Don’t listen to anyone that tries to tell you SEO is no longer important. The rise of smarter, more discriminating search engine protocol hasn’t eliminated the importance of search engine friendly web building strategies. In fact, it’s made it more important than ever that modern business owners really know what works and what doesn’t when it comes to SEO.
SEO becomes even more critical when you’re building an eCommerce site, as you have more factors to consider before you ultimately settle on a given platform. The following features are considered by industry experts to be the features to look for when deciding which of the many options out there is right for you and your business. Does the platform you have your eye on make the grade?
Customizable Landing Pages
Don’t make the mistake of thinking that a successful eCommerce site doesn’t really need to include solid written content. All major search engines, including almighty Google, penalize business and commerce sites for not having it, just as they would any other type of site.That said, make sure the platform you choose allows for fully customizable landing pages. Landing pages can be used to display the type of useful, keyword-rich, standalone content that search engines love, as well as target specific niche markets, and add lasting value for visitors. Full customizability ensures that you’ll be able to tailor each page to your business’s exact needs.
Full Blog Support
You’ll also need to make sure you’re providing your visitors with an ongoing stream of fresh, current content, and a blog is the simplest, most effective way of doing that. Blogs are also essential when it comes to building your backlink catalog, as well as establishing your company as an industry authority.Make sure your eCommerce platform is capable of supporting a blog that includes a full suite of features. Examples include an integrated social sharing interface, spam protection, and streamlined commenting capability.
Solid Category Pages
Even eCommerce professionals that understand the importance of maintaining a blog and building the right landing pages tend to underestimate the importance of category pages when it comes to SEO. Don’t make the same mistake yourself.You want category pages that support multiple forms of rich, valuable content, so look for platforms that allow for more than just text. Category pages are at their most SEO friendly when they integrate images, videos, and other forms of multimedia. Not only are such pages considered more useful to visitors, but they allow you as a business owner additional opportunities to add even more overall value to your site.
SEO-Savvy URLs
It isn’t just your content that needs to be on point when it comes to SEO. The URLs attached to each of your pages matter just as much. Settling for auto-generated URLs full of random numbers and symbols doesn’t serve your purposes. Substituting keyword-rich, relevant alternatives that match the content on the page does.That said, you need a platform that will allow you to edit and choose each and every one of your site URLs, including those attached to individual product pages and blog entries.
Canonicalization
Canonicalization allows for the correct indexing and ranking of content pages reachable via multiple URLs. For example, if your company website includes a category page about black leather purses, you may have one primary version of that page’s URL, but also additional URLs that lead to that same page.When you choose a platform that supports canonicalization, all of the URLs leading to the black purses page will be consolidated as far as accumulated “link juice” goes. You also will be able to avoid potential issues related to duplicate content. Make sure you get one!
Speed-Friendly Interface
Long load times associated with your site can ruin the impression visitors and search engines alike have of your website. Speed isn’t just a nice feature to consider. It should be a top priority if you’re truly serious about achieving ongoing success.Look for eCommerce platforms that that support lightning quick code, as well as the ability to integrate useful performance tools (like those offered by Google) in order to monitor your speeds going forward. Remain aware of load speeds on an ongoing basis and keep an eye out for opportunities to make improvements for best results.
Redirect Support
When you run an eCommerce site, it’s common for obsolete product pages or category pages to be deleted at some point in order to make room for new ones. However, 301 redirects can help you make sure you retain all of your hard-earned link juice by redirecting it to newer, relevant content pages.You can, of course, choose to keep obsolete product pages live under “out of stock” status instead. However, even if you think this is what you’d rather do, you should still prioritize platforms that feature 301 redirect support. Then you’ll have the option of changing your mind if you prefer at some point.
Simple Navigation Capabilities
Picture the last time you visited a given web store or commerce website and really couldn’t find your way around. Remember how frustrated you were? Remember how little time it took you to consider buying what you wanted elsewhere? If your site is set up the same way, search engines will know it, and they’ll be less likely to send traffic your way.Make sure your eCommerce platform prioritizes easy navigation. It should allow visitors to navigate without JavaScript or Flash, you should be able to edit menus at link level, and the overall structure should keep unnecessary/duplicate links to a minimum.
Optimizable Image Support
Not everyone will be landing on your site via standard web searches. Quite a few will come your way via image searches instead, so make sure your platform of choice fully supports search engine optimized image tags. Relevant keywords should be added to each of the image ALT tags on your website for best results, and some options are better at providing this feature than others.
Full Control of Page Titles
When it comes to critical SEO elements to consider, it’s simply not possible to overstate the importance of page titles. Several popular platforms allow website owners to edit the titles of some types of pages, but not others. Look for an interface that allows you full control. Pay special attention to whether or not you’ll be able to edit category pages, as these are the most common exclusion.
Detailed Taxonomy Support
When you’re running an eCommerce site, the ability to create a detailed, organized taxonomy for your products, services, and categories becomes incredibly important. A well-built taxonomy makes your site more user friendly for visitors and more professional in the eyes of the search engines.It also allows you to fully optimize all of your brand-related pages with branded keywords in mind. When branded pages are prioritized in this way, your site is much more likely to attract and retain high conversion visits – critical when one of your major goals is to move product and bring in revenue.
Automated XML Support
XML site maps are among the best ways to help you make your site super easy to crawl and index. That said, look for platforms that support automatic XML sitemap generation. It will be an absolute godsend when it comes to keeping your maps up to date and making sure all of your pages remain easily accessible to Google’s crawl bots right from day one.
Support for Robots Meta Tags
Every so often, you’ll find you have pages that you’d prefer the search engines overlook during the indexing process. While there are several ways you can approach the issue, robots no-index meta tags are the go-to solution.Of course, this isn’t an absolutely essential feature. However, it’s something that enough eCommerce site owners eventually find useful that it’s worth considering from the beginning. Smart choices in eCommerce platforms are just as much about anticipating your future needs as they are about taking care of your current ones.
Control Over Robots.txt Files
Just as you may have certain pages you’d rather Google not crawl or index, you will have the same in regards to your directories and URLs. For instance, you wouldn’t necessarily want Google bots to crawl files like PDFs and other non-HTML text files.If your eCommerce platform supports the blocking of certain URLs via robots.txt, you can easily handpick files that shouldn’t be indexed. Just keep in mind that while the text located at a URL won’t be crawled if blocked, the URL itself may still appear in search engine results.
Thorough Google Analytics Support
Yes, Google Analytics is an incredibly popular web tool – so popular that almost all modern eCommerce platforms support it. However, if you’re building an eCommerce site, you’ll also want to make sure that the platform you pick supports Google Analytics eCommerce tracking in particular. Some do, but others do not.Google Analytics eCommerce tracking can help you accurately track the relationship between your revenue and various landing pages on your site. It can do the same in regards to keywords. The information you’ll glean from doing this will prove incredibly helpful when it comes time to update your SEO strategy down the road. You’ll have a clear picture of what’s working, how well, and how often.
Support for Google Analytics Site Search
You already know that your eCommerce site needs to be searchable by visitors so that they can easily find what they’re looking for. However, you’ll also want to make sure that your eCommerce platform is capable of integrating with the ever-useful Google Analytics site search tool.Google Analytics site search is one of the easiest, most convenient ways to keep track of what your visitors search for when they’re on-site. When you know what keywords and phrases your visitors search the most often, you can adjust your keyword research strategy accordingly.
Full Meta Description Control
Meta descriptions in and of themselves don’t have a direct effect on your search engine ranking, but they do help search engine users decide whether or not to click on a given link. That said, the more control you have over what your meta descriptions say, the better. The more accurate the meta description, the higher your click-through rate.The best platforms for eCommerce allow you to individually edit meta descriptions for each individual page on your site (including product and category pages).
Support for Schema Tags
Schema.org specializes in providing markup tags for a variety of important eCommerce elements. These include but are not necessarily limited to reviews, individual products, and user ratings. Google then makes use of these tags to help generate search engine results and determine the ranking of each option. That said, you’ll definitely want to at least consider a platform with full Schema support. It’s sure to be useful to you regardless of your industry or niche.
Support for Authorship Tags
Did you know that the author tags associated with your pages and posts can have a tremendous impact on SEO? The higher the rank of a given author in the eyes of the search engines, the better you can expect their posts to do in relevant searches.Author rank is only expected to become more important going forward, so get the jump on things now with an eCommerce platform that supports authorship markup for your blogs posts, resource pages, and so forth. You’ll be glad you did.
Super Easy Social Sharing Capability
Social media shares are no longer just nice to have. They’re a top priority in any solid SEO campaign, so it’s important to do what you can to make your posts as share-friendly as possible. The easier your posts and content pages are to share, the more they’ll be shared.Prominently display “share” buttons for all major social media outlets – Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, Tumblr, and so forth – on every page to encourage shares. Look for Open Graph Protocol support in your eCommerce platform as well. This allows you maximum control over how the posts will look when shared over social media. You choose the image, title, and displayed URL that you feel will encourage the most clicks. Explore the possibilities today!
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