5 SEO Tips for E-Commerce

Doing SEO for an e-commerce site is tricky.  Almost all the pages are virtually identical, so it’s hard to determine how to do standard SEO for these pages.  Here are five quick tips to help you do some solid SEO for your e-commerce site (a shortened version of the excellent explanation on Search Engine Land):

1. Do solid SEO on product pages. Focusing on these will help draw traffic to each specific product.  Standard SEO rules apply here – especially remember the title tag, as that will make a big difference.  And keep it search engine friendly – using a lot of Flash or something else the spiders don’t like is not recommended.
2. Proper categorization. Every product fits into specific categories.  Making sure you use this as best you can will help.  If selling a television, keep all categories in mind, such as a brand name, the size of the television, the type of tv, so forth.  The more detailed your categories, the easier to find (good SEO).
3. Avoid duplication. Having duplicate pages is a big SEO no-no.  If you have your URLs structured based on categories, then you can often have each category branching through other categories to a single product, resulting in different URLs but the same content (duplicate pages).  To avoid this, you can use parameters (the same URL, different arguments) or even just 301 the duplicate pages all to one single product page.
4. Use the on-site search engine. To start, having a good on-site search engine is highly recommended for all internet marketing purposes.  If you have one – checking the queries people put into it are easy ways to see what people are searching for that couldn’t find it naturally.  This is a big “SEO THIS” sign.
5. Social media! Yes, get on board.  By letting people comment on your products or share them with others through social media, you can often get more inbound links than you might expect.  Just make it easy for users and visitors to be able to share, whether it be through on-site widgets or a site blog, or even profiles on social media sites.

These tips will help your products on your e-commerce site be found, both through social media and through the search engines.  These tips are a revised version of the excellent explanation by Aaron Bradley on Search Engine Land.