A friend of mine paid thousands of dollars to purchase an online store. He spent several weeks setting it up then waited for the traffic to arrive to begin making sales. It never happened so he gave up thus wasting his time and money.
Most e-commerce web sites list their products on pages with little or no content. This is typical of e-commerce templates that make it easy to add products to your store however they are not search engine friendly.
How to pre-sell your product with articles
1. Write a 300 word article for each product
If you want to get visitors to purchase your product, write a brief article about it. It only has to be a couple of paragraphs (approx. 300 words). The article and product should be assigned their own web page.
2. Include targeted keywords
Check if your product is being entered into the search engines by doing a search in Word Tracker. Word tracker will show you the number of searches for the term you enter. Select keywords from the list generated and include them in your article. This will attract the search engines and drive traffic to your web page.
If no searches are displayed, include the product name and number in your article. If anyone searches for that specific product or product number, they will find at your web page.
3. Use correct meta tags
There are 3 meta tags to include in your web page.
Title tag
The is tag is what search engines use to rank your site. It’s what visitors see at the top of their browsers. It should include your main keyword and/or product name and and clearly articulate what’s on your page.
Description tag
This is the description of what your visitor will see about your product in the search engines. Create an attractive description that makes visitors click the link on your page.
Keywords tag
This tag has become rather useless to most search engines because it was abused. It’s still a good idea to include it though as some search engines still recognize it. Include your main keywords, and product name. Separate each word or words with commas.
4. Validate html (xhtml)
Correct and clean code makes your pages easier to spider and fast loading. Use the validation service at http://validator.w3.org/ by entering the URL of your page in the address box. Correct any errors.
5. Create incoming links
If you want to speed up the indexing of your product page in the search engines, link to it from your home and site map pages. When search engines visit either of these web pages they will also visit your product page. Getting incoming links from other web sites will also increase the rankings for this page.
Conclusion
Even though writing short articles for each product is time consuming, it has the long term benefit of generating continuous traffic. More traffic increases sales which is really your bottom line.
*****************************************
Herman Drost is the Certified Internet Webmaster (CIW)
owner and author of Web Site Design, Search Engine Optimization, Hosting
Receive fresh, in-depth articles articles on how to design, optimize and promote your web site by subscribing to his “Marketing Tips” newsletter at: http://www.isitebuild.com/
Speak Your Mind