Just a bit about search engine optimization.

How do you optimize your site for ecommerce? Keep in mind that the basics of search engine optimization (SEO) are the same for an ecommerce site as they are for a government site about sidewalk renovation. SEO is generally considered to have two basic categories, on-page (or on-site) and off-page (or off-site), and this is especially important for you as an online merchant. Your on-site optimization generally concerns your content, and content includes articles, product descriptions, menu names, sub-menus, headlines, and anything else that has text. On-site optimization also includes your site architecture, meaning the organization of your categories, products and pages. Off-page, or off-site optimization generally concerns quality and number of back links pointing to your site’s pages.

Links are important, and maintaining good incoming links with your keywords will get you good rankings. It’s very important to get as many natural links as possible; providing interesting and useful content can make this happen for you with no extra work at all! You will seem completely natural to search engine spider. These natural links are the basis of link SEO. If you are trying to attain links you should first attempt to attain these links from pages that would naturally link to you but may not have heard of your site yet. After you have done this you should go to directories and other sources of links that may not be as obvious. First things first, don’t mess up your search engine listings because of a bunch of bogus links from unsuitable, questionable, or malicious locations. These links can and will get you banned.

One of the most popular, practical, and workable methods of not only getting search engine attention to your site but bringing potential customers is through the use of a blog. A blog is a publishing platform that allows you to make frequent, updated posts. When blogs first became popular, people used them as a sort of personal, online journal. Now a days businesses use them to publish company news, articles, thoughts, comments, tidbits and tips about the subject area, or just to stay in touch with readers. As a means of ecommerce SEO and traffic generation, blogs allow you a means of easily publishing hundreds and even thousands of pages of highly relevant, focused content. These pages serve as a sort of funnel through which you direct people to your product pages.

Many SEO experts will tell you that they have specific ways of choosing the right keywords for a website. Some do it using SEO tools, software that compares possible keywords to see which are used the most. Some will give you DIY methods with spreadsheets. We say, however, that you should try every method you can in the search for keywords. Here are some steps that might help: Identify and create a list of keywords from meta tags, research on your competitors, your highest-converting products and biggest current traffic sources. For each term (typically between 30 and 50 terms overall), narrow the field down to about 15 or 20, choosing the terms you feel are most relevant to your website. Your higher ranked competitors are probably ranked higher a reason so take a look at what they are providing. Make sure that everything is directly relevant. The less common your key words are, the more likely you are to get the search engine results for these key words.

Content is a key factor in high search engine rankings. Make sure that you have plenty of content throughout your site with your target keywords in the articles, menu names, headlines, and any category listings. It’s also worth doing a search for websites similar to yours and taking a look at the kind of content used on the pages. From a search engine point of view, more content you have the better. From a human perspective, the content should be well written, helpful, and interesting to someone wanting to know more about your products. It is generally a good idea to have between three hundred and five hundred words per page, Of course, your product pages may not require that much text, though product descriptions of 2 to3 hundred words would be optimum. Again, quality of content is more important than merely raw quantity. You cannot just put out three hundred words of meaningless jargon and expect visitors to find your site credible.

Use the power or press releases. The press release is both an SEO and traffic strategy. The press release itself will bring traffic. Even an off-line press release done through a local paper will influence SEO because the search engines respond to traffic. However, your Internet press releases–in addition to traffic–will themselves provide back links to your site and so can be important, especially when they rank well for your site’s keywords. Press releases can also appear as news items on Google and Yahoo!. For that reason, although you can do press releases yourself for free, it might be worth spending the money to have a firm who guarantees a spot on Google News do your press release.

Want to know what SEO for ecommerce is about? Take the first steps with work-from-home product sourcing right now!