Ecommerce Websites

What is Search Engine Optimization(SEO)?

Potential customers enter search terms and phrases (e.g. buy watches) into a search engines (e.g. Google, Yahoo). Google then displays the relevant results based on the search term. Search engines utilize complex algorithms (long calculations based on variables and parameters) to search your pages in order to determine if your site suits the search terms. Then based upon their algorithm they place a level of importance on your site in relation to the search term and accordingly output your site link in their results in the order determined by importance relative to the search term/phrase.

However, a site must be configured using various techniques that make it a search engine friendly site. Certain sites are constructed in a manner that makes it difficult for the search engines to read and determine what products or services they sell; these sites will never attain a good placement in the search engine results. Search engine friendly sites are constructed using techniques that are approved by the search engines and display their data in a way that is easily found and read by the search engine; thus giving the site the potential for a top place in the search results for their products and services.

We have designed our shopping cart around a search engine friendly structure and employed all approved search engine techniques, as listed below.

(1) Individual meta tags for each product and product category:

The meta tags are displayed in the top section of the source code on every page. Although not visible to the public, they are read by the search engines and assist the search engine in determining the subject matter of each page. This then assists the search engine in determining if your page matches the search criteria entered by the individual searching for your products. Our shopping cart will automatically add your product title and description to the meta tags, with the single click of a button. There is also an option to manually edit each individual tag for a specific product.

E.g. of a meta tag

<title>Watches for sale</title>
< META NAME="DESCRIPTION" CONTENT="We specialize in top brand name watches such as rolex and seiko.">
< META NAME="KEYWORDS" CONTENT="watches, seiko, rolex, cartier">

Now a person searching for watches or Rolex or Seiko etc.. will have a better chance of finding your site.

(2) Optimized urls:

The search engines also read your url (web address of a particular page) to determine the content for that page, and this is another tool that assists in good results. Our shopping cart will automatically add your product title to the url.

E.g - www.yourstore.com/rolex-watch-model-oyster-pearl.html

Without this feature, your product url would look like: www.yourstore.com/index.php?id=357. As you can see, without adding the product title to the url, the search engine has no way of telling what the url refers to.

(3) Sitemaps configured in html and xml:

A sitemap is a collection of all the links on your site. Search engines use these sitemaps to discover all the pages in your site. Without this, the search engine finds it difficult to discover all your pages and thus you are left at a disadvantage. Some search engines have specified in their online documentation that they prefer either an html or xml formatted sitemap. Our shopping cart automatically creates both html and xml sitemaps that can then be accessed by the search engines. Generating a new sitemap once additional pages, products and categories have been added is a simple click of a button.

(4) Html tags:

By utilizing certain html style tags on specific keywords, the search engine will place a higher level of importance on that particular word. We have thus added specific style tags to your product titles on the product info pages. This is yet another powerful and approved search engine technique.

Please note that we have made every effort to assist you in getting a good placement in the search engine results. The main element involved in getting good search engine results is building a quality link campaign. A link campaign is the process of getting other websites that are in the same or a similar business to link to your website. There is a lot of information regarding link campaigns and SEO on the internet. Spending some time doing your research will greatly increase your chances of success. Hint: a good place to start off your link campaign is to submit your site to free online directories.