Basic SEO Guide for Ecommerce Websites

This is yet another topic that deserves a book to be written on it. The problem is that I can not recommend a book. In fact, this industry changes so quickly as Google tweaks their algorithm it is difficult to determine what the most important factors are. However, I will try to point out those that very few people will dispute as the big ones. Others are there just for your benefit to be aware of.

First off, there are two major categories in SEO. There is on-site SEO and off-site SEO. Generally, most everyone will start with the on-site SEO because you want Google to recognize what your website is about. If they do not, then how are you ever going to rank for a keyword? These spiders that crawl your website will be looking at several different attributes on each page to determine where it needs to go and how relevant it is to specific searches done at Google’s website.

Another note worth mentioning: What is a keyword? A keyword is basically an elaborate name for what people might search for when trying to find your website. I have been using a motorcycle website as an example throughout, so I’ll continue to do that. People could search for “motorcycle”, but they might also search for “buy motorcycle”, “black motorcycles”, “Harley Davidson motorcycle for sale”. All of these would be keywords, or probably more properly could be said to be key phrases. However, they are generally all referred to simply as keywords. Note below that almost all on-site SEO has to do with is placing good quality keywords throughout your website where Google’s robots, spiders, or software might be able to determine what your website is about.

On-Site SEO Factors

1: The Title of the Page

2: The keywords used throughout the text on the website.

3: What keywords are used in H1 tags.

4: Keywords used in your domain name

5: Keywords used in the URL of a webpage.

6: Meta Keywords

Off-Site SEO

1: Links Pointing to Your Website

This is without a doubt one of the keys to having your website listed in the search engines results page for specific keywords. Google likes to look at what others are saying about your website to determine what it is about. For example, if someone is a huge fan of a unique motorcycle, and you have it for sell, they may link to your website with “unique motorcycle” as the text that people would click on to get to your website. This text is called anchor text and Google will see that link as a simple “vote” for your website to appear higher than others for that keyword. In short, these are commonly referred to as backlinks.

2: Quality of the Websites linking to your Website

Those linking to your website should also have some form of importance. For example, there are many websites with loads of outgoing links to many websites. Google does not want to give these websites as much weight in their “vote” in comparison to a link from Harley Davidson’s official website or something along those lines.

3: The Age of Your Website

I listed this as an off-site related issue but really it doesn’t fit in either category. This is a simple issue that the search engines will evaluate. This is not to say that it is the most important factor, but many older websites will naturally rank higher than new websites that have more backlinks. I am not sure why this occurs, but many would say that it does. Yahoo definitely puts more weight on this than Google does.