Very often the owners of online stores think it can insert in your e-commerce hundreds if not thousands of products to increase access from search engines, only to discover that it does not work right!
The problem is that optimize an e-commerce search engines is not as simple as optimizing a blog or a corporate website with a few pages, since most of the time you have to deal with dozens of products that are added or deleted from the catalog in a short time, and all that makes SEO for e-commerce one of the most difficult tasks in the field of search engine marketing.
And then the 7 SEO Mistakes of a typical e-commerce site.
1. Product Description absent
Unless your products are not rare or have very little competition, it will be really hard to appear in the top 10 research if the card is completely missing a description.
A measure for the amount of text needed for the description can be obtained by counting the words used in the navigation menu in the sidebar, in the footer and any other block of text in the data sheet blank, and try to enter a unique description length higher than the previously calculated value, to ensure that it has a weight greater than the default text.
Obviously the higher the amount of text inserted only in the description of the product, the greater the benefits in terms of SEO, but it is well to consider that:
> You need to enter texts that help visitors to make decisions on the purchase of the product
> We do not recommend copying texts from other websites, search engines may penalize
> It is best not to overdo it with the length of the texts, could be annoying
2. Use the description of the producers
If you want your items to be excluded from the search results, then use the descriptions provided directly from manufacturers!
The problem is that most online stores use this practice, and not only Google does not like duplicate content but recently has openly declared war on those who copy the text on the web. The best solution is to write unique texts, always.
Who manages e-commerce with hundreds of products might have some difficulty since it is an activity that requires a lot of time, but a suggestion would be to focus its attention on the best-selling products, the ones that generate the most profit or suffering more competition on the SERP.
3. No reviews
About 70% of consumers look for information on the internet before buying a product. Allowing customers to write a review about your products not only allow you to increase the ' audience capturing a large segment of users searching for information, but will also facilitate positioning of the product cards with text content in the theme generated by the comments.
The advantage of the user reviews is twofold:
> Generates unique content for free
> The page is still "alive", and this is a very pleasing to the search engines
4. Do not optimize products based on the search engines
A typical error of e-commerce with a very nice catalog cards is that the products are not really optimized taking into account the query entered by users on search engines.
Here are some tips:
> enter the make of the product in the H1 tag and the title of the page
> do not forget to enter the ' alt attribute to the images
> Not over optimize your pages by entering the keywords too many times
> Never use iframe to display content
5. Duplicate titles
Another problem faced by online stores is larger than the duplicate title tag. Sometimes it can be difficult to try to differentiate the titles if the catalog offers many similar items, even the same brand.
A good practice would be to include in the title: Brand - Model - Type
6. URL not optimized
Optimize the URLs to pages giving addresses keyword rich, containing keywords, certainly brings some benefits.
There are many e-commerce sites that do not take this into account, only apparently marginal, and leave the URL "unreadable", with the ID of product and / or a series of parameters due to the dynamic nature of the web-site.
Here are some advantages of using optimized URL:
> Users can already get an idea of what they'll find on the page before you even click on the URL
> URL is too long and unreadable could be mistaken for spam attempts
> If other sites link to your pages should the presence of keywords in the URL would ensure the presence of keywords in the ' anchor text
> The presence of keywords in the URL is still a factor of positioning on search engines, although Google is reducing the weight
7. Duplicate content
The most common problem in e-commerce sites is represented by duplicate content, generated for example by filtering systems products, from research, from the archives, the content formatted for printing but also from the structure of the website.
Let's say we need to load in our e-commerce data sheet LED TV Samsung 32 "model UE32EH5000W : Depending on the structure of our shop it is likely that this product is included in the categories "LCD TV", "SAMSUNG", "DA-32 -A-42-INCH "and that, for a limited period, is also in promotion. His card may be accessible from the URL:
1. http://www.yourwebsite.com/samsung-tv-led-modelno123
2. http://www. yourwebsite.com / led tv / samsung-tv-led-modelno123
3. http://www. yourwebsite.com.it/ -led tv / samsung / samsung-tv-led-modelno123
4. http://www. yourwebsite.com / tv-led / by-32-to-42-inch / samsung-tv-led-modelno123
5. http://www. yourwebsite.com / products-in-offer / samsung-tv-led-32-ue32eh500w
This particular problem can be solved through the use of the tag " rel = "canonical ", which indicates to the search engines which URL should be considered during indexing.
Here are some tips to minimize duplication of content:
> use the robots.txt file to restrict access to the sections that create duplicate content, such as archives, tags and categories
> use the canonical tag to indicate to search engines to index the URL
> use the ' nofollow attribute on links that point to areas with duplicate content
The golden rule of SEO
Want to be rewarded by Google? So indulge your users!
As is well known, the search engine Google takes into account its users and their browsing experience, so make your e-commerce useful and functional customers will earn his respect.
Greater the time spent consultation of your pages and navigation of the catalog, the lower the "bounce rate ", one of the main factors considered by Google to determine the quality of the contents of a website.
And you, what other errors optimization for search engines you have found in your e-commerce site or that of your competitors?
About the author: Abel Wike is a content manager at ClickSSL, GeoTrust SSL Reseller. She enjoys the challenges of creativity and attention to detail.
Img: Peter Stark
