Basic SEO to kick-start your Online Store

I've launched a new online store using OpenCart and I've been researching ways to improve your website presence and performance on search engines both safely and effectively.

On-Site SEO
1. Home Title (title of your website) should reflect your main keywords

2. Use SEO-friendly URL
[ie - http://www.example.com/white-denim-jeans instead of http://www.example.com/productid_9399]

3. Repeat your Product Title's keyword in the description
[keyword density of 6~8% is good]

4. Integrate a Blog so you have fresh content

5. Internal Linking: in your product page, recommend another product that is perhaps similar or if you have a review on your "blog", link it there.
[when you link it, don't say "go to http://www.example.com/xxx" - instead use keyword rich title that links to your review page: "White denim jeans review"

Off-Site SEO
1. Integrate account with Google Webmasters (also Bing)

2. Submit url to multiple search engines
[just type submit url and u'll find useful services for free]

3. Submit ur shopping site to DMOZ
http://www.dmoz.org/Shopping/

4. Quick Index your website so sites know about ur site:
http://www.affmastermind.com/toolbox/quickindex/

5. Use Social Media (twitter, facebook pages, etc) and post your url with relevant keywords
[ie: you can buy white denim jeans here: http://www.example.com]


I hope some of these tips were useful

Any more Basic SEO tips??

That's a nice concise guide to SEO. Good of you to post it.

In my opinion, DMOZ is a waste of time. But it's only your time, so go for it. You also don't need to submit your website to search engines. They're search engines; they'll crawl it. That's their job.

I would add 2 things I've used for years that have stood me in good stead. I've not done a lot of the other things you're "supposed" to do for SEO (including paying a dime for advertising), but get plenty of targeted business from natural search anyway.

(1) Use all your keywords in your product title. Obviously, you want it to still read like a title, but "Ceaco Christmas Kitten Cat 750 Piece Jigsaw Puzzle TITLE OF PUZZLE HERE Itemnumber" is way better than, "Ceaco Cat Christmas Puzzle".Think carefully about the search terms YOU use when you search for stuff, and remember that for many products (especially electronics), people are going to look for the exact model number of what they want.

(2) Put all the variations of the items in a category in the category footer (I've rearranged my OC category template so the "description" goes at the bottom and serves as a footer). Ditto for a "sitemap". I've gotten lots of referrals from what I call a sitemap on my page, but which is actually a list of all the variations of things within a category, linking to that category page. Sometimes the hits come from this "sitemap" and sometimes from the same info at the bottom of the category page. Depends on what the bot crawled that day, I guess.

Karen wrote:You also don't need to submit your website to search engines. They're search engines; they'll crawl it. That's their job.

Even so, you'll see that it helps tremendously in getting your store indexed by a search engine quickly if you submit a sitemap...e.g. in
Google webmaster tools: http://www.google.com/webmasters/tools
Bing webmaster center: http://www.bing.com/toolbox/webmasters/

Karen wrote:..... Put all the variations of the items in a category in the category footer (I've rearranged my OC category template so the "description" goes at the bottom and serves as a footer). Ditto for a "sitemap". I've gotten lots of referrals from what I call a sitemap on my page, but which is actually a list of all the variations of things within a category, linking to that category page. Sometimes the hits come from this "sitemap" and sometimes from the same info at the bottom of the category page. Depends on what the bot crawled that day, I guess.

Thanks for this idea, Karen. It's really interested me, as it sounds very effective.
How does this work on the page - the category variations and the site-map? Are the category variations a random list, like a tag list... and where do you put the site map? Thanks!

sooskriszta wrote: Even so, you'll see that it helps tremendously in getting your store indexed by a search engine quickly if you submit a sitemap...e.g. in
Google webmaster tools: http://www.google.com/webmasters/tools
Bing webmaster center: http://www.bing.com/toolbox/webmasters/

Yeah, that's what they say, but I haven't found it to be necessary. I've noticed a distinct change in the last 2 years or so - things get crawled and indexed REALLY fast these days.

Not saying anyone shouldn't submit a site map; just that, IME, doing so isn't that much of a help.

Your mileage may vary, of course. And it certainly won't hurt you.

Moggin wrote:How does this work on the page - the category variations and the site-map? Are the category variations a random list, like a tag list... and where do you put the site map? Thanks!

Not really a tag list. Let's see...here is a category page on the site I'm migrating at the moment. The first one:

http://205.134.249.57/route=product/category&path=49

At the bottom, you'll see a list of all the types of products that are in that category. The bots seem to pick up that text quite frequently. (And for those who may be VERY new to SEO: it's important not to make the text much smaller than the rest of the text on your page, or light enough so that it disappears, like white or nearly white text on a white background. Search engines look very poorly on hidden text, and it's one of the things that can get you excluded from future crawls.)

Here's a different variation; a page from one of my old sites. Instead of a laundry list, it's a list of the varities of search terms people have used to find what's on this page:

http://www.catandcaboodle.com/Cat-Food- ... c_660.html

As for the "site map": I just create a separate page with all of the same terms I've put at the bottom of the category pages. They link to the category page. Then you put a link to your site map at the top of the left column. Supposedly, crawlers treat things at the top as being of greater importance than items at the bottom (which is why OC's standard template puts that site map link at the very top of the header).

Karen wrote:..http://205.134.249.57/route=product/category&path=49

At the bottom, you'll see a list of all the types of products that are in that category. The bots seem to pick up that text quite frequently.

Oh thank you, now I see how it works. Clever! The keywords are there, and there are plenty of them - but they don't get in the buyer's way

Karen wrote: Here's a different variation; a page from one of my old sites. Instead of a laundry list, it's a list of the varities of search terms people have used to find what's on this page:

http://www.catandcaboodle.com/Cat-Food- ... c_660.html

OK, so this one uses actual keyword search terms. It builds on itself, so to speak

As for the "site map": I just create a separate page with all of the same terms I've put at the bottom of the category pages. They link to the category page. Then you put a link to your site map at the top of the left column. Supposedly, crawlers treat things at the top as being of greater importance than items at the bottom (which is why OC's standard template puts that site map link at the very top of the header).

Got it!
Thank you for sharing these ideas, Karen. There are so many myths about SEO out there, it's good to know about tweaks that really work.

Karen wrote:You also don't need to submit your website to search engines. They're search engines; they'll crawl it. That's their job.

Not completely true. In order for your site to get spidered/crawled google needs some way of knowing your web address. It does this from either submitted URL's to their site, or from links found on the web on other sites it crawls. Of course, if this is a new website, there aren't any URL's on the web, so the only way to get into google (and other search engines of course) is submitting to them or posting your urls on forums and blogs and whatnot

JAY6390 wrote:

Karen wrote:You also don't need to submit your website to search engines. They're search engines; they'll crawl it. That's their job.

Not completely true. In order for your site to get spidered/crawled google needs some way of knowing your web address. It does this from either submitted URL's to their site, or from links found on the web on other sites it crawls. Of course, if this is a new website, there aren't any URL's on the web, so the only way to get into google (and other search engines of course) is submitting to them or posting your urls on forums and blogs and whatnot

Yes and no. Before I started developing on a sandbox subdomain that blocked Google, I routinely had them indexing brand new sites while still in development. This happened also when developing on the clients' hosting, using a brand new domain not linked anywhere. The problem was - aside from the fact that it was on a test site - is that sometimes page names change, then I needed to request Google remove the URL. So yes, Google will find you, even when you don't want to be found.

The benefit to submitting the site to Google (and Yahoo and Bing) is that you know it's been done, and you can specify some domain parameters to Google (www vs no-www), and you have a little more control over how they index and such. Plus, it gives you something to show the client, that you've gone the extra step.

David_Fraiser wrote:... Before I started developing on a sandbox subdomain that blocked Google, I routinely had them indexing brand new sites while still in development. ....

I thought a robots.txt file would prevent that! Does that mean Google has been crawling my disallowed files, showing all my half-made pages to the world?..

No it hasn't Moggin, they will not index anything you specify disallowed in the robots file

@David_Frasier - Google can't just know that a new domain is purchased. There's two possible scenarios. Either you registrar provides a list of purchased domains or "Latest bought domains" and a few domain names below (which google could pick up). That or the domain names have previously been purchased and google is checking up on them. Google has no magical power to find purchased domain names from nowhere. Here's their article on how sites are found
http://www.google.com/support/webmaster ... swer=34397

@Jay, Jay I don't know how it works but it has happened to me. Google found me when I didn't want to be found and then the Oh sh*t, delete files real quick
It might have something to do with Google knowing where I click. I don't know but I do know I had to do an emergency delete.
Nonetherless, a submitted sitemap helps and it's painless to do

If you have the google toolbar installed and type your url in your browser google will find your site. I always block google on a new site via htaccess until the site is ready to be live just to prevent the indexing of pages that I don't want indexed.

nakamurak wrote:
2. Use SEO-friendly URL
[ie - http://www.example.com/white-denim-jeans instead of http://www.example.com/productid_9399]

Does anyone know if this is possible using OpenCart?

Bugsafari wrote:

nakamurak wrote:
2. Use SEO-friendly URL
[ie - http://www.example.com/white-denim-jeans instead of http://www.example.com/productid_9399]

Does anyone know if this is possible using OpenCart?

Of course!

In Settings select se SEO-friendly URL and in your shop's root rename .htaccess.txt to .htaccess

Yes, set the SEO url in the admin area for the product, make sure SEO url's are turned on in the settings, and rename the .htaccess.txt to .htaccess if you haven't already. That should do it

Karen wrote:

Moggin wrote:How does this work on the page - the category variations and the site-map? Are the category variations a random list, like a tag list... and where do you put the site map? Thanks!

Not really a tag list. Let's see...here is a category page on the site I'm migrating at the moment. The first one:

http://205.134.249.57/route=product/category&path=49

How do you achieve different set with different category/product?

Karen wrote:

Moggin wrote: At the bottom, you'll see a list of all the types of products that are in that category. The bots seem to pick up that text quite frequently. (And for those who may be VERY new to SEO: it's important not to make the text much smaller than the rest of the text on your page, or light enough so that it disappears, like white or nearly white text on a white background. Search engines look very poorly on hidden text, and it's one of the things that can get you excluded from future crawls.)

Here's a different variation; a page from one of my old sites. Instead of a laundry list, it's a list of the varities of search terms people have used to find what's on this page:

http://www.catandcaboodle.com/Cat-Food- ... c_660.html

As for the "site map": I just create a separate page with all of the same terms I've put at the bottom of the category pages. They link to the category page. Then you put a link to your site map at the top of the left column. Supposedly, crawlers treat things at the top as being of greater importance than items at the bottom (which is why OC's standard template puts that site map link at the very top of the header).

I want to use similar method with preselected keywords
different set of keywords to be displayed on product page / category page

how do I achieve this since we have one footer file for all category and products.

thanks in advance

Keywords should be those which are targeted and can receive visitors. Then it would be very useful for business purposes.

Also use SEO audit tool like http://iwebchk.com or similar.

dxter wrote:Also use SEO audit tool like http://iwebchk.com or similar.

Hi..thanks for share the reference link, but my SEO point is low, so i must to work hard anymore