Search Engine Optimization for Ecommerce

The goal of search engine optimization for ecommerce is to rank higher in searches, so people find your site and you get more traffic and sales. Search engine optimization (SEO) is the art and science of magnetizing high-quality traffic to your site.

What does an SEO professional do?

Before you go about finding an SEO professional, it helps to consider what search engines want. They are trying to help people find stuff, so they want to know exactly what your site is about so they know who to show it to. To communicate this, you need to speak to them in a language they understand. SEO professionals help you do that by identifying the right keywords for your business and by building your site copy and links around them. They also can survey the landscape and see how much competition there is for a particular keyword or phrase and help you create an SEO strategy.

A word of warning: when looking for an SEO professional, ethics and integrity are important. There are many ways to "lie" to a search engine, and, as you can imagine, they eventually "find out" and are not very happy with you and can ban your site. For the long-term health of your rankings, be sure you hire people who only use above-board techniques and have a long-haul approach. If they give you promises like "we can make you #1 on Google!", look askance.

SEO Resources

Colleen Wright, Search Engine Academy – Colleen Wright combines no-nonsense SEO techniques with a good deal of savvy about writing and publishing press releases. She can work with folks on a budget, and doesn't require thousands of dollars up front just to inform you of commonly held wisdom, such as the fact that title tags should reflect the content of each page. We have personal experience with Colleen and we vouch for the quality and effectiveness of her SEO strategies.

Jill Whalen, High Rankings – Jill Whalen writes a newsletter that's extremely insightful and easy to digest. We haven't worked with Jill directly, but we've gotten great ideas from her articles.