What are the Most Important SEO Factors for Beginners?

[Mallee Boy]

What would people say are the most important SEO Tasks for a beginner with a new site to learn? What kind of SEO tutorial or training would you recommend for someone just starting out?

I am especially interested in hearing from the experience of those who use Prestashop.

In no particular order:

 

Learn to write clear and detailed product descriptions.

• This is a big deal. So many stores I see have little more than one sentence

Do keyword research related to your niche

• Don't rush this step. Look at your competitors. use Google Keyword Planner Tool

Complete Meta Titles and descriptions for every product

• So basic, but lazy people skip this and have to return to every product page later to correct it.

Well crafted and Friendly URLS

• Nothing worse than having to change a URL 6 months down the track.

Draw your Menu and Category Structure before you build it

• You want Google to be able to navigate your site. Even more, you want your customers to navigate your site. Think about your categories and make your Menu's logical.

Complete alt tags in all product images

• I have gained a lot of business on one of my Prestashop stores because the images were showing up in Googles image search tool. Again, don't be lazy about this.

 

This is just a partial list that I am using to update my own resource.

 

I Would love to hear from the experiences of other shop owners for the benefit of all Prestashop users.

Edited July 13, 2014 by Mallee Boy (see edit history)

[mathewj]

have a user friendly url.

on page should be done.

submit in high pr sites

 

 

[Kimss]

It might seem obvious, but I think the first thing people need to do is to familiarize themselves with some of the tools available for analyzing the web traffic and index status of the site. At the very least, you need to be comfortable enough using the tools Google's providing for free that you always know how many people are visiting your site, where they're coming from, what they're doing on your site, how people are linking to your site, how Google is indexing your content and what your site's performance is in the SERPs.

 

Also, be patient and avoid mistakes. Again, it might seem obvious, but you can't stress the importance of minimizing mistakes enough. You have to remember that the worst thing that can happen, if you're not aggressive enough in your SEO is that it takes longer for the results to show. But if you're too aggressive, you run the risk of being banned from the SERPs entirely.

[Zestard Tech]

According to me....

 

* Onpage Factor (Include Meta Tags, Alt+Tags, Sitemap, Robots, Site Speed, Site Content, Keywords Density, Inner Pages Optimization and more..)

 

* Off page Factor (Inlcude Social Bookmark, Social Network, Blog, Article, Forum, Press Release and more..)

[Trip]

From my experience category pages get most hits. Although good product descriptions are necessary I would concentrate on the category names/urls first and try to find good names. At least in my case I get a couple of thousand hits on the category pages where my best product pages get less than 100

To compete with words like "shoes", "pants" or "iphone" as category names is impossible so I would be more creative with that.

Regards, Trip

[Mallee Boy]

From my experience category pages get most hits. Although good product descriptions are necessary I would concentrate on the category names/urls first and try to find good names. At least in my case I get a couple of thousand hits on the category pages where my best product pages get less than 100

To compete with words like "shoes", "pants" or "iphone" as category names is impossible so I would be more creative with that.

Regards, Trip

 

That's some really good advice.

 

Has anyone else experienced this? What pages get the most inbound traffic? Is it your Category pages, Product pages?

 

Addict, what kind of products do you sell? I wonder if that makes a difference.

[Kimss]

It's an interesting way to look at it but I think it's very different from shop to shop whether it's the way to go or not.

 

With the kind of shop I run it really don't make much sense to take the customers through a category page before they get to the product page. I have relatively small selection of products and the individual products tend to stay in the selection for a pretty long time (+6 months at least). Also, there's an insane amount of competition on the generic keywords in the business I'm in while the long tail and the specific brand-specific keywords are fairly low hanging fruit. In other words it makes most sense for me to focus on the individual product pages and actually make an active effort to keep the traffic going to my category pages at a minimum.

 

On the other hand, if you have a shop with a huge selection of products that constantly change it makes all the sense in the world to put a lot of effort into the category pages.

If we look at the example with the iPhone it totally makes sense to put a lot of effort into building a strongly ranking category page. With an release cycle somewhere around 12-14 months on the iPhone model program you'd be running the risk of constantly trying to catch up with Apple by focusing on a product page for a specific model. While building a category page that ranks strongly on the more generic keyword "iPhone" will always keep you a step ahead, if nothing else, simply because you'd be able to quickly rank a product page for a new model on the strength of your category page.

 

At the end of the day you have to remember that the hard part about SEO is that no two cases are exactly the same and there's no silver bullet. What's right for your shop is what's right for your shop, not what's right for Jack's or Jill's shop

[Trip]

@Kimss

As said, it is also important to have good product pages (descriptions etc.pp.) for long tail keyword phrases.

I just share my observation on inbound traffic.

I  noticed some shops with really weak category names and want to share my experince as in nearly every article I read, they only talk about product pages and never mention the category pages which are at least in my setup by far the biggest source of traffic. 

Question remains if my product descriptions are to weak or this is natural as category pages and static cms pages etc are linked on every page and therefore get most of the pageflow(link juice).

 

I asked that already and I think I will have to take the risk on my own, I am still not sure if the standart url pattern root/category/product-page is the best way. Maybe shorter urls  like root/product-page are snappier and might rank better.

At the moment I am developing a redirect override because just changing the url pattern unfortunatly results in 404 errors which is not optimal.

 

I second that if I have to compete against strong websites focussing on  long tail phrases might be the only option but when I start with category page names like books, phones I might waste a good traffic source in the case I really have to offer something outstanding.

 

Thanks for the input, all the best, Trip

[Trip]

Before I forget it. You should also take the time for a good start page.

All the keywords should be mentioned there. Take the time to make good page page titles and meta descriptions espacially on the start page.

All your fancy product carussels and jquery effects are not so impressive for search engines. So when I see startpages with megabytes of pictures and  no text on it and also forgot page tiles and stuff I am not suprised they don't rank very well.

 

Also check the performance with http://www.webpagetest.org/ or for a quick check I use http://tools.pingdom.com/fpt/

 

It is not the first time I read posts here from people asking for SEO advice and when I visit there shop pages the loading or sometimes even the reponse time is more than 10 seconds. With such performance you don't have to worry about your keywords.

All the best, Trip 

[Trip]

Dear Rahul, 

although your listing is not wrong I think the topic starter (same as me) wanted to talk about experience.

Your list feels like the 10th trillion blog post about SEO techniques but at least for me, lacks substantial information. What is 

URL optimization (1024 characters) ? 

For example as a beginner I would be carefull with blind directory submission and especally with websites who want backlinks to there site.

I am quite positve I was penalized once for linking to a website witch google would name "bad neighbourhood".

 

Blog Posts - yes maybe. I think if the blog is integrated in the shop system this might help. If the blog is on a different domain I would really research on how many conversations you are generating with that and if it is worth the time.

 

Same goes to satellite pages with "maybe" exact keyword domain. Maybe you get a lot of traffic but do these pages really generate conversions. I've tested that a couple of years ago and in my case I must say you should better spend the time for other things.

There is nothing good about good serps when the visitor immediatly leaves the site because he did not find what he expected.

 

I think youtube vids of products might be a good source but have no experience with that.

 

So if you are a beginner and have no good SERPS cpc campaings might be an or the only option. This is a complex topic.

For our products google adwords is to expensive and did not work to well in terms of conversion.

I am trying now adword in connection with google shopping so only your product images are displayed but so far the results are not so impressive neither but it is really early to make conclusions.

 

If prestashop would have better integration I would definetly advice to use other market places like ebay  or whatever besides you own webpage. You have to pay fees for them but on the other hand they provide advertising in google shopping, adwords and many other advertisers in return. I think this is cheaper than making on campains but might differ from case to case. 

 

Just my two cents, regards, Trip

[El Patron]

a significant factor for seo is user experience.

 

Google weighs your 'above the fold' (AFT) page render time for SEO purposes.  It's all about user experience. 

 

Measuring a shop using online metrix...pingdome, gmetrix, etc. while it provides useful information does not currently measure AFT.

 

The AFT is so important that Google patented it.

 

Learn more here:http://www.google.co...s/US20070118640

 

so as you develop a new shop or look at existing shop, make sure you are using theme that uses a bootstrap methodology, where it is presenting AFT in good order.

 

PrestaShop introduced in 1.6, bootstrap theme.  If you are not going to use default theme, then make sure the theme you choose has same or similar framework.

 

I can not stress enough how important making the AFT render as fast as possible.

[Kimss]

@Kimss

As said, it is also important to have good product pages (descriptions etc.pp.) for long tail keyword phrases.

I just share my observation on inbound traffic.

I  noticed some shops with really weak category names and want to share my experince as in nearly every article I read, they only talk about product pages and never mention the category pages which are at least in my setup by far the biggest source of traffic. 

Question remains if my product descriptions are to weak or this is natural as category pages and static cms pages etc are linked on every page and therefore get most of the pageflow(link juice).

 

I asked that already and I think I will have to take the risk on my own, I am still not sure if the standart url pattern root/category/product-page is the best way. Maybe shorter urls  like root/product-page are snappier and might rank better.

At the moment I am developing a redirect override because just changing the url pattern unfortunatly results in 404 errors which is not optimal.

 

I second that if I have to compete against strong websites focussing on  long tail phrases might be the only option but when I start with category page names like books, phones I might waste a good traffic source in the case I really have to offer something outstanding.

 

Thanks for the input, all the best, Trip

 

Sure, and I appreciated your interesting take on things. I'm sorry if I didn't make that clear enough.

 

My point was simply that from my experience, it depends on the specifics of the site whether or not you should actively try to rank your category pages. That's just my opinion. But when I look at my conversion rates there's really nothing to discuss. My conversion would take a huge hit, if I began to direct the traffic through my category pages.

That being said, I'm not going to extremes and doing stuff like trying to avoid my category pages being indexed or anything like that. In any case, as long as it's not being taken from my product pages, the traffic I receive on my category pages is very valuable.

 

I guess the short version simply is that for me, right now, it makes the most sense to focus on my individual product pages and if my category pages started outranking my product pages on important keywords, it would probably hurt my business

[Trip]

If you have so good results on your product pages  congratulation

I definetly don't know why my are so weak but as the categories rank excellent I am not to concerned about it

Can you tell me what pattern you use. Just one keyword in the catgories or more?

Yeah above the fold .. google webpage test says not so good that I load css from external location in this case a cdn... that is kinda odd

Naa anyway, thx all for their contributions so far.

[El Patron]

If you have so good results on your product pages  congratulation

I definetly don't know why my are so weak but as the categories rank excellent I am not to concerned about it

Can you tell me what pattern you use. Just one keyword in the catgories or more?

Yeah above the fold .. google webpage test says not so good that I load css from external location in this case a cdn... that is kinda odd

Naa anyway, thx all for their contributions so far.

 

cdn is not much improvement when one uses ccc on .css / .js  files.  as it's only one http request for each.

 

I think cdn is 'possibly' good for images are other files where are say more than max connections defined in your hosting.

 

another thing that trips up nearly everyone (no pun intended) is that one may get a good grade for java bottom (even when none is loaded bottom) because they only have one .js but  it's ccc'ed so in fact there area 'many' javascripts being loaded top.  This is a huge blocker for AFT.

 

 

So getting a good grade on this is 'very' mis-leading.

[Trip]

Well it depends. As you can see here the ccs is downloaded in 16ms with cdn     http://tools.pingdom.com/fpt/#!/cNHAmR/http://www.jing-shop.com

 

Without cdn it takes over 600ms  http://tools.pingdom.com/fpt/#!/cBTCoz/http://www.jing-shop.com

To be honest I made a couple of benchmarks and depending on if the files are really cached at the edge nodes or not

the difference might not be as impressive or in case they are not cached it might even be slower than without cdn.

 

I am using three subdomains to maybe utilize better parallel content downloading at the cost of some extra dns queries.

 

Well anyway if you don't want to sell to many countries  or continents at the same time and have good performance in your country I don't know if one needs to use a cdn. 

All the best, Trip

[El Patron]

Well it depends. As you can see here the ccs is downloaded in 16ms with cdn     http://tools.pingdom.com/fpt/#!/cNHAmR/http://www.jing-shop.com

 

Without cdn it takes over 600ms  http://tools.pingdom.com/fpt/#!/cBTCoz/http://www.jing-shop.com

To be honest I made a couple of benchmarks and depending on if the files are really cached at the edge nodes or not

the difference might not be as impressive or in case they are not cached it might even be slower than without cdn.

 

I am using three subdomains to maybe utilize better parallel content downloading at the cost of some extra dns queries.

 

Well anyway if you don't want to sell to many countries  or continents at the same time and have good performance in your country I don't know if one needs to use a cdn. 

All the best, Trip

 

thanks for sharing, then cdn is making a good difference!

[Kimss]

If you have so good results on your product pages  congratulation

I definetly don't know why my are so weak but as the categories rank excellent I am not to concerned about it

Can you tell me what pattern you use. Just one keyword in the catgories or more?

 

 

Thanks, but in all honesty, it's probably more a question of the competition not being that tough, rather than me being a SEO genius

 

I try to have as broad a keyword as possible in the URL, like "shoes" or "running-shoes". From there, I try to find the balance between keeping Google happy and writing something that people will actually want to click on in the SERP, while also expanding the scope to catch the long tail. If I sold shoes I'd put something like "running-shoes" in the URL, then "Great deals on running shoes for the discerning athlete. Whether you're into trail-running or....yada yada yada..." and then focus on the broad keyword/keyword phrase (i.e. "running shoes") in the actual content on the page.

Also, I think it's important to keep the site structure as flat as possible and being careful not to feed Google the same content over and over again through on-page search and product sorting features.

 

But as I said, ranking my category pages isn't really a priority right now. I'm really just trying to keep that aspect of the SEO for my site on the back burner and not make any mistakes that'll come back to haunt me if/when I decide to go after some of the more generic/broad keywords.

 

If I was trying to rank my category pages I'd probably be a bit more aggressive. Especially with the URLs. 

Edited July 21, 2014 by Kimss (see edit history)

[El Patron]

tip on keywords, create or use your existing google adwords account

 

create a campaign

 

create an ad group

 

research and use google suggested keywords

 

take the 'most' expensive keywords, use those where possible.

 

note: if you don't run adwords, keep it inactive but it's a good tool to use for starting out or even seasoned shop owners.

 

[Trip]

Also "Google Trends" can be usefull to compare keywords, how and where they rank.

This vid http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.de/2011/01/using-webmaster-tools-like-seo.html has some good advice on howto use webmaster tools.

[acedezines]

Keep sufficient content on product page also very important.     

[saranrajj]

tip on keywords, create or use your existing google adwords account

 

create a campaign

 

create an ad group

 

research and use google suggested keywords

 

take the 'most' expensive keywords, use those where possible.

 

note: if you don't run adwords, keep it inactive but it's a good tool to use for starting out or even seasoned shop owners.

 

 

 

Good info. But can you share how to find tune negative keywords. If we dont fine tune it would waste our money.

[Tomek-gll]

Adword's is one way to research keywords. But you should also consider using differente keyword research tools (google free ones)

[El Patron]

Good info. But can you share how to find tune negative keywords. If we dont fine tune it would waste our money.

 

you do not have to activate the campaign, I think I stated that earlier.

[Mallee Boy]

From my experience category pages get most hits. Although good product descriptions are necessary I would concentrate on the category names/urls first and try to find good names. At least in my case I get a couple of thousand hits on the category pages where my best product pages get less than 100

To compete with words like "shoes", "pants" or "iphone" as category names is impossible so I would be more creative with that.

Regards, Trip

 

That's excellent advice, Trip. Thanks Monkey Man!

[Alt-team]

As, Trip has said, e-store performance iwas one of the important SEO aspect.

I 'd like to add 3 resources that help us improving our customers' e-stores.

 

They are:

1. GTmetrix. More convenient service than webpagetest.org

2. YSlow Many people use it, but GTmetrix shows YSlow results.

3. Google page speed. Good for mobile oriented e-stores.

 

Best regards, Alt-team.

Edited August 8, 2014 by Alt-team (see edit history)

[El Patron]

more and more important is 'above the fold', which I have found no tools to measure, but Google has.

http://www.prestashop.com/forums/topic/314461-module-javapro-prestashop-performance-significantly-speed-up-your-shop-pages-defer-javascript/?p=1737254

[gotgmovie2014]

If your On page for the website is best consider your self on the top of searches already with a little bit of SEO.

 

Your title for the page must be useful and attractive for the user.

 

Desc. must contain one or two keywords use the keywords in desc. by breaking them.

 

Head tag must be the keyword

 

alt tags in images should be used including the keyword.

[El Patron]

I have locked this thread because it is becoming repetitious and spammy.  Please review all posts and if you have specific question or tip, post new topic.