So finally decided to do SEO for your e-commerce website? Good decision, needless to say. There has never been a better way to enhance your website, bring more visitors to your site and increase the conversion rates. Here are a few tips to help you in the process.

Before

1. Make sure your domain name describes what you sell.

2. Study your current website carefully.

3. Find the spots in your website that needs rework.

4. Discuss with your team and management on the necessity of SEO for your website.

5. Decide on whether the SEO is going to be done by you or an SEO company.

6. If you have decided that it will be done by a company, choose the right one.

7. Set your goals for each of the web page in your website.

8. Do a proper keyword research, including that of your competitors.

During

General

1. Make sure your website has an “About Us” page.

2. Make sure you have your contact details on all the pages of your website.

For viewability for search engines

1. Decide on your keywords.

2. Use animation in your web pages moderately. Search engines are not very partial to them.

3. Provide keyword-rich content.

4. Use about two keywords per a page.

5. Give your brand name in the domain as well as title.

6. Get quality backlinks.

7. Make sure you have a site map. None of your pages should go unmarked.

8. Try to make all your URLs static. Dynamic URLs are not favored by search engines.

9. Make sure your keyword is present in your title tags, headings, internal links, etc.

10. Make sure your categories and sub-categories have your major keywords.

11. Create blogs and articles that are sensible, meaningful and keyword rich.

12. Do not try to stuff the content with keywords purely for the sake of search engines.

13. Try to include your locality in your content so that you get found in a local search.

14. Make sure that your keywords include their spelling variants. Suggest correct spelling in case the customers type wrong spelling in the Search area.

15. Post newsletters announcing your latest events and offers.

16. Request your customers for product reviews that can add to the content of your website.

17. Keep an eye open for canonicalization issues.

18. Make sure that you use 301- redirect so that all the pages in your website are crawled.

19. Try to keep your outgoing links below 100.

20. Create product description with your keywords inserted.

21. Make sure that your navigation is simple and easy to follow.

22. Give the most important information on top since search engines crawl that first.

23. Try for social networking. Digg, Yelp, Facebook and Twitter are a great help in SEO.

24. Though Google is and always has been the most major search engine, do not ignore the others in your SEO.

25. Keep the use of multimedia moderate and use more text instead.

26. Optimise the images for search engines as well as for fast loading for the customers.

27. Use error-free XHTML and CSS markup.

28. Keep an XML site map so that the search engines can find the updates to your site on a regular basis.

29. Keep away from black hat SEO tactics.

30. Keep your page size small. This is more suitable for search engines.

31. Instruct the search engine crawlers using robot.txt files to limit the access to some sections of your website.

32. Read and record your articles, save as MP3 and submit in podcast directories.

33. At logical places link products to your blogs or articles.

34. Ensure that your website’s HTML code meets web standards.

35. Have headers with tags that include your keywords.

36. Create press releases that include your major keywords and submit them in different press releasing websites.

37. Keep sending newsletters to your customers on a regular basis.

38. Have footer for all the pages.

39. Try not to have empty spaces on the web pages. For SEO purpose fill the gaps with text rather than images.

40. Make sure that your links are text based and not image based.

For increasing saleability

1. Make sure your shopping cart is easy to navigate for the users.

2. Provide appealing images of your products along with descriptions.

3. Display your latest and best products on your home page.

4. See that all your web pages are just 2 or 3 clicks away from your home page.

5. Have a “Buy” button next to all your products.

6. Ensure that your website has more action-based verbs like “Buy now” and “Grab this opportunity”.

7. Provide recommendations for accessories for each product.

8. Consider using Google Adwords or other such sponsored marketing techniques to establish your product in the market.

9. Find out more and more unique ways of online marketing instead of sticking to the proven and old methods.

10. Display the price of a product wherever you provide the image in your website.

11. Provide occasional discounts and offers to your customers.

12. Provide bonus points or discount offers for frequent customers.

13. Adding videos of your product have a great effect in enhancing the sale.

14. Display the logos of SSL certificates installed to ensure the customers of the security of payment.

15. Make sure you have“Search” functionality so that the customers can find the product they want without going through the whole categories and sub-categories pages.

16. Add“Advanced Search” functionality also so that the customers can search with other criteria like colour, size, design, etc.

17. Do not impose hidden costs over the customer. Even the “must-have” accessories of a product should be manually chosen by the customer.

18. Make your website flexible so that the customer can easily add or edit items in the shopping cart.

19. Make the payment process as simple as possible.

20. Try to provide free shipping for products that cost above a certain amount or to an address within certain locality.

21. Give the customer all the necessary information like delivery details, shipping policy, privacy policy, etc.

22. Do not ask for unnecessary details when the customer sign up for the purchase.

23. Provide multiple currency converter and payment options.

24. Assure the customers of the protection of their banking and payment details.

25. Make the payment options that are easy and simple to carry out.

26. Provide alternate payment options.

27. Get a thorough knowledge of the customer behavior by installing a good analytics program like Google analytics.

28. Avoid pop-ops that can interrupt the browsing.

29. Make sure to complete the delivery on the said time.

30. Reply to the customers’ queries and remarks as soon as you get them. The mantra is “never to keep the customer waiting”.

31. Make sure that you have an “Unsubscribe” option for your customers.

32. Make sure you have a “Refer to Friend” option.

33. Keep a 24/7 server as well as customer support.

34. Keep your website and all its pages functional always.

35. In order to avoid a high bounce rate make sure your links take customers to the correct landing pages.

36. Consider using an admin interface that lets you add, edit, update and delete your website content yourself.

37. Instead of giving large images of products on category pages and losing space, add large images on a separate link.

38. Do not advertise out of stock or poor products.

39. Track the clicks and get to know where the customers leave your site.

40. Provide economical shipping for international customers.

After

1. Monitor the performance of your website on a daily, weekly and monthly basis.

2. Keep finding new keywords as you keep adding new products.

3. Keep updating the content in a timely manner.

4. Think of innovative ways to categorise your products.

5. Change your website layout once in a while to avoid monotony.

6. Continue to acquire backlinks, especially if you intend to branch out.

7. Check customer feedback always. It’s important to know what your customers think of your products, be it good or bad.

8. Try to get a toll free number.

9. Thank the customer once the purchase is made by sending a mail or calling, preferably the former.

10. Sustain a database that contains all the information of the customers, both old and new.

11. Give adequate training to customer support representatives on the products and your services.