60 SEO Tips & Online Marketing Techniques for Ecommerce Websites

Improving the Online Marketing presence of an Ecommerce website is usually a very challenging task. This is because the Online Marketers & SEO Professionals have to optimize the website in order to achieve better rankings on Search Engines, they must improve the user experience, they have to use all the available channels to promote the Online business and above all they have to find ways to increase conversion rates & boost the sales.

Few weeks ago we published a detailed SEO Checklist with 60 essential checks that need to be done before launching a website. In this article we list 60 important SEO tips and Online Marketing techniques that can be used in order to improve the Online Marketing presence of an ecommerce website. The list touches upon several different parts of the optimization process and thus we group the various tips & techniques in 8 large categories.

Link Structure

1. Use SEO Friendly URLs which contain the important keywords of each product or category.

2. Choose carefully your categories and use a tree-like link structure.

3. Prefer the “example.com/product1” URL structure over the “example.com/cat1/procuct1” structure if you have multiple categorization. The second one can create duplicate content issues.

4. Link directly from your homepage to your best selling products.

5. Watch out for duplicate content and use canonical URLs. Don’t create multiple landing pages for minor product differences (color, size etc).

6. Eliminate all the Dangling & Broken links by using the Link Structure Tool.

On Page Optimization

7. Conduct Keyword Research and find out how people search for your products.

8. Use targeted, compelling and unique Page Titles.

9. Usually you should use singular over plural (example camera vs cameras). Check the trends in your industry to see which is more popular.

10. Don`t use generic manufacturer product descriptions to avoid duplicate content issues. Write meaningful & useful descriptions for at least the best selling products.

11. Optimize your pages for the targeted keywords and check their Keyword Rank with Keyword Analyzer tool.

12. Don`t create thin content and pages that are not needed. Panda is watching you!

13. Produce compelling SERP snippets to increase CTR.

14. Use schema.org to label the product details and prices.

15. Update your content regularly to keep it fresh.

16. Optimize your images (filenames, alts, surrounded text) to increase the traffic that you receive through Image Search.

Link Building

17. Use targeted anchor texts by using the keywords that appear on the title of each product/category.

18. Analyze the link building campaigns of your competitors and try to acquire links from the same high quality sources.

19. Use text hyperlinks to link between your products and categories.

20. Build links that point directly to the product landing pages and don’t focus all your link building efforts only on homepage.

Design & User experience

21. Use properly the call to actions. Keep them clear and place them strategically on your pages.

22. Create a compelling, user friendly, professional design.

23. Use “security badges” (McAfee, VeriSign, Better Business Bureau or Direct Marketing Association) to gain the trust of your visitors.

24. Don`t confuse the visitor with 1 million options. Steer his/her attention to the call to action.

25. Offer all the cool features such as “Add to wishlist”, “Send Email alert when product becomes available”, “subscribe to Newsletter” etc. They are good for the users and they can help you increase conversion rates.

26. Use several images and videos featuring the best selling products.

27. Ensure that your website is cross browser.

28. Keep your check-out and payment process simple to increase your conversion rate and reduce theShopping cart abandonment rate.

29. Reduce the loading time of your website by minimizing the size of css/js/image files and by using caching mechanisms.

Website Structure & Architecture

30. Choose carefully the Ecommerce platform that you will use. Ensure that it is regularly updated, that it has lots of plugins, that it is supported by an active community or a serious company and that it is SEO Friendly. Don’t select the platform only based on its cost.

31. Create HTML & XML sitemaps and submit them to the various search engines.

32. Avoid using AJAX, Flash and other non SEO Friendly technologies for important parts of your page.

33. Ensure that the session IDs do not appear in URLs. This can create a duplicate content issue.

34. Mind Pagination and the order of the products in those pages. Ensure that the most important/best selling/popular products appear first on the list.

35. Create a product RSS feed.

36. Offer to your users the ability to search for particular products based on their name, brand, price andcharacteristics.

Social Media & Promotion

37. Add the social media buttons on a strategic place of your page.

38. Use product reviews and ratings.

39. Organize contests to generate positive Buzz for your company.

40. Create a blog within your website and write reviews for the best selling products.

41. Use PPC advertising to get highly targeted traffic.

42. Use Email Marketing campaigns and keep in touch with your loyal customers.

43. Sign up on Google Merchant Center to have your products appearing on Google Product Search.

44. Check if affiliate marketing can help you boost your sales.

45. Don’t use spammy methods to promote your website (spam mail, comment trolling, etc)!

Monitoring

46. Track user behavior and see how he/she navigates through your website.

47. Identify your good clients, request their feedback and reward them by offering discounts.

48. Identify the trends and the best selling products.

49. Focus on conversion rates and make the appropriate changes to improve your sales.

50. Use A/B and Multivariable Testing to improve user experience and sales.

Off page factors and other must-have Features

51. Decide how many languages you should support on your website and which should be the default one. Have a different URL for each language version, don’t use a cookie solution.

52. Choose the name and the TLD of your domain wisely. A .com or a country specific TLD can really make the difference.

53. Host your website on a reliable hosting company. Choose wisely the country of the server.

54. Decide on whether you should use GEO Targeting methods.

55. Offer a lighter & simpler mobile version of your website.

56. Recommend similar products to your visitors.

57. Provide various payment methods to your customers (Credit Card, PayPal, Direct Bank Transfer etc).

58. Offer different shipping methods and reach to as many countries as possible.

59. Use robots.txt to ensure that search engine spiders can’t access the various ecommerce features/functions such as Add to Basket, complete purchase, add to wishlist etc.

60. Create Special Offers & Brand Landing Pages to boost your sales.

Even though optimizing an ecommerce website is a complicated and challenging task, I believe that the above list along with the initial SEO checklist that we published recently, can cover the most important parts of the process and they can be a great starting point for the SEO professionals & Online Marketers. I wish to all of you the best of luck and I’ll be happy to hear your thoughts and suggestions.

What other tips do you have for optimizing an Ecommerce website? Leave your comments below and don’t forget to share this article if you like it. 

Health Freaks

Green Tea Health Benefits

 

 

Protects Against Cancer & Diseases

Green tea is packed with potent antioxidants called “polyphenols” and “catechins”. These are remarkably efficient at fighting free radicals, which are nasty little toxins responsible for causing cellular damage, disease, aging, and cancer.

Promotes Healthy Skin & Prevents Wrinkles

The same free radicals that cause cancer and disease also attack skin cells and contribute to signs of aging in the form of wrinkles and skin spots. Green tea finds and terminates these free radicals and helps promote healthy, smooth skin.

Fights Aging

Along with fighting the signs of aging, green tea also helps with less obvious forms of aging as well. A Japanese University study found that drinking more than 2 cups of green tea per day slashed the odds of cognitive impairment in elderly patients by 64%. That’s an amazing number, and really demonstrates the power of green tea against cognitive impairment, memory loss, dementia and Alzheimer’s disease.

Enhances Mental Focus

Green tea contains mild levels of caffeine which has a stimulating effect on the nervous system. That’s not so amazing by itself, but...Green tea also contains the amino acid L-theanine, which is found almost exclusively in the tea plant. Theanine affects the brain’s neurotransmitters and increases alpha brain-wave activity. In simple terms this results in a calmer, yet more alert, state of mind.

Boosts the Immune System

Speaking of theanine, a 2003 study by the Brigham and Women’s Hospital found that theanine may help the body’s immune system when fighting infection. The study compared coffee drinkers to tea drinkers and found that the production of anti-bacterial proteins was up to five times higher in the tea drinkers, an indicator of stronger immune response.

Promotes Oral Health

Researchers at the University of Illinois in Chicago found that polyphenols in Green tea inhibit the growth of bacteria that cause bad breath. These antibacterial properties also help the teeth and gums. In fact, a Japanese University found that regular consumption of tea strengthened participant’s teeth and helped to prevent tooth decay.

Other Benefits of Green Tea

Starting to get an idea of the amazing health benefits of green tea? There’s a lot more too. Here are a few things that green tea can do that we haven’t mentioned so far:

• Fights rheumatoid arthritis
• Fights infection
• Lower stress
• Protect against heart disease
• Inhibit atherosclerosis
• Build bone density
• Minimizes risk of heart attack
• Speeds recovery after a heart attack
• Protects from brain damage
• Lowers blood pressure
• Protects the kidneys
• Protects the liver
• Increases endurance
• Protects against diabetes

Health Freaks

Health Benefits of Cabbage --

• Cabbage, is known to reduce the risk of a number of cancers, especially lung, colon, breast, ovarian stomach and bladder cancer.
• Cabbage is a muscle builder, blood cleanser and eye strengthener.
• The juice of fresh raw cabbage has been proven to heal stomach ulcer.
• Cabbage provides high levels of iron and sulphur, minerals that work in part as cleansing agents for the digestive system.
• Juice of fresh cabbage is effective in treating fungus infection(due to it sulfur content).
•Cabbage boosts the immune system’s ability to produce more antibodies.
• Cabbage can lower serum cholesterol.
• Red Cabbage has more phytonutrients than the green cabbage. The vitamin C content of red cabbage is 6-8 times higher than that of the green cabbage. 
• Cabbage is a rich source of tartronic acid. This acid converts excess sugar and fat in human body. In a way it controls carbohydrates and fat. Thus, it becomes the best slimming agent. Weight loss, thus, becomes yet another health benefit of cabbage.
Cabbage is also a very good source of dietary fiber, manganese, vitaminB6 and folate, and a good source of thiamin, riboflavin, calcium, potassium, Vitamin A, tryptophan, protein and magnesium.

Transcendence Movie Review

Transcendence

Genre: Science Fiction

Director: Wally Pfister

Cast: Johnny Depp, Rebecca Hall, Paul Bettany, Kate Mara, Morgan Freeman etc.

Synopsis: Dr. Will Caster (Johnny Depp) is the foremost researcher in the field of Artificial Intelligence, working to create a sentient machine that combines the collective intelligence of everything ever known with the full range of human emotions.  His highly controversial experiments have made him famous, but they have also made him the prime target of anti-technology extremists who will do whatever it takes to stop him.

However, in their attempt to destroy Will, they inadvertently become the catalyst for him to succeed—to be a participant in his own transcendence.  For his wife Evelyn (Rebecca Hall) and best friend Max Waters (Paul Bettany), both fellow researchers, the question is not if they can…but if they should.

Their worst fears are realized as Will’s thirst for knowledge evolves into a seemingly omnipresent quest for power, to what end is unknown.  The only thing that is becoming terrifyingly clear is there may be no way to stop him.

Review: Artificial intelligence isn't just the villain in the muddled technothriller Transcendence. It's also an apt description of the film's script: a cockamamie mishmash of Big Ideas and TED Conference buzzwords that sound smart, but don't compute. Johnny Depp, playing what's probably the closest thing to a villain he's managed in his 30-year career, stars as Dr. Will Caster. He's a maverick brainiac working on a top-secret sentient computer nicknamed ''PINN'' (Physically Independent Neural Network), a colossal wall of servers that resembles one of those hulking old IBM mainframes with menacingly blinking LED lights and the soothing monotone female voice that anyone who's seen 2001 will immediately suspect is up to no good. Depp's Caster has an equally brilliant partner and wife named Evelyn (Rebecca Hall), as well as a rock-&-roll level of nerdy fame. All of which makes him a ripe target for a technophobic band of Earth First!-style terrorists preaching sci-fi doom. After delivering a preposterous lecture at an ''Evolve the Future'' conference, he's shot by one of the terrorists. The wound seems harmless enough until it's discovered that the bullet was laced with polonium. Now he's got a radiation death sentence. With his expiration date quickly closing in, his grieving wife decides against the misgivings of their more levelheaded colleagues (Paul Bettany and Morgan Freeman) to upload his consciousness to PINN. She will do whatever she can to allow him and his work to live on. (This is where a Living Will would have been handy). With a series of electrodes sprouting out of his shaved head, Depp looks like Pinhead (or PINNhead?) from theHellraiser films crossed with a Radio Shack Chia Pet. And guess what? The experiment works. Depp has become the soul in the machine. But at what price?

Directed by Wally Pfister, Christopher Nolan's brilliant cinematographer dating all the way back to 2000's Memento, Transcendence at least looks as great as you'd expect. But the script by first-time screenwriter Jack Paglen is so full of half-explained cyber-nonsense and wheezy, kneejerk man-vs.-technology clichés, it borders on the ludicrous. It doesn't help that Depp—the star who will no doubt be the chief reason most folks go to see the film—is reduced to a spectral talking head that appears on video monitors spouting technobabble like some sort of Max Headroom digital messiah. Even worse is just how many good actors are left with little or nothing to do. Hall and Bettany never get to do much more than look increasingly concerned at the disembodied Will's bizarre actions, Freeman all-too-infrequently wanders onscreen to offer Voice-of-God concerns, and poor Kate Mara, as the leader of the luddite resistance, is given the most thankless task of all: popping up to spout manifesto-ready slogans.

Transcendence wants to be a thinking person's film about what the Internet hath wrought, à la The Matrix, questioning our dependence on ones and zeroes instead of human reason. And the film imagines a cyber 9/11 apocalypse that's more numbing than chilling. Watching it all unfold and slowly go off the rails, you can't help but wonder what Pfister's mentor, Nolan, might have done with the same material. My guess is he would have sent the script back for a Page One rewrite for starters.

Forum Posting

Importance of Forum Posting in SEO

Almost all webmasters use forum posting as a tool in SEO, especially in off page optimization. Posting on forums gives do follow backlinks to your site, once the forum page is indexed on Google. On the other hand it will provide you direct targeted traffic to your blog/website. So forum posting is a must know technique to generate a brand on web. I’ll give you a list of best forums on my future posts.

Let’s discuss this in details.

What is Forum posting?

Forum posting is participating on forums about a specific topics between new and experts in forum platform. Here you’ll able to discuss any related content according to that particular category thread.

As an example you can ask anything related to search engine optimization (SEO) in a thread related to SEO. And you can ask anything related to jQuery slide show in a thread related to Web Development.

How Forums give high quality backlinks?

As I told you earlier, you can get backlinks to your blog/website just by posting your content and questions on forum. But how did it happen? There is a part called “Signature” which located just below each and every post you made on a forum. What you need to do is add your link inside this signature box with the anchor text. Once you published a post inside a forum you will see do-follow backlinks just below your post with those anchor texts. But always you should keep in mind not to spam the forum; otherwise admin will kick your butt out from the forum.

Once you published that particular forum post it will be indexed in Google. Then you will get high quality backlinks from that particular forum.

How Forums give Targeted traffic?

The next question is how it brings targeted traffic to yourblog/website. Since you placed a link on your signature box with a descriptive anchor text, the people who likes to read no your anchor text will visit your blog. Then you will get more visitors to your blog.

How Forum posting affects your Google Page Rank?

As we all know backlink is one of the major factors that determine your Google page rank. Since you can get high quality backlinks from Forums, you will be able to reach a better Google Page Rank within a short time periods. Then Google PR decides the place of your blog/website in SERP (Search Engine Result Page). Better the Page Rank will show your blog in a higher position of SERP.Simply this will bring tons of organic traffic to your blog via search engines.

How to select a Forum for Forum Posting?

Selection of a forum to make posts is a crucial step in forum posting. Selection of a forum is not that difficult when you consider the factors given below. First you should look for a forum which has the same niche to your content. As an example if you are writing reviews on mobile phones, you must select a forum related to technology to make your post. It makes high quality backlinks to your blog/website once that forum page indexed on Google. If you send mobile phone reviews in a celebrity video forum, it will not help you to get high quality backlinks.

Then you look for a forum with considerable amount of traffic to make your forum posts. More visitors can bring more sales on your site.

Onthe other hand you must post your links on a forum which has higher PR. Higher PR will provide you high quality backlinks.

What to consider when making a forum post?

Making a forum post is not a difficult task. Either you can start a new thread or you can reply to an existing thread. Replying to existing thread is not that difficult. But making a new thread is very important in forum posting. The new thread you are going to make should make sense to both you and the other forum members.  Otherwise your post will be penalized by other members. Always post the content which is useful to both you and the others.

Well,these are the importance and importance facts you must consider while involving in forum posting. Later I’ll give you a list of good forums to make forum posts. Until then keep in touch.