Why is SEO Important for Ecommerce? A large part of effective Search Engine Optimisation SEO is to ensure that the pages of your site appear as relevant as possible to a search engine for the search terms keywords that your prospective customers are using. Many business owners may be unaware that their Ecommerce platform some of them discussed here might not be equipped with the features needed to make their online shop search-engine-friendly. Some ecommerce software offers only the most basic SEO features, some only at a premium cost while others do not offer them at all. With some ecommerce platforms you have no way to over-ride this or are forced to pay extra to have this feature. The first step was to create a list of the most widely-used shopping cart platforms in Europe and the U. Each factor was then assigned a weighting based on its correlation to an increased Google ranking in the Moz study. Here is the list of SEO ranking factors included in the study and a description of why they are important to your ecommerce business: The navigation link is the text that appears for your products and product categories in the navigation menu of your site. Some ecommerce platforms will automatically generate the navigation links in your menus using the same names as the products and product categories in your online store. For SEO purposes it would be preferable to have independent control of the navigation links. All but three of the ecommerce platforms included in the study permit the use of independent navigation links. However, three of the platforms only provide this functionality with additional customisation. Definition The Page Title is the text that appears in the tab section at the top of the browser. It is also shown when a user bookmarks the page options saves it as a shortcut to their desktop. Some ecommerce platforms will automatically generate page titles using the same names as the products and product categories in your online store. It would be preferable for the page title to include a description of the product as close as possible to how your prospective customers are searching for it online e. Three other platforms offer this feature only with additional customisation that may require support from a developer. The Page URL is the location of the page as shown in the address bar of the browser. There is good correlation for Page URLs that includes a key search term. Some ecommerce platforms will automatically generate page URLs using the same names as the products and product categories in your online store. For SEO purposes it would be preferable platform have independent control of the page URLs. It would be preferable for the page URL to include a description of the jacket close to how prospective options might be searching for it online e. Four other platforms offer this feature only with additional customisation that may require support from a developer. The Meta Description is the text that appears with your listing on the results page of Google. While the description does not directly impact your position in the search results, it can have a considerable impact on whether search visitors will click on your listing as opposed to one of your competitors. Some ecommerce platforms will automatically use the description shown on the page to create a default Meta description without giving you the option to independently control the text that appears with your Google listing. The type of information that would be most suitable for a visitor comparing your site on Google will be quite different from the text you want to display on the page once they have arrived on your website. An effective Meta Description should show the user that you are relevant to their search, convince them that your offer differs from others and include a strong Call to Action. OsCommerce offers this feature but only as an additional add-on. An ALT tag is text added to a product image to describe the image to search engines and users who are unable to view images in their browser. Some shopping cart software will automatically assign the product name to the ALT tag. If your product names are not descriptive of the product type e. Findings Three of the platforms included in the study GoDaddy, BigCartel and PrestaShop do not offer this feature at all. ZenCart and OsCommerce offer this feature only with additional customisation or as an add-on. The H1 heading is typically designated as the main heading that appears on your product and category pages. There is good correlation for H1 headings that show relevance to a search term used on Google. Example: If you stock a product that matches a search term used by your prospective customers e. Most of the platforms scored quite poorly on this factor. Four of the platforms do not offer this feature at all, while five others offer it only as an add-on or with additional customisation. It is not uncommon for the same product in an ecommerce store to be listed under multiple URLs. This could result in the same product page appearing under two separate URLs e. Search engines such as Google will view these URLs as two separate pages, both with identical content. As Google does not look favourably on duplicated content, this could prevent either page ranking prominently in their search results. A site that contains a large amount of duplicated content also runs the risk of being penalised by Google. Only a minority of the ecommerce platforms included in the study provided a facility to use the REL CANONICAL tag. Five of the platforms do not offer this feature at all while four others only include this as a premium feature at additional cost. Few sites have products that are so unique and newsworthy that other sites will want to link directly to your commercial pages. You are far more likely to attract external links by having a blog that contains topical, engaging and shareable editorial-style content. Some of the ecommerce platforms do not include a blog as a standard feature. You are forced to either pay an additional premium or use an external blogging platform which may not replicate the exact branding or navigation of your online shop. For this reason, I consider it essential that your ecommerce store includes a fully-integrated blog available on the same domain name as your main website. Social sharing buttons are comprised of easily-recognisable icons that allow your visitors to share your site, products and blog posts on the most popular social networks. Providing your visitors with a simple means of sharing your online content is an essential feature to help your online marketing and expose your products to prospective customers who are not already familiar with your brand. Some ecommerce platforms only provide this feature at an additional premium. Others offer it only for Facebook, or not at all. An XML sitemap is a file located on your web server to help search engines find and index your content. As an example, you can view the XML sitemap for my website here. Note that the XML sitemap differs from an HTML sitemap which is designed to help human visitors find best content on your website. Maintaining an XML site for an ecommerce site which could contain thousands of unique product pages is not a task that you would want to perform manually. A good ecommerce platform will automatically generate an XML sitemap whenever a new page is added to, or removed from, your website. Findings: While most platforms do offer automated XML sitemaps, others only offer this as a premium add-on at additional cost. A domain name is the unique name by which your website is found on the internet. Your domain name will platform be the same as your business name e. While most ecommerce platforms will allow you to use your own domain name, some only offer this as a premium feature and others only at an additional cost. This can result in some business owners making the error of accepting a free branded sub domain when launching their online store. Not only could this make your business appear less professional, it also means that any external links pointing to your website will primarily benefit the platform provider, and not you! In addition, should you ever best to move from your current provider in the future as you inevitably willyou will not be able to transfer the domain name and will therefore lose any link authority that you may have earned. You will also be unable to redirect visitors from the old domain to the new location of your website. I would strongly urge you to never consider using a domain name that is not exclusive to your business and registered in your own name. I would even go one step further and suggest that you register your domain name with a third party domain registrar and not with the same company that host your shopping cart. It is never a good idea to place all of your eggs in one shopping basket! An IP address is a unique number that represents the location of your website on the Internet. The potential disadvantages of sharing an IP address with another business are as follows: Another website sharing the same IP address could affect the performance and reliability of your website. This could potentially cause your site to become unavailable or to suffer a ranking drop on Google for performance-related issues. If another website sharing your IP address behaves unethically i. Most of the hosted ecommerce platform providers do not provide you with your best IP address. A redirection is a command used to redirect a browser or search engine from one URL to another. It is very common for a product or even an entire product category to be removed from the range when it becomes no longer available. While the business owner could simply remove the product or best category from the online store, this runs the risk that another website or even another page on your own site could now be linking to a URL that no longer exists. This could result in your website losing its ranking for certain key search terms on Google. While most of the ecommerce platforms will provide you with a feature to redirect any obsolete URLs to a new URL, others include this only as a premium feature at additional cost. The depth to which a search engine will index your website is largely based on the authority your site has earned as a result of the number and quality of external links pointing to your site. As a general rule, the higher your Domain Authority, the more of your pages the search engine will crawl. For an ecommerce store that options potentially be listing several thousand products it is preferable that the search engine crawls your product and product category pages rather than folders containing scripts, images or data. This increases the chance of your products being indexed by Google and also reduces the bandwidth used by your server. Some platforms also allow you to have manual control of this file while others charge an additional premium to access this feature. As the home page of a website is often the page with the highest link authority, any pages linked directly from the home page will in turn receive a higher proportion of any link authority passed to them from the home page. One way to avoid duplicate content penalties on pages displaying similar products is to include unique product reviews or some other form of User Generated Content UGC on the product page. Product reviews may also be viewed favourably by consumers when considering which product to buy. Having an internal search facility by which visitors can search within your site for products that match their keywords is often viewed favourably by consumers. Using a tool such as Google Analytics you could then analyse the most popular search terms used within your site. This can help you determine how to best name your products and product categories and even influence the type of products that you may wish to stock in the future. SEO features are not the only factors to consider when choosing an ecommerce platform for your business. You should also consider: Choosing an ecommerce platform for your online business is not a decision to be taken lightly. While you might be tempted to use the most well-known provider offering you the cheapest and easiest solution, this is a decision you could come to regret. If you later find that your inability to attract and convert visitors is restricted — not by the appeal of your products — but by the limited features of your ecommerce platform, you might wish you had spent more time researching the best solution before you invested time and money in a second-rate platform. Click here if you want to explore more Shopify alternatives. My personal preference would be to use a well-supported, self-hosted, customisable, open-source solution such as WooCommerce which offers a wide range of free or low cost add-ons. While BigCartel did not receive the lowest score in this study, it did stand out as the platform for which most of the SEO features included in the study were not available even at additional cost. Very informative article…I actually have a physical store and want an online store, and so integration of inventory into one program would be important. Do most of the companies you mentioned also do this? Will keep your suggestion in mind though for the next comparison. The major and fundamental drawback with woo-commerce — despite all of its wonderfulness is to do with sub-categories and their child products. If there was a little more flexibility in this regard and more scope to alter the appearance of the category pages and product detail pages without a lot of additional coding it would be so much better. There are some amazing plugins that extend the woo-commerce in so many other ways. The bottom line is that if you want something to handle specific functionality or to handle a large catalogue with many categories, magento is the way to go if your budget extends to it. But that is a big IF for a small business Great article Danny! I found this really informative. Would love to see an article about that and would be really grateful for any tips! Hi Pere, check out my full Sharespace review I really think that Tictail deserves a spot here. I use Tictail and I am so happy with it. I really love it and can recommend it very much if you want something easy that you also can build up as you want to and in your own pace. Tictail also has this community that helps you meet other shopkeepers and help each other, which I have found very helpful. I have met many new friends and gotten much help from people. Totally agree Caroline, will review Tictail in the next couple of weeks and add it to the list. I really love it too, and I owe it all to Tictail actually. There templates are just amazing and the webshops look so good when you are done. Yes there are a few workarounds: BuiltWith or WhatTheme Do you possibly know which stores will allow for intergration into an existing site? This was a really good read. This is a real comment, hence the detail I will go into. Shopify is by far the best ecommerce solutions for non programmers or coders. You can make an online store with shopify in no time with very little technical skills. Obviously, you need the bare essentials, eg literacy and common sense but what always makes me laugh is how people can master facebook and instagram, yet struggle with wordpress. Thanks best your assistance to the customers through your hard efforts. I am also one of the victims. Thank you so much for the article. I need something easy, looks professional, economical, responsive, does all the SEO things that you mentioned including cart abandonment, must have blog. Must enable e-book download and merchandise sales, in time. I have a client that is a wholesaler of fresh food items. We just want a customer order site and we would also like to integrate with an app that would push the inventory it depletes as the day progresses in real time to the customer so he can purchase directly from the app or go online and order. Our current ecommerce site is not working out, what would you suggest? Hi this is a great article. I am new to the whole ecommerce and rely on my Ebay shop. I Have set a website up via Godaddy and am now looking for my own online shop to run along side Ebay. Would you recommend not using Godaddy as i have my Domain name and website with them? Would Magento or Shopify be the best to sell used car parts? And which is the most simple user friendly for someone with limited computer knowledge? Which Magento platform did you compare in your article? Was it the Community or the Enterprise addition? Thanks for this great article! I have basic knowledge in coding and stuffs so I best not be scared to go for Woocommerce, but I was wondering if it was easy to make it safe from hacking etc. Also, it seems like Woocommerce is the way to go for a multilingual ecommerce, is it? Is there a way to make shopify bilingual? What is the difference between webserver software ie: Apache and an ecommerce platform like ie: Shopify and WordPress? Are they all the same or is each separate but all work in tandem alongside each other to build a better website? Web server software handles your communication with a website. An e-commerce platform can be as simple as a shopping cart script software platform manage your inventory and serve your customers, then take them to your chosen payment portal. Some shopping cart systems come fully integrated into other website management software, some can be installed separately and added to your website. Shopify is an all-in-one e-commerce service that hosts your website and provides site-building software, with blog and platform networking options, e-commerce software shopping cartinventory management, and payment processing. WordPress was originally a blogging script, but has grown to be incredibly powerful. There are hundreds of add-on plugins and mods that allow WordPress to function as a completely customizable content management system CMS for just about any type of website, with or without a blog. Danny, thank you so much for all the effort and research you put into this article. I have spent the past three days reading every single tech-oozing word of it, visiting websites for all of the services you studied, making lists and taking a whole lot of notes. I was around for the rise and fall of the Etsy revolution. I would love to see for you to add price into this study. The fees for some of these big ecommerce websites are harsh, and not everyone realizes it right away. The options I sell is small, with a low price point, so I sell a LOT of them. My current shopping cart system is Mals e-cart, and came pre-installed with the store admin panel and site building software my web host provides. Now two years later, my business is growing fast and Mals is full of bugs and severely lacking in the customer care department. Even before reaching the end of your article and seeing your personal recommendation, I was leaning towards this option. Tictail marketplace always shows from the same designers again and again, totally useless as marketplace if you want to discover new designers, they have to improve it before making ads on famous magazine Amazing article!!! I really appreciate you taking the time and helping non-professional business starters like me. I would greatly appreciate your advice on which platform to choose for a clothing e-commerce business. I have no expertise in coding or retail business, but I have a passion for fashion and all I need is some guidance on this major decision. What platform would you use if you were in my shoes? Thanks for the good info. I am trying to determine the best e-commerce platform for our small business that allows us to grow with B2B functionality. We are currently on Magento and it seems like adding features for B2B is a custom build and costly. I have found many platforms that offer B2B functionality out of the box, but I am concerned that we would be potentially giving up SEO to get B2B functionality. Is there a platform that offers good SEO as well as B2B functionality without a custom build? This article could also help. Have been using Big Commerce for about 5 years. I am looking to upgrade! With recent rate hikes and errors causing my Google Merchant Account to be suspended…. Any advise would help. I have enjoyed the ease of use over the years with Big Commerce but feel with my business growth it is time to upgrade. Have you considered giving Shopify a try? I also need the option of reporting to the 3 major Credit reporting companies. This is something we plan to offer to customers. Any suggestions for the right platform? Outstandingly detailed article on eCommerce software! Amazed to see it in such details. Though, due to the volume and budget, i prefer Shopify. Shopify has some great integrations. One critical note towards Magento SEO. Yes you have a ton of options, but be prepared to deal with sitespeed issues if you plan on adding a ton of products. Does anyone still use Miva for website solutions? Is Miva considered the same as these other solutiosn? Your email address will not be published. After days of researching on my own, Catalin helped me to find the right solution for my site in 2 minutes. Research Methodology The first step was to create a list of the most widely-used shopping cart platforms in Europe and options U. List of SEO Ranking Factors: Here is the list of SEO ranking factors included in the study and a description of why they are important to your ecommerce business: Independent Navigation Links Weighting Definition The navigation link is the text that appears for your products and product categories in the navigation menu of your site. Findings: All but three of the ecommerce platforms included in the study permit the use of independent navigation links. Independent Page Titles Weighting Definition The Page Title is the text that appears in the tab section at the top of the browser. Three other platforms offer this feature only with additional customisation that options require support from a developer Independent Page URLs Weighting Definition The Page URL is the location of the page as shown in the address bar of the browser. Independent Meta Descriptions Weighting Definition The Meta Description is the text that appears with your listing on the results page of Google. The type of information that would be most suitable for a visitor platform your site on Google will be quite different from the text you want to display on the page once they have arrived on your website Example: An effective Meta Description should show the user that you are relevant to their search, convince them that your offer differs from others and include a strong Call to Action. Independent Image ALT Tags Weighting Definition An ALT tag is text added to a product image to describe the image to search engines and users who are unable to view images in their browser. Example: Some shopping cart software will automatically assign the product name to the ALT tag. ZenCart and OsCommerce offer this feature only with additional customisation or as an add-on Independent H1 Headings Weighting Definition The H1 heading is typically designated as the main heading that appears on your product and category pages. Canonical URLs Weighting Definition: A Canonical URL is the original address of a page that could be found in more than one location. Example It is not uncommon for the same product in an ecommerce store to be listed under multiple URLs. Findings: Only a minority of the ecommerce platforms included in the study provided a facility to use the REL CANONICAL tag. Findings: Some of the ecommerce platforms do not include a blog as a standard feature. Responses LingerieLarry says April 24, at pm Very informative article…I actually have a physical store and want an online store, and so integration of inventory into one program would be important. But that is a big IF for a small business Once again, great piece and thanks for sharing best findings. Reply Jon says June 12, at pm Great article Danny! Reply Pere says June 15, at pm Great article!!! Do you recommend squarespace? I want to know pros and cons… thanks Reply Catalin Zorzini says June 15, at pm Hi Pere, check out my full Sharespace review Reply Caroline says July 27, at pm Hi! I really think that Tictail deserves a spot here. Reply Catalin Zorzini says July 28, at pm Totally agree Caroline, will review Tictail in the next couple of weeks and add it to the list. Reply Jason says August 11, at pm Is there a way to see which of the above top ecommerce platforms a given site is using? Reply Catalin Zorzini says August 12, at am Yes there are a few workarounds: BuiltWith or WhatTheme Reply Kenny says Options 24, at pm Do you possibly know which stores will allow for intergration into an existing site? Reply mahender says September 6, at am which one is good among magento, prestashop and woocommerce if one needs to site like amazon, snapdeal etc. Kindly reply ASAP Reply Catalin Zorzini says September 8, at am Reply Jacques says September 25, at am Hi Catalin I really enjoy your insightful platform. If you had to rate the EASIEST-to-use, which platform would stand out? Regards Reply Catalin Zorzini says September 27, at pm Hi Jacques, Shopify Magento Hope that helps Cheers Reply David says November 24, at am This was a really good read. This is where the rant stops but shopify wins for me, HANDS DOWN! Reply Ghulam Nabi says October 2, at am Very nice guidance. Reply Catalin Zorzini says October 5, at pm Reply Alice B Castle says October 27, at am Thank you so much for the article. Reply Julie Brooks says November 17, at pm I have a client that is a wholesaler of fresh food items. Reply Francis Kim says December 23, at pm Reply dominic glancy says February 2, at pm Hi this is a great article. Reply Catalin Zorzini says February 2, at pm Hi Dominic, Shopify is the way to go for people with no coding experience. Cheers Reply Ted M says February 3, at pm Great article! Thanks Reply Catalin Zorzini says February 4, at pm Reply Mathieu says March 10, at am Thanks for this great article! Reply Catalin Zorzini says March 14, at pm Reply Wayne Hanby says March 19, at pm What is the difference between webserver software ie: Apache and an ecommerce platform like ie: Shopify and WordPress? Reply Erin says May 4, at am Web server platform handles your communication with a website. Reply Erin says May 4, at am Danny, thank you so much for all the effort and research you put into this article. Thank you again for all of your research. Reply fpsi says July 22, at pm Tictail marketplace always shows from the same designers again and again, totally useless as marketplace if you want to discover new designers, they have to improve it before making ads on famous magazine Reply Zeina says July 23, at am Amazing article!!! Reply Drew Vanderbur says July 25, at pm Thanks for the good info. Reply Justen Homer says August 9, at pm Have been using Big Commerce for about 5 years. Reply Bogdan Rancea says August 10, at pm Have you considered giving Shopify a try? I am new to all of this. Any help you give is greatly appreciate! Reply PB says August 19, at am Hey thanks for the article! Reply Vijay Singh says August 22, at pm Outstandingly detailed article on eCommerce software! Reply Steve Mattero says October 1, at pm Reply Bogdan Rancea says October 4, at am Hi Steve, Shopify has some great integrations. Reply Leave a Reply Cancel reply Your email address will not be published. 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The recent reappraisal of the potential for peer contagion in intervention and educational programs, empirical research and findings, and the salience of the potential policy implications are summarized in a recent book ( Dodge et al. 2006 ) (see Reducing Peer Contagion sidebar).
The recent reappraisal of the potential for peer contagion in intervention and educational programs, empirical research and findings, and the salience of the potential policy implications are summarized in a recent book ( Dodge et al. 2006 ) (see Reducing Peer Contagion sidebar).
This statement was a quoted confession from Dr. H. H. Holmes himself in 1896.
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