30/07/2013

5 Profitable Tips to Drastically Improve SEO for your Online Store

In order to be profitable online, customers must be able to discover your store. This is why practicing various strategies for SEO, Search Engine Optimization, are crucial for your store’s success. Kick start your online store with PrestaShop Addons’ SEO Module and read the following tips to drastically improve SEO for your Online Store.

1. Use Unique Titles and Meta Description

These are the probably the most important tags on your website. Make sure that your titles accurately describe the product/page and that Meta Description is a description of what’s on your page. Take this coffee mug product example:

Title: “Coffee Mug” (optimal length for search engines is less than 70 characters)
Meta Description: “The best and cheapest coffee mugs and tea cups…” (Optimal length for search engines is about 155 characters)

2. Use only one Domain

You’re thinking, I definitely only have one domain but you need to decide whether you refer to your site as http://www.myonlinestore.com or http://myonlinestore.com.

It’s important to choose only one because search engine crawlers treat both domains as two separate sites. When both sites are crawled, search engines will find duplicate content and it will result in poorer rankings for your store. In order to avoid this you should redirect all URL’s to your main page.

3. Avoid Content and URL Duplication

There’s nothing search engines are more averse to than redundancy. This is why you should never copy and paste product descriptions and always create unique URL’s. Take a look at these PrestaShop modules to help you with URL Duplication to enhance your SEO efforts. Also, make sure to use relevant keywords on your product pages, a good start is by using Google Adwords Tool as a guide for what customers are searching and what your competitors are doing.

4. Use Keywords in URLs

For better SEO try to avoid URL’s that look like math equations and include keywords in product URL’s. For example:

Avoid: http://myonlinestore.com/product.sfe?id=885
Use: http://myonlinestore.com/dresses/lilac-summer-dress.html

URL rewriting is a native feature in PrestaShop which can be found in your back office under Preferences > SEO & URLs.

5. Sitemap

It’s impossible to have successful SEO without a sitemap. Submit a sitemap to Google including your most up to date inventory. Check out these PrestaShop modules to make it easy for you to create a sitemap.

For additional information download our SEO White Paper. If you have any questions check out the PrestaShop Forum.

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