ShareIn the battle for the top of the SERPs it’s clear that the weight of correctly optimised content can deliver astonishing results. E-commerce websites in particular have the potential to perform well – with huge numbers of product pages ready to be indexed – but only if they are effectively optimized with SEO planning from the outset.
Despite this many web developers still make fundamental errors when creating e-commerce websites. Perhaps the biggest mistake of all is focusing on design at the expense of usability and SEO. Good usability is essential to achieve sales, and SEO of course will enable your customers to quickly find you.
Planning for usability and SEO
From personal experience I have found that SEO and usability studies tend to strongly complement one another. In fact SEO and usability are very similar in that both point towards common sense and logical thinking.
I believe it’s particularly dangerous to consider SEO as an afterthought to web design and development. But on a positive note over the past 2 -3 years I’ve noticed SEO is being more commonly brought into play during website pre-production.
It’s not rocket science
There also seems to be a growing perception that there’s far less science involved in the practice of SEO. True enough, and perhaps due to increasing user sophistication; as rapid growth in the use of social websites and online interaction has created a new generation of web-savvy users.
The positive upshot is that more and more online marketing managers are confident about exploring the possibility of utilising SEO.
With effective SEO planning from the outset the end product should be a fully optimised e-commerce website delivering excellent content for customers and for the search engines.
Make sure all your pages are indexed
And once a large e-commerce website has been effectively optimised Google should index all of its pages; with each having the strength to achieve a natural listing in the SERPs.
The key to delivering a successful e-commerce website is achieving a fluid website architecture. Large, information-heavy product websites should deliver streamlined content in an organized-fashion – targeting keywords along the way.
Achieving natural results with large e-commerce websites is about looking at the big picture.
