There are some fundamental, and simple, steps that you can take to improve the ranking of your site and just as importantly the product pages within your store. The following are ten tips that we recommend

 

 

You might think you know what your customers will search for to find your site and to find your products, but guesswork should not be a tool that you use.  If you don’t already have one, set up a Google Adwords account and use the keyword tool to find out what keywords people actually search for. This way you know the keywords and phrases that you should use on your site.

 

 

The page title is single most important factor in your on-site optimisation, so it is critical that you have your keywords and phrases within this tag.  We suggest a maximum of 65 characters for the title tag, so you need to be concise.  Also, try to include the keyword towards the start of your title tag and ensure that each page is unique.

 

 

Meta information is hidden information that does not appear on the web page itself.  A meta description tag, for example, is usually used as part of a search engine serach result.  It is therefore important to include your keywords within the description.

 

Images within your pages can have ALT tags. These are hidden tags that the search engines view and are also important in on-site optimisation.

 

 

Use H1 Headings on a page to emphasise the most important keywords for your page.  For example, put your product names into these. You can also use H2 headings for secondary terms.  We would suggest that all your content should have unique title tags and headings, targeting 

 

 

Ensure that that your ecommerce system can handle keyword-friendly URLs. Often sites have a URL that could look similar to this:

 

https://www.domain.com/catalogue.html?product_id=147&back=search&category_id=549

 

The following would be better:

 

https://www.domain.com/kitchenaid-k5-planetary-food-mixer-d147.html

 

 

All sites should have a sitemap to help both the search engines and site visitors to navigate a site.  It is also possible to create a sitemap that is easy for the search engines to catalogue a site and these are called XML sitemaps.  In conjunction with a robots.txt file, sitemaps are a powerful way of providing the search engines with 

submit it. Link to your sitemaps from a from a robots.txt file.

 

 

Google Base is an online database provided by Google that provides a mechanism to store structured data and for it to be searchable.  It is ideal for uploading product information and our experience is that it can drive good search volume to a website

 

 

Although writing blogs can take time, they are a great way of creating keyword-focused content that search engines like.  For an ecommerce site, create a blog on your site and write about topics such as new products added to the database, industry information or tips on how to use some of your products.  Keep the information fresh and genuinely interesting and the search engines will like it.

 

 

Optimising titles, meta tags and URLs are all important, but creating content on your pages is also key to show the search engine what the topics are about. Consistency in the keywords, in the tags and content is very important.  We also suggest that you try to ensure that your keywords are as close to the top of the page as possible.

 

 

The search engines visit your online store on a regular basis looking for new content and often they make the assumption that newly added content is the most worthwhile.  Updating your site regularly, including your blog, new products and updating your product information keeps the search engines visiting, catalogue and ranking you.

 

There is no magic bullet here, but each and every one of the tips above when used in combination are very powerful. Ensure that the keywords used remain constant on each page to maximise the effect.