Hi The majority of SEO advice here is given based on blogs. Obviously most advice can be applied to all type of sites. However some of the techniques i have found do not really apply so much on an ecommerce site. For example, digg.com won't allow any submissions if your website is an ecommerce site. The whole social networking side of SEO seems much tougher to do with ecommerce as they don't like people using them to sell products and services. Can people give any advice on SEO techniques they concentrate on specifically when dealing with ecommerce, not blogs. Also any other situations where certain SEO techniques cannot be used on ecommerce sites would be useful.
Many directories have shopping / ecommerce categories. You can also use article directories to get backlinks to your stores. Write guest posts or blog comments and you can get even more backlinks.
A lot of the 'social bookmarking' techniques I don't really classify as SEO anyway. I see them more as a way to drive traffic, not improve rankings. However, I guess by driving more traffic there is a tiny chance you might pick up an extra link or two if some of those visitors own web sites. But generally, unless you create a HUGE buzz about your site with social bookmarking that drives hundreds of thousands or millions of visits, it is not likely going to get you many links of any value or quantity. Almost all other non-social bookmarking techniques here are applicable to ecommerce sites. On-page SEO techniques like <title>, <h1>, <h2>s, keyword rich URLs, content, etc. apply to any type of site as do other on-site SEO techniques like using breadbrumbs, using keyword phrases from the target page as link text when your pages link to one another, etc. Off-site SEO techniques all still apply which basically involve getting backlinks from relevant sites with your targeted keyword phrases (and slight variations) from the page pointed to by the link as the link text. So most of the techniques here are universal. eCommerce sites do pose some challenges that a lot of other sites, however, typically don't have to contend with or at least which are not as prevalent on traditional sites and blogs. For example: 1) eCommerce sites usually have hundreds of thousands if not millions of URLs. Getting a large portion of those pages indexed can be quite a challenge. It requires a well thought out information architecture (linking structure), and I recommend ALWAYS submitting sitemap.xml files to the engines for such sites so that you can help prioritize which pages you would prefer to see indexed and in which order. 2) eCommerce sites are notorious for having canonical issues which means they also have duplicate content issues and split link equity/split link juice issues as well. There are almost always multiple URLs pointing to the same product page. For example, a Sony Bravia TV Model 123 product page might have URLs like: http://www.example.com/tvs/hdtv/sony/bravia-model-123.html http://www.example.com/sony/tvs/hdtv/bravia-model-123.html depending on whether you navigate to it by choosing a category on the home page (TVs) or a brand on the home page (Sony). This can be avoided by either: a) selecting a canonical URL for every page on the site (maybe the URL is always /<insertbrand>/<insertcategory>/<insertsubcategory>/<insertproduct>.html and ONLY referencing a product page with that canonical URL (preferable method) or b) using the new <link rel="canonical" href="/sony/tvs/hdtv/bravia-model-123.html"> in the product page so that regardless of which URL is used to render it, "/sony/tvs/hdtv/bravia-model-123.html" gets credit for ALL inbound links to the product page (less preferable than #1 but better than having canonical issues). 3) Another challenge for eCommerce sites are keyword rich URLs. eCommerce sites typically run off of some massive database or eCommerce-type CMS system that uses a single program to render every page on the site. Depending on which query string parameters get passed into the one program, it renders a different page. And many such sites never deal with this problem. Even commercial sites like BestBuy.com are terrible So you end up with very URLs like "http://www.bestbuy.com/site/olspage.jsp?_dyncharset=ISO-8859-1&id=pcat17071&type=page&ks=960&st=8661959%2C+9230511&sc=Global&cp=1&sp=&qp=crootcategoryid%23%23-1%23%23-1%7E%7Eq383636313935392c2039323330353131%7E%7Ecabcat0400000%23%231%23%232%7E%7Encabcat0403000%23%232%23%232&list=y&usc=All+Categories&nrp=15&iht=n". URLs like these are TERRIBLE from an SEO perspective AND a user experience perspective, probably more the latter... Even though keyword rich URLs are only a minor ranking factor in Google's algorithm, every little bit helps. There aren't many big on-page ranking factors other than <title>, <h1>, and <h2>s. It's usually the sum of a lot of small optimizations that lead to good rankings, not the result of making one change. The widespread use of query sting parameters can be the SEO death-nail of a web site. They lead to all of the same canonical, duplicate content, and split page rank/split link equity issues as were mentioned in #2 above which prevent a site from ever reaching its true SEO potential. Remember, the search engines will even see http://www.example.com/?x=1&y=2 and http://www.example.com/?y=2&x=1 as different pages because the URLs are different even though they have the exact same query string parameters with the exact same value and the same page is rendered. Order of those parameters don't generally effect how the DB/CMS system used to render the page sees it... but it DOES make the search engines think they are different pages because the URLs are different. From a user perspective the above URL is VERY ugly when viewed in the SERPs. It is not immediately obvious when seen in the SERPs whether that URL is a page that might hold the answer to the user's search query. Therefore, it can greatly reduce the click-thru-rate for pages. A user is much more likely to click on http://www.bestbuy.com/cameras-and-camcorders/camcorders/ than they would be to click on http://www.bestbuy.com/site/olspage...##2##2&list=y&usc=All+Categories&nrp=15&iht=n IMO. There are fixes to this but they require work. It requires either switching to an SEO friendly ecommerce database/CMS system or hiding the ugly links by using advanced Mod Rewrite tricks to implement redirects and URL rewrites for EVERY page on the site. So, if someone requests http://www.bestbuy.com/site/olspage...##2##2&list=y&usc=All+Categories&nrp=15&iht=n that system would need to 301 redirect the user's request to http://www.bestbuy.com/cameras-and-camcorders/camcorders/. And then when the browser turns around and requests http://www.bestbuy.com/cameras-and-camcorders/camcorders/ as a result of that redirect, the system would need to URL Rewrite the request back to http://www.bestbuy.com/site/olspage...##2##2&list=y&usc=All+Categories&nrp=15&iht=n so that the nice clean URL remains in the browser but the CMS/DB system has the URL it needs to render the correct page. Food for thought.
Addressing the bookmarking/digg part of the question - there are bookmarking sites that concentrate specifically on 'products' - e.g. wists, thethingsiwant, iliketotallyloveit, thisnext and kaboodle.
Thanks Canonical, that is some extremely helpful information, and also answers another question i was going to ask about query strings and duplicate content. I shall get right onto that. Magda - thanks for that list, i will check those out too.
I think every site (social bookmarking/directories/article directories) will have a separate category of shopping. So you can submit your site in that section.
No Digg allows ecommerce site to submit and there many ways to get the traffic to an ecommerce site.Submit it in the free online web directories and comment on blogs.