Although Search engines have proved to be the traffic generators for any e-commerce website, the retailers still remain unaware of this fact. Almost 80% of the retail websites are not Search engine friendly (Source: One up pub). It is astonishing to know that large e-retail companies do not implement the basic strategies of e-Commerce SEO. The meager amount of search engine traffic directed towards them is only due to the popularity of their brand name and/or brand-specific product search.

Regardless of the brand’s popularity, a well optimized e-commerce website will get the targeted traffic from well-known search engines like Google, Yahoo, and MSN . This is because 75% of the consumers do online product research before they make online or offline purchases.

An e-commerce website with unique content will definitely rank higher in search engines than a site which uses the content from the manufacturer websites or from well-established online retailers.

Steps to Increase Search Engine Traffic:

Important Note: Search engines rank a website based on Website Relevancy and Popularity Quality inbound links from other relevant websites (either from horizontal or vertical market). The following are some of the strategies of e-commerce SEO.

Product Web Page Title: Each web page should have a unique title. Including product name or a keyword associated with the product in the web page title is a traditional method, but is still considered as an important technique for search engine optimization. Example: Sony cyber shot dsc-h9 – with 15x Optical Image Stabilization Zoom. (Maintain character limit up to 70-80 in the web page title)

Product Name (H1/H2): Placing keywords or key phrases in H1/H2 tags is another important technique of on-page optimization.

Image Tag: Search Engines are not smart enough to index images and graphics. So, adding a keyword or the product name in the ALT tag will result in optimization.

Product Page URL: Make sure that the product’s name is included in the URL of that specific product. Since most of the e-Commerce websites generate pages on the fly, search engines find it difficult to crawl through these dynamic pages. Re-writing the URL to a static format is the best option and it will definitely have a good impact on optimization.

Meta Keywords: Use of Meta tags is considered to be an obsolete technique in search engine optimization. But make sure that limited and targeted keywords, that do not harm the website, are added.

Meta Description: Writing a small description in the Meta description space will boost the click through rate. The first sentence or two of the body copy from the web page can be used as the meta description content. And these will probably appear in the search engine result page if (if and only if) the most searchable keywords are plugged in.

Keyword-rich Catalog: Most retailers fail to recognize the importance of content/catalog optimization and SEO copywriting. Unique product content integrated with searchable keywords is a very good technique for search engine optimization.

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