| It's a question I hear asked over and over again: "How | | | | out this Wikipediaarticle. For IIS users, you might want |
| do I make my product pages rank in the search | | | | to consider this software from Isapi |
| engines?" Most e-commerce websites struggle with | | | | Re-write. |
| ranking their product detail pages due to three factors: | | | | No-Follow Tags in Links: |
| duplicate content penalties, poor internal linking structure, | | | | Many sites distribute their internal linkjuice in such a |
| and competition. While nothing can be done about the | | | | way that is not favorable to the product detail pages. |
| last issue, much can be said about the first two. | | | | In orderfor your pages to rank highly, they need to |
| In this article, I'll share some of the tactics I've used to | | | | receive a decent flow of PageRank. Iwould strongly |
| improve productpage rankings for my customers. | | | | recommend slapping a no-follow tag on your less |
| Don't Use Manufacturer Descriptions: | | | | important pagesfrom an SEO perspective (e.g. |
| Resist the temptation to copy andpaste manufacturer | | | | Privacy, security, about us pages). Just be sureto link |
| provided product descriptions. Why? Because all | | | | to them from your sitemap without the no follow. For |
| yourcompetitors use them as well. When Google sees | | | | more info on thistactic, check out this post on the |
| multiple pages with the samecontent, it will likely favor | | | | no-follow tag. |
| the site in which the content was published first. | | | | Add Keywords to Title Tag and Meta Tags: |
| In addition, these stock product descriptions often are | | | | It goes without saying thatall your title tags must be |
| not the most wellwritten from a sales perspective. | | | | unique and contain the product name. However, thisis |
| Allow Product Reviews: | | | | simply not enough. Create an extra field in your |
| Product reviews are a sure fire way to ensureyour | | | | product database where youcan add alternative SEO |
| pages are rich with unique content that occurs only on | | | | keywords. Then have these keywords show up in the |
| your site. Back whenwe were able to view | | | | Titletag for each product page. For example, while |
| supplemental results on the Google SERPs, I found | | | | you'll likely never rank for ahigh volume keyword |
| thatpages that had unique products reviews did not | | | | search such as "Christian |
| end up as supplemental results. | | | | T-shirts", you may stand a chance at ranking for "Cool |
| On the contrary, pages without unique descriptions or | | | | Christian T-shirts"if you add those phrases to the title |
| product reviews did. | | | | tag. |
| Use Keyword Rich URLs: | | | | Internal Contextual Linking: |
| Because most ecommerce sites are linked with | | | | Link to your important product pagesinternally from a |
| adynamic database, they use ugly url's which contain | | | | non navigation link. For example, you may want create |
| at least one numberparameter. Convert your category | | | | akeyword rich link in the product description of one |
| product page URLs into friendly, keywords richfile and | | | | product linking to anotherproduct page. |
| folder names. For more info on URL re-writing, check | | | | |