Most new customers will find your site by searching through a search engine such as Google. This means that you need to plan your marketing strategies for an e-commerce presence just as carefully as any other marketing strategy you have worked with before.
Remember there are literally billions of web pages out there, so the only way for someone to find what they are looking for is to go to a search engine and type in some keywords to try and describe their need.
A search engine is a really, really big listing of all the web sites out there (though let's remember that no search engine ever knows every single existing site as pages on the net are being constantly added and removed from the web).
So what makes a search engine so clever is the ability it has to work out how to categorise every site on the list and bring a part of the list to you in response to a search request. The technology used by search engines has become incredibly refined and sophisticated. Even so, you are responsible for making your own company site as relevant as possible to your subject and giving the search engine lots of information.
I'm sure you have all searched for something at one time or another and found that Google has returned you hundreds of thousands (if not more) of web pages. Obviously no one is going to bother going and looking at a page that is a few hundred thousand down a list. They are unlikely to go look at a page that is a hundred down the list! In fact it is suggested that if your page does not come up in the first 20 results, forget it, no one will bother.
Optimising your web site for search engines is often a matter of making small modifications to your site. (Optimising meaning to make it easy for the search engines to categorise your site and give it a high ranking)
Below is an overview of some of the types of optimisation that your site should include. (you will want to discuss these with your web site designer)
Unique, accurate page titles. A good title will include the name of your site that reflects what you do, and some keywords that accurately describe the focus of that particular page. You want the title to read well also, not just your name and a list of tags, but a short descriptive sentence.
BAD example: Home
GOOD example: Welcome to XYZ where your photography supply needs will all be met!
Description meta tag. Search engines use the description tag to gain a summary of what the page is about. Some search engines only use snippets of the description in the search results, whilst others will use the entire description. Keep these descriptions succinct and clear for best results.
File structure of your site. Use good descriptive names for the folders and files inside your site to allow search engines to rank your pages well. Don’t name pages with names like page1.htm, but rather use a name such as rarest_baseball_cards.htm
Keep navigation simple. Search engines use spider technology to trawl through your web site and the ease of this navigation (not too many clicks from the home page to reach important content) will be noted as search engines like to have a sense of what role each page plays in the bigger picture of the site.
Provide quality content. Users of your site are more likely to direct others to your site using their own blog, twitter and social networking sites if you provide clear, easy to read, informative content. Whilst you are designing the content for your users, not search engines, the more links that point back to your site through your quality content, the higher your ranking progresses.
Promote your site well. Good practices include – using a blog to promote new content and services, put your site address on all business material the public may encounter, use social networking sites to promote your site, link to other peer sites in your business community and add your business to Google’s Local Business Centre
Track site usage. Use a tool such as Google Analytics to regularly review how users reach and behave on your site.
