Web optimization for e-commerce sites

You can optimize your e-commerce site so easy by just following a few simple rules and steps for increasing the relevant traffic on your web site and to also increase the sells. Many e-commerce web sites are not properly optimized mainly because the owners are not SEO specialists and they bought an online shop software and have no real understating of all the fields that need to be fill for each product in order to get search results. Many use the same title for all the pages of the web site and on top of that that title is not even representative for the web site.

What is an e-commerce site

An e-commerce web site is, for many people, the most wide method of making money online. Even if this type of web sites mostly refers to online shops the concept can be extended to any kind of web site that is selling something : products or services. I will not talk in this article about the layout of a successful web site. That is for each business to decide by performing tests on how the users click through the pages. Instead I will talk about how to optimize your individual pages and specially the landing page and the article pages for better result in search engine placements.

The most common mistake on choosing keywords for e-commerce sites

I received a couple of e-mails to optimize some online shops. The most frequent mistake that I’ve encountered is that people ask me to optimize their web site to be number one for one word. For example an online shop that sells perfumes for kids wanted to be number one for the words “gifts”, “perfume”, “kids” . Of course that the search volume is very high for those words but are they relevant to you ? I mean when someone is typing “gifts” they really want to buy a perfume for a kid ? If they do then they don’t know what is the Internet about and you should try not to pay attention to that person. Single words can be used in so many senses and maybe only 1% or maybe less of the people that searches it are actually interested of your products. SO, you should try and ASK yourself : Is this keyword relevant to what I do with my web site. For example “perfume” and “kids” are not relevant for this web site but “perfume for kids” or “online perfumes for kids” or “gifts for kids” or “Christmas gifts for kids” could be.

What to do after you selected the best keywords for your web site

I think that once you established the main theme of your web site and you can summarize it in one or two words you should try and purchase a domain name that is as close as you can get to that theme. If you sell perfumes for kids then I think you should buy the domain perfumes-for-kids.com . Of course that this are your primary keywords and you should first check if there is enough search volume for those words. Assuming that you’ve done all that now is time to populate your web site with articles that you want to sell. There are a few simple rules to follow such as :
– the main title of your web site should contain the main keywords (the keywords that establish the theme and the name of the domain)
– don’t use the name of your company in the titles; if you have to place it at the end
– the main page should have some initial content and a subheading of H1 containing the keywords
– each article page should have it’s own title (not more then 65 characters but descriptive and appealing : don’t say “Perfume for a 10 year boy” BUT “Get a special Perfume Gift for your 10 year boy for only 10$” )
– create a good description for each article and present not only the technical aspects of the product but also give some suggestions on how to use the product or when you can use it
– good testimonial about a products helps a lot

Create a Blog to improve your sells

Creating and maintaining a Blog on an e-commerce web site can greatly improve the traffic and ultimately produce sells. Many people have blogs and many companies have business blogs but not all of them are use it right. A business blog is more then just a blog. You can get new customers, provide informations to existing ones, you can increase the company’s presence and placement in search results, provide a modern communication channel for your clients. Blogging for business means understating who you’ re blogging for and what your potential customer would need. You also should establish a purpose and few goals to achieve. Finally you need to create good, original content regularly. When you have a blog you can’t afford to overlook it or forget posting. You have to do it at least 2 times per week. The posts could be anything that could be related to your business : customer success stories, product or service tips, news and announcements, industry news, related interests or maybe product stories. With each post you can target new keywords and get new traffic and maybe target new demographics.

In conclusion

So, optimizing an e-commerce web site can be done easily by following a few simple rules but without a blog that can provide content that attracts traffic it’s very hard. Almost every time a sell is not accomplished from the first visit on the web site. So making the visitors comeback is essential for your web strategy and creating content for the user can help very much.