When looking for web solutions for ecommerce, one of the most important things to look out for is SEO. Most ecommerce solutions claim to provide SEO friendly platforms, but hardly deliver. You need to have SEO features, and this means comparing the features that are being provided so as to get the best platform for your business.While we cannot list all the SEO features that you need, we will try to list some of the most essential features. Remember that cheap ecommerce providers may not have these features.
The page title is the most essential SEO element and your ecommerce platform must allow you to edit page titles. Most platforms will only allow product page editing, not category pages. Look for a solution that allows you to set up redirects. Most ecommerce sites delete pages when products are no longer available or have changed categories. Redirects give you the ability to direct visitors onto a new page when they try and access the deleted pages. The navigation structure needs to be search friendly. Search engines want to give users the best experience and your navigation structure needs to meet certain SEO criteria. The SEO features that you will find most useful include Google Analytics. This might seem like such an obvious feature. However, not many ecommerce solutions support Google analytics ecommerce tracking. Many only have Google Analytics code which is pretty basic. The platform also needs to give you ability to create customised landing pages. This allows you incorporate rich keywords that attract your target market.
Content marketing has been an effective strategy for SEO measures such as link building. A blog is therefore one of the most essential SEO weapons you can have. A platform that provides a full featured blog with social sharing, RSS features and anti-spam could enhance your SEO. Other things you might want to consider while choosing e-commerce solutions include: site speed, authorship mark-up, social sharing, Meta description control and alt tag control, just to mention a few.