How to create an indexable online store:
In this post, we’ll try to offer a view from an SEO perspective when creating an online store. To do this, it is essential to build a team with smooth communication between the development, design and SEO departments.
The starting point is a briefing with the client to clarify concepts such as usability, web architecture, page functionality and design, and of course to define the initial keywords for the business model being taken online. In this first phase, close communication and contact between the client and all departments involved is essential, so that everyone is willing to listen, raise questions or clarify concepts, and collaborate seamlessly.
In the development phase, the SEO perspective will contribute ideas on the website’s architecture and structure, the choice of CMS, navigation, URL syntax, configuration of certain server files, and everything related to content and wording: taxonomies, keyword selection, copywriting, domain name, etc. This ensures there are no later indexability problems caused during production or development, and makes it possible to create an indexable online store, which will make the difference in achieving optimal rankings against competitors’ pages that didn’t take this into account or didn’t handle this part of the build well.
source: www.bot-bot.com
It is essential to keep the following in mind:
If you are working online, it is crucial to block crawling by spiders through the robots.txt file located in the server root; otherwise, search engines will start indexing URLs that may not be final. This can also be done with the robots meta tag in the page’s < head >. This way we avoid generating both duplicate content and 404 errors. Don’t forget to remove the restriction on robots when moving from production to live (it sometimes happens). Another server-related aspect to take care of is implementing the sitemap.xml file.
Another essential part is preparing the online store to display correctly on devices such as smartphones or tablets, so you will choose a responsive design or use a layout suited to all the devices currently used for online shopping, even if the design differs for each one. What matters is that the user experience is the best possible and users can access the available information quickly, with a simple checkout in as few steps as possible.
The social environment is unavoidable, especially Google Plus, Twitter and Facebook. It’s not enough to have profiles on these networks; you need to work on them and place the corresponding icons on the website linking to each one, as well as set up content authorship with Google Plus profiles if the online store has a blog.
Key on-page factors include:
< title > tag. Found in the < head > of every page on a website.
Description meta tag. Found in the < head > of every page on a website.
< h1 >..< h6 > headings. Used to structure content hierarchically. One < h1 > per page is recommended. The others can be used more often.
Internal and outbound links. No more than 100 internal links per page. Outbound links should point to non-controversial and, if possible, popular pages. All should have the title attribute
rel=”canonical”. Attribute used to point to one URL from others with the same or similar content.
rel=”nofollow”. Attribute used to manage link juice and avoid passing it to another website or internal pages.
Image alt. Attribute that describes an image and can be crawled by robots. It usually includes keywords.
Highlighting text: < strong >, < em >. Tags used to give weight to certain words or phrases.
301 redirects where needed. To redirect from an old URL to a new one, for example.
WPO (Web Performance Optimization). Optimizing the website’s loading speed.
Content: create original content enriched with keywords. It should always be readable, without keyword stuffing, and use stopwords (of, a, an…).
Blog: essential for driving traffic and keeping a website’s content dynamic.
Keywords: choose the most suitable ones for the business model, closely tied to the two previous points.
Off-page factors:
Earn external links with high PageRank naturally, or in a way that looks natural, paying close attention to anchor text to avoid penalties. This technique is commonly known as link building.
Link baiting. This means creating content that sparks visitors’ interest so they link from their own websites to that content because of its relevant information.
There are more aspects to consider when creating an indexable online store, but the essentials are covered in this post.
