I know you've heard this many times during your business life but, are you aware of just who your number one e-commerce customer is? Your first thought would be the person in search of your particular product or service.
Wrong.
Your number one customer is actually a group of customers called Search Engines (SEs). There are quite a few in the group but most folks think of the top 5 as the ones you need to "please".
In order, they are:
- Bing
- Baidu
- Yahoo!
- Ask.com
- DuckDuckGo
I bet you may not know that there are three types of SEs:
- Web Crawlers
- Directories
- Sponsored Links
The first two of these should be on your "treat 'em nice" list for sure.
Web crawlers and directories use algorithms to help them "place" you and your products in front of the right people. Think of them like the guy handing out flyers to your brick and mortar at the entrance to the big mall. "Specials today a Thompson's Treasures, Trinkets, and Trash! Second floor, next to the food court." Think how much more traffic that store will get just from that one pointer.
But, that guy needs either a brochure or the knowledge of EVERYTHING in your store if he is really going to help you out. The most trained personnel at Disney Land and Disney World are the folks sweeping and handling the trash. They have to know where everything is located in the Park as they are approached the most for information.
So, it makes sense that we need to get as much information to the SEs as possible. They are our frontline of information. But, like some of the Magic Kingdom's visitors, the SEs are blind. They cannot see the "This way to Magic Mountain" signs.
If you really want to make those five SEs stand up and take notice, there are three things that must be done.
- Make sure every image has an alt tag.
- Most are generated by Zen Cart for you and have the product name as the alt tag.
- If you add an image to a product description or your main page, be sure the alt tag tells the "blind" SE what the image is about.
- Make sure every product has a unique and complete description.
- Don't break out a product by colors just to make it look like you have a lot of products. Google especially will catch this and mark you down for duplicate product. You do not EVER want Google to think you are trying to scam them.
- Make sure your description let's the "blind" SE exactly what the product is for and who would use it. The more info the better.
- Let the search engines know when you add something to your site, no matter if it's only one product.
- If you don't have Sitemap XML v4 installed, you need to get that done ASAP.
- Whenever you add new things, make updating your sitemap the last thing you do in that process.
- Letting the SEs know that you have added product will have them immediately checking you out.
- Of course, you want the best info out there before updating the Sitemap.
- The worst mistake you can make as an e-commerce website is to assume that someone dropping into your site is familiar with your product(s). Treat every visitor as if they've never been to your "Magic Kingdom" before. Flood them with information and your ranking WILL improve.
