On page eCommerce SEO should actually begin behind the scenes, in the HTML source code
itself. It is a fairly quick and easy process to achieve maximum optimisation,
which serves to help users find your website as well as provide information
vital to search engines. Each page of a website should be optimised
individually to achieve maximum benefit. The following is listed in order of
importance:
Title Tag
The title tag is
always placed inside the <head/> section of your website and should not
be the name of your business. See it more as an opportunity to improve PageRank
and make it keyword orientated. The optimum length of a title is 68 characters
(including spaces) which is the number that is displayed in the search engine
results pages (SERPs).
Metadata
The <meta/>
tags, one for "keywords" and one for "description, are also
placed in the <head> section. The first is a prime opportunity for
listing long tail keywords which you think users may search for you by, the
second is a description of your business in a nutshell. Metadata is used by
browsers for display purposes as well as search engines.
Headings
Shown in HTML as <h1>, <h2> and so on, with h1 being the most important and always
used for the page title. The others are used for sub-headings in order of
importance but this rarely goes beyond <h3>. Many people believe that
headings are purely a design feature of a website but they are actually an
integral part of telling search engines about the page content and its
importance.
Bold and Strong
The </b> and
<strong/> tags are used to emphasize particular words for the user's
benefit. Where possible the emphasized words will be important keywords as
well, but it is important not to sacrifice user experience and well-written
text to include them. Contrary to popular belief, there is no optimum keyword
density.
Images
Every image
displayed on your website should have its own Alt Tag which accurately
describes the content of the image itself.
E.g. img src
="image.jpg" alt="description of image"
Doing this serves
two purposes, firstly, it provides search engine spiders with additional
information about your website and, secondly, it enables accessibility to users
whose browsers are unable to render images.
Hyperlinks
Hyperlinks are
the lifeblood of the Internet and enable easy movement from page to page on a
website or sometimes to another website altogether. They are an essential part
of search engine optimisation as the quantity and quality of links to a given
website are very relevant to search engines.
Hyperlinks enable
your website to link to others containing relevant content, with anchor text
containing your keywords.
So there we have
it, a few very simple additions and tweaks can make a great deal of difference
to the results your website is able to achieve in the rankings. Probably the
hardest part of the whole process will be determining which keywords are the
best ones for you to use.
Do
bear in mind though, that nothing is carved in stone and as things can change
very rapidly where the Internet is concerned, you should always be ready to
make changes yourself to keep pace.