Hi, I was wondering what strategies do you apply for promoting / optimizing an e-commerce website (which sells online a few thousand products). When it comes to promoting and optimizing a normal website, you have only a couple of keywords. But how do you plan your strategy when it comes to doing the SEO for an e-commerce site which has, as i said, thousands of products? Thanks!
Every page on ANY site (not just ecommerce sites) should target different keyword phrase so I don't quite get why you think, "When it comes to promoting and optimizing a normal website, you have only a couple of keywords." a 1000 page non-ecommerce site should be targeting roughly the same number of keyword phrases as a 1000 page ecommerce site. So the strategies are the same. The biggest problem I think exist w/ most ecommerce sites which should be avoided is duplicate content from: 1) URL canonicalization problems due to using query string parameters (/index.php?cat=tv&subcat=sony&model=bravia is seen by the search engine as a different page from /index.php?model=bravia&cat=tv&subcat=sony even though they render the exact same page in most cases) 2) URL canonicalization problems due to displaying the same product page for a Sony Bravia TV at multiple places on your site like /tv/sony/bravia, /sony/hdtv/bravia, /electronics/tvs/sony-bravia, etc. 3) using canned product desciptions from the vendor. Avoid all 3 above by: 1) rewriting URLs to SEO friendly, keyword rich URLs, 2) picking a SINGLE place on your site for a product page to live, and 3) write your own unique product descriptions for EACH product you sell respectively.
Canonical is right, you need to rewrite your URL to only show one way to prevent duplicated pages/content. I posted about e-commerce site earlier in another thread on DP. "http://forums.digitalpoint.com/showthread.php?t=1569166 What are you selling? You need to find what is being searched more: Brand or Product Name You need to come up with a universal strategy for your site or you can break it down to categories. Naming convention can be {Brand} {Product_Name} {P/N or SKU} or {Product_Name} {Brand} {P/N or SKU} You'll need your landing pages to be well thought out and optimized. As "smindsrt" said, you'll need quality links pointing to your site. You'll need to figure out where you want the links to point to. Just make sure it's relevant to the page it is going to. Make sure you have a sitemap.xml that is generated everytime a page is created. Use Social Media to your advantage. Just some basics for you. Good Luck " I've done a lot of work with e-commerce sites and have done well. The hardest part is coming up with a universal strategy. If you sell good products, and you promote yourself through social media techniques, then you shouldn't have to worry about trying to get links, the links should pour in. Hope this gives you some direction.
Iam a newbie to SEO. Could you please me how to start and where to start working on ecommerce site...Do i use need to use any plugins to work for doing seo.