Ecommerce site issues are aggravated by grave SEO mistakes. Mere listing of products on ecommerce website is certainly not the best route to run a successful business, much contrary to the belief of most of the online merchants who think otherwise. The reality is that search engine traffic will not pour in simply by the act of listing products and services online.
Ecommerce SEO Mistakes
Following are certain common SEO errors committed by most ecommerce websites online.
1. Absence of Product Description
Most Online gift stores as well as retail merchandisers commit the common error of refraining from having a text description of the product put up on their site. Mere visuals are not suffice when such an error could risk these online merchants of their websites or blogs being eluded from the top search engine queries of the world wide web. More so, this error could even risk their chances in case of low-frequency queries to destroy their chances of being demonstrated amidst many of the search results on their search engines. Although the proverb ‘picture speaks a thousand words’ is true, one cannot transgress the significance of the proverb ‘pen is mightier than the sword.’ So as to say, your website or blog should be an optimal combination of visuals and content if you so desire to make it a profitable venture online.
A formidable mode to measure the uniqueness of your content, as suggested by most SEO analysts, requires the measurement of default word count in the product page. Your default word count should represent all the words that may be comprised in your text, sidebar, footer, navigation, amidst others and which could be optimally included in the blank product page. However, your “default” word count should be lesser than the formulated unique text so as to render you prominence in the lettered arena of displaying an unique content.
A well formulated unique content will certainly aid in enhancing your SEO efforts. However, you ought to be aware of certain facts before doing so. As a measure of caution, it is best to adhere to the following pointers:
- Your website’s descriptive content should be directly proportional for triggering your customer’s decisions of purchase.
- Your content should be fully original as copying the same from other websites would have you paying damages fined by the search engines online.
- As a test, it is better if you take measure of the description word count which would aid in your customer’s decision of purchase. Likewise, loading too much content might make it look spammy.
2. Copied Product Descriptions
Mere adding of manufacture descriptions would not only have your website filtered by many of the search engines, but also would have it possibly banned by the search engines. In other words, leaving the text by copying the same from its manufacturer’s details would make it appear spammy, resulting in it being classified as a non-unique content from Google. Moreover, most of these manufacturer descriptions do not have a marketing agenda attached to them which is why they are rather unattractively put forth.
The principle of unique content always dwells around the idea of marketing and selling your products and services online. Also, duplicating or scrapping content from other web pages has been shunned by Google by the administrators ultimately lowering website rankings and even getting some of them actually banned.
As to how to generate an unique content can be a rather tedious task to ponder upon. NO INDEX meta tag on product pages bars you from writing unique content for the product category. Which is why it is certainly a prudent move to keep all the no unique content pages out of search engine ranges. A professional expert in SEO would advise you not to indulge in incorporating automatically generated content from webpages, as a means to generate traffic. Doing this could also defeat the norms required to be adhered for formulating unique content on your website. Your SEO expert can enable you website occupy a good standing on the search engine results, by having a well formulated unique content on it rather than blindly proceeding to tag on the manufacturer’s product descriptions.
3. A website sans Product Reviews
Most buyers online seek product reviews for enhancing their purchasing decisions optimally. Moreover, site reviews can add to the site’s authenticity more than anything else. Also, it is very easy for a website incorporating product reviews to authenticate its unique content so as to reach the top of search rankings without much obstructions.
Amazon.com is the best example of online business success, wherein the site has many reviews for its books, or gadgets placed therein. Which is why the site exudes authenticity by encouraging a whole community of book or product lovers to share their respective experiences with the larger audiences wanting to make their purchase.
Some of the attributes embodied in product reviews are:
- They enable unique content creation for your online business without much strain or obstruction
- They add to the authenticity of the product page , whereby customer purchase decisions are accelerated successfully. Such site can also garner better search engine rankings also stimulated by customer opinions or word of mouth referrals.
4. Product Pages not based on Search demands
As an online merchant, you ought t be fully aware with the SEO basics as much as know of the keywords which stir up customer sentiments in enabling their purchase decisions. As such, you have to understand that your content headlines and product descriptions, amongst certain other parameters would ne appearing on search engines. Which is why your product page information or description should necessarily correlate with search demands. Ore else, no matter how unique your content is, nobody would be watching or seeing it in the search results. For instance, the keyword phrase “Rosy Hill Design” could be optimized by using keyword phase “Design Rosy Hill” or something which your SEO analyst would suggest to improve its visibility on search engine rankings.
Following are certain tips to enable product page optimization
- Your H1 headings as well as title tags should necessarily contain precise model numbers.
- Your H1 headings as well as title tags should embody product brand names
- Image alt tag information is a necessary must in this new age of information!
- Repeating keyword phrases over and over again would make the content appear spammy so refrain from doing the same
- Displaying your content should never ever be done with iframes. Your product pages should actually contain the content.
5. Having Non-Unique headlines in your unique content
Duplicated title tags or even including non-unique title tags or headlines is something online merchants should refrain from. Likewise, refraining from adding identical values should be the simple rule which deserves to be followed in the online arena of SEO guidelines.
Unique title tags should be formulated with proper care and expertise especially when you have multiple product line displayed from the same brand, or identical products from several brands in the market scenario. Refrain from the mistake of repeating the same keywords many times to avoid the description appear duplicated. Many significant Search engines support the utilization of unique key phrases which is why duplicating of product description is a practice very much negated by them.
Likewise, most of the online shoppers like to notice key phrase which do not resemble many of the others in the web scenario and which have a single word identity. This mode of tagging a unique title especially is optimal for depiction of “band-model” title tag in one’s site online. As such, have your title tag structured as : Brand – Model – Item format. In doing so, your description of Honda sports coupe could best appear as “Burton Aftermath Snowboard 2013.″
Surveying your customers to check out the best ingredients they look for or the language they prefer to see while searching a particular product type, would enable you garnish your unique content formidably. Likewise, it could also enable you render insight into the phrases you could use for marketing your products with effective title tags or unique headlines placed in your website appropriately.
6. Display of mechanical URLs
Your website need not be static and which is why including purely mechanical or unvocal URLs is a strict no-no! Likewise, to cite an example, http://www.givemebook.com/ebook/harry-potter-and-the-prisoner-of-azkaban-65 is a “keyword friendly URL” which should be essentially placed in your book website address. Your SEO professional could render you help in creating this URL for your products visible in the website. Making inclusion of anonymous IDs should be strictly refrained from, which in doing so could easily enhance the profile uniqueness of your site.
Active or speaking URLs would include:
- The right display of Semantics: With this mode, your customer can easily know what they would be seeing on clicking the respective URL. Avoid long URLs which would be visibly unattractive as well as spammy in relating to.
- Anchor Link Privileges: Getting keywords incorporated in anchor text would be suffice to drive your website all the way to top of the search engine rankings.
- Mention of only relevant keywords: Keywords in the URL certainly have to be relevant to the whole context and the content. Having done so, relevancy in keywords could be of great assistance in choosing your domain names. Although, many search engines such as Google do not focus on this issue with great priority, display of relevant keywords is no doubt of significant importance for enhancing your website’s marketing content.
7. Duplicating your Content
There are lot of actions and online technicalities which spur up one’s duplication of content. Knowingly or unknowingly, if you make it a habit to constantly formulate archives with several elements, or inclusion of tags, would easily lead to duplication. Which is why it is optimal for using indexed mode preferable to be closed in robots.txt. Following are some pointers to reduce duplication in your website:
- As aforementioned, make use of robots.txt to completely avoid the areas which generate duplication in content be it your archives, or the tag category.
- Canonical tag would render you the idea of which content would preferably be indexed by you as well as let other search engines informed on the pages they ought to give notice to. This type of tag works best in the scenario wherein you would have the same product lines placed in more than one pages, but you would want to differentiate one form the other on the basis of mention of its reviews and user comments.
- Adding no-follow attributes to your linked URLs would be suffice to render viewers of the duplication. However, you have to be clear and accurate about the links which need to be warped with a no-follow attribute. If you skip any of the links which deserve an no-follow attributes, Google will trace them.
Usability is the necessary action word to be used for enhancing your SEO content
Google is very particular about satisfying its user experiences. In doing so, Google traces for the convenience rendered by many of the online ecommerce portals in satisfying the customer experiencing. If you can create usability and convenience for your customers, it will be rated highly by Google.
Likewise, if Google traces significant amount of people spending time on your site, without having the need to occupy themselves with more searching online, Google will find your website a preferable source for the business category. In which case, your website will be highly recommended by Google to people searching for that particular consumption base.
Lastly but most importantly, your website higher search rankings could in fact result from people who have liked your website. Needless to say, these people finding the usability of your website preferable to many others, would certainly link it and which would ultimately result in your website garnering even more popularity.
