Search Engine Optimization for Retail Websites

SEO for retail websites requires very different strategies and techniques than your run of the mill Search Engine Optimization. More so than with any other online sector, the focus of retail industry SEO requires very specific tactics and reviews and reputation are of extreme importance.

Organic Search Engine Optimization

Organic search is essential to retail businesses. It is important that you use search friendly technology for you backend. Unfortunately, some programs don’t allow you to customize title or meta tags, or are simply unfriendly. I have even seen situations where a client’s software completely blocked spiders from indexing any pages. Another important factor in organic search is unique content. Google recently implemented changes to their algorithm that majorly penalized sites that only had copied content from catalogs. To be unique you must either write your own content, or have lots of reviews throughout your site.

Local Search

Although not as key to online sales, local search optimization can bring in lots of local buyers which for some businesses is better than potential online buyers. To rank in local search you need to have lots of positive reviews on your Google Places page, and these should be from real customers, not just friends. We can help you build a strategy to get the positive reviews you need to rank at the top of Google Places for your industry.

Google Product Search

When it comes to search engine optimization for retail sites, one of the key factors is ranking in Google Product Search. The techniques required to show up prominently are similar, yet very different from traditional, organic SEO. For starters, you must build a database and get it approved by Google. This can be a time consuming task if you site does not already include the categories that Google requires for you products to be listed. While your datafeed should be optimized, there are other factors that are extremely important. Such as…

Reviews

If you do not have reviews from product reviews sites such as resellerratings or Google Checkout, you have little chance of seeing significant amounts of traffic from Google Product Search. We generally recommend that you create a strategy to get your satisfied customers to give you positive reviews. The more of these you get the more you rank, but you also improve your…

Online Reputation

This may sound obvious, but never has there been a more important time to make your customers happy. In the web 2.0, review happy world that we live in, not only can good reviews greatly improve your business’s reputation which can greatly increase your sales, but had reviews can really hurt you. Unfortunately, you cannot always control what a competitor or an unhappy customer may say, but you can filter them out with lots of good reviews.