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What is SEO? (Search Engine Optimization)Intro
Imagine this. You have an incredible website and have spent thousands of dollars on it. Your products are 100% quality. You charge the lowest prices amongst your direct competitors. And most importantly, your customer service is top notch. So why have you only made 2 sales in the last year? It does not make sense. It defies the laws of economics. The silly fact is that there are perhaps hundreds of thousands, maybe millions of people out there who share this same problem? The answer is very obvious and simple. You cannot make sales if noone knows your store exists. Please note that there are hundreds of thousands of sites that make money on the internet, and I'm talking big money. And some of these sites that make the big dollars have higher prices, poor customer service, unreliable products, etc. However, what they do not lack is people coming through their doors. One common denominator is that their websites are search engine optimized (SEO). Is your site search engine optimized? Or do you have only a few visitors per year? Let's take a closer look.
SEO Defined
SEO is a form of online marketing which goes through a process of making a site and its content highly relevant for both search engines and searchers. Successful search engine optimization helps a site gain top positioning for relevant words and phrases. As you probably already know, a higher search engine ranking can easily be translated into higher sales volume. The higher the ranking, the more people go to your site, the higher the probability of a sale being made. It’s just that simple.
"If you build it, they will come,” does not apply to the internet. There are literally millions of websites out there. If you spend thousands of dollars creating the best type of site possible, and do nothing to optimize its search potential, chances are it will not be seen by anyone. Imagine if you had a bricks and mortar business, and no one walked into your store. Most likely sales will not be made. Therefore in order to get traffic to your site, achieving the highest search engine ranking possible, would be a good idea.Search Engines Defined
A Search Engine is a system dedicated to the search and retrieval of information for the purpose of cataloging the results. Usually based on an index of several HTML documents, so you can easily locate the document(s) you are looking for (Refer to fig. 1). In fact, the most common way to find an online vendor is through a search engine. Overture.com reports that over 42% will use this method to find the vendor they are looking for.
With the hundreds of search engines out there, there is one Search engine that is head and shoulders above the rest. You probably know who they are before I even mention their name. Google. Almost half of the internet population will use Google to search for the keywords they are searching for. In fact, you may have used Google to find this page your reading.
How does Google rank sites?
Google will rank a web page giving it a Page rank (PR) between 1 and 10. A score of 1 will give you a low ranking, while a score of 10 will give you the highest ranking. The PR value is what Google deems to be the importance of your page, when compared to other web pages. Frequency and location of keywords, and the number of inbound links are two important centers that Google will look at.
Frequency and location of key words on your web page, allows for Google to logically select for viewing. It’s human like decision making qualities allows the person who is searching for a particular key word get exactly what they are looking for. For example, if someone types in “I want to buy jewelry ”, Google will then search for the most relevant page that matches this request (Refer to figure 2). Pages that will appear, will most likely have content that will provide the user with information on where to buy jewelry(Refer to Fig 3).So what key areas of the web page are Google’s main focus. Important areas of focus include the main title, sub title, meta tags, keywords in the body, and of course the URL. Please note, that Google is able to recognize whenever someone falsely puts information in as false content. This is called keyword stuffing. If this occurs, Google could ban you from their search engine. Each page must stand on its own merits and present information specific to the page's topic.
Shopping Carts and SEO
Most shopping carts main functions are to store information in a database. This seriously limits the shopping carts ability to be search engine optimized. Whenever someone goes to purchase a product, when they click on an item, there is a string of numbers in the URL that identifies this product and will take you to a page that will display this particular products features. There is one problem with this. Google does not recognize numbers as meaningful information. Therefore because of this, these web pages will get a lower ranking than other pages that have all relevant key points that Google will look for.
Most shopping carts do not have true SEO capabilities. A majority of them will provide webmarketing tools such as an autoresponder, broadcaster, click through tracker, etc. Although there is nothing wrong with these features (we have them on our cart also), they do not generate traffic. They only help to manage them.
SEO and Us
We recognized this problem, and made some adjustments. Instead of having a number string whenever someone clicks an item, we replaced it with words. Not just words, but meaningful words that not only label the item, but describe its true purpose. For example, in Figure 3 you can see that when someone clicks on the Amethyst Ring, the URL is now labeling the page as www.superiorjewelrystore.com /products.cfm /Category/ Rings-sterlingsilver /item/ Amethyst-Ring-Gemstone.html. So here is a typical scenario. An e-shopper wants to buy an Amethyst ring and types, "I want to buy an Amethyst Ring-Jewelry-Sterling-Silver". Google will then scan its millions of documents and present the pages that are most relevant to this request. Since this site will have all the keywords in the right areas of focus, they will receive an optimized ranking. If this site used the traditional numerical string found on many shopping carts, it would unfortunatley receive a lower ranking, if ranked at all.
Conclusion
In conclusion, if you ever want to maximize your online selling potential, you should definately give SEO a chance. Just remember, there are many sites out there that will make claims to make your site search engine optimized. Make sure you are aware of the methods they will use to accomplish this. If you have any questions about SEO, feel free to give us a call or send an e-mail.
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