Ranking well in the search engines is absolutely vital for an online business and why optimising an e-commerce site is essential. If you are not at the top of the search engines for your keywords, you are missing out on vital sales. Ranking an e-commerce site though is easier said than done as often they have dynamic URLs, duplicate content issues and they are light on content.
Although the core principles of ranking any website are the same, certain websites lend themselves better to search marketing than others. A news site for example is rich in unique content, is updated daily with new stories and rarely has duplicate content issues as each story is different. Unfortunately though, the same cannot be said about ecommerce sites. Ecommerce sites by their very nature lack content as they are usually mostly image based and several products are often placed in more than one category leading to duplicate content issues.
What does this post cover?
In this post I will cover the 3 main points:
- How to organise your site to avoid duplicate content issues
- How to create landing pages
- How to encourage unique and user generated content that will encourage conversions
Site Structure
Most of the problems with ranking ecommerce sites, such as duplicate content, can be resolved with a good site structure. Duplicate content is exactly how it sounds – content that appears in more the one place, e.g. on two different web pages. It is a problem because when there are multiple pieces of the same information, search engines find it difficult to decide which is more relevant to a given search query but it needs to choose one because delivering multiple search results with the same content is not very helpful to the user. The key issues with duplicate content are that search engines don’t know whether to index the content and which page to rank for a given search query. They also don’t know where to direct the search metrics (authority, link juice etc.). Do they give it all to one page or divide it up? The important thing with the site structure is to maintain organisation but also to make it searchable. This is done in 3 simple steps:
- Categorise products
- Create category pages with content giving an overview of the products
- Makes search engine friendly URLS
It is no good building a good site structure if your URLs are not readable. A lot of ecommerce sites dynamically generate URLs causing unfriendly query strings like field1=value1&field1=value2&field1=value3… which cannot be read by the search engines. It is important to change these URLs to make them search friendly. Make sure you separate the words with a hyphen or an underscore to make them readable e.g. domainname.com/search-engine-friendly-url.
Category URL
A good category URL would be domainname.com/category-url
Product URL
The product URL very much depends on your site as to which approach to take. While it makes sense to have a URL like domainname.com/category-name/product-name, this is not always best as you are inviting duplicate content issues as products are often put into more than one category causing pages to have exactly the same content. While you can get around this with canonical tags (I will explain these later), this approach just invites duplicate content issues.
A better approach is to not include the category name in the product URL and instead have a URL like domainname.com/product-113944. Notice the number next to the product name. It is important to add a unique product number next to the product name to protect against similar product names.
Canonical Tags
If you end up with duplicate content on your site for whatever reason, you can notify the search engine of the orginal page and avoid any possible duplicate content issues by adding canonical tags to both pages. You do this simply by adding the following code before the closing head tag, referencing the original page:
<link rel=”canonical” href=”http://www.yourdomain.com/correct-page” />
Product Description
Product descriptions are one of the few opportunities you have to add content to your site. Make sure that you take time to write your own, unique product descriptions. If you pinch product descriptions from the manufacturers, not only would the product descriptions be the same as the manufacturer, it will be the same as all of the other websites that pinch manufacturers’ product descriptions. By pinching product descriptions, you are missing an opportunity to add unique content.
Meta Tags
Meta tags are an important element in onsite SEO and are a great opportunity to optimise your site.
Meta Title
Meta titles are one of the most important aspects when it comes to onsite SEO. It is important though that these are unique for every page. Doing this across thousands of pages is impossible if you have to do it manually. It is therefore a good idea to set up auto-generated meta titles that include the product name and a simple call to action.
Meta Description
Meta descriptions don’t actually have any bearing on rankings but they do have a big influence on click through rates. Like meta titles, it’s important to make sure your descriptions tag are unique for each page. Again, setup auto-generated meta description based on the product name and category.
H Tags
It is best practise to use H tags in all websites. These are header tags and automatically make text larger, for example the page title is normally H1, headings H2 etc. For ease, it’s a good idea to configure your CMS system to automatically configure your product name as the H1 tag for that page. This helps with search marketing as your target keywords will be in the title and as the text stands out, it is deemed more important.
Customer reviews
Customer reviews really are a must for ecommerce sites. One of the biggest difficulties when it comes to ranking an ecommerce site is the lack of unique content and customer reviews are a great way of producing unique content. Customer reviews are also a great way of getting feedback about your products which is vital information for your business.
Often getting reviews from customers is easier said than done. Some great tips to encourage reviews are:
- Setting up auto-generated emails to be sent out a couple of weeks after purchases asking for a review with a nice hyper-link leading them to the review section
- Offer incentives like discounts for those that write a review which again can easily be automated
You can also customise your review system so that it only displays when there are reviews to show avoiding ugly “there are no reviews on this product yet” messages
Reviews are also great at making your ad stand out in the search engine result page (SERPs) which will help with click through rates (CTR). To do this though you need to make sure you are marking up the reviews with rich snippet microdata.
Q&A Content
As mentioned before, ecommerce sites are invariably light on unique content so any opportunity to generate content should be taken. Integrating a question and answer feature for products does just this and it will help to improve engagement and conversions. Product Q & As are also good for long tail searches as they are bound to cover additional terms that otherwise are not covered.
Breadcrumbs
Breadcrumbs help to improve the user experience but they are also a great way of building internal links. A must for ecommerce sites!
Image Search
Most people forget that there are multiple ways of searching. While contextual search is the most popular, image search is often used too. As ecommerce sites are predominantly image based, why not make use of this and optimise your images to encourage image search as well?
You optimise images by:
- Using descriptive file names like ecommerce-image.png
- Adding alternate text tags to the html code that describes the image and include your keywords (you can set this up to be the same as your product name)
- Submitting image sitemap to Google and Bing
Local Search
Including company details such as the company address and contact telephone number not only improves your trust signals and encourages conversions, it helps to improve your local search ranking.
Optimising an e-Commerce Site Summary
Great onsite SEO, especially with e-commerce sites, is about careful planning and a good approach. Certain website platforms make it easier to optimise your site than others and some are straightforward to amends, others are and this should be discussed during the discovery and website scoping process. While you may expect e-commerce web development companies to incorporate these adjustments as standard, most web development companies focus on making sites user friendly and looking great. They tend not to be digital marketers.
If you have any questions about making your ecommerce site search engine friendly, write a comment below and i will answer it as quickly as I can. For those that are looking to adjust or renew their e-commerce site, talk to us today and see how we can help.
For more digital marketing advice, subscribe to our newsletter!
SIGN UP TO OUR NEWSLETTER
We design and build mobile compatible websites to help companies reach users that search on their smart phones and tablets. Smart phone and tablet usage has increased exponentially in recent years and companies need to have a fully responsive website that works on mobile devices, offering an excellent user experience.
Mobile sites are similar to traditional sites however they tend to be much smaller and so the design and layout needs to be optimised for each platform and device. They are operated using fingers rather than a mouse and therefore buttons and navigational menus need adjusting to accommodate taps and swipes of a finger.
With a growing audience using their smart phone and tablet devices to search the web, a mobile site is essential to all digital marketing strategies, especially now that Google and other search engines include mobile friendly sites as a ranking factor and so search rankings will be improved by making your website mobile friendly.
All of the websites that we build are fully responsive and thus work on every platform and device. We can also alter websites to make them responsive or we can build a dedicated mobile site to improve usability. Digital marketing is at the centre of what we do and all of our projects focus on your audience and business needs. As part of your website design, we will create a buying journey with clearly defined call-to-action and KPIs. Once the site is built, we test it on each device and use analytics and other data to improve the user experience. We can also organise a focus group to improve usability further
Why choose Marketing Grin for your mobile website design and development?
We are effective because the audience is at the centre of what we do and everything is done with your business needs in mind. We apply a proven digital marketing strategy when scoping and designing your mobile site where we map out the buying journey and set-up KPIs to track the user journey and measure the success of digital marketing campaigns. Being a small mobile web design agency in Essex, we offer a personal, tailored service that matches your requirements and achieves your business goals.
We build fully responsive sites and we also adjust sites or build dedicated mobile sites for those that are not after a complete site rebuild. For more information on how we can help you, speak to one of our experts today.
We use back office integration to help you to synchronise website data with your back office systems and reduce admin overheads.
We live in a digital age where technology is essential to most businesses, helping companies to run efficiently. Synchronising programs can save time and improve functionality. A great website is an effective lead generator and sales tool where important sales data is compiled. If you have a back office software such as a customer relationship manager (CRM) or an enterprise resource planner (ERP), you will want to fully integrate your site with it so that vital data can be transferred automatically, avoiding timely manual transfer.
With our back office integration solutions, we make your digital visions a reality and take companies to the next level. The functionality of your website can be greatly increased by linking your website with back office software such as CRM systems, ERP, stock management, accountancy, project management and email marketing systems together. Think what synchronising all of your business tools together would allow you to do.
We provide:
- CRM Customisation – we are able to customise most CRM systems to your business needs, helping you to get the most out of them
- Website Integration – all online forms can be integrated into your website avoiding time consuming data transfer
- Bespoke Back Office Integration and Synchronisation – we can synchronise data transfer between your CRM, ERP, stock management, accountancy, email marketing and project management systems, improving efficiency and functionality
Why choose Marketing Grin for your Back Office Integration?
We have experience with most back office software including major customer relationship management software including Salesforce and Microsoft Dynamics along with most popular business tools. This combined with a proven and effective approach, with your business needs at the core of what we do, allows us to deliver cutting edge business solutions.
For more information on how we can help you, speak to one of our experts today.
We use a thorough discovery and website scoping process to make sure our websites are right first time, helping us to deliver on time and to specification. Often when effective website scoping is not done, it leads to badly specified sites which frequently result in labour intensive and costly amendments which usually occur late in the build process causing projects to overrun.
The initial process of website scoping is to understand what your requirements are and what the intended purpose of the website is. We sit down with you to understand your business, the buying cycle and your objectives, looking at who your audience is, where they hang out and the best way to attract qualified traffic to your site. We will use your insightful knowledge of your industry and market research along with our expertise in digital marketing to put together a detailed website brief.
Once a clear, detailed brief has been compiled, the next stage is the planning stage where we will write a thorough website specification. We will take all of the information from the discovery and website scoping process to decide on the appropriate platform to build the website, call to actions and KPIs to track how visitors found your site and the user journey and to put together a detailed plan.
Why choose Marketing Grin for your website scoping?
We are effective because the audience is at the centre of what we do and everything is done with your business needs in mind. We apply a proven digital marketing strategy when scoping your site, deciding on the appropriate website platform, map out the buying journey and set-up KPIs to track the user journey and measure the success of digital marketing campaigns.
We can scope your website as part of a fully integrated digital marketing campaign or can scope a website for those that wish to build the website in-house. For more information on how we can help you, speak to one of our experts today.
We use e-Commerce web design and development to provide companies with online business solutions that attract, engage and generate sales. Our sites are high-performance, fully responsive working on all platforms and devices and are user friendly guiding visitors through a carefully planned buying cycle.
Online stores invariably lack content and have duplicate pages as well as other search engine optimisation issues unless they are set-up correctly. Our e-Commerce sites are audience lead and focus on your business needs. Before we begin planning, we complete a comprehensive discovery process where we scope out your website requirements. We sit down with you to understand your business, the buying cycle and your objectives, looking at who your audience is, where they hang out and the best way to attract qualified traffic to your site.
We look carefully at your system requirements. Our clients demand secure and fast sites that are built in a reliable and easy to use infrastructure. We will discuss and recommend the best platforms to use based on the project specification, budget and your administration, performance. We can integrate your site with just about any back office system such as your accountancy software, customer relationship management (CRM), stock management or enterprise resource planner (ERP) helping you to synchronise your data, reducing your administrative overheads and minimising data input mistakes.
Our enterprise e-Commerce sites are built in Microsoft ASP.Net, C# and MVC and run off a Microsoft SQL database. We can also provide clients who are working to a smaller budget with Magento and WordPress e-Commerce systems.
Why choose Marketing Grin for e-Commerce Web Design and Development?
We are effective because the audience and your business needs are at the centre of what we do. We don’t just build pretty, user friendly e-Commerce sites, we build business solutions that attract, engage and generate sales. We apply a proven digital marketing strategy when scoping and designing sites where we map out the buying journey and set-up KPIs to track the user journey and measure the success of digital marketing campaigns. Being a small ecommerce web design agency in Essex, we offer a personal, tailored service that matches your requirements and achieves your business goals.
For more information on how we can help you, speak to one of our experts today.
We use web design and development to provide companies with a platform where you can promote your brand and generate sales and sales leads. Our sites are high-performance, fully responsive working on all platforms and devices and they deliver rich and engaging content that guides users through the buying cycle.
Your audience and business needs are at the centre of what we do and before we begin planning, we complete a comprehensive discovery process where we scope out your website requirements. Here we sit down with you to understand your business, the buying cycle and your objectives, looking at who your audience is, where they hang out and the content that they are after.
Our clients demand secure and fast sites that are built in a reliable and easy to use infrastructure. We will discuss and recommend the best platforms to use based on the project specification, budget and your administration performance. We can integrate your site with just about any back office system such as your accounting software, stock management or enterprise resource planner helping you to synchronise your data, reducing your administrative overheads and minimising data input mistakes.
Typically we use the latest Microsoft MCV .NET, HTML5, CSS design techniques for larger sites that require enterprise solutions and build WordPress sites with increased security for smaller sites.
The sites that we design and build are different to most sites in that we provide a complete solution that is fully optimised for search engine optimisation, has a clearly defined buying cycles with conversion tracking set-up so. Our sites provide the foundation of your digital marketing strategy.
Why choose Marketing Grin for website design and development?
We are effective because the audience and your business needs are at the centre of what we. We don’t just build pretty, user friendly sites, we build business solutions where you can not only promote your company but generate sales and sales leads. We apply a proven digital marketing strategy when scoping and we design sites where we map out the buying journey and set-up KPIs to track the user journey and measure the success of digital marketing campaigns. Being a small web design and development agency in Essex, we offer a personal, tailored service that matches your requirements and achieves your business goals.
For more information on how we can help you, speak to one of our experts today.
We are a digital marketing agency in Essex and use a blend of digital channels to help brands reach their target audience, increase visibility and drive qualified traffic to their site. When on the site, we use a carefully planned user journey to guide visitors through the buying cycle and help convert prospects into long-standing customers.
Using a blend of digital marketing disciplines to reach prospects, spread your message, increase brand awareness and direct qualified visitors to your site. We get visitors to act by downloading resources or marketing material, and interact with your posts by commenting or sharing them online. We help users convert through carefully planned micro or macro conversions and keep them engaged and in the sales pipeline so that your customers remain happy, long-term customers, achieving your business needs.
Our digital marketing services
We start with a careful discovery process where we learn about your buying cycle and how your audience finds, consumes and buys content, products and services and with this information we put together a carefully planned digital strategy with clearly defined KPIs.
Analytics & Insight
We use a combination of top level and lower level reporting software to give an overview of progress and to drill down and analyse what is happening and why, understanding market trends.
Biddable Media
We use a combination of paid media platforms including paid search social advertising, display and remarketing to promote content and drive qualified traffic to your site.
Content Marketing
We use content marketing to generate targeted traffic, better engagement, improved reach, brand authority and increased sales.
Search Marketing
We use a combination of search engine optimisation (SEO) and paid search advertising (PPC) to put together integrated search strategies that increase reach and drive qualified traffic to your site
Social Media
We use social platforms to increase visibility, promote content, interact with prospects and customers, build authority and to bring positive sentiment to your brand.
Website design and Development
We build fully responsive websites for B2B and B2C businesses that are audience focused and guide users through the buying cycle both on e-Commerce and lead generation sites, helping companies achieve their marketing objectives and business needs with clearly defined KPIs to measure engagement, interaction and micro and macro conversions.
Website functionality is very important and helps to keep users engaged and moves them through the buying cycle helping you to convert prospects into loyal customers. Poor functionality will cause visitors to be less engagement and increased chance of users clicking off without converting and therefore reducing sales.
(more…)
Website load times are important and effect user engagement and conversions with faster pages ranking and converting better. People are busy and if the load times on your site are slow, users will bounce and click off.
An effective digital marketing strategy combines multiple digital channels to reach prospects, boost awareness and drives qualified visitors to your site where visitors are engaged and convert into loyal customers.
This post is by a our guest writer Carlton Daniel, a senior associate at Hammonds, a commercial law firm.
The UK is at loggerheads with the EU over how much protection is needed for internet users’ privacy, in particular with respect to the issue of behavioural advertising. The legal position is likely to result in changes which will adversely affect the behavioural advertising sector but the position is not clear. (more…)