Google's Search Engine Optimization Starter Guide and ProductCart

First released to the public in November of 2008, Google's Search Engine Optimization Starter Guide is a must read for anyone that wants to rank well on Google. That means pretty much everyone we can think of

The Guide goes through a series of topics, making recommendations on what Web site owners should do to make sure that their pages can be properly and effectively indexed. Below we are going to indicate, for each of the topics discussed in the Guide, how ProductCart can help you implement those suggestions. As a reference we are using the edition of the Guide that was published on November 13, 2008.

Google stresses the fact that your store visitors come first. We all agree that happy users buy more and come back more often. The interesting thing is that - in terms of store design - decisions that you make with usability as your first priority often translate into optimal decisions under a search engine point of view as well. If you're ever in doubt of going one way or the other, do what's best for your customers. It will likely work well under an SEO point of view too!

For example, think of navigation. Well thought out, easy to access, extensive Web store navigation clearly is key for a pleasant user experience for your site visitors, and it is equally important for search engine optimization. Having an updated store map (Marketing > Generate Store Map) that is easy to reach from any page, for instance, is a great tool for your Web site visitors, and helps search engines index your store.

On the other side, whether your store pages are in the root directory or two levels down, really does not matter to your site visitors at all, and it does not matter to search engines either.

Let's focus on what matters most, and get started with the first section of the Guide, which talks about the TITLE meta tag.

ProductCart tools to implement this recommendation: Meta Tags generating tools. Make sure to read the Good Practices section for tips on creating good titles for your products, categories, and content pages. The TITLE is typically one sentence. It does not have to be the same as the title shown onto the page itself. For example, the TITLE can contain a product name and a bit about what it does, whereas the title shown in the body of the product page is just the name of the product.

ProductCart tools to implement this recommendation: Meta Tags generating tools.

ProductCart tools to implement this recommendation: Keyword-rich, static URLs. Read that section of the WIKI carefully to learn how to implement this useful ProductCart feature.

One of the implementation guidelines is “Provide one version of a URL to reach a document”. To do this:

• Make sure that you are using all of the files we provide, including the Control Panel ones
• Recreate things like your store navigation, store map, site map, etc. so that the new URLs are used
• Manually update your store interface to use the new URLs, if needed
• Go through the portions of your Web site not controlled by ProductCart and update the URLs there too

ProductCart tools to implement this recommendation:

• Add navigation to your store interface
• Create a store map
• Add store links to other pages/navigation sections
• Submit a site map

ProductCart tools to implement this recommendation: Content Pages. Writing good, engaging content for your store really is important.

• It will make customers come back regularly for more (e.g. more “tips & tricks” on a certain topic)
• It will makes the point that you are an expert in the field, increasing the overall confidence level, which may lead to a better conversion rate
• It will increase the overall search engine friendliness of your Web site as the text that exist on your pages is clearly the most search engine friendly content you can provide to a search engine spider.

ProductCart tools to implement this recommendation: built-in. For example:

• ProductCart automatically links to other products using the same Custom Search Fields, from the product details page
• ProductCart automatically links to other products belonging to the same brand, from the product details page
• Category names in a breadcrumb are links to those categories
• … and more.

Read and use Google's recommendations on anchor text to write your own, correct links in your content pages and product/category descriptions.

ProductCart tools to implement this recommendation: built-in. ProductCart uses the H1 heading tag for the page title in the body of the page (different from the TITLE meta tag). It also uses sub-headings in some cases. You can control the look of these headings using Cascading Style Sheets.

ProductCart tools to implement this recommendation: built-in. ProductCart already adds an ALT tag to the images used in the storefront. Sometimes the text used for the ALT tag is automatically extracted from the page (e.g. product name for the ALT text on the product image), and in other cases it is controlled via the language file.

This is outside of ProductCart. See Google's recommendations.

In ProductCart this syntax in some cases to avoid the risk of duplicate content (same page with different names). As for using “nofollow” in your own links, see Google's recommendations.

This is outside of ProductCart. See Google's recommendations.

This is outside of ProductCart. See Google's recommendations.

One of the things you can do here is point your Google Base account to the Google Base export file that you can create in ProductCart, so you don't have to upload it manually.

ProductCart tools to implement this recommendation: Integration with Google Analytics

Should all ProductCart-driven pages should be in the root of Web site? In our experience (and in the feedback we have received from many ProductCart users) the default directory structure used by ProductCart does not negatively affect your search engine optimization efforts. If anything, it can do the opposite.

Specifically, one of Google's recommendations is to “Create a simple directory structure: Use a directory structure that organizes your content well and is easy for visitors to know where they're at on your site. Try using your directory structure to indicate the type of content found at that URL.”

To implement this recommendation, rename the "productcart" folder with a name that makes sense to your store visitors. For example, assume “mystore.com” sells skiing equipment. The “productcart” folder could be renamed “ski-store”, which makes sense and is also search engine friendly.

Since many times the store URL does not say anything about what's sold there, renaming the productcart folder with your number 1 keyword (or short keyword phrase) will very likely increase the relevance of your store pages in searches that use that keyword or keyword phrase.