Search Engine Optimization – Can it Help My E-Commerce Site?

Search engine optimization has become a buzz word for some in the online business world, and there have been many articles written on the subject. Here is a basic overview of how to accomplish good search engine optimization and how it can affect your business.

The best way to gain leverage on a competitive keyword or phrases, is to have good information architecture for your site. Generally, you want to have a good mix of category pages, sub-categories, and single-page pages. This helps to spread your keyword total across multiple pages. If you have a site that sells a product or service, then you might want to split the main pages into separate sub-categories and divide them into relatively unrelated categories. You don’t necessarily want to do this to other keywords or phrases, as it tends to unclear things up for the user.

If you have a site filled with articles on a certain subject, then you want to break them down into relatively unrelated pages. You see, if you break an article into smaller sections, then it becomes easier for the reader to understand the subject. These types of articles are ranked lower than simply stick to the main topic. Therefore, you want to break your more comprehensive articles into smaller parts. Articles that are 100 words or more are often broken up and put up separately on the site. By doing this, you can make sure that a user can go directly to the relevant topic without having to go to other pages. After all, if a user is searching for something, they are generally ready to buy.

For the best results, you should also try to make articles a little closer to the root of the site. For example, if your topic is “oncoming spider stingers”, then you want to put this somewhere near the top of the article. preferably near the beginning. Then put the spiders in the topic to get the attention of the search engine spiders.

Try to make a user-friendly site. Often times you will find that when you have a site full of links, users get lost and simply give up. Users want to be able to get what they want from a site. Therefore, put good information into the user’s hands rather than making a user work for the information. Work out the keywords that you want to target and make sure that these are in the articles and on the site. Answering questions on the site is another way to help. Users love to place questions on a site. Use this method to help direct users to the information they want.

The key to this is that you need to have good balance on the subject you want to rank for and the amount of determines the ranking. Do not simply stuff lots of information on a single page. Search engines do not like this and your will not get anywhere. Use cross-referencing to cross-check your work and make sure that it is all relevant.

This is a crucial part of search engine optimization and needs to be adhered to. Your users are important, the search engines are important. The combination of the two, along with your knowledge of what search engine optimization techniques are acceptable for a particular site, can make all the difference in the world.