Natural Search Engine Optimization

Successful ecommerce depends on attracting visitors to your ecommerce site. This can be achieved by a process of paid advertising and promotion, or by getting your e commerce site to be ranked high by search engines. Many search engines such as Google support the concept of paid promotion such as pay per click or something similar. This approach can bring visitors to your ecommerce site even if your ranking is not very high. The problem is that you pay through your nose to achieve this. The amount that you pay would depend on a number of factors and is governed by a process of bidding. If your ranking is not very high, you may have to pay a very high price for this service. So even if you are using this approach it makes sense to optimize your ecommerce site, if you want to keep costs lower and ensure profits from ecommerce. You can also employ other means such as media advertising to publicize your ecommerce site and attract visitors. If you are not expecting very high returns from the site, or are not sure about how visitors to your site would react once they are there, it stands to reason that you do not go in for a high priced publicity approach. That leaves you with natural search engine optimization. The question is how do you achieve it.  

Search engine considerations

Search engines consider a number of factors in a website to determine its ranking. Very broadly these may be divided into onsite and offsite factors. Onsite factors refer to what your site, whether it is for ecommerce or otherwise, actually contains in terms of content, design and features. The most important item under this heading is the keywords used and the keyword density. Offsite factors include the quality of the website in accordance with the criteria determined by the search engines.

Some Online factors

• Keywords: Search engines consider the frequency of the keywords used, their relevance to the search, the proximity of these words to the actual words entered, and the weightage given to the chosen words. It becomes important to choose the right keywords. Additionally, you should also use a number of related words that users are likely to key in while searching for something similar to what you are offering. This process should make your keywords more specific to the ecommerce services or goods that you offer.
• Titles: Use titles that describe your ecommerce services or goods, in addition to containing your firm or business name. The title should contain a good number of the keywords. However, you should bear in mind that your website is being created for users – ecommerce customers - who come in, rather than for search engines. The best approach would be to think of how you can make your title relevant and attractive to your ecommerce customers without considering search engine optimization, and then include the features that search engines would find useful. Also take care to ensure that your title appears attractive and readable. For example, avoid using all caps in the title.
•  Meta tags: These are the tags that you submit to the search engines. Some of the most popular search engines, including Google and Yahoo, use these to rank your sites and refine the search results. So it is important to use Meta tags to maximize your rankings.

Offsite factors

Link popularity is perhaps the most important off site factor that search engines use for ranking ecommerce and other sites. Some of the important considerations in this respect include the type and density of links and to which sites they are made. It is, of course, advantageous to have your site linked to as many external sites as possible. That however, does not tell the whole story. Some “bad” links may actually do more harm than good. So it is important that your links are to the right sites. Moreover, links from and to sites that are themselves not highly ranked, may not add too much to the value of your ecommerce site. Although they do add value to your site, the real meat lies in the links to highly ranked sites. Another important factor to consider is the link description that these sites give. This should be close to the chosen keywords and should describe your ecommerce site reasonably well.

The success of your ecommerce site might well lie in the correct approach to search engine optimization with an understanding of how search engines would rank your site. Natural optimization is an approach that can help your ecommerce site obtain higher rankings.