Optimizing Your Online Storefront for Search Engines

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Part 3 in a Series of SEO Tips for Ecommerce Success.

Last week, we posted an article entitled Ecommerce Keyword Research: Finding the Best Profit Driving Keywords for Your Online Store.  This post detailed the various ways to research keywords and determine a keyword strategy to drive traffic and profit for your ecommerce site.  Once you have created a list of keywords that you want to rank in search engines for, the next step is to optimize your storefront for these keywords.  Luckily, the best ecommerce software makes search engine optimization (SEO) a priority so that merchants can remain competitive.  Unfortunately, if you don’t know what keywords to target, or how best to implement them, then these SEO tools quickly become null and void.  This post will focus on the common SEO tools available in ecommerce solutions and how to use them to optimize your online store.

Please note that this is a continuation of the keyword post mentioned above and assumes that you have read that article and have already prioritized your target keywords.  Once prioritized, you should take your highest priority keywords and optimize multiple pages for them.  Make sure that these are your highest level pages (home page, top category pages). Your lower priority keywords should just get one or two pages of optimization and live in a deeper level of your site.  To optimize a page for your keywords, try to put the keyword in the content at least 3-5 times.  Do not stuff your content with the keyword, because that is spam.  Also, if your content is overstuffed with keywords, it will be hard to read and even harder to convert a visitor into a customer.

Breakdown of Ecommerce SEO Tools:

The common SEO Tools available in an ecommerce solution are as follows: Custom Meta and Title tags, image alt attributes, the ability to add HTML to product/category pages, and the inclusion of H tags.  Top ecommerce software takes things a step further by including the following SEO tools: 301 redirects, SEO friendly URLs, customizable URLs, and the ability to add custom HTML pages.  Whether these tools seem like too many to handle or even too little, if used properly they can combine to create a well optimized online store.

Meta and Title Tags:

The ability to customize meta and Title tags is one of the most common features available in ecommerce software.  These tags do two things:

1. Tell search engines like Google what your web page is about
   In other words, if you want a page to rank for a specific keyword, you should place this keyword in your meta and Title tags.
2. Tell search engines like Google what to display in search results
   Look at the top of your browser. Do you see the part at the top that says “Optimizing
   your Online Storefront for Search Engines?”  That’s the Title tag.  When you’re doing a search in Google, you’ll notice that results display with a line of blue bold text followed by two lines of supporting text.  The blue bold text is the Title tag for that page and the supporting text is generally the description tag.

Some common rules apply to these tags:

1. Never repeat a Title or description tag (each tag must be unique to the page it’s on)
2. Do not stuff Title and description tags with keywords, because this is spam
3. Put the keyword you are targeting in the beginning of your Title and description tags
4. The keyword meta tag is no longer relevant to Bing, Yahoo, and Google, so do not waste your time with this tag if you don’t have the time to spare

As you can see, these tags are important.  You should be filling these out for every single page of your online store, and your ecommerce solution should make this easy to do when you edit each page.  Beyond adding the keyword you are targeting to your Title and description tag, also consider making them both catchy.  Since these are what appear in search engines, these tags will be the first thing your customer sees about your site and can also encourage or discourage a user from clicking on the search result to visit your site in the first place.

Image ALT Attributes:

Many ecommerce solutions let you add the ALT and/or Title attribute to your images.  This is a great way to add another instance of your keyword to a page while still remaining relevant to your user.  The ALT attribute supplies alternate text for the user if they are unable to view the image.  This is also a great way to increase sales to those who cannot view an image, so try to make your ALT attribute descriptive while not exceeding 5-8 words.

Ability to Add HTML to Product/Category Pages

Search engines love unique and rich content pages.  This is because their primary goal is to serve up the best possible content to the end user.  Because of this, you should take the chance to add content to your online store wherever possible (provided it doesn’t distract from the sale).  This content should be complimentary to your products and categories by better describing them.  On product and category pages, your keyword target should be the product/category name, so it will be easy to include the keyword in this content without being spammy and while still providing a great service to your visitors.

The Inclusion of H Tags

The Heading Tag (H tag) is a standard HTML tag that formats important text (headings) to stand out on a page.  Because this text is important, search engines also give it more weight, as this content is usually what a user reviews when skimming a page.  Good ecommerce software incorporates the H tag and the best ecommerce solutions let you code out H tags in their WYSIWYG editors.  Make sure your H tags are relevant, and include your target keyword in at least one H tag on the page your are optimizing.

301 Redirects

If you’re moving from one ecommerce solution to another, then this feature is a MUST.  While the best of the best ecommerce solutions provide this feature, many don’t state this in their feature list, so it is always good to double check by doing a free trial before purchasing.  A 301 redirect tells search engines that you are permanently redirecting an old URL to a new one.  When you move ecommerce solutions, it is likely that your URLs will change for product and category pages.  If you were ranking in search engines for these pages before, then you will definitely want to 301 redirect any old URLs to their matching new ones.  This ensures that search engines like Google know that the page they previously ranked is now the same page, just on a new URL.  If you don’t do this, Google will likely take that page out of their rankings and you will have to wait for the new URL to rank in it’s place, which could be a huge hit to your profits.

SEO Friendly URLs & Custom URLs

A common theme in SEO is the fact that, if it’s good for the user, the search engine wants you to do it.  Think about the last time you visited a site with a crazy long URL that had a large amount of special characters in it (?,@,=,+,etc.).  Unless you’re Rain Man, it’s unlikely that you could remember this URL.  URLs like this are common among database driven websites, like an online store.  Luckily, ecommerce software companies have worked hard to implement SEO friendly URLs, which get rid of the “dynamic URL” or muddy URL with many special characters.  These URLs are still likely to appear in search results, but all other pages of your ecommerce solution should allow for SEO friendly URLs, which clean everything up.  SEO friendly URLs are also user friendly, because they are easy to remember for anyone who is not Rain Man, which is one reason why search engines like them.

Taking SEO friendly URLs a step further, many ecommerce solutions like CoreCommerce and 3dcart let you edit your URLs.  Customizing your URLs is a great opportunity because you can (and should) place your target keyword in the URL of the page your are optimizing.  This helps tell search engines what your page is about as well as your users.

Adding Custom HTML Pages

Last week, I showed an example of a site for a personal trainer in Los Angeles named Becky Tinney.  Her site is built on the BigCommerce platform.  The majority of the site consists of static HTML pages which are content rich and could easily be optimized for search engines.  This allows  Becky the ability to have a full HTML website while also utilizing the tools of her ecommerce solution including the ability to sell workout videos, send email newsletters, and more.  Having HTML surrounding pages in your online store not only improves the user experience by providing them with relevant information, but it also helps you add unique and rich content that targets the keywords you want to rank for.

Optimizing Your Ecommerce Site: Conclusion

As you can see, each SEO tool has its own unique purpose within an ecommerce solution.  Above are simply the most common SEO features available in ecommerce software, but there are often other options as well.  If you have a question about an SEO tool that wasn’t covered (or one that was), don’t hesitate to post your question to the comments section and it will be answered.

Over the course of the next week, start utilizing these tools.  Search engines take time to rank a site, even after changes, like those mentioned in this article, are made.  On page optimization is a large part of improving your position in search results, but there are many other factors that play into a good ranking in Google.  Next week, I’ll discuss one of these factors: Links.  Stay Tuned.

Posts in this Series
Part 1: Choosing an SEO Firm To Drive Traffic to Your Online Store
Part 2: Finding Profit Driving Keywords to Optimize Your Online Store
Part 3: Optimizing Your Online Storefront for Search Engines
Part 4: Understanding PageRank to Optimize Your Online Store
Part 5: 13 Ecommerce Link Building Tactics For Your Online Store