Shopping Carts and Search Engine Optimization
Search engine optimization is managing your site in such a way that your site
appears near the top of the search results in popular search engines such as
Google for the search words important for your business. For example, if you
sell discount widgets, you might want to make sure your site appears among the
first few search results when people search for “cheap widgets”.
Some shopping carts present challenges in search engine optimization. If
optimization is important to you, this is something you will need to take into
account when choosing your shopping cart software. Not all shopping carts are
suited to search engine optimization.
When looking for an online shopping cart that is suitable for search engine
optimization, one effective technique is a system that generates static pages
automatically. These are HTML pages that have a unique URL, where the HTML and
the URL do not change. Search engines often don’t like pages with long URLs such
as
www.widgetcorp.com/shop/items.php?id=2322&cat=32&subcat=2&br=1231 so watch
out for this.
The shopping cart system should also put the name of your product into the title
tag of those HTML pages automatically, and it should also automatically fill in
the keywords, description, alt tags, heading, and body text of those HTML pages
as well. A good shopping cart that is designed for search engine optimization
will also give each product page a file name that relates to that product.
Keep in mind that all of this should occur automatically, as soon as you add a
new product to your shopping cart, but you will need to enter the descriptions
of your products into the shopping cart administration area with search engine
optimization in mind as well, focusing on the key words important to your
market.
Make sure that you include the exact name of the product, as well as common
words for the product as well. For instance, if your product was Herbal Essences
Shampoo, you would enter that name, as well as other words, such as herbs,
herbal, shampoo, and hair care products into the description. The shopping cart
software can only do so much, the rest is up to you.
All of these elements are vital to search engine optimization. If you have
worked hard to optimize all of the other pages of your website for the search
engines, why wouldn't you want the pages in your shopping cart optimized as
well? With your shopping cart pages optimized, each time someone searches for a
product that you offer, that page of your shopping cart stands a good chance of
appearing in their search results, which will ultimately increase your sales.
You may also want an ecommerce shopping cart that includes website traffic
statistics, and ROI tracking. It should be able to track sales from affiliate
programs, banners, text links, and even print media with the use of promotional
codes. Of course, it should also be able to track hits from the search engines,
which will allow you to tweak and tune your descriptions for better results.
Make sure you read the documentation before choosing a shopping cart system, and
be sure that it includes the features that you will need for search engine
optimization. If you cannot find this information in the documentation or the
website that advertises the shopping cart, contact the developers, or the
webmaster for more information. Let them know exactly what features you are
looking for.
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