One thing I've recently done is started adding unique titles to each product, category and information page. There are several mods in the extension store that adds this ability to opencart and I am finding a boost for both queries and click thru rates since I've been doing it. Still working on updating all my products, but one thing this lets you do is to use a different keyword set in the page title (displays in the search engine results and in the browser) than the product name or give added relevance to a keyword I want to rank for. Remember, these display in search engines as the title but don't show up on your product page (they are shown at the top or on the tab for most browsers, but most customers don't even look there - this is more for search engines) so you can also include more of a call to action in the title than you might want on the product page. The goal is to make someone want to click on it so adding a benefit like "Ships Free" to what otherwise would just be the name of the product can do that. Some tips for writing great titles can be found here:
http://moz.com/learn/seo/title-tag
I've also had several people pm lately about seo questions so thought I'd comment on a few of them here for others wondering similar things.
Q: What mod should I use to automatically create my seo url keywords:
A: Honestly, I don't recommend any mods for auto generating your seo urls and feel doing them manually is much better as you should research your keywords (see my post a little above in this thread) to properly include them instead. This is especially true if you tend to have long product names (which I don't recommend but I know some feel the need to do). The seo url, like titles, gives you an opportunity to give yourself some keyword benefits so don't just go with your product name necessarily but use those keywords. Keep your urls short with the most important keywords only and not every benefit, model it is used for, or whatever else you might feel you need in it. Keep it 3-6 words at most and a good phrase (long tail keyword) is best. It does have to be unique, so I add my sku number at the end like "black-fishnet-stockings-8201" which will keep it unique as I add more products. If you want to save on typing, using a mod is fine as long as you edit the results to keep them short. Review them, don't just hit "save" without looking at them. Once you set an seo url you should NEVER CHANGE IT unless you have to - this will cause 404 errors from links people might have saved or have posted on the social networks. If you have to change it, do a 301 redirect in your htaccess file to maintain any link juice it already has. Automating things I know saves time, but I really believe that taking the time for things like keyword research, writing good titles, urls, and descriptions while adding products is an investment in better traffic and better sales and just plain HAS to be done.
Q: I'm getting traffic to my store but am also getting a high bounce rate. How can I keep people on my store?
A. Your goal should be to get the lowest bounce rate you can (under 50% for sure) and this can be hard to figure out. (Bounce rate means how quickly people leave your site after clicking thru to it).
First off, make sure you are not seeing referrals from semalt.com in your referral list in google analytics. This is a search engine spider that will mess up your stats as it always shows a 100% bounce rate. See
http://priteshpatel.me/how-to-exclude-t ... le-filter/ for how to filter it out of your results. Then allow about a week for your stats to settle out more accurately once you do. I suddenly saw 80+ bounce rate that freaked me out until I discovered this messing with my stats myself.
Next you need to do some detective work. Take a look at what search queries generate your highest bounce rate and then look at the landing pages for those queries. Do the query terms actually match that page meaning if they are searching for "red corsets" but are landing on a page that has a red skirt on it instead, figure out why & fix it. Do you have the wrong keywords, tags, or other bad info making the search engine link to the wrong page? Next look at the loading time and design of the page. Is it loading in 3 seconds or less? People are impatient so if your site is slow to load, often they will just click the back button on their browser and click on a different site link. Do everything you can to speed up your site loading time. Is there enough information above the fold (the top screen full of data they see first) to make them want to read about the product and buy it? A good photo, the main details like price, options available, etc, should all be above the fold. Think about what makes you click right off a page you land on and make sure your site isn't guilty of the same thing. Ask friends and family - sometimes what is obvious to someone else you don't even notice.
Lowering bounce rate is a continual experiment so keep tweaking things until it gets below 50% and then keep working on it more to get it lower.
