• Posted by Melanie
• 26 April 2011
• Ecommerce SEO

Google's recent changes, while in some cases overly aggressive have all been about removing low quality and spammy content from their results. I can certainly appreciate that as, like you, I am a searcher as well. I would like to say that searches are better now than they were a few months ago... But that would be a lie. So logically speaking, we can expect more of the same from Google until they get it right.

Every shop owner should be taking steps to eliminate low quality content, duplication and improper formed content throughout your websites. No one expects to complete this in a day, to be honest I have a couple of days to spend in my own shops and we have never duplicated content EVER. So, do not think you are going to be "okay", rather take the steps to update your content and store's SEO now while Google is still experimenting.

First let me start by saying I mention SEO in the truest sense of the process and not in the manner most of you *think SEO is about. SEO is very simply managing the website's ability to be properly crawled and indexed by search engines. Notice the complete and utter lack of words like keywords, stuffing, spam, tags...etc. That's simply because that stuff is garbage marketing and NOT SEO.

While just like anything else new, there is a lot involved... We are going to concentrate on 3 main areas that ecommerce shop owners can should be able to control. These areas are duplication, quality and architecture. I've decided that these areas are likely to provide the greatest impact for shop owners and help you to create better habits ongoing as well.

Duplication

Duplication of content can happen in may ways and comes in many forms. For ecommerce websites we will canonical duplication, copied text, lack of text and repeated text as the top areas of concern.

Canonical duplication:

This is simply the duplication caused by the same content being loaded on more than one url. For example www.domain.com, domain.com, domain.com/index.php?main_page=index etc... you get the picture. Serving up the correct canonical page for your content is crucial and this is a task that is easily met. For your www/non www provide a 301 permanent redirect to the correct version. For the index pages, provide a 301 permanent redirect to the domain/shop root such as domain.com. We specialize in Zen Carts, so we can provide some extra tips for not so normal canonical duplication such as /index.php?main_page=products_new and /index.php?main_page=products_new&disp_order=6&page=2 for example. The issue with new products, specials, featured and even sorted product index pages is that they have the same content, but different urls. The easiest way to combat this is to upgrade to Zen Cart version 1.3.9H, which has native canonical support via the rel="canonical" tags for these and other pages.

Copied Text:

Copied text is just that... If you copied the text in full or part from ANY other web page (including your own), it's duplicate. This also includes using manufacturer's provided descriptions that 9 million other shops are using as well. The simplest way to fix this issue is to "stem" the content. If you add or change a word every 5 words, the content should then be unique to you.

Lack of  Text:

This one is a little more confusing. The most common cause (see image below) is that shop owners do not provide enough page unique text to overcome the common template textual areas which are duplicate on every page.

Click to Enlarge

While I am in no way suggesting that a common template throughout your website is a bad thing.... Quite the contrary as it's more professional, consistently branded and builds shoppers trust. Rather I am suggesting that the page specific text on each be of enough content to make the page about the unique provided text.

Quality of Textual Content

This one in my opinion is the easiest to figure out and perhaps the most tedious to implement. Writing unique and quality content is your job if you have a website... No ifs ands or buts about it. It is necessary and it's a load of long hard work to accomplish once you already derailed.

Your product descriptions for example should be descriptive, creative and moving. I tell shop owners to describe and sell the product on the page the exact same way they would on the phone. Category pages and index pages are a bit more of a struggle. We know we need unique content... But we are concerned with the page real estate issues of our product listings being pushed down the page. With these pages I have 3 simple rules.

1. The text is ONLY about that page and no other pages or broad site comments.

2. The text is 100% unique.

3. The text is short enough to allow the shopper to at least get the first product listing without scrolling.

Proper Textual Architecture

As we have discussed already, Google endeavors to more effectively determine the proper "weight" for our web page containers. This in a great many ways will help shop owners. The common template text we discussed earlier will have it's weight "downgraded" by Google, logically making our unique text in the "main content container" more effective. But this idea has some other implications as well with regard to how we form our content.

Content should be formed in proper containers. Paragraphs, lists and other "grammar school day lessons" will be need to be practiced so that Google can effectively segment the page's containers, thoughts and more effectively pull snippets. These are a challenge for many and the code aspect is a real challenge for all Zen Cart HTML editors. The built in editor tends to screw this all up. Instead of a clean separation of content with <p> paragraph tags we tend to see....

<p>some text is here and this is the thought<br /><br />this is the next thought but the editor is too stupid to create another paragraph</p>

I will suggest that you use a proper HTML editor to create proper containers for your text and avoid using Zen Cart built in editors at all. Something we didn't mention above is the code/text ratio of a page. This is a little more complicated than I wanted to go, but I will touch on it briefly.

Let's say for example you edit a product description using a built in editor and change some size, colors etc. See example of the damage all the garbage code can cause below.

Click to Enlarge

I'll leave you all to get to work now.... As always if you have any questions, we will be sure to help you out best we can.

• Posted by Melanie
• 10 February 2010
• Ecommerce SEO, Myths Misconceptions

Easy SEO, this is a term as similar as black and white.

Easy SEO?

More to the point, you saw this title and thought I was going to give you some easy trick to make your shop rank so you can be rich. Not so, this is rather a rant, some things that just need said. You can benefit from the content of this post if you are determined to succeed in your ecommerce business, and you have some common sense. If so, please read on...

First lets tackle something no one seems to know. What is SEO?

SEO is a very mechanical, analytical and hands on discipline. SEO is a part of marketing (SEM), but is not marketing, rather SEO is just as the acronym suggests... Search engine optimization.

SEO itself is a method/practice of making your website better accessible to the search engines, mechanically sound, optimizing page structure, content and elements, website architecture, flow and navigation and server side scripting as well.

Rank itself is the goal, but making both your content and website easily understood and navigated by the search engines is the process. The things we do are generally based on 3 things. Things we know. Things we see proper research to prove. And things we believe to be true and are testing.

None of these things we do is anything automated or really easy. This is definitely hard work. The hard work involved comes in a few forms. For example building great content regularly is hard work, building quality inbound links is hard work... But most of all, reading enough so that you have a clue and can participate in the decisions for your SEO campaign is also hard work.

So that leaves basically 2 sets of website owners... Those who do, and those who don't.

Those who do seek to optimize their own websites are very vulnerable, for many reasons. They often set out and read on the internet about the SEO they need, implement it blindly as fact without support or merit and then fail to measure the results. These individuals then proceed to propagate this disease by sharing their ill founded and unsupported techniques with others just as vulnerable. For these folks I have some advise.

1. Know your sources. I could put up a website tomorrow offering a 5 minute solution to all of your SEO needs for $200 and sell these lies to the masses with ease. Just because I say something, does not make it true. I could get away with this because most have their heads wrapped around easy and fail to search out any supporting documentation or support for anything that looks to make SEO easy.
2. SEO cannot be automated. Even if every search algorithm factor was laid out for you in a to do list, you could not automate your SEO. Every website is different, the only way to properly succeed in your SEO campaign is to read, understand, test and measure the results. Anything less is just a reckless waste of time.
3. Common sense. If I tell you your website will rank if you make it all yellow, do you believe me? At the end of the day, your success will be determined on your ability to make good decisions. Now if you haven't taken the time to seek out the reading and education you need for these decisions, then at least use common sense.

Those who do not, are equally at risk, just in a different manner. There are many reasons website owners seek out a professional to provide their SEO, unfortunately most of these reasons are what make them destined to fail. If you think that paying someone for SEO will answer all of your goals without you lifting a finger, you are mistaken. If you think you will require no knowledge of the techniques because you are paying someone, you are also mistaken.

Website owners blindly paying for SEO they do not understand are running around with a big bulls eye on their foreheads. You are not only vulnerable, but the cost can be both failure and cash! So I have some advise for those that do not as well...

1. Do not pay someone for SEO if you haven't checked them out. Do they use a gmail email address? Do you think that is professional? Is their own site well constructed, easy to navigate and ranking? Can you call them on the phone and have a discussion?
2. Ask questions. If your paid SEO cannot/will not answer your questions regarding technique, services etc... Then they are likely jerking you around. Ask questions, do some reading and then ask better questions.
3. Why are you paying me? You may think this is in contrast to #2, but I assure you it is not. If your SEO tells you you need more content, you do some research and are still confused, then perhaps you should just do what they say. You are paying them for their professional services, correct?
4. Cost. If you are paying a low amount of money for an SEO who has said they will do everything and you need to do nothing, you are getting screwed. This type of service in my opinion is not only impossible, but would be very expensive (in the thousands of dollars a month). The reason this is veritably impossible is that this SEO person needs your input and niche specific expertise to create and execute a successful SEO campaign for you. No person, SEO or pretending professional can know every product, niche and service well enough to proceed without your involvement.
5. If they guarantee you rank, they are lying. SEOs do not work for Google, Bing or any other search engine. There is no way for any legitimate SEO to make you a guarantee of rank. It's just frankly a snake oiled lie to get in your pockets.

Easy SEO Summary

• There is NO easy SEO.
• SEO cannot be automated.
• SEO is hard work.
• SEO requires common sense and research.
• There is no plugin, module or magic dust that will make you rank.
• If you make changes without analysis, you have failed.
• No one can provide comprehensive SEO services without your involvement.
• Rank guarantees are outright lies.
• Use your head, check people out.

So this means, those of you seeking out the quick get rich SEO trick are pissing up a rope... The very rope that will be used to hang your website out to dry.