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Search engine optimization is indisputably an integral part of ecommerce. You may have the finest product or first-rate services, but without SEO, your site is just floating around in cyberspace without being discovered by prospective clients.
There are a little over 100 ecommerce platforms to choose from, open source and proprietary, and many more are in the works as more shoppers get comfortable with online purchasing. Deliberate wisely on your choice as it could spell the success or failure of your online store.
So when you’re checking out and comparing ecommerce platforms for your store, consider their SEO features, or if they have any, if it’s integrated into the package price or if it’s optional at an additional cost.Moz, the recognized SEO expert, does a study every two years on SEO ranking factors that raise the visibility of websites in search engines. The factors mentioned here are mostly taken from that study and simplified to make it easy to understand for the general audience.
You can use your own domain name.
Commonsense says that your domain name should match your business name, i.e. amazon.com. People remember you by your brand name and use it to search for you. Yet many small businesses miss this very important element in SEO. Instead they use exact match domain names which include search terms. By 2012, Google took note of the proliferation of EMDs and has marked them as spammy URLs, thereby demoting their ranking in search results.
Some ecommerce platforms will allow clients to use their own domain name only as an enhancement that you have to pay extra for. They do offer free branded subdomains using their own brand name, much like what WordPress offers for its free blog address. If WP were an ecommerce platform, your domain name would look like this: www.yourstore.wordpress.com. Business owners use the free domain name offered without knowing any better. Not only does the platform get the primary benefit, it will also be difficult to transfer to another platform using your domain name and you lose link authority. Not good for SEO!
You have control over title tags.
The title tag is one of the most important elements in SEO. For your ecommerce platform, choose one that allows you to edit individual title tags and put the search term at the beginning.
Some ecommerce platforms do not allow editing of the title tag and automatically create them based on the product name. Shopify, a top platform for online stores, lets the store owner set title tags for pages, products and blog posts. Adding a search term before the product name in the title tag optimizes your page.
You have control over meta descriptions.
The meta description is the text that is shown on Google’s search results page right below the title tag.How it is written will determine if people will click on the link to your online store. Some ecommerce platforms will automatically use a snippet from your page, usually the first few lines, and make it the default meta description. But it may not give the search visitor an idea of what your page is about. Other platforms for online stores allow you to customize and make your own meta description.
Good meta descriptions for ecommerce begin with a verb, like “shop” or “try.” They should be within the maximum limit of 160 characters including spaces and preferably include the search term. Use direct language different from that which is on the web page. Each web page must have different meta descriptions.
You have control over navigation links.
Some ecommerce platforms create your navigation links by default, using your product names. If your product has a long name listing its specs, it wouldn’t look good. Or it could result to redundancy. For example, a clothing store has categories for women, men and kids. In the women, there are subcategories for dresses, tops, bottoms, etc. Automatic generation of navigation links will have the text “women’s” before each subcategory. A good ecommerce platform allows independent navigation links which is good for SEO.
A blogging platform is integrated into the package.
Blogs are great for getting links from other sites and engaging customers through social media or within the blog. Google considers the number of external quality links to your site in their ranking and blogs serve this purpose. If your blog is hosted on a separate platform, links to it will not lead to your website.
Some ecommerce platforms do not have integrated blogging platforms or they are optional and need additional coding. By choosing one where a fully integrated blog is a standard feature, you eliminate a lot of hassle and can focus on the blog’s content.
