search engine optimised ecommerce custom website solution

Our ecommerce website solution has been developed to meet the particular criteria laid down by search engines to help improve ranking and site success.

Features included for search engine position improvement:

• URL-rewriting
• Improved meta data
• Landing page production

Check out one of these two sites using our system to see the features in a real world example.

• http://www.horses-ponies.co.uk
• http://www.southerncreative.co.uk/clients/keeler

Gaining top positions with high-traffic keywords takes both science and art because web content has to balance between what search engine ‘spiders’ like with meeting your business goals and providing compelling value to customers.  Of course, other websites are competing for top positions with “your” keywords as well.  Search engines have criteria, programmed as algorithms called ‘spiders’ that try to give their users the most relevant searches.  Search engines are always adjusting their algorithms but in general, their main criteria are consistent.  The closer you can follow their criteria, the better your website’s positions will be.  Following criteria also means avoiding ‘spider killers’ (see sidebar).

These ‘spider killers’ will hurt your placements or even get your website banned from search engines:

• Spiders can’t read art or photo files – it’s amazing how many websites don’t let the search engines know the name of their company.  Make sure your company name and keywords are in html text, as well as art. 
• Frames layout impedes spiders, and so do Flash and some Java effects – if you have to use them, make sure all text is repeated in the source code, or even on a redirect site without frames or effects on your website’s host server.
• Repeating the same keyword too many times in obviously ‘pushy’ content will penalize your positioning.
• Spiders have algorithms that detect and flag tricks that will get your website banned: Hiding text by making it the same color as the background; Using very tiny text to hide keywords; Putting text into the ‘dead’ space surrounding the visible web page; and repeating text keywords over and over.

Since spiders are based on criteria and rules, it is important to realize that just because your site may have more appropriate content for a particular keyword(s), it may not rank as high as other sites that follow the criteria and rules more closely. It’s objective, not subjective.

Search engine spiders rank websites according to: relevance, prominence, focus/defensibility, and PageRank (see below).  Each search engine’s algorithms are a bit different, and Google--with 60% of the consumer market--is more different than most.  Therefore, following the same criteria will give a range of placements on the various search engines.

Relevance
In a search engine spider’s world, relevance means a combination of controlled repetition, keyword content and value.  If your website is truly about (relevant to) your keyword subject, it will have a lot of content that repeats your keywords that is of value to your visitors. 

Home Page

• Use your keywords both as content that people read and as the names of links to other pages. For example, any of the pages for MBSI-NY, a storage solutions company, can be found by a number of keywords that also serve as links. Notice how these same keywords—Filing, Housing, Retrieval, and Tracking Solutions--also act as links to inquiry forms throughout the site.  Keywords have to be exact because spiders see “relief from pain” as a different keyword than “pain relief.”  Repeat your keywords as much as is comfortable without hurting the message, and without clumping them together. Try to hold total page content to 250 words.
• Your most strategic keyword(s) should either be your website title or in the subhead or (if your company name is the title), or in the lead sentence. On MBSI-NY's home page they have their most strategic keywords "filing, material & handling, storage and specialty furniture solutions. . ." as part of their lead sentence and as a link as well.  (See example)
• Write a 125-character site description (the text description that follows your web site title) that includes your keywords and make that the lead sentence of your home page.  Google seems to be picking that up as your site description.  An easy way to write this is to start with the words “We offer...” and follow with a list of your keywords in descending order of traffic count and in good grammar.  While the order and phrasing are up to you, Google often chops the end off so you want to have the keywords with the greatest traffic counts in the front. (See example)
• Every web page has an underlying source code page that contains the references, text and programming that makes the web page work.  Spiders read the keywords that are inserted in the reference ‘tags’ of the source code page which add relevance for some search engines. For example, click here and then put your cursor on any wheel segment. The boxed comment that pops up is called an Alt Tag. Talk to your html programmer about putting keywords in your Heading Tags (H1, H2, etc.) whenever possible. Add meta tag list of all keyword phrases separated by commas – most search engines now ignore meta tags, but it can’t hurt. 
• Use keyword labels for links to supporting pages.  Make every possible tagged graphic and photo a link to an appropriate page because tags rank higher when they are links.  For an example, go to the New York City government's official website. Notice the photo on the home page heralding a lighting competition. That photo has an Alt Tag "City Lights Design Competition" and is a link to the city's Department of Design and Construction. 
• Add an html list of links to pages at the bottom of all pages or an html Site Guide on the Home Page– redundant for navigation but good for spiders.  (See example)

Other Pages

• Since spiders crawl at least four pages deep, each keyword link on the home page should lead to supporting pages about that keyword, with each page giving value, information, and credentials.   For example, NYC.gov's Home Page keyword on Transportation links to supporting pages on the JFK AirTrain, City Ticket and Lower Manhattan Info.
• Each supporting page should have the same keyword emphasis in its page title, lead sentence, tags, and links as the home page, but devoted to the keyword for that page. For example, NYC.gov's supporting page on Transportation has titles, lead sentences, content, tags and links that support the “transportation” keyword with relevance, prominence, focus and PageRank.
• The URL page address for supporting pages is an excellent place to feature keywords.  For example, MSBI-NY uses this format for the supporting page for the keyword "client installations": http://www.mbsi-ny.com/client_installations.html.  (Note the use of the "underscore" to connect multiple words - do not merge the two words - e.g., clientinstallations).

Prominence
To search engine spiders, prominence means the more upfront a keyword is, the better the likelihood of it getting a high placement in a search.  In particular: 

• Legible text and links are more prominent than tags
• Top of page is more prominent than lower down
• Titles are more prominent than body copy
• Home pages are more prominent than secondary pages

You can quickly see how this works and how your keyword traffic counts can guide you in best laying out your web site for spiders as well as customers. 

Focus/Defensibility
With the importance of content in gaining “relevance” and “prominence,” every word on the home and secondary pages of your website is prime real estate, and either helps or hurts you. Ask yourself two important questions with respect to each page on your website:

• Does this content help or hurt getting targeted placement, traffic and sales?
• Are there any ways to strengthen your position against targeted competition from other websites?

PageRank/Sites That Link to Your Site
PageRank is a Google (which is 60% of the market) criteria that ranks your website by how many relevant websites link to it  (only inbound links count– those that are placed on other websites and link to yours).  The higher your websites’ PageRank, the better.  Google is 60% of the market.

There are two ways you can check your site’s PageRank:

• Download the Google toolbar.  Click on “Options” on the toolbar, then select “PageRank Display” under “Page Information” on the drop-down menu, then click “OK”.  Enter any website through Google and the green PageRank bar will appear on the top menu to show you the website’s PageRank.  Holding your cursor on the bar will bring up an Alt Tag that shows the website’s PageRank numeric value – higher is better. 
• Enter your (or any) web address in Google as “link:www.yourwebsiteaddress” and the total number of linking web pages with descriptions will be shown. Review this list for inbound links from other websites, especially those that have high PageRank themselves, as these will do you the most good.

Building PageRank never stops and will improve your position after your website is listed.  Some ways to improve PageRank are:

• List your web site on second and third level search engines like HotBot.com, Jayde.com, joeant.com, and industry directories that will list you in relevant categories like business.com.  Enter “search engines” into Yahoo or Google to get long lists of search engines with descriptions.
• Get listed in regional and professional association directories.
• Trade website links with suppliers and friendly customers by calling and asking.  You both gain PageRank as long as your fields are ‘relevance related’.  For example, a printer and a paper supplier would both benefit by trading links because their fields are in the same industry, but neither would benefit from a link with a limousine service, because the ‘link relationship’ with a limo company is not relevant to printing industry services. 
• Set up your own “Industry Directory” page to locate reciprocal links with relevance related reciprocal websites.

Vital Hint: Whenever possible, label your link on the other website with your relevant keyword, not your domain address.  For example, at NYC.gov's website, Real Time Traffic Cameras is the link to the DOT's closed-circuit television cameras that monitor the city's major arteries instead of the url: http://nyc.gov/html/dot/html/motorist/atis.html. 

Following these guidelines will enable you to specify your website’s optimization, or at least evaluate it for future improvements.  (Note that Dynamic websites and certain eCommerce websites are a special case and need special SEO, and will be addressed in a future article.)

When your website is optimized to your satisfaction, manually submit it to the search engines (do not use an automated service) by following the instructions on each search engine.  If there are no instructions, enter “add URL” in the search field and read what comes up.  We will be publishing an article describing how to best do this.  Don’t worry if your optimizing isn’t perfect – search engine spiders continually crawl websites after they are submitted and re-rank them as they are changed, so you will have plenty of opportunity to audit and tweak.