Nothing is less appealing to a consumer than the lack of individuality often associated with poorly designed e-commerce sites. Generic and interchangeable, e-commerce sites are large and difficult to optimize, so why even try? Because for the sites that do optimize, the results are memorable, unique, and create brand loyalty in a way the competition can’t.
Optimization of a 100,000 product site can seem like an overwhelming task, but a good way to ease into the process is by beginning with the products that are being viewed or purchased the most. By using Web Analytics, you can establish which products are driving the most traffic or revenue and create a plan for your optimization approach. For those focused on long tail, low traffic keywords, SEO strategies beyond flat site architecture and essential optimization can seem beyond your time frame, skills, or budget. However, by beginning with key pages and following the tips below, e-commerce sites can easily be transformed from lackluster to breathtaking.
Gather and Provide Unique Information
Anyone who has worked in search engine optimization knows that duplicate content is a no-no. Creating sites with duplicate content, intentional or not, can lead to penalties and further ramifications (e-commerce sites with non-unique descriptions will not have products appear in Google Shopping). However, in addition to maintaining your site’s integrity with search engines, developing unique content generates links. Link building can be very difficult for e-commerce sites due to the inherent lack of incentive for the providers of the links.
Two options you have are to continually price below competitors or to buy links; however, both of these can easily become counterproductive. Unique content provides the necessary incentive for links to develop organically, and to spread across a greater network than can be provided by buying links.
Unique content can include product comparisons, contests, donations, and any type of user interaction. Often overlooked, creating information not only on where to buy a product but how to buy it and how to use it can be a great way to provide content that’s unavailable anywhere else.
Be careful, if your e-commerce site places products in multiple categories you may have duplicate content problems. For example, if you sell clothing and one of your products is a white t-shirt, it may appear under the t-shirts category as well as a white color category. If your product pages contain categories in the url, the product will be in multiple places.
One solution is to use the canonical url meta tag, telling search engines which page should be used as the primary page in the search engines. Some carts have this type of functionality built in, others such as Magento, have community developed plug-ins that allow this functionality. Make sure you address this issue to prevent your unique content from becoming duplicate content.
On-Page Optimization and Directly Created Links
While unique content is key for off-page optimization efforts, on-page optimization is equally as important. An excellent way to begin optimizing is by writing unique titles for every page. Just keep in mind that sometimes consumers will search for the exact title, so don’t go too wild. Also, make sure to interlink products inside the descriptions with good anchor text, Wikipedia style.
The next step is to write a unique (non-manufacturer) description of each product. These descriptions can be funny or compelling, but at the very least should distinguish your pages from the competition. On-page optimization drives visitor engagement, and visitor engagement drives brand loyalty.
While the multitude of pages e-commerce sites require presents a challenge for optimization, it also provides a variety of opportunities to apply link producing strategies. Wikis, tutorials, ratings, user generated comments - these are just a few of the options that can be developed for pages of an e-commerce site.
Images
Imagery is the most important component of e-commerce optimization. Creating imagery can provide a unique experience for users now, and those images can be licensed to provide link opportunities later.
The inclusion of a watermark or logo can ensure the images are attributed to you alone. When generating images, a good way to distinguish your site is to provide multiple images with different views, enlarged images and different colors.
However, watch out for duplicate content; URL changes should only be in the hashtag. Make sure that the product is still recognizable and don’t forget download speed and resolution.
Off page strategy
Getting people to talk about your products on blogs and websites can be a challenge. The key question you must ask is “what’s in it for them?” Why would another website benefit from linking to your website?
This is where you need to get creative. You can often find bloggers that are willing to do product reviews, so one strategy could be to setup a Google alert that would find those types of websites on a regular basis. You can also review new products yourself. Take great pictures, write unique content, and new links will quickly appear.
Another technique to gain online brand exposure is by encouraging interaction through contests and giveaways. The key to this strategy is to utilize a products selling point. If it’s a product known for durability, have people submit photos of it being worn, while working perfectly.
For example, if you sell hiking shoes, have people take a photo of their boots at the summit of a mountain. Offer the winner (the boots that reached the highest peak) a new set of shoes. If you are able to be creative while focusing on the positive attributes of your products, links will follow.
Conclusion
When dealing with an e-commerce site, it is easy to feel overwhelmed by the challenge of creating a coherent optimization plan for thousands of pages. Instead of quaking in your boots, begin at the beginning and keep going from there, making sure on-page and off-page efforts are consistently maintained and unique content is uploaded for as many products as possible.
Finally, to ensure all of your hard work pays off, keep it up! Constant new uploads encourage the search engines to review your entire site and index every page, virtually guaranteeing more rankings.