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Improve SEO with User-friendly URLs

Posted by Helmut BerieSEO, User Experience

There is a compelling correlation between well-ranking webpages and them having user friendly URLs. Therefore, improving your site’s URLs is one of many simple ways you can optimize your SEO. Just follow these guidelines:

Identify the Top Keywords to Use – In the actual URL, use keywords that summarize the topic and content of the page. These are often the same keywords as used in the page titles. Making URLs SEO-friendly starts with the discipline of creating quality content where each page is focused on one main topic that can be described in 1-3 words.

Keep the URL Short – Use a few keywords only to keep the URL as short as possible. Any keyword required to state the page topic should be in the URL but nothing else. This not only helps in SEO, but also makes it easy for users to copy and paste or even remember the URL.

Use Real Words – Avoid use of numbers, special characters (with the exception of hyphens, which are recommended to separate words) or made-up words – unless they are a key component of your brand. Only use words that someone might search for. Try to stay clear of URL query strings (URL part following a “?” towards the end of the URL) entirely.

Remove Articles – Take out unnecessary words like “the,” “and” and “an.”

Use Hyphens – A simple hyphen is the best way to separate words; they’re found to be easier to use and to read than an underline mark, period or white space between words.

Use a Consistent Case – Be consistent in whether you use lowercase, uppercase or camelcase words in your URLs. Whichever you choose, follow the same style for all.

Avoid Canonicalization Issues – These issues can arise when multiple URLs direct to the same webpage. Most home pages, for example, can be called up by using any of the following structures:

  • http://sitename.com
  • http://www.sitename.com
  • http://www.sitename.com/index.php
  • http://www.sitename.com/index.htm
  • http://www.sitename.com/index.html

However, you want to choose one preferred URL for each page and have the others use a canonical tag. Otherwise, your page authority for these pages can diminish, which negatively impacts your SEO. In addition, you are wasting crawl capacity that might prevent some pages from getting crawled.

Generally speaking, canonicalization issues are considered bad website design, and once they are spotted by Internet search engine bots, it will negatively impact the rankings of the entire site. It is common for duplicate content issues to be canonicalization issues in disguise. If content moves, you should set up a 301 redirect from the old URL to the current page. By grouping the duplicate pages together in this way, their combined ranking signals work together for better overall search engine ranking.

We will continue with this blog series on Improving Your E-commerce SEO. Please subscribe to our blog to ensure you are informed about new posts. Also, download our free white paper, “How to Get the SEO-driven Revenue You’re Missing” for more best practices on improving your e-commerce site.

A Review of the Basics: SEO Terms & Principles

Posted by Dawn MortenseneCommerce, SEO

This is the first post of a blog series on how to improve SEO on your e-commerce site, so it makes sense to start with the basics:  some main SEO terms and descriptions of various SEO disciplines. If SEO is what you do for a living, you’ll know these inside and out. But for those working in e-commerce with only partial SEO knowledge, this is a good place to start.

SEO Terms You Should Know

Bot – also referred to as a spider or crawler, a bot is a piece of software used to crawl your site. Internet search engines use them to gain an understanding of your entire site and its individual pages. There are desktop-specific and mobile-specific bots. Well-behaved bots identify themselves with a unique “user agent” string that is logged as part of the page request in your web server’s access logs.

SEO – search engine optimization – the practice of increasing the quantity and quality of the traffic that you earn through the organic results in Internet search engines. (Rand Fishkin, “What Is SEO,” Moz).

SERP – search engine results page – the page on which Internet search engines (e.g. Google, Bing, Yahoo!) show search results after a visitor submits a query.

Ranking Factors – there are many ranking factors that search engines consider to determine your SERP position, including basic document relevance (relevant terms, word count, proving words), number of backlinks, site speed, anchor texts in internal and external links, engagement signals (bounce rate, time on site, pages visited per session), support for mobile devices, domain authority, etc.

Index Size – the number of pages you have listed in Internet search engines. There are two index sizes – the number of pages an Internet search engine knows about and the number of pages it has actually crawled and can send its visitors to. The first number is significantly higher (in particular for e-commerce sites) than the second and can result in unfavorable “large index size” messages sent to your Webmaster Tools account.

Snippet/Rich Snippet – the listing shown on a search engine results page below the title is a snippet; other details added to the snippet (e.g. review stats, price, availability, etc.) make it a Rich Snippet. A Rich Snippet causes your listing to be larger and appear more predominant on the SERP. In addition, the larger your listing the further it pushes down your competitors’ listings and the more likely it is to catch the attention of a searcher.

Rich Snippet Markup (RSM) – code elements that are added to the HTML of the webpages showing product or other information. RSM allows the Internet web engine crawlers to better understand the information shown on the webpages. If the information on the page is well understood and the page itself is considered RSM-relevant, the search engine might honor this with a rich snippet on the SERP or it might improve the ranking of the page containing the RSM.

DA, or Domain Authority – this term was coined by Moz but is widely used in the SEO community. DA is the best prediction for how a website will perform in SEO rankings. It’s used to compare one site to another or to track the strength of your site over time. The collection of domain-level ranking factors determine a site’s domain authority.

PA, or Page Authority – this term was coined by Moz but is widely used in the SEO community. PA is a metric predicting how well a webpage will rank in Google’s search results for a particular search phrase. A collection of page-level ranking factors determine a site’s page authority. The same page will have different PAs depending on the search phrase for which the page ranks.

Penguin / Panda / Hummingbird / Pigeon – a series of major algorithm updates from Google focusing on different aspects of ranking webpages.

  • Penguin focused on identifying and rewarding sites with a high number of legitimate inbound site links, while also identifying and penalizing sites with spammy “black hat” inbound links.
  • Panda focused on interpreting which content is of high quality. It allows Google to reward pages that have highly relevant content and penalize those that use black hat practices such as content spinning or keyword-stuffing to try to give a higher SERP ranking to irrelevant content.
  • Hummingbird focused on measuring the semantic relevance of webpage content in relationship to search queries. It focused on “intent” and not so much on exact keyword matching. It is less about what searchers are asking for and more about what they actually want.
  • Pigeon focused on identifying localized content and giving higher rankings to localized content searched for from a corresponding region.

Meta Description Tag – an HTML attribute that describes a webpage’s content and is frequently used on SERPs. A well-written meta description is important for gaining high clickthrough rates, as it sums up the information on the webpage. The meta description tag should be unique for each page on your site to improve its efficiency (Moz).

Title Tag – an HTML attribute often used on SERPs to provide an accurate and concise description of a page’s content. One popular format is to include the following three elements, in this order:

  • 1) primary targeted keyword 2) secondary targeted keyword 3) | your brand name
  • Example: Fashion Jewelry | JewelsRUs

WMT, or Webmaster Tools – Google (Google Webmaster Tools – GWT) and Bing (Bing Webmaster Tools – BWT) provide tools that allow webmasters to check the performance of their sites, monitor any crawling and indexation issues, test certain aspects of their sites affecting indexation and apply configuration to the way the search engines treat site information. Understanding the information provided within WMT is crucial to understanding the performance of your site.

Types of SEO Activities

There are various SEO disciplines or activities, each of which has a number of significant subdisciplines. Here’s a brief summary of each discipline and how it may be used to improve SEO on e-commerce sites. Not all activities need to be executed all the time, but it is a good idea to consider these items as a checklist when working toward optimizing your website.

On-page and off-page SEO: On-page SEO is any activity, on individual pages or the entire site, which is completed in an effort to boost ranking in Internet search engines (e.g. optimizing h1 tags). Off-site SEO is not related to the site but will cause ranking improvements indirectly (e.g. link acquisition, brand management, etc.).

Technical SEO: This encompasses any activity performed to ensure the site is technically sound so that bots can crawl it efficiently and effectively. Technical SEO is mostly on-page SEO and excludes content creation.

Local and international SEO: Local SEO focuses on ensuring high rankings for searches with local intent. International SEO focuses on sites with multiple geographic locations and possibly different languages. The aim is for the site to rank well in each target market and to avoid duplicate content issues.

Content creation and marketing: This discipline focuses on identifying relevant topics, creating highly engaging site content and ensuring this content is reaching target audiences. Content creators should keep in mind that great content doesn’t always yield immediate SEO results. As an example, it can take years of quality blogging to establish a new site’s domain authority. Content must be created and marketed to reach its audiences and provide an SEO benefit.

Site analysis/audits: This includes looking at specific metrics to identify why your site or competitors’ sites are ranking or not ranking well for particular phrases or topics. Site audits also typically focus on technical SEO and link profiles.

Competitive analysis: This includes the practice of understanding why competitors’ websites rank well for particular phrases or topics. This information is valuable for identifying how you can rank higher than your competition. It might also help you understand the level of effort required to outrank your competition on particular phrases or topics.

Brand management: This is the practice of ensuring your own brand is perceived well in all target markets or market segments. The higher the brand awareness for your business, the stronger your domain authority.

Come Back for More

Return to this blog in the coming weeks to learn specific ways you can use SEO to increase your e-commerce revenue. Also listen to our recent Webinar: How to Get the SEO-driven Revenue You’re Missing.

 

The 2015 Guide for Improving E-commerce SEO

Posted by Dawn MortenseneCommerce, SEO

SEO graphic blogAs a retail executive or e-commerce professional, your goal is to produce more revenue. You want site traffic that is high in quantity, but also in quality – you need it to convert.

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is just one practice out of many in your tool belt. Unless SEO is your full-time job, it’s nearly impossible for you to fully keep up with the details of constant algorithm updates that affect your site’s rankings, like the recent mobile-friendly updates from Google and Bing (a.k.a. “mobilegeddon”).

Plus, it can be difficult to know which SEO-related activities can drive more revenue without causing damage to your site’s rankings.

To help, I’d like to present our new SLI Systems white paper, How to Get the SEO-driven Revenue You’re Missing.

The easy-to-use 22-page guide will help you identify what’s possible with SEO and start on the path to improvement. Whether you have an in-house expert, use an outside agency or need to learn how to do basic SEO on your own, this paper will help you know where you want to go with SEO and outline the main steps to get there. Topics covered include:

  • Why you need to pay attention to the changing SEO landscape
  • A review of the basics: Top SEO principles
  • Two SEO tools you need to set up correctly before doing anything else
  • Six steps to improving the SEO of your e-commerce site
  • Major SEO “no-no’s” that can damage your site’s reputation
  • New streams of SEO-driven revenue most retailers miss out on
  • How user-generated SEO increases traffic and conversions without negative SEO

At SLI Systems, our search and SEO experts continually monitor and improve the on-site search of more than 1,000 client sites in the e-commerce industry. With more than a dozen years in business, we have gained unique insight into SEO best practices and opportunities, and we’re happy to share them with you.

Enjoy our new white paper now, and stay tuned to this blog for more articles on the topic of SEO in e-commerce.

 

After Mobilegeddon, Focus on Site Search for Mobile-Friendliness

Posted by Shaun RyaneCommerce, Mobile, Mobile/Tablets, SEO, Site Search

Mobile commerce is exploding! The majority of traffic to e-commerce stores is coming from mobile devices (Shopify 2014) and mobile commerce is growing three times faster than overall e-commerce. In its “Spotlight on Modern Retail 2015,” NRF found that during the first three quarters of 2014, retailers reported their mobile sales grew a whopping 87 percent!

Well aware of the growing mobile masses, on April 21st Google expanded its mobile-friendliness ranking signal to reward mobile-friendly sites with higher search rankings and demote those that fail its test. (a.k.a. “mobilegeddon,”). While the full results are still to be seen, action by many online retailers is still needed. To guide developers, the search giant also provided them with the top things to know when building a site for mobile devices. Here’s how e-commerce site search fits in and can help contribute to your mobile success.

outline-steps#1: Make It Easy

Google’s #1 recommendation for building a mobile-friendly site is: Make It Easy For Customers. Heavily contributing to the ‘mobile-friendly’ signal is whether or not visitors, after landing on a mobile page, can easily complete the tasks they want to accomplish by solely using the mobile site. For instance, when visitors using smartphones search for new running shoes on Sports Authority, the company’s mobile-friendly site helps them easily find and buy the shoes they want, which in turn will now help Sports Authority fare better in Google smartphone rankings.

Mobile-optimized site search helps retailers connect shoppers with the products they’re seeking, making it easy for mobile visitors to find, research and/or complete a purchase (their main objective). Given mobile’s space and speed challenges, the search box is the best gateway to finding products and content on mobile sites. That in turn has a big impact on engagement metrics such as conversion rates, bounce rates, average time on site, average pages requested per session and more, which affects its ‘mobile-friendly’ signal and mobile search ranking.

Helping site visitors easily complete their objectives now has a direct impact on mobile search rankings, making good site search more important than ever before.

#2: Measure Effectiveness

Google’s second recommendation for building a mobile-friendly site is: Measure The Effectiveness Of Your Site. Optimized site search is a vital part of delivering a satisfying shopping experience to mobile users as it helps visitors quickly and easily engage with the site – often increasing conversion rates and average order values, and lowering bounce rates. Leading e-commerce companies, including international cosmetics brand e.l.f. Cosmetics and specialty retailer WebUndies.com, have experienced impressive measured results with mobile-optimized site search.

Lesley Klein, director of e-commerce at e.l.f. Cosmetics, reported: “Conversion for mobile visitors using site search is four times the rate vs. mobile users who don’t use search. With 30% of our online traffic coming from mobile devices, we’re providing a seamless shopping experience no matter how or where people come to e.l.f.”

Terri Hunsinger, co-owner at WebUndies.com, found: “Mobile site search has been very effective in bringing 2,500 products to the forefront for customers who are trying to search on small devices where it can be difficult to see our broad product selection. People are spending more time and more money and are more engaged because of the accurate search results they are seeing.”

As with sites like e.l.f. and WebUndies.com, optimized mobile sites make it easy for customers to shop. Whether Mobilegeddon ends up significantly impacting SEO or not, your optimized mobile search will strongly contribute to better online shopping experiences and conversions.

 

For SEO, Check Off Mobile-Optimized Site Search (By Apr 21!)

Posted by Tim CallaneCommerce, Mobile, Mobile/Tablets, SEO, Site Search

Now that more than half of all time spent shopping online is done via mobile devices, mobile commerce is growing three times faster than overall e-commerce. In its “Spotlight on Modern Retail 2015,” NRF found that during the first three quarters of 2014, retailers reported their mobile sales grew a whopping 87 percent!

To meet these quickly changing usage patterns, Google is again adapting its algorithms to help users discover more mobile-friendly content. On April 21, Google will expand its mobile-friendliness ranking signal to make it even easier for users to find ‘mobile-friendly’ websites in search results.

outline-stepsAccording to Google, “This change will affect mobile searches in all languages worldwide and will have a significant impact in our search results. Consequently, users will find it easier to get relevant, high quality search results that are optimized for their devices.” And if anyone wants to test mobile web pages, Google provides a handy tool: The Mobile Friendly Test.

Mobile-Optimized Site Search Boosts SEO

Heavily contributing to the ‘mobile-friendly’ signal will be whether or not visitors, after landing on a mobile page, can complete the tasks they wanted to accomplish by solely using the mobile site.

For instance, when visitors using tablets search for new running shoes on Sports Authority, the company’s mobile-friendly site helps them easily find and buy the shoes they want, which in turn will help Sports Authority fare better in Google rankings after the April 21 algorithm change.

Mobile site search is a vital part of delivering a satisfying shopping experience to mobile users as it helps visitors quickly and easily engage with the site. Given mobile’s space and speed challenges, the search box is the best gateway to finding products and content on mobile sites. That in turn has a big impact on engagement metrics such as conversion rate, bounce rate, average time on site, average pages requested per session and more, which has a direct domain-wide impact on its ‘mobile-friendly’ signal and mobile search ranking.

For a complete guide to providing mobile shoppers with a great user experience, download the new white paper Site Search and the Mobile User Experience.

Mobile 101 – New Webinar!

Join us on Tuesday, March 24 at 10:00 a.m. PDT for a new SLI Webinar, Mobile 101 – Best Practices, to learn more about how to convert mobile shoppers with an engaging mobile user experience (and in turn, boost your mobile search ranking!). Registration is open until 8 a.m. PDT on March 24, plus an on-demand version of the webinar will be available soon.

Appliances Online and SurfStitch Win Online Retail Industry Awards

Posted by SLI SystemsConferences, eCommerce, SEO, Site Search, Success Stories
urfStitch SLI's Learning Search

SurfStitch Showcases SLI Learning Search

Aussie retailers Appliances Online and SurfStitch have been picked as equal winners for ‘Best Pureplay Online Retailer’ at the Online Retail Industry Awards (ORIA).

The annual awards, which recognize the pinnacle of excellence in digital retailing, handed out the top accolade to the joint winners. Both online retailers use SLI Systems’ Learning Search solution that ‘learns’ from past site search activity. It does this by tracking visitors’ search behavior, and then uses that data to deliver the most relevant results. The technology also brings clients’ non-product information (such as user ratings, reviews, social content, blogs and videos) into search to deliver an impressive user experience that compels shoppers to buy.

“It’s a great achievement to win the top award at the ORIAs,” said CEO John Winning for Appliances Online. Since implementing SLI Learning Search, Appliances Online noticed that people who use site search spend twice as much time on site as visitors who don’t use site search. The appliances retailer also witnessed a 20% increase in site revenue.

As well as using SLI Learning Search, SurfStitch also uses SLI Site Champion, which builds upon SLI Learning Search technology to deliver high-quality organic search traffic to sites. It learns from site visitors and dynamically creates SEO-optimized landing pages that are indexed by Google and other Internet search engines, extending the site’s SEO footprint and making more content findable.

Since  inception in 2008, SurfStitch has recognized that investing in its e-commerce platform, customer service and engagement is key to offering customers an optimal online shopping experience.  Learning Search and Site Champion have eliminated dead-ends for SurfStitch’s customers, as site visitors no longer find themselves lost or stuck looking at products they don’t want. In addition to experiencing a 90% reduction on ‘no results’ pages, average sales are up 15% for SurfStitch and site visitors spend 25% more time browsing. Appliance Online has seen a 20% increase in revenue.

“SLI is committed to offering the world’s leading e-commerce acceleration solutions such as Learning Search and Site Champion. I congratulate our customers Appliances Online and SurfStitch on their achievement in winning this award,” said Shaun Ryan, CEO, SLI Systems. “We are excited to see these two important customers increase customer conversions through the use of our solutions, and to have them recognized for their successes.”

How to Drive Sales from Popular Search Engines

Posted by Jason MillereCommerce, SEO, Webinar

Jason Miller will provide additional insight on this topic at IRCE 2014 at the E-commerce Accelerator Theater, Booth #601. Catch his presentation at 2 p.m. Wednesday, June 11, or at 11 a.m. Thursday, June 12. View other Theater information here.

I recently did a webinar about how online retailers can increase conversions – and lower bounce rates – through dynamic landing page banners. I find this topic very interesting since, in my previous position with Motorcycle Superstore, I had a lot of success using SLI Systems Dynamic Product Banners. What makes this concept highly effective is the use of a learning engine, like SLI Learning Search, to determine what products and content to show in the landing page banners, based on the behavior of previous shoppers.

It’s no surprise that people shop for different items in different ways. It is extremely valuable to have a learning engine that, in real-time, can analyze and aggregate data on how visitors shop your site for various types of products. Rather than making assumptions about how to best present relative products to your customers, you can use all the rich data and user behavior on your site.

For example, through a learning engine you can see which facets people typically select for certain types of searches, as well as what colors are most popular and what items convert at the highest rate. The learning allows the search itself to present results that best match people’s interests and deliver a better more relevant experience. This learning can be applied to on-site merchandising, autocomplete and product recommendations, to name a few.

When it comes to SEO, SEM and landing page optimization, some key performance indicators are conversion rate and bounce rate. The industry average bounce rate for e-commerce sites is generally agreed to be around 34%, though some large e-commerce sites claim bounce rates of less than 10%, according to the Q2 2013 Web-Analytics Benchmark study by ClickTale. (Note: If you happen to have an exceptionally low bounce rate, I suggest you check your analytics tagging, because you may have duplicate site tagging.) Among its many other negative impacts, a high bounce rate will obviously hurt conversion and make your SEM campaigns less cost effective.

Some common reasons why users bounce:

  1. Page content doesn’t match users expectations (this often happens with poorly managed SEM campaigns that aren’t targeted enough)
  2. Poorly designed UI, including sites that don’t properly handle tablets and mobile devices
  3. Site performance (milliseconds matter – users are not willing to wait)
  4. Out of stock or unavailable products

 

A few ways to reduce bounce rate:

  1. Closely monitor your SEM campaigns for relevant landing pages
  2. Use responsive design and a qualified UI team, which can help you optimize user experience on the widest range of devices
  3. Use a high-performance content delivery network such as Akamai to decrease page load times
  4. Take advantage of SLI Dynamic Product Banners, which use advanced learning algorithms to show relevant products on your product pages – even when the current product is unavailable or out of stock

 

As an e-commerce retailer, you may have very little control over what page Google ranks your site for a specific search term. However, you can still drive sales through popular search engines using Dynamic Product Banners to populate landing pages for natural and paid search. This approach has proven very effective for many SLI clients. If you’d like to view my recent webinar to see how e-commerce sites like Wine Enthusiast and others use Dynamic Product Banners, you can get it here.

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