Category Archives: SEO

Aggregated SEO Wisdom

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ecommerce-sitemaps

If you read nothing else:

Here’s the best infographic we’ve found that explains what SEO is, courtesy of pointblankSEO.com. It’s the best starting point we can think of for any SEO newbie. (For the old-timers- it’s still useful to see the information presented so clearly!)

For Beginners:

Understanding Search Engine Optimization (SEO) for beginners.
SEO is about “pleasing” search engines so that they rank your page higher on their lists. (That means more views, more hits, and ultimately more sales.) How do you do that? First, you’ve got to understand what search engines do, and how they do it.

First SEO Checks (Non-Technical)
Your store is up and running; what should you do about SEO? Before getting technical, you have two chief concerns- clarity and navigation.

Getting started on SEO for eCommerce:

Simple eCommerce SEO checklist
Use Friendly URLs, product titles, Meta description.

Basic SEO for eCommerce Sites
Common issues and the best ways to handle them. Get your file-names right, avoid duplicate content, keep things clear and intuitive.

Intermediate SEO for eCommerce Sites
Image Optimization, XML Markup, Internal Anchor Text, Rapid Indexing, Department and Category pages.

Enterprise Level SEO for eCommerce Sites
URL Structure. Writing for people vs. Writing for search engines. Accessible content. IP delivery & language specific content. Redesigns & redirections.

eCommerce-specific SEO issues:

Rich Snippets From Reviews
How to add product reviews that show up in Google. (Important!)

eCommerce SEO for Mobile Websites and Apps
Use subdomains such as m.example.com. If you’re going to use mobile apps, make sure they’re good.

eCommerce SEO for new or seasonal products
Choose your URLs carefully so that you don’t need to change them. Take “placeholder” pages seriously, using as much real, non-duplicate information as possible.

eCommerce SEO for Category Pages
URL, Editorial Photos, Text, Products & Thumbnails, Internal Links, Page & Filesize.

eCommerce SEO for Product Pages
URL, Product Titles, Product Descriptions, Product Images, Internal Links, Social Media.

Universal SEO Issues:

Duplicate Content
Search Engines don’t like duplicate content, and will punish you for it. Either replace it (which can be tedious or costly), or hide it from search engines using approved methods (noindex tags).

How to Optimize Your Images for SEO
File names, file types, file sizes, ALT tags.

How To Use XML Sitemaps to boost SEO
When should you use them? How should you use them? What are the mistakes people make?

Use a Crawling Path to get your product listed in Google
What is a crawling path? How does it work? How does it benefit you?

Be Mindful Of Google Updates.
You need to adjust accordingly so you don’t take a hit when things get shaken up.

Dealing with Google Panda 
Avoid duplicate content. Have it re-written if it’s worth the cost, otherwise use ‘noindex’ meta tags to avoid problems.

Creating eCommerce content that earns inbound-links
Start a blog, use informational linkbait, resource guides, useful statistics and surveys…
 

Social Media: 10 Ways To Increase Website Traffic

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Highway Insomnia

Are you looking for Internet traffic that will bring paying customers to your site? A quick search on Google will quickly show several sites that offer “free Internet traffic,” but what’s the catch? If these services are as great as they say, how do companies like Google still be in business selling clicks for more than a dollar each?

This article will teach you several methods for getting quality, targeted, traffic to your website.

1. Facebook

Who isn’t on Facebook these days? Facebook currently has over 1 billion active users and is considered by many Internet marketers to be their favorite traffic source. Succeeding in Facebook can be simple but it requires some time.

Since Facebook is all about “being social,” using it on a regular basis definitely helps. One way is to add links from all of your posts to your Facebook timeline. Use as much visual content as possible, as this will increase the likelihood of people viewing it. Have fun creating memes and use them to help build your brand!

2. LinkedIn

After you set up a great LinkedIn profile, start connecting with everyone you know. Help out your contacts with recommendations for the people you know professionally and add skills to their profiles. Many times, they will return the favor and add recommendations and skills to yours. Be active. Answer questions on LinkedIn forums and join groups where you can ask and answer questions. You can also share your LinkedIn profile with your peers off-line to help build your network.

When you meet people that might benefit from your website, ask to connect to them through LinkedIn. Sometimes people will connect using this method instead of e-mail as it seems less obtrusive than exchanging an e-mail address.

3. Google Plus

Google Plus can help give you social proof and improve your search engine rankings. Much like Facebook, you can engage with people and connect with them through circles. You should link out to your published content on your website. It can also be helpful to host huddles and hangouts.

If you’re using keyword terms, make sure you use your customer’s terminology. This will help you connect better to your customers.

4. YouTube

Video marketing can be a powerful tool in building traffic to your website. It can be a great way to create controversy and at the same time educate viewers. Make sure you include a call-to-action telling the customer what you want them to do. Have your URL in the video as well as in the annotations. Introduce your site as soon as possible in your video to help establish your brand. Create an interesting video description.

5. Pinterest

Pinterest is the fastest growing platform on the internet. The number of visitors has increased by an amazing 6% year after year. If you spend about half an hour 3-4 times per week adding pins and following other pinners, you get to grow a following. Pin your best articles from your website, but make sure they match popular topics on Pinterest. Take extra time to select interesting images as they will increase the likelihood that someone will share your post. Take some time to think of a great description for your pins.

6. Twitter

If you are not using Twitter to promote your site, you should start now. Twitter is a micro-blogging platform where every message can only be 140 characters long. It takes some practice, but with a little work you can create a Twitter following that will make you proud.

Two things you need to do when you set up a new Twitter profile is to create an interesting description and find an interesting background. You will also want to impress people with your rapier wit and thought-provoking style the moment they arrive. If not, at least make them believe you are more interesting than the sandwich they had for lunch.

Whatever you do, don’t immediately start promoting your product or service. This will turn people off and you’re likely to lose followers and credibility. Take the time to help others by answering questions and providing value. Selling your service or products will come later after you’ve established trust.

Start following people that are leaders in your niche. You can find them using Twitter search. Once you find the first one, you can follow their followers to quickly grow your list.

7. Writing Articles for Site Promotion

Writing articles can be a great way to establish yourself as an expert in your field. Most articles should be a minimum of 500 words. You can either write it yourself or hire a freelance writer to write one for you. It is important to post the article on a site that is in the same niche as yours. This way the people that read your article will already have an interest in your topic.

It is a good idea to pick popular sites in your niche. They usually have good traffic and you can get some from them. Don’t be surprised if you don’t get much traffic on the first article. It is generally a good idea to submit 3-4 articles at once. This way, readers see your name more than once and it gives you a great opportunity to build trust.

8. Blog Commenting

Proper blog commenting is not about creating bulk comments using an automated tool. It is about helping people and adding value to the conversation. If blog commenting is done regularly and correctly, it can be a great traffic source.

9. Posting to forums

Forum posting has received a bad rep in recent years because spammers have used these sites without providing any real value. What you want to do is the exact opposite. Forums can be a great way to learn more about your niche and eventually contribute to the community. It is usually a good idea to read and learn more in the beginning so you can get a feel for the people on the forum before you start posting.

Be careful not to directly promote your product on forums. This can be an immediate turn-off and can even get your account banned forever.

10. Blogging

We saved the best for last. If your website does not have a blog, get one. You should post engaging, well-researched articles a few times a month at a minimum. The search engines like blogs and so do readers. Just like with social media, it is important to build a community. You can use tools like Addthis.com to create sharing icons for Facebook, Twitter, and the other sites you’ve read about in this article.

Blogging can be a great way to tie all of this work together. Regular posts to your blog can be posted on Facebook, Pinterest, tweeted on Twitter, etc. These sources of traffic will help bring more people to your blog and your website.

What about that “Free Internet Traffic”?

So what about all of those websites that promise “free internet traffic” that were mentioned at the beginning of this article? Most of them use a method called traffic exchange which is the old tradition of “I’ll go to your site if you go to mine.” The problem with these is that most people will spend several hours a week going to other people’s sites. They in turn generally get very low quality traffic back to their site from people that almost never buy anything.

Conclusion

This article contains several great methods to gradually increase traffic over time. These methods don’t cost any money, but most require your time. If your goal is to establish yourself and your company as a leader in your niche, this is a great way to start.

How To Use XML Sitemaps on eCommerce Websites to Boost SEO

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XML sitemaps are powerful tools that belong in every eCommerce and web publishers toolbox. Not many people use them effectively, though. (Or at all!)

In this post: How to use them, how to get the most out of them, and some mistakes to watch out for.

Don’t depend exclusively on XML Sitemaps

XML sitemaps should be considered a supplementary or “support” tactic. You should design your site such that it’s “naturally” crawl-able by search engine spiders.

That means you should have straight links to all of your pages. Never depend on XML sitemaps for getting pages indexed. (This isn’t just dodgy SEO – it’s bad navigation, which is absolutely fundamental to any site or business!)

For more on this topic see how to set up crawling paths.

When to use XML Sitemaps?

If you have a website with 100 pages or less and it’s irregularly updated and/or generally static, you don’t need an XML sitemap. There’s no harm in having one, especially if you’re preparing for future expansion – but you’ve probably got more important things to worry about for now.

If you have a site with 1,000 pages or more, frequent changes, and/or lots of new content added regularly…then yes, you should be using XML sitemaps.

If you have a large website with over 10,000 pages, or one with deep content (content that requires more than 4 clicks from the homepage to reach), then you absolutely need to use XML sitemaps.

How Many Sitemaps Does My eCommerce Website Need?

According to the Google help files for sitemaps, you can list up to 50,000 files in a single sitemap. This covers almost every website out there (except ultra-large sites like CNN or Microsoft.)

However a much more effective and easier to maintain configuration, is to use multiple sitemaps. We suggest breaking up your sitemaps into logical groupings such as:

  • Products Only – This XML file will list only individual products, and will be modified as new products are added/removed.
  • Categories Only – This XML file will have only the category or department pages.
  • Boilerplate Pages – This XML file will have the static boilerplate pages like “contact us”, “about us”, privacy, TOS, etc.
  • Editorial Pages – This XML file will have links to any editorial, articles, or informational sections and pages your website may have.
  • Blog – This XML file will have links to your blog pages. It should have listing for individual posts, archives, tags, author pages and any other templates you are using.

You can have more than one sitemap per segment, but it’s really unlikely that you’ll ever need to. (If you have 50,000 products, for instance, surely you’re better off getting rid of the weaker performing ones altogether so that you can focus on the good ones!)

Common XML Sitemap Mistakes

  • Listing files that are blocked in Robots.txt. Don’t include files you are blocking from being indexed.
  • Not changing the <Last Modified> tag. This is an optional tag but if you are going to include it make sure you update it whenever a file changes.
  • Submitting files that no longer exist. Remove files that no longer exist on your website from all XML files.
  • Submitting duplicate files with parameters. Duplicate content on an eCommerce website is a bad thing, don’t create that situation if you can avoid it
  • Not pinging after an update – When you update an XML sitemap, the best thing to do is ping the search engines, while they will eventually find the new file, being proactive speeds up the process.

Conclusion:

Sitemaps can be a powerful tool to ensure that your website is properly indexed. If you implement it intelligently, you can get lots of value with minimum effort and maintenance required.

Image credit: BigStockPhoto/Alexstar

How to Optimize Your Images for eCommerce SEO

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Optimizing images for SEO is a controversial, overlooked and underutilized tactic.

The main argument against it is that it encourages image theft and hot-linking. That might be a small price to pay in comparison to the potential payoff, though.

However, keywords can lead to conversions. Consider phrases like “Wynn hotel room pictures”, “angry birds halloween costume”, or “navy blue one piece swimsuit”.

Users searching for such images are often researching those products, and may be planning to buy them. (Even for those who aren’t, you get the opportunity to imprint your brand upon them.) They will often bookmark your pages and comeback to them later and make a purchase.

In this article we will take a look at some the best tactics for accomplishing that goal.

Optimizing Image File Names: Use Keywords

From an organizational workflow perspective, it makes sense for most eCommerce retailers to name their images with a product number (or SKU), as this helps them to quickly match images to their respective products.

This is a wasted opportunity from an SEO perspective, as your product numbers or SKU’s have little relevance to anybody outside of your store. Customers search using natural language using search terms such as “small gold hoop earrings” and not “sku 345812345″”. You’re missing out.

A compromise would be to include both keyword terms and SKU’s in the naming of images files. You could do <gold-hoop-earrings-3432.jpg> or  <3432-gold-hoop-earrings.jpg>.

The first gets better priority on search engines (because of keyword prominence), but we recommend using the second – it makes life much easier for the people responsible for your site’s day-to-day maintenance. You save them time and effort, which can ultimately be put to better use on less mindless minutiae.

Next you’ll want eliminate stop words and low value keywords, and replace the spaces with a delimiter. The optimal word delimiter is a hyphen, Google and the other search engines have gotten better at working with different characters as delimiters, but there’s really no reason to be creative in this regard.

You don’t want too many keywords (which surely sets off “keyword stuffing” alarms). The fewer keywords you use the better. <12345-gold-hoop-earrings-small> is good. <12345-gold-silver-bronze-earrings-accessories-hoops-dangle>, not so good.

Search engines are pretty smart these days – if you put your image on a product page, it might just turn up when somebody searches “gold accessories”, even though it isn’t in the filename. So do everybody (and ultimately, yourself) a favour – keep it succinct.

Optimizing Image File Types
Use standard image file types such as “.jpg”, “.gif” and “.png”. Again, there’s nothing to be gained from being innovative in this area – unorthodox file extensions just look suspicious, to both users and engines.

You want to use the file type that gives you the best trade-off between image quality and file size. Experiment! Changing file types (especially for photographs) can sometimes drastically reduce file size without affecting quality too much.

Google and the other search engines can work with all three image types mentioned above, however in practice I have seen some preference given to “.jpg” and “.gif” over “.png” files.

Optimizing Image File Sizes

In recent years, search engines have begun to use file and page sizes as a secondary ranking factor. That means you’ll be punished for using oversized pictures. So it’s in your best interest to use images that have been sized to the size you are using on the page, and not resizing by using CSS or inline HTML.

Serving a 500px x 500px image and using CSS or inline code to resize it down to a 150px image is going to increase your page load time, especially on pages with multiple images like an eCommerce category page.

Make sure you save the image in a web-optimized format. Desktop image editing software often includes a preview or other “unnecessary” information which makes the file larger than it has to be.

A secondary part of image optimization concerns the pixel size. You want to make sure your images are a common size or have a common ratio of height to width. Square image sizes are the safest as search engines understand these the best. If you are going to go with rectangular sizes, your safest bet is to choose something with a 3:4 or 4:3 height to width ratio or a ratio that matches the golden ratio. if your image has height to width ratio which falls “too far” outside of one those common aspects you are working from a disadvantage.

EXCEPTION: Conventional desktop wallpaper sizes have immunity against this, because they’re common and widespread.

Optimizing Images with Magnification Software

Lately, many retailers have begun to use image magnification software, to allow customers to zoom in and see the items in detail while shopping.

This provides a great user experience, but it can works against your SEO. Most of the software uses flash or AJAX, which renders the image file invisible to search engines.

So you need to either do user agent agent detection and serve a straight image to the search engine spiders, or use a <noscript> tag. Serving content strictly based on user agent does fall under the technical definition of “bad cloaking”, so ideally using these two solutions in conjunction with each other would prevent you from looking like you are trying to “trick” the search engines.

Of course, this is ultimately a trade-off you must make. If your customers love being able to zoom in, then you should give them what they want. If they’re generally indifferent to it, though, then you might as well get rid of it.

Optimizing Images With Alt Tags

ALT Attribute Tag was originally created for visually impaired browsers or other screen readers to let the user know what the image they couldn’t see was showing. (Fun fact: Did you know that there’s alt text commentary on every xkcd comic?) Search engines do give some weight to the text contained in an ALT attribute. Be descriptive, but don’t stuff. (Follow the same guidelines for naming your image – 3 to 5 words is plenty.)

Optimizing Images with Heading Text & Surrounding Text

Placing the keywords that you want to rank for and that accurately describe the image in a Hx Heading Tag and in the surrounding text give the search engines more hints about what the image is actually a picture of. Be descriptive.

Optimizing Images for Conversions

If you are going to perform image optimization the most critical aspect is optimizing for keywords that are going to bring customers that will bring them into the conversion funnel. For example, optimizing an image for [Bellagio Hotel Room] is very likely to bring in a consumer who has high intent of booking a hotel room at the Bellagio Hotel if you can keep them on the information scent.

Takeaways from this article:

  • Optimize your image file names with 3-5 words omitting stop words and using hyphens as a word delimiter
  • Optimize your image file types with common images file format like “.jpg” and “.gif”
  • Optimize image file size to make your images as small and fast loading as possible
  • Optimize your image file size to be square, or well proportioned rectangles
  • If you are using image magnification software, use alternate search engine friendly implementations like <noscript> to get your larger images indexed
  • Optimize your images with descriptive alt tags, without overstuffing them full of commercial keywords
  • Use heading and surrounding text to re-enforce keywords
  • Choose image keywords that are likely to get browsers who have a good possibility of turning into customers

Image credit: BigStockPhoto/t.s.choong

Why Ecommerce Sites Need to be Aware of Google Updates

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All eCommerce sites should embrace SEO principles. Complying with Google’s best practice guidelines improves the likelihood that you’ll rank higher in search results, which is a good thing.

However, these rules aren’t set in stone. Occasionally the search engines will update their algorithms, and this can render existing techniques obsolete.

So you can’t quite “set-it-and-forget-it”. SEO isn’t future-proof. You have to be prepared for updates, so that you can adapt and adjust accordingly.

Easier said than done when you’ve got a busy eCommerce business to run!

Beware of the Panda

The Google Panda update in 2011 demonstrated how a major algorithm change can drastically impact the rankings of millions of websites. This saw the search engine cracking down on sites with poor or duplicate content, demoting many overnight. eCommerce sites took some of the hardest hits.

Businesses relying on flimsy on-page content or generic descriptions went from the first page to nowhere in the blink of an eye. This had a major impact on sales and revenue for a number of retailers. Panic ensued.

Search Engine Watched featured a story in which a furniture retailer saw a million daily visits vanish overnight and asked Google Webmaster Central for assistance.

This is is just one in a long list of struggling eCommerce sites. What would you do if your traffic halves from one week to the next? What would you think? Unless you’re already intimately familiar with search engines and how they work, and you know about their their algorithm updates, you’re in for a rude shock. Fewer visits mean fewer sales.

It happened before, and it will happen again
Panda isn’t the first time that Google has decided to mix things up a little. Back in 2009 there was the Brand Update, which made it easier for larger, more established businesses to rank higher within the search index. This hurt smaller online retailers.

Again, there’s nothing that businesses can do about this. Google are the masters of their own destiny; they can make major changes whenever they choose. Their top priority (beyond ensuring positive returns for shareholders) is to deliver the very best search results, which effectively gives them free reign to do as they wish, so long as they deliver their promise to their users. Consequently, we are all at their mercy as long as we choose to use them as our preferred search engine.

Don’t Forget the Result Pages (SERPs)
Algorithms aren’t the only things that change. Adjustments to the way in which search results are returned can also impact a site’s visibility. Search engine results pages (SERPs) are constantly evolving to incorporate new features.

In recent years, Google has made massive adjustments to the way local results are shown, incorporating videos and social results. Unsurprisingly, this has a major impact on organic results.

When images and videos were first introduced in SERPs, sites that were ranking in third or fourth positions were suddenly being nudged below the fold (i.e. searchers would have to scroll down to find them). This reduced visibility and sometimes negatively impacted the click-rate of some sites.

Things haven’t always been bad for the little guy.
Smaller eCommerce sites were given a boost by swathe of local search changes in 2010. If you were optimizing your site to appear for a particular location and had signed up for Google Places (or the Bing equivalent), visibility for your listings would’ve increased significantly.

It’s a zero-sum game (but it’s an expanding pie!)
In terms of PageRank, SEO is a zero-sum game – so when some sites gets a major boost, others must necessarily fall behind. (The number of people searching globally is increasing though, so it’s possible for you to see your hits and sales go up even if you lose PageRank.)

Respond swiftly.
It’s impossible to predict precisely what a search engine is going to do next (unless you’ve got insider information, maybe), but you can respond swiftly when changes are made. Ensuring optimal visibility is essential for any online business.

Google rankings aren’t set in stone. You do have to work on maintaining and improving them as you go along.

Search engine algorithm updates should inform your future optimisation efforts. What works one year may be redundant the next, so keeping a keen eye on what Google are doing could well save you time and money in the long run. Quality content and a usable, engaging site design are always going to be important, just as competitive pricing and excellent service will ensure your customers keep coming back.

No site is infallible (JC Penney learned this the hard way when they were punished for utilizing link schemes). So get your techniques right and your knowledge up-to-date to remain competitive in an increasingly crowded market.

Sites worth following:
Google’s Official Blog
Bing’s Official Blog
Search Engine Land – leading search industry blog

Final notes
Tactics can get outdated, but principles are eternal. The core fundamentals of SEO remain constant – make a great site that is clear, navigable, understandable with great content (or products, if you’re a retailer) that people will want to link to.

Using Rich Snippets For Product Reviews

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eCommerce Shoes

For retailers who run eCommerce websites, getting enhanced listings is a key way to improve the prominence of your listings and get more click-throughs.

In this article we will be looking at implementing rich snippets for reviews.

20120330-085747.jpg

Product Reviews for Existing Products

The first and most powerful way to get rich snippets is to add product reviews to your existing products. (We discussed how to get these reviews here.)

Once you have obtained a “critical mass” of reviews, you can add them to the product pages. You need to use the proper HTML markup to ensure that the search engines will understand and properly extract the data to display it in a rich snippet format. (Otherwise you’re not getting the most value out of those reviews!)

There’s no point being creative with conventions here – if you use something familiar, you’re more likely to get the desired snippet. If you use common styles that search engines are familiar with, you will have an easier time getting the rich snippet.

The two most common rating systems are 0-5 stars or a number rating from 0-100. Not all of the information is required, but the more information you provide, the better. First, we will be looking at adding the markup for individual reviews directly on the product page. In this example, we will be working with the following data:

Item Name: 32″ Blue Widget Holder
Item URL: http://example.com/blue-widget-holder-32/
Item Description: This wall mount will securely hold your 32″ blue widget to any wall.
Review Author: Mike G.
Review Date: 2012-03-01
Review text: This is the most secure mounting system for blue widgets I have ever used.
Rating: 4.5
Lowest Rating Score: 0
Highest Rating Score: 5

All of the specifications for product reviews can be found on Schema.org/Product. If you want a tool that’s less complex and complicated, a much easier tool can be found at Schema Creator. Ultimately, your data should look like this:

<div itemscope itemtype="http://schema.org/Review">
<a itemprop="url" href="http://example.com/blue-widget-holder-32/">
<div itemprop="name">
<strong>32" Blue Widget Holder</strong>
</div>
</a>
<div itemprop="description">
This wall mount will securely hold your 32" blue widget to any wall.
</div>
<div itemprop="reviewBody">
This is the most secure mounting system for blue widgets I have ever used.
</div>
<div itemprop="author" itemscope itemtype="http://schema.org/Person">
Written by: <span itemprop="name">Mike G.</span></div>
<div><meta itemprop="datePublished" content="2012-03-01">Date published: 03/01/2012</div>
<div itemprop="reviewRating" itemscope itemtype="http://schema.org/Rating">
<meta itemprop="worstRating" content="0"><span itemprop="ratingValue">4.5</span> / <span itemprop="bestRating">5</span> stars</div>
</div>

Each review should be wrapped in its own block of code. If you want to have separate pages for the aggregate review data and the individual reviews, you’ll have to use a slightly different implementation. Here is the basic data we will be working from:

Item Name: 32″ Blue Widget Holder
Item URL: http://example.com/blue-widget-holder-32/
Item Description: This wall mount will securely hold your 32″ blue widget to any wall.
Brand: Acme Widgets
Manufacturer: Acme
Model: wm-1-1
Product ID: 123wms
Average Review: 4
Total Reviews: 5
Price: $45
Condition: New

We’ve found http://schema-creator.org/product.php to be much easier to understand and use. Properly formatted your product data looks like this:

<div itemscope itemtype="http://schema.org/Product">
<a itemprop="url" href="http://example.com/blue-widget-holder-32/">
<div itemprop="name">
<strong>32" Blue Widget Holder</strong>
</div>
</a>
<div itemprop="description">This wall mount will securely hold your 32" blue widget to any wall.</div>
<div itemprop="brand" itemscope itemtype="http://schema.org/Organization">
<span itemprop="name">Acme Widgets</span></div>
<div itemprop="manufacturer" itemscope itemtype="http://schema.org/Organization">
Manufactured by: <span itemprop="name">Acme</span></div>
<div>Model: <span itemprop="model">wm-1-1</span></div>
<div>Product ID: <span itemprop="productID">123wms</span></div>
<div itemprop="aggregateRating" itemscope itemtype="http://schema.org/AggregateRating">
<span itemprop="ratingValue">4</span> based on <span itemprop="reviewCount">5</span> reviews</div>
<div itemprop="offers" itemscope itemtype="http://schema.org/Offer"><span itemprop="price">$45</span><link itemprop="itemCondition" href="http://schema.org/NewCondition" /> New</div></div>

Be Sensible: Test It First!
Before implementing this site-wide, the best thing to do is put up a test page and use the Rich Snippet Testing Tool. Once you have that format right, build a review submission page that links directly from your product pages. Pre-fill as much information as you possible can. The easier it is for your customer to complete the review, the more likely she is to do it. This also makes it easy for you to extract from a database and publish with the properly formatted markup.

It takes time.
After you have published the products with proper markup, you’ll need wait a while before rich snippets begin appearing. If you’re sure your page has passed the testing and is properly formatted but the rich snippet is not showing, Google has provided an FAQ on rich snippets not appearing. If none of the reasons match your case your next best option is to look in Google’s Webmaster Central Console.

SEO Concerns

When you add reviews to product page in some cases there are SEO concerns to be aware of.

Don’t cheat.
Adding fake reviews is a bad, dishonest practice, and in some jurisdictions, illegal. Just don’t do it. As a retailer, you want a healthy relationship with your customers and with the marketplace at large.

It’s best to have a review policy that allows you to edit out fake, questionable, slanderous, or offensive reviews. You don’t want to delete bad reviews, if customers feel they can’t trust you, it’s unlikely they will buy from you. There is some debate as to whether reviews with poor english, bad grammar, or lack of keyword focus can do more harm than good from an on-page SEO perspective.

So if you decide to implement this strategy, do it on a limited basis and pay attention to how adding reviews affects your rankings. If you can see a direct correlation between adding the reviews to the page and a drop in rankings, move the reviews to an auxiliary page, and only show the aggregate review data on the product pages, as this gives you a lot more control over the content the search engines see.

Adding reviews isn’t without risks, but if you are aware of them, are on the lookout for the potential problems, and can clear the biggest hurdle of getting real customers to submit them, they are a valuable asset, and can definitely improve your click through rates in the SERP’s, and add value for existing and new customers.

Image credit: Shutterstock/Ruslan Semichev

SEO for eCommerce Product Pages

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20120313-213916.jpg Previously, we looked at SEO for the eCommerce Category Page. In this article we’re going to be drilling down one step further and looking at SEO for product pages.

The URL

As with all aspects of SEO, getting the URL right is one of the key steps in the process and should not be overlooked or downplayed in importance. URLs should be as short as possible contain no more than 3-5 keywords, use standard word delimiters (such as hyphens), and standard file extensions (although using no extension is even better). Avoid using parameters if at all possible, if you need them for marketing/tracking purposes use the hashtag instead.

Bad URL Example: example.com/prod1234
Bad URL Example: example.com/prod.php?id=1234
Bad URL Example: example.com/darkbluewidget
Bad URL Example: example.com/darkbluewidget.go
Bad URL Example: example.com/buy-cheap-dark-blue-widget-cheap-online-now
Bad URL Example: example.com/dark-blue-widget/?utm_source=camp1234

Good URL Example example.com/dark-blue-widget/
Good URL Example example.com/dark-blue-widget/#src=camp1234

Putting products in a sub-directory or sub-folder, is tricky. If the sub-directory or sub-folder changes or gets renamed you have a lot of 301 redirects to deal with, and that can easily turn into a headache. However if you have thousands, tens of thousands or more of products without a sub-directory things can get messy if you’re not diligent. It can be done, it just requires a lot of discipline or things can go wrong very quickly.

Product Titles

Products should have good unique descriptive titles that describe the item, contain good keywords and are keywords customers are likely to be searching for. The more unique your titles are, the better. However, if your products are very similar, for example “3×4 Bath Mat – White”, “3×4 Bath Mat – Navy”, this can sometimes be a challenge. In all but very few cases, the product title should be first followed by a dash, hyphen, colon or other common delimiter and then the store name.

Good Title: Navy 3x4 Bath Mat - Ultimate Bathroom Store

Bad Title: Ultimate Bathroom Store – 3×4 Bath Mat Navy

Generally speaking, search engines weigh the words at the front of the title higher than words at the end. If you notice in the good example, I even moved the color in front of the name of the product. In the bad example, you can see that the color “navy” is the seventh word and will be given very little weight. In most cases the on H1 tag for the product will be the same as the title but not always. In the example above it would actually be optimal to have them be slightly different. HTML Title: Navy 3x4 Bath Mat - Ultimate Bathroom Store H1 3x4 Bath Mat, Navy. While then HTML title will be seen in the search engine listings for the product, it’s primarily for the search engines. The H1 tag which will appear on the page is more for the user and any internal search functionality.

Product Descrptions

Each product should have a unique description. The description, should be unique and different from every other product in your store, but different from every other store selling the same product as well (see preventing duplicate content on your website). Sometimes this can be a challenge if you have a large inventory, or don’t have staff/budget to rewrite product descriptions you get from the vendor/manufacturer. However, keeping the exact same description as hundreds of other merchants is a real obstacle to ranking well for products. One strategy to get around this is to make your page more unique with product reviews. If you go down this route, make sure you use the proper XML Schema Markup for product reviews.

Product Images

Customers like to see big clear pictures of the products they are shopping for. It’s even better if you can get multiple images. However large images contribute to larger file sizes, longer download times, and page speed does have an effect on rankings. So size your images properly, don’t resize a 1000×1000 image down to 250×250 with HTML or CSS. Many sites show smaller images and let you click for a larger view. This gives you the best of both worlds. If you can rename your files to match the product, you will have an advantage over merchants forced to use SKU or inventory based image naming schemes.

Internal Links

Once a customer has entered the sales funnel, you want to keep them on course, and not provide too many links for them to leave. However there are a few ways to add internal links to your benefit. The first is with breadcrumb navigation, this is the tiny text that lets you know where you are in the store hierarchy: Home >; Bath Products >; Bath Mats >; 3x4 Bath Mat, Navy If you make each of the words a link, you help your overall SEO effort by spreading internal keyword link equity. Another strategy is to show related products, add on products, or upsell other products. The best way to do this is to show 2-4 thumbnails for the products towards the bottom part of the page.

Social Media

Social media is a popular topic right now and it definitely is a part of search engine rankings. However, adding half a dozen Facebook like, Tweet this, or other buttons can make your page look busy. Additionally if you use the buttons with active voting counts (ie 17 people liked this on Facebook) you will have a negative effect on your page speed. Each of those active counts will call a different service and add approximately one second per button. If you add six buttons that’s six seconds. Be honest with yourself if your products are that social that you really need that, or can you use plain on site local images.

Takeaways from this post:

  • Get your URLs right, keep them small, straight forward, uncomplicated, and free from parameters
  • Use your HTML and H1 product titles wisely, and to your maximum benefit
  • Make your product descriptions unique not only to yourself but from other merchants
  • Look at reviews to make your pages unique
  • Keep images small, while offering consumers the ability to see larger pictures if they want
  • If possible, use keywords to name your image files
  • Link internally using breadcrumbs to help your overall SEO effort
  • Show related or add on products to increase sales, make pages more unique, and add value to the consumer

Image credit: Shutterstock/RA2 Studio

SEO for the eCommerce Category Page

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Retailers running eCommerce stores often under-utilize their category and/or department pages.

In this post we will talk about ways to maximize the contributions these pages can make to your overall SEO strategy.

Get the URL Right

Unless your eCommerce package was designed with SEO in mind, you will often find yourself with inelegant, complicated URLs that look like this:

example.com/dept.asp?dept_id=1234
example.com/dept.php?id=456&sort=price

Search engines have made tremendous strides in recent years in handling “complicated” URLs with parameters tacked onto the end. They have even come up with solution in webmaster central to let you tell them which parameters to ignore, and the rel=canonical to give Google the correct URL.

That’s no excuse for you to get sloppy though. You shouldn’t take search engines for granted, or expect them to do all the work for you. They do occasionally get things wrong, so it’s best not to have to depend on their guesswork/interpretations.

Instead, use simple category URLs like:

example.com/dept/bathroom-faucets/
example.com/kitchen-sinks/
example.com/kitchen-sinks/stainless-steel/

Use keywords instead of numbers. If it means the difference between ranking #2 instead of #4, it’s well worth the extra work. Other factors to consider:

  • Try to keep it between 3-5 keywords total
  • Use sub-folders and hierarchy where it makes sense from an information architecture standpoint, don’t do it just to add keywords
  • Use common characters as word delimiters whenever possible

Editorial Photos and Text

Most product and category pages use small thumbnails as links that lead directly to products.

If you want to increase your rankings, try adding an editorial “beauty shot” and some editorial text. Keep it at around a 100 words – long enough to weave a compelling narrative about your products and/or the lifestyle they promote, but short enough so that your products aren’t too far down down the page. Experiment with photos. Try using visually compelling images with some text mixed into them and see how they affect conversions.

Products and Thumbnails

You want to have editorial control so that you can control the default sorting order of your products, featuring your most important products first. Display a reasonable number of products by default – if you have more than 100 products per category, give consumers the ability to view all of the products at once.

Another nice feature is to give consumers the ability to sort by price, size, or other characteristics. When you add these shopping features you don’t want to create duplicate content with URLs like:

example.com/sinks/?view=all
example.com/sinks/?sort=price

When you create this situation you create the potential for search engines to choose the “wrong” ordinal page. If you have to use URLs like that add the meta noindex tag, conditionally to those pages. A better solution is to use hashtags like this:

example.com/sinks/#viewall
example.com/sinks/#sortprice

Search engines will not index URLs with the # symbol in them.

Secondly you want to make the thumbnail image a separate link from the name of the product. Both should be links, but create two HTML links, don’t wrap it in one link, it just makes things easier for the search engines to understand. Use the name of the product as the alt tag for maximum SEO value.

Internal Linking

Using breadcrumbs on all the pages in your shopping environment is a good way to increase the value of internal links, as long as you make the words links

Home: Sinks > Kitchen Sinks > Stainless Steel Sinks

However also try to create links in the editorial sections of your site as well. If you have a blog, put links in there too – but keep it natural and organic. Hard-selling blogs are a turnoff, and that’s ultimatately worse for you in the long run.

Page and File Size

Page speed and file size are currently one of the ranking factors in search algorithms. While it’s a second order factor, again it could be the difference between ranking #2 instead of ranking #4. Keep your images as small as possible, create thumbnails don’t resize using HTML, CSS or scripting. Keep JavaScript, Ajax and other scripting elements to a minimum, use asynchronous loading whenever possible, use remote files instead of inline code, and keep any inline code at the bottom of the page. Having hundreds of lines of JavaScript at the top of your pages is never a good idea. Use one remote file for each scripting type (CSS, JavaScript, etc), having multiple JavaScript files creates unnecessary calls and slows your pages down about 1 second for each file.

Takeaways from this post:

  • Keep urls as simple as possible without parameters
  • Use keywords in the urls instead of numbers whenever possible
  • Try adding editorial pictures and photos to make pages more compelling
  • Let consumers search/sort with parameters, just make sure you don’t create duplicate content
  • Link to the department/category pages from the breadcrumb area, editorial areas, and blog whenever possible
  • Keep the file size as small as possible and consolidate scripting elements to keep the pages loading quickly

Image credit: Shutterstock/Vlad_star

Enterprise Level SEO

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Enterprise level SEO concerns are different from those of smaller companies.

Smaller companies worry about creating enough content, building trust and earning inbound links.

Enterprise level SEO (for large companies) is more about keeping everyone involved moving in the same direction and avoiding “friendly fire” that sabotaging the overall SEO effort.

Here are some of the most common SEO issues faced by large companies.

URL Structure

Large websites have lots of URLs, sometimes running into the millions. Such large quantities are impossible for individuals to deal with on their own. It is utterly vital to have clear systems of managing and organizing these pages.

For small sites, using directories is optional; for larger sites, it’s a requirement. Keep directory trees elegant and simple. There is almost never a need for a directory tree to be more than four levels deep. Example:

Home > All Stores > State > City > Individual Store

Another common URL problem is having identical or nearly identical content on more than one URL. This often happens when a unique page is created for ad hoc marketing or advertising purposes, and the information gets duplicated when a similar event happens in the future.

You have 3 options:

  1. Recycle these URLs
  2. Have an archiving strategy that lets people see/use the content but blocks it from the search engines.
  3. Unique content every time.

Writing For People vs Search Engines

Effective communication is context-dependent. Ornate, flowery language can be beautiful, yes, but isn’t necessarily the best way of doing things.

However, you need to “sell” to everyone who creates and publishes content for the website that they are writing for the people who use search engines, not for the machines.

People have credit cards. People search for and buy stuff. Machines don’t. Depending on who is in charge of what departments and how entrenched and senior they are, this is often an uphill battle.

The debate over writing good content and good titles for search engines has been going on for years and won’t go away any time soon.

Here’s how it is – really good titles for search engines get more clicks than weaker titles. Really good content gets shared more (on social media, for example). It gets more inbound links.

Accessible Content

Big organizations have bigger budgets, and bigger budgets allow for extensive, expensive flash or video content. However, to a search engine, that type of content is a mystery box they can’t see inside of. I have heard more than one CEO say they want something on a website to sizzle, followed up by a slick flash production. Try telling them the 10k they spent creating that was “wasted” from a search engine perspective – they would have been better off spending $100 on having a well written page created instead.

IP Delivery and Language Specific Content

If you are working on a large website, chances are good it’s a multi-national corporation. How you address giving users the content they want is a complicated issue with lots of solutions and no clear “best practice.” Some companies use one domain and use sub domains or sub folders for different languages. Others use country specific TLD’s ie .ca for Canada, .co.uk for the United Kingdom, .de for Germany and so on. Other companies try to detect what country the user is coming from and redirect/serve content based on that information. However as an English speaking American, I can say that Google redirecting me to Google.mx and serving me the Spanish version of my Google calendar was less than helpful when I was on vacation in Cancun Mexico. So think carefully about the pros and cons of each solution.

Redesigns and Redirections

Many large companies “re-invent” or rebrand themselves every so often. This usually involves a website redesign. If a website was designed properly with CSS (see CSS Zen Garden as an example of a properly designed CSS website), the redesign is a non issue.

But that’s the best case scenario. The real world is usually a lot messier. A redesign can have a huge impact on SEO, rankings, and traffic if improperly handled.

Websites are often completely re-structured during such redesigns.  The higher the percentage of URLs that move/change, the worse this is from an SEO perspective. In the real world, a redesign and restructure/redirection make sense. From an SEO perspective, it’s like living on the coast and learning a category 5 hurricane will make landfall in your backyard.

It’s a huge problem and if you don’t prepare for it, you could see your traffic plummet for weeks or months.

If possible, break the project into two phases and address the redesign and restructure separately. Learn how to do 301 redirects, check to make sure that they are working, and try not to change too much at one time if at all possible.

Enterprise level SEO is about management. It’s about learning how to communicate and manage expectations of what search engines are looking for, understanding those limitations, and playing to them.

It’s also about getting as many people (especially “C” level executives) to understand that they can’t resolve these issues by simply throwing money at them. It requires thoughtful, purposeful action.

Image credit: Shutterstock/61151038

Basic eCommerce SEO Checklist

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So you’re looking at eCommerce packages or maybe thinking about having a custom shopping cart written for you. What are the basic SEO items you need to make sure you have?

SEO Friendly URLs – Each product should have its own unique URL and should not have parameters.

Example.com/blue-widget/ – good
Example.com/product?id=123 – bad

While search engines are much more sophisticated than they used to be and can understand parameters in URLs, the fewer things you do to complicate the issue the better. You should be able to specify the keywords in the URL, keep the URLs as short as possible, use only keywords, remove stop words, and don’t stuff with extra keywords. If you change the product slightly or modify any of the information, you should be able to keep the URL intact.

Product Titles
Each page should have a unique title that is not identical or similar to any other product you are selling. Unless you are a Fortune 100 Company or are a household brand name, the name of the product should come before the name of your company or store.

Product Meta Description
While this isn’t a direct ranking factor, it still is important that every item has a unique meta description. Having multiple products with identical or nearly identical meta descriptions is a signal of low quality.

HTML and XML sitemaps
Every eCommerce store with more than 100 items should have an HTML and XML sitemap. It should automatically update as you add or remove products.

Breadcrumbs
Breadcrumbs are the small text navigation that shows where you are in the eCommerce hierarchy. They often look like this:

Home > Shoes > Women’s Shoes > Sneakers

Each word should be a link back to its category or sub-category page

Category & Sub Category Pages
If you have more than 100 items, you will need some categorization or breakdown so customers can shop. The URLs should be SEO friendly

Example.com/shoes/womens-shoes/sneakers/ – good
Example.com/category?id=5678 – bad

Again, search engines can figure out complicated URLs, but it’s in your best interest to keep it simple, easy to understand, and to inject some keyword value wherever you can. If you want your category pages to rank, you will need to add some editorial content, like a picture and text. If you are using images and text on the category pages, make sure both link to the product page for usability. Use the product name as the alt tag for usability and SEO value. If you have any sorting features, such as sort by price or relevancy, don’t let those URLs get indexed by the search engines. Block them using a meta tag. You should also be able to control the default sorting order of the products.

Navigation and Crawlability
Your eCommerce website should be easy for users to navigate and for search engines to crawl. You can test this with any free or commercial spider simulators such as screaming frog. The more complex your navigation and the more levels deep your products are, the less likely it is that search engines will fully index all of your products.

Product Categorization
In the early days of eCommerce, products could only be in one category, but this is not a limitation that modern shopping carts should have. You should be able to put products in one primary category and multiple other categories or featured departments. This gives you the ability to create special, holiday, or other themed groupings.

Merchandising
Your eCommerce solution should give you the ability to create directly or create a file to control how the homepage of your store looks. Ideally, you should be able to have both graphic and textual elements. If you can have editorial feature shots, that’s a plus. If you can have multiple editorial items that rotate or display randomly, that’s better. The more control you have to prioritize things, the better. The items on your homepage should be the most important from an SEO perspective.

Page Size
You want to keep your pages loading as quickly as possible. Use good sized images, but don’t serve a 1000×1000 pixel image and display it at 300×300 using CSS or HTML. Keep external scripts, images, CSS, and other elements to a minimum.

Checkout
Block everything from the shopping cart into checkout and completion from being indexed using the nofollow tag. It serves no value in a search engine.

From an SEO perspective, the more of these items you can have built in or customized into your package, the better.

Image credit: Shutterstock/pressureUA