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1. Avoid Manufacturer Product Descriptions:
It’s tempting to just copy and paste from the manufacturer’s website, but resist the urge. At the very least, re-write the description in some way to make it unique. 2. Create a SEO Keyword Field in Product Database:
Just as every product record in your catalog has a name, price, and other attributes, you should also create a SEO keyword field that is displayed in the title tags, meta tags, and preferably the body as well. As you add products to the site, enter commonly search for keywords in this field. Not everyone will search by the brand name or item number, so this will greatly help your product pages rank for long tail searches. 3. Focus on Singular Keywords on Product Page:
As a general rule, I try to optimize for plural keywords on the home page or other SEO landing pages. 4. Simple Product & Category URLs:
Ideally, URLs should consist of keywords, not useless ID’s or other parameters. If you don’t have the option of using URL re-writing software, at least limit the number of variables passed in the URL. 5. Unique Title Tags:
While it’s debatable whether the company name belongs in the beginning of the title tag, most agree you should not include extra keywords that are repeated in every tag. For example, if you company name was XYZ Travel, include only the company name in title tag, not “XYZ Travel Agency and Vacations.” Use as little duplicate content as possible in order to prevent diluting the value of the rest of the text in the title tag. 6. Unique Keyword Meta Tags:
Meta tags, including keywords and description, should be entirely unique on every product page. Though Meta content likely doesn’t directly affect your ranking, unique tags will prevent duplicate content penalties. In addition, don’t stuff keywords into your Meta tags that aren’t relevant to the specific page they are on. 7. Unique Description Meta Tags:
Personally, I like putting the same product description that appears on the product page in meta description tag. This will ensure unique content on each product page. 8. Product Reviews:
A great strategy for guaranteeing unique content is displaying user generated content from your customers. Allow customers to review products they’ve purchased or comment on one’s they haven’t. 9. Track Page Yield:
In order to determine the effectiveness of your site as a whole, take the number of unique keywords you are found for during a given time period. Then, divide that by the number pages indexed by Google. This will give you your page yield, a good metric for measuring the length of your “long tail.” 10. Optimize your Internal Site Search:
This is more of a usability tip, but it applies perfectly within the context of ecommerce SEO. Because your visitor found your site via a search engine, they will likely expect your internal site search to work as well. I’ve found that many first time visitors landing your site from a SERP will search for the exact same term they typed into Google.
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