Retailers – key SEO considerations for selecting an ecommerce platform

When implementing a new ecommerce platform it is vitally important understand the systems technical and SEO constraints as these can affect the business benefits case. We always recommend clients include their internal  SEO team or an external SEO agency in the platform selection process to make sure that the correct decision is made from the outset.

The importance of Ecommerce platform selection for SEO

With the e-Commerce channel being only growth areas for many retailers in these tough times; Getting the decision wrong can mean a much higher SEO total cost of ownership for your ecommerce project, including SEO management work. That is not too mention that SEO constraints of ecommerce platform can directly affect top line sales  revenues affecting not just online revenues but even business feasibility in the long run in the most critical cases.

Below our quick tips for ecommerce platform selection.

SEO Quick check list

• URL taxonomy: The ability of the ecommerce platform to create user and search engine friendly URL’s out of the box.
• Unique page titles: The ability to create unique titles, descriptions and content on a page by page level.
• Unique Meta data: The ability to amend meta data on page by page basis in the console of the platform, allowing non-technical personnel to manage meta data.
• Page load speed: Does the platform have the ability to set page caching options.
• Redirects: Does the platform create 301 redirects to new content; give internal users the ability to manage redirects. For large sites the ability to create 301 redirects instead of the 302 redirects is an important for SEO.
• HTML tags: Does the platform give you the ability to create unique H1 tags in the system, without adversely affecting the ecommerce content or architecture of the website.
• The flexibility of the optimization suites of the ecommerce platform; what comes as part of the standard implementation and the what components need to be added to the package to give your web operations the flexibility to make your website as discoverable as possible.
• Multi-language platforms: The flexibility to set up, structure, and manage multi-language content & URL strategy. This can have a big impact of you are running one website for numerous territories for how that discoverable that website is locally via search engines. See our international SEO service.

Other key considerations involve around

• SEO website migration
• Systems integration impacts on reporting
• What comes as standard, and what plug ins and components are available
• Can you add third party plug ins into the platform to mitigate any technical SEO short comings

The ecommerce platform selection process is a huge step and should be approached in a rigorous and methodical manner. Its ramifications go way beyond SEO, but SEO is a key commercial consideration for any retailer that affects the business justification.

Seek4Commerce, through our expert retail and SEO knowledge will be able to guide you into ensuring you take into consideration all the main SEO factors when selecting an ecommerce platform.

Contact us to find out how we have helped retailers with their ecommerce platform selection process on 0844 870 9806.

This article was produced by: Steve Bernard – Ecommerce SEO Expert,

Director at Seek4Commerce, a leading London SEO Company.

Maximize sales earlier by including SEO in your product launches

Include SEO in your product content approval process

Not having an on-page SEO stage as part of your new product content workflow results in a lot of missed SEO sales opportunities from poor planning.

Long tail SEO is imperative for retail businesses trying to survive and even increase sales from online channels. It is amazing how many retail websites have not effectively optimized product content before approving and posting it on their websites. Sometimes entire supplier/brand product portfolio’s are posted un optimized compounding the problem even further.

Below a set of quick SEO tips to help your content approval process

• Educate product managers / buyers of the value of SEO
• Ensure that SEO is in the content production process
• Develop a checklist to include all the key SEO information on a product level
• Have an SEO sign off process
• Quality control products for SEO after approval & posting online

SEO Training

If you want to discuss how we train internal teams to include SEO as part of their product content development process, to drive the SEO benefits from the outset then contact us for more information on 0844 870 9806

This article was produced by: Steve Bernard – Ecommerce SEO Expert,

Director at Seek4Commerce, a leading London SEO Company

Refine internal site search to drive an increase in sales

Onsite search can increase average order values & improve SEO results

Improving internal search results through refinement & testing to increase average order values, and increase SEO traffic from deeper keyword penetration should be a key low cost tactic employed by business’s that have an ecommerce presence.

Maximising the value from internal search is a vital tenet in realizing the additional sales value wrapped up in internal search engines.

Refinement & improvement of search results can be made in following areas;

• Product categorisation of products
• Product attributes / descriptions
• Internal keyword search analytics
• New content generations
• Modifying search engine settings / parameters
• Creating sample data sets tested & compared between test and live environments
• Activating SEO friendly settings for on-site search

The process of ongoing refinement and improvement will lead to more relevant and improved search listings presented to your websites users. In commercial terms that should lead to increase in traffic from SEO, and an increase in average order values as users more easily find products on your ecommerce website.

Contact us on 0844 870 9806 to find out more.

This article was produced by: Steve Bernard – Ecommerce SEO Expert,

Director at Seek4Commerce, a leading London SEO Company.

How to expand online retail sales in a slow growing sector

The BBC today reported a weak growth in the retail sector. However, being optimistic at heart we always believe that opportunities for sales growth exist even in a declining or slower growing retail market. Many of the online retailers we speak with or analyze often are leaving money on the table by not implementing a few simple low cost changes that could be transformational in the results obtained from their ecommerce retail web stores.

Understanding the key success factors in setting up and operating a web store; we can an rifle in most important KPI’s. Understanding what to look for, where to look and how to uncover sales opportunities is vital in extracting as many pounds from your website as possible. Below are 3 areas you could look into which cost very little or nothing at all.

1.     Good quality and regular keyword research and analysis can allow retailers to quickly identify quick win SEO keyword sales opportunities at low cost, and which have a fast time to impact.

2.     Understanding how to extract the benefits from long tail search to drive product sales growth. Optimizing underlying product data to drive visibility in third party portals such as Google product search results.

3.     Improving conversion rate; even by a fraction of a percentage point for a larger site can lead a major profit contribution from a minor change or piece of work.

Taking an enterprise approach to website and search marketing, that is focused on maximising the value from the website sales growth KPI’s can lead transformational sales growth.

To find out how we can help please contact us on 0844 870 9806

This post was produced by: Steve Bernard – Ecommerce SEO Expert,

Director at Seek4Commerce, a leading London SEO Company.

SEO impact of new Google site links

Google has begun to re test a greater number of site links in its natural search results pages. These expanded links appear when  you search for the domain name / brand name of a website. I.e., BBC

What is the change?

Google has increased the number of site links from 8 to 12 for websites in its natural results. This change is meant to increase the relevance of the site links helping Google’s surfers to find the appropriate section of a website more easily. This is why site links also contain a snippet of text and the domain name.

What is the SEO impact on websites ?

Two fold, 1 it gives companies some additional protection for is own domain name and /or brand terms in Google, as the expanded set of site links means that they take a larger proportion of the search results page.

On the second point; if you have a website which has a broadly generic name site links may push out competitor results, or your results from those search results positions.

Generally, we do not expect to see much of a difference to website SEO performance in the results pages from the new site links changes confirmed by Google as permanent. This is pretty much just an expansion in scope of the existing site links Google use in their natural search results.

We will keep an eye on the impact of site links on SEO and update our readers and clients as we know more. If you want to get access to leading edge SEO knowledge base and learning centre available to our clients please get in touch for more information.

This article was produced by: Christian – In house SEO Expert

Account Manager at Seek4Commerce, a leading London SEO Company.

Use the Google page speed tool to improve website performance

Why is page speed so important?

The primary reason page speed is for general usability. The faster loading a web page the better the performance for visitors to that page, whilst slow loading pages lead to higher bounce rates.

Google monitors website performance and bounce rates and uses this as a baseline when comparing the click through rates and bounce rates of the top competing websites for keywords and phrases. This plays a role in a websites search positions as Google is keen to improve the user experience of its surfers and this is why this is increasingly becoming a ranking factor for top search engine positions.

Google has launched a new page speed tool for webmasters that checks the website load speed of sites. Check out the tool at Google page speed lab. This new tool is an indication of the increasing importance Google is placing on webmasters producing higher quality websites.

As the search landscape evolves and the expectations of surfer’s increases online, the broader quality of websites is likely to increase in-step with search engine webmaster guidelines expansion. This means that there will be a wider scope of activities and ranking factors that developers and/or your SEO agency will need to consider as time evolves to ensure client websites rank higher in Google and other search engines.  There will therefore be an increasing direct correlation between higher quality websites and higher performance in the search engine results pages (SERP’s).

To find out more about on page SEO please call us on 0844 870 9806

This article was produced by: Steve Bernard – Ecommerce SEO Expert,

Director at Seek4Commerce, a leading London SEO Company.

How top retailers improve seasonal SEO results

Many retailers understand the importance of ranking highly for seasonal events like Christmas, Valentine’s Day, Mothers day etc when the event is upon them.

With up to 30% + of retail revenue in some sectors generated around the Christmas period alone ensuring that you dominate the events search terms is a primary business driver for retailers with a website. The time to act is now if you want to start benefiting later.

Christmas is here now

To truly maximize the impact of being top in Google for your top seasonal keywords at prime time then retail businesses need to start planning now for the Christmas period, and first quarter events.

Some quick tips below:

What is the sales window?

The Christmas sales window is 3 months prior to the big day meaning that SEO planning & implementation must be undertaken 6 months prior, whilst the New Years Eve event window usually starts one month before. It is important to understand the planning process to maximize the SEO outcomes during the sales window of these events.

Understand your keywords

Do thorough keyword research to identify the keywords with the highest sales value potential for your business around key events.

Build keyword research into your content strategy

Once you have identified a portfolio of keywords by sales opportunity. Create additional SEO friendly content that targets the long tail combinations and develop your universal search strategy by optimizing all elements of the content. Image, video and news pieces around the content will help you rank higher for your terms.

Identifying on a product level the keyword sales opportunities will allow you to rifle gun in sales success over the seasonal periods.

With Google increasingly applying a universal search approach to its natural rankings, the more bases covered by your optimization efforts the higher the probability of your listings being found. This can be easily evidenced by doing a product search on Google and seeing that shopping results are visible in the natural search listings.

Make best use of Google product search

Google product search is one key foundations of online retail success. It is free and highly traffic generative, for product search optimized listings it also pushes the top 2-3 listings in to the natural search results in Google increasing product ad exposure massively.

A well implemented long tail product based campaign can lead to transformational sales growth, whilst a poorly implemented campaign is money left on the table for your competitors.

Web content strategy to fit into overall communications strategy

Develop a online content strategy around developing new, fresh and SEO friendly product & sales copy that it part of the business’s overall communications strategy. Include; people from the various business work streams and ensure that document management and approvals processes do not hold up the issue of core content that could drive your websites performance at a critical time.

A leading SEO agency will be able to tap into your business’s communications strategy and content plans to help you obtain the SEO sales value from the copy you are already producing. This will save you additional time and money in executing your SEO campaigns.

This article was produced by: Steve Bernard – Ecommerce SEO Expert,

Director at Seek4Commerce, a leading London SEO Company.