SEO for Online Shops

One of the most common purposes of the search engine usage is to research, locate and buy products. This is why any website of a business is trying to gain business leads and sales online through web promotions and search engine optimization (SEO) becomes a key fundamental asset for online shops to get noticed.¹⁾

1. The internet is a worldwide marketplace:
   Customers from all over the world can find your website in the internet much easier if it is properly optimized and is highly ranked in search engines.
   
   
2. Web marketplace competition:
   Every year more and more businesses start to set up websites which are professionally optimized to draw traffic from search engines.
   
   
3. The potential for capturing long term leads:
   Building trust, loyalty and increased sales are targets of a continuing basis, once the foundation of SEO and traffic generation has been established.
   
   
4. Limited costs of SEO and getting results:
   SEO is a low cost marketing tool compared to other forms of traditional marketing.
   
   
5. Geo targeting and local search:
   To appear next to the top results for local business search, the website has to be search engine optimized.²⁾
   
   

1. Optimization of the start page:
   The start page is not only important for the consumers first impression, it is even more important for the search engines. Even though online shop owner often doesn’t want a lot of text on the start page, it is essential.³⁾
   
   
2. Focusing with relevant categories on keywords:
   Mostly, there is a top-down hierarchy within product categories. The lower the category level, the more specific it is. A category page that contains only links to sub-headings is rather uninteresting for search engines. Only when there is relevant text, which introduces the topic and is also informative, the search engines can adjust rankings.⁴⁾
   Websites should encourage deep linking because it enhances usability and it is more likely to satisfy users' needs. Generic links, such as links to a company's homepage, are less useful than specific links that take users to an individual article or product.⁵⁾
   
   
3. Optimize product pages:
   Product pages are often suitable for achieving good search engine rankings. But most product pages are aiming only the product name itself. That is why the page can only be found when someone searches for this specific product. Since many online stores have identical products (especially electronics), it is almost impossible for these words to reach good search engine rankings.⁶⁾ Even it is easy to just copy and paste the product description from the manufacturer’s website, try to re-write the description in some way to make it unique.⁷⁾
   
   
4. Implementation of special pages for more targeted searches
   With the category and product pages you can already target many keywords, but it certainly makes sense to create additional pages to be able to cover even more items. Thus, for example in search engines for specific brands (“ABC Furniture”), according to certain properties (“garden furniture made of wood”) or looking after a quotation (“cheap garden furniture” or “exclusive garden furniture”). It is important above all the meaningful integration into the general store.⁸⁾
   
   
5. Link the website within the topic
   External links for most search engines is an important ranking criterion (link popularity). A link from one site to another is regarded as a kind of vote: A site that links to the many other sites must be more important overall as a site with a few external links. In addition, it is also important that you get links from sites that have high link popularity. Because you inherit a portion of this link popularity, it is sometimes better to get a link from a very well linked website, as ten links from small private home pages.⁹⁾
   Joining a affiliate program can help to improve the link structure. Affiliate Marketing refers to promoting products for a commission. If you are into this business, you can offer an unlimited list of products, books for example, by becoming an affiliate for companies like Amazon. The more people click on your site and order products the bigger is your commission.¹⁰⁾
   
   
6. Avoid structural problems
   Not everything that looks good is good for search engines. This principle is particularly important for shop systems, as they often put on search engine unfriendly technologies. Unfortunately, the search engine friendliness of a system for the layman is not always easy to recognize. You should therefore consult an experienced agency.¹¹⁾
   
   
7. Keep eyes on the competition
   Optimizing a site for search engines is less a battle against search engines, but against other companies that target the same keywords. It is important to identify the competitors and to judge concerning linking and optimization before the development of the shop. One result of this analysis may also be that the effort is too high to get ranked as good as established stores. ¹²⁾