I do happen to work with some of the world’s most well known brands which happen to have large commerce sites.  As a result, I evaluate their competition’s web presence as well.  In 2009, I am amazed to see just how much fundamental organic optimization these large e-commerce sites lack.  Even worse is the fact that some (many?) in the Search industry also overlook the fundamentals of SEO.  So while this may be a refresher for many of you, I do know that there are some out there who will find the following SEO reminders useful.

SEO Reminders for e-Commerce Sites

1. Site Architecture is important for SEO success - guess what?  If you cannot map out a search friendly architecture and layout of your site, you are simply not going to do well in the search results of the engines.  Some key points to remember:
    
   • Structure your site in a logical manner
   • Avoid burying important content 4 or more folders deep in the hierarchy
   • Create search engine friendly URLs 
   • Use canonical URLs
   • Use the canonical tag to address duplicate content concerns
   • Keep it clean!
      

      

2. Create Unique Content on your Product Pages - add to the vendor supplied product description copy that you are given.  Every other site that sells the same product will also feature this content.  The engines are looking to index useful, informative and unique content.  Help them out by continuing to publish fresh and informative content.  You will also receive the benefits of link value from other site and blogs that link to this content.
    
    
3. Use an SEO friendly CMS (Content Management System) - ensure that your CMS system allows you to populate unique title and meta tags and that you are able to add content as required.
    
    
4. Avoid Using Java Script in Navigation - while the engines are getting better at reading JS, they are still not there just yet.  Make sure that the search engines can follow your links and avoid placing your main navigation (top nav, side nav, footer nav) in JS.  Consider using CSS and include files as a way to create your site navigation.  Again this is just SEO 101 best practice type of stuff.
    
    
5. Create and Update Your HTML Sitemaps – as you push out new content to the web make sure that you add it to your HTML sitemap
    
    
6. Create and Update XML Sitemaps – e-commerce sites tend to be very large.  One way to ensure that your content is being crawled and indexed efficiently is to create and submit XML sitemaps.  Using these sitemaps you can actually set the priority of which pages you consider to be the most important as related to other pages on your site.  Communicate this to the search engines to ensure efficient indexing of your site.
    
7. Avoid hiding your content from the search engines – things like Flash, JS and frames might be useful from a design perspective but really they can wreak havoc from an SEO perspective.  Help the engines find your content and make it easier for them to crawl and index. 

 I understand that to some of you this may be elementary SEO, but why oh why are so many sites neglecting these fundamental practices.  If you are an e-commerce site and are currently having difficulty in gaining visibility in the major search engines, start with the basics.  Trust me, if you have failed to address the fundamentals you will be limited in your ability to place well in the results.  The longer your wait to address these issues the harder it is to overcome them.  In case you have not yet noticed the Web is a hyper-competitive environment.  Failure to address the fundamentals can most definitely have an impact on the bottom line that you generate from your online marketing efforts.  Why restrict yourself?  The need for fundamental SEO should be the first place you start when trying to optimize your web properties. 

1. Preparing for a Site Redesign – when planning a redesign and making sure that all of the SEO best practices are being put in place as you prepare to launch. You’ll want to bolster your online campaign with sponsored efforts as you transition from the old site to the new site. Once the SEO efforts kick in post-launch, you can reduce your PPC spend and focus your sponsored efforts elsewhere.
2. Preparing to Launch a Micro site – Micro sites allow you to try out a more targeted online strategy. For quick traffic generation to your new micro site, you’ll want to utilize a well planned sponsored strategy. At the same time, your SEO efforts can be geared towards a focus on long-tail and less competitive keywords to drive additonal traffic to the micro site.
3. Launching a new Sub-Domain – Similar to launching a micro site, sponsored efforts can be used to direct traffic to the new sub-domain while an SEO strategy can be developed to obtain long term rankings for the sub-domain.
4. Launching a new Website – Any time you launch a new website, you should have both an SEO and SEM strategy working together to help obtain traffic to your new web property. Initially, your sponsored strategy might be the only means of driving traffic to your new site, until you can improve your visibility in the natural search results of the search engines.
5. Marketing Your Website on a Shoestring Budget – If you have a tight budget, you can focus efforts on SEO and complement that with a smaller PPC strategy where you bid on phrases that are less expensive. You may want to focus your PPC spend for local search while you concentrate your SEO efforts for more general search engine rankings. As you develop content through SEO and on-page optimization, the only cost you incur is time.
6. Company Mergers & Merging Web Properties – In the dynamic economic environment that we have experienced in recent years, it’s not uncommon to see companies merge. Quite often startups are bought out and you are left with multiple web properties at your disposal. This is another great example of when you should be using SEO and PPC simultaneously to educate your target audience of your recent merger or acquisition. You may want to phase the old company out, and as a result move some content from that company’s website to your own. Developing an SEO transition strategy that is backed up by a solid PPC strategy can be an effective way to educate your existing customers as well as any new prospects who may be looking for your solution.
7. Releasing a New Product Line – PPC can be used in conjunction with SEO to promote your new product or solution line. Chances are that your new product name will be easy to rank for organically; back that up with some non-branded traffic from sponsored efforts and you can quickly acheive some additional branded and non-branded traffic that will convert on your site, with the proper type of messaging and promotion.
8. Online Reputation Management Campaigns – Experienced some negative press? Use SEO and sponsored solutions to protect your brand in the online space. From an SEO point of view, you’ll want to ensure that any negative organic listings are pushed to page two of the search results page, by optimizing your site for blended search, and leveraging social networks to dominate the SERP landscape. Furthermore, you will want to protect your brand via PPC efforts so that negative or “questionable” listings do not appear within the sponsored results.
9. Entering New Markets – If your company is large enough to go global or is entering new regional markets, you might want to use SEO and PPC to target these geographic demographics. Depending on your expansion, you might want to try a GEO-targeted sponsored campaign, backed up with content development for organic rankings in the natural search results of the search engines.
10. Plateauing Search Engine Traffic – Seen your website traffic start to plateau? Maybe you need to modify or add a sponsored strategy to your SEO strategy or vice versa. Revisit both your SEO and PPC efforts and get creative with some new messaging to drive more traffic to your site.

While many companies are doing SEM or are developing SEO strategies, there are still a number that are not leveraging SEO and PPC efforts together. If your company is experiencing any of the ten issues above, you may want to establish a co-existing SEO and SEM strategy to ensure that you effectively intercept your target audience and that you continue to drive qualified traffic to your site. Search engine optimization and sponsored search marketing efforts can work together to provide you with optimal results. The more effective you become with your online marketing efforts, the less spend it will take to drive more business. While it takes time and is subject to the changing nature of the Internet, realizing when to use SEO and PPC together can return tremendous results.

Original Post Courtesy of SEO-Space:  SEO & PPC Working Together