
- The DB
eCommerce sites are heavily dependent on databases. Yet Google prefers its content straight-up without iframes, barriers, feeds, etc. Yet for eCommerce, the DB is king. So the question is, what about your database table composition? Did you leave those alone based on pre-existing templates or standards? It maters for trying to identify how easily/poorly Google can crawl the text on your site pulled from your DB – if you changed any code there (such as code to alter speed of download) or left it at defaults? And most importantly – do the DB tables have included Indices (for fast, easy crawling)? - Original Content
Don’t just have prices and brief product descriptions – for SEO, you want as much original, non-duplicated meaty content as possible (500 words per page preferably). - Keywords
Strategically identify, and use, keywords and phrases. But don’t keyword-stuff. - Linking
Links aren’t always good. So don’t crowd your pages with them. Especially not if they’re outbound links (to other websites). Try to get one-way links from your vendors to your website, as opposed to just promising to exchange links. And don’t subscribe to shady link-blasting services! - Site Speed
A good thing to get is analysis of your site speed. If you’re at less than five seconds, that is a good gauge. Of course the more site speed can be improved, the higher you will rank in search engines (they like sites they can crawl fastest and easiest). There are good free resources to analyze site speed – like www.webpagetest.org. - HTTPS
Finally, you should want the majority of your site’s content to be on HTTP:// as opposed to HTTPS:// – many eCommerce sites prefer the “secure” option, but the opposite would be better for SEO. But either way, set your final preference and tell Google one or the other via site search engine canonicalization settings.
– Jake Aull, Head Honcho, ZenFires Digital Marketing
