August 25, 2007

(Continued from page one).

Step no. 4
As one might expect, if you really want your online business to prosper, it has to be visible in the major search engines such as Google, AltaVista, Yahoo, Global Business Listing and all the others. You need to make your e-commerce website "search engine-friendly" so that when the spiders (or crawlers) come, they will be able to include it in their databases.

Depending on the exact design and structure of your e-commerce site, the way it was originally done and the techniques used to interlink the pages together can materially and adversely affect the SERP's (Search Engine Results Pages). Search engine spiders can’t follow image-based navigation elements, and are stopped dead in their tracks once they see “question-mark delimiters” (?) in filenames or long URL’s with question marks that come from most database-driven sites. If at all possible, you should always try to avoid such database-driven technology, as most search engines today cannot index those sites in their directories.

If the only way to navigate your site is by clicking on images, you won’t do very well with the search engines. If your e-commerce site features these major roadblocks, offer a text-based navigation option to complement the images.

Title tags - The majority of the search engines heavily weigh the title tags in their ranking algorithms of the sites they index. Don’t waste the power of the tag with something like “Our company home page”. Try to incorporate your top keywords into your title tags. It will make a very positive improvement in the overall ranking of your e-commerce web site.

Description tags - Most search engines today use meta description tags for the writing they post in their results. Think of description tag content in terms of marketing & sales copy. In short, be sure your description tags are written for people to read and something that will invite them in visiting your site as opposed to the sites that are competing for the same business.

Meta tags below your Java Script code - Search engines often have problems reading meta tags placed after JavaScript on web pages. If your website uses JavaScript, be sure to locate all of your meta tags above the JavaScript code, or, better still, in a separate file.

Site maps - Include a site map with text links on your site and submit it to the search engines. This will help the search engines locate pages within your web site. For an example of how I make a sitemap, click here. Also, be sure to name the filename of your sitemap "sitemap.html" and not site_map.html or something like that.

Sites built with frames - Search engines just don’t like frames. They can't read them either. There are ways around the problem if you must use them, but my advice is to avoid using them if at all possible. For more on the subject, I suggest you refer to an earlier article I published on this website on How to make a frame site rank highly in the engines.

Dynamic content - Search engines cannot index dynamically generated pages and they were not designed for that either. This can present some very serious problems trying to promote an e-commerce site using shopping carts, product catalogues and dynamically generated pages on most of the site. If your e-commerce site does deliver dynamically generated pages, try to implement dynamic pages after the home page. For more information in the careful optimization of most dynamic sites, please refer to an earlier article I wrote on this website about How to optimize dynamic and database-driven websites and how to correct these very important problems.

Sites deeper than three levels - Search engines typically only index the top three levels of any site. Sites built like this:

www.yourweb.com/dir_1/dir_2/dir_3/dir_4/dir_5... etc. (6 levels deep) usually only get half of their pages indexed. I strongly suggest that you build as “flat” as possible, something like this:

www.yourwebsite/dir_1
www.yourwebsite/dir_2
www.yourwebsite/dir_3 etc...

Step no. 5
The importance of advertising, promotion and the proper marketing of your e-commerce and online business can never be under-estimated. Step five is a bit rudimentary, but necessary. Here, the old methods usually work as well as the new ones.

You might try advertising your site locally, in your city using newspapers or with the use of flyers. I have a few clients that tried banner advertising, with mixed results. Banner advertising worked better in the younger go-go days of the Internet. Today, most people look to Google or the other major search engines for their buying or shopping. You could try banner advertising on a few selected websites where you really think your audience could be, but I wouldn’t waste too many resources on that.

If you have the budget, other e-commerce advertising medias could be radio or tv ads on selected "prime-time" programs. Just make certain that is really the target audience you need for the products and services you offer on your online storefront.

Conclusion
As with anything, the careful planning, design and implementation of any successful e-commerce website takes time, dedication and, most of all, the proper knowledge and understanding of the basics involved in each step of the process. I strongly suggest you carefully review each of the five steps that I have shown you in this article in order to achieve these goals.

Furthermore, I would be very pleased in learning some of the experiences some of you may have had in the past or maybe some of the present ones you are going thru today. I am always available for questions, comments or if you need assistance in any of these 5 steps. Good luck in the building of your e-commerce online business!

(Updated from my previous October 2001 article).

Article written by Serge Thibodeau,
President & CEO,
Rank for $ales
Copyright (c) Serge Thibodeau 2001

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