Search Engine Optimization

Tips on how to get good Search Engine ranking.

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Think about your keywords

You don't want your website to be picked up by Search Engines when placing queries containing uncommon search words or phrases. You will therefore need to consider which words or key phrases a customer would use on Search Engines to get to your products. Once you have made a list, go through it and review it using the following online tool: http://inventory.overture.com or a more advanced one: http://www.wordtracker.com. Also consider the following tool which generates alternatives for a specific word or phrase: https://adwords.google.com/select/KeywordSandbox. Using the wrong key words means that you will not get the best possible outcome from Search Engines.

Your e-store's theme

Pick the main key word or phrase for your e-commerce store and 3-4 alternatives. All these should best describe the theme of your website and will therefore be related to each other. For example when placing a "digital camera" query on a Search Engine, an e-commerce store selling only digital cameras will have an advantage over a store selling all kinds of electronics. Similarly when searching for "electronics", the electronics e-store will come first.

Category and Product names

Decide on the structure of your e-commerce store using the keywords that you have selected and use them as your category names. Additionally, give full names to your products. In the example of the digital cameras e-store, use the name "Sony Cyber-shot DSC-P100 Digital Camera" instead of "Sony Cyber-shot DSC-P100" since the main key phrase of the store is "Digital Camera".

Keywords in descriptions

Try including the key words in the small as well as the extensive descriptions of your products but do not overdo it; a maximum of 7 references in every 100 words for a key word should be enough. Words in bold are valued more highly by Search Engines so it is a good idea to use the editor provided for extensive descriptions to change the format of key words and phrases to bold.

Web site content: keep it rich and up-to-date!

Add rich descriptions for your products as well as pages with related advice and articles. Apart from helping you with Search Engine Optimization this will also boost your sales. Make sure you update your e-store's content regularly, since content is one of the most important criteria for ranking these days. If you don't have new products to add, change the ones appearing on your homepage, update your news page or advertise a different offer each week.

Getting links from other websites

Up to now we have been looking at the internal factors that affect your e-store's ranking, which involved improvements on your website. Equally important or even more so are the external factors: how other sites 'connect' to your website. Search Engines like sites for which links can be found in many popular websites. You should therefore acquire as many link references as you can, either by publishing your web address on catalogs free of charge, or by using a paid submission service or even by agreeing to an exchange or any other sort of arrangement with the websites. Whenever there is room for negotiation, ask for the link's text to include your store's key words (if the link is a picture add these to the AltTag), and try adding your link within text rather that link lists, close to the upper left corner of the page. It is also best to advertise in pages that do not contain many other links and are homepages rather than internal ones. If you don't know where to start this process from, have a look at the links of your competitors by running link:www.domain-of-competitor.com in http://www.google.com

Patience and paid Search Engine submissions

If your business has to deal with a great amount of online competition do not get disappointed if you don't get any results in the first 6-8 months. In the meantime you could use a pay per click search engine such as Google, Yahoo and other popular search engines.