1. Anybody who has tried to optimize an e-commerce site for
the search engines can attest to the complexity of the
task. E-Commerce requires specific SEO tactics and skills
due to the very particular nature of an online store
compared with a traditional content based website. While
it is possible to optimize an online shop successfully, to
accomplish so you'll need to keep the challenges of e-
commerce SEO fresh in your mind.
3. Unlike content based websites, e-commerce content is
often concentrated on product descriptions, and this often
causes duplicated content penalties for two reasons: Many
similar items could have the same or similar description,
and many online stores use the default descriptions
provided by the manufacturer. Unless you rewrite all your
product descriptions or your products are exclusive to
your store, you may find that ranking is difficult due to
duplicated content having less value in the eyes of Google
and other search engines.
5. Many stores carry thousands of different products as
stock, and optimizing each of them for the search engines
is beyond the resources of even a large corporation. In
order to attract potential customers to your product
pages, you'll need to optimize category or tag pages that
display several products, but even that can leave you with
hundreds of pages that need to be keyword researched
and optimized. Landing pages need to have enough
content to be able to rank on the search engines, but at
the same time be concise enough for a type of visitor that
is after quick results in order to convert.
7. Having thousands of product pages is also a challenge in
terms of getting the search engines to spider all of it, but
it's important to make sure that each page is identified
uniquely or you risk running into duplicated content
issues. This is especially relevant if you are using URL
rewriting to create keyword rich URLs. On the other hand,
using parameter based URLs can cause some search
engines to not index your site fully, due to limits on the
spider's programming. Creating a site architecture that is
easy to navigate by both search engines and human
visitors is key to a successful e-commerce site.
8. Optimizing an e-commerce site for SEO is considerably
more difficult than for a content based website, due to the
unique requirements and format of e-commerce content.
In most cases, your best option is to create entrance pages
that are optimized to draw search engine traffic and
funnel your visitors towards your product pages and
offers.