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SEO (Search Engine Optimisation) is important to all business websites, but when you have an ecommerce site, there are several reasons why you might not be getting a high search ranking. Here are a few tips to consider when optimising your online shop for popular search engines.

1. Be Aware Of Duplicate Content

One of the biggest issues for ecommerce sites is that of duplicate content; it can lower your search rank and present a big problem for owners of online shops. This can happen when products in the store are linked via multiple distinct URLs. Fortunately, there are many ways you can combat this issue.

Canonicalization – if your website does include identical or similar content over several pages, you can tell Google your preferred (canonical) URL. You can do this by setting your preferred domain, using 301 redirects, featuring your canonical URLs in a sitemap, or by specifying the preferred link for each version of a page.

If your content is actually being used by a third party on a different site, against your permission, you can ask for the page to be removed by Google. This will come under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act.

2. Make Quality of Content A Top Priority

With the introduction of Panda (an update to Google’s search algorithms), the popular search engine now discriminates against pages written specifically for spiders (such as relying on keyword density). This means that the content of a website has to be both unique and of a good quality. If you’re having trouble making your ecommerce site unique, it can be easily achieved by asking customers to provide comments and reviews of your products and services that are specific to your company.

3. Prioritise Your Products

Visitors generally don’t spend too long on ecommerce sites if they can’t find what they’re looking for. Therefore, you should put all of your most popular products in a clearly visible place on your homepage. Put most of your marketing effort into promoting the few items that regularly sell well, and if there isn’t room to include them on your homepage, make sure you link to those products directly.

4. Get Social

As with any business, expanding your brand to social media websites will help to reach out to a wide range of potential customers. Getting a discussion going on your Twitter or Facebook page can help you to engage with and attract new customers, and it will also give you the chance to interact with people on a personal level. In terms of SEO, Google+ can help you with your search rankings; users are able to see images and other content from their friends as they are actually integrated into their search results.

5. Promote Your Physical Store

If you have a physical store, then make the most of promoting it online using Google Places. By including your business address, hours of trade, photos of the outside of your shop and more, you can use Google to not only drive virtual traffic to your website, but also physical traffic to your actual store. Google Places allows visitors to rate and recommend their experience, enabling discussion and allowing your business to stand out from the rest.

By Chelsey Evans

Follow @AmpheonLtd