Unlike a normal blog or a website, onsite audits for ecommerce sites can be a mammoth job to undertake. It is always better to go through the site and make sure it is seo compliant BEFORE launching. This is to prevent google from indexing non-optimized pages or worser still, finding countless 404s and duplicated content.

1. If the ecommerce build is currently on a “dev” subdomain or a sub directory of a site, ensure that it is uncrawlable by password protecting the directory. This is usually the best method instead of adding meta noindex, no follow on page level or blocking bots by the Robots.txt file
2. Check URL structures: avoid query string based urls, keep it as clean as possible. Also avoid creating URLs that are more than 4 levels deep.
3. Keywords should be in Product title. Product description should include the keywords at least within the first sentence. Employ a product name-ing strategy that allows you to score on long tail as well such as:
   Armani Black Womens High Heel Shoes
   
4. Catergory Pages: Must have content. By content, I mean text. Optimize catergory pages by adding useful, relevant text regarding the items in that section.
5. Panda Update: the recent Panda update is reinforces, once again, the importance of relevant and USEFUL content on site. Thin, spammy or content that is not useful can affect your rankings. Plus, if you have a page that has thin content, it can also affect your rankings so remove it. I suggest adding a “Wiki” section on a section of your site. (notice i avoided using the word “Resource” as the term has been widely used to mean a reciprocal links page). Here, you can add how-to-install PDFs, analytical graphs and statistics on your niche that you do not mind sharing to the public, or things such as: your delivery process, software requirements, best practice guides, infographics, diagrams and such. Even better, if you can add a community section that allows your users to review, discuss and exchange tips, ideas on your products and services. For example, if you sell televisions, perhaps the conversations could be about using the right cables, or how to install a flat LCD television on the wall etc.
   A good example: www.mixxx.org/wiki/doku.php/hercules_pc_dj_console  
6. Avoid duplicated content on product pages: some product pages have help and/or delivery information tabs for customers. Use links that onclick, opens in a new tab, and they go to a dedicated FAQ page on another section of the site. The FAQ page is then written in a way such that sections of the content such as Returns and Help is divided by a <DIV ID=”section”>. Hence the URLS on the product pages have a # suffix at the end that point to the relevant div section of the FAQ page.
7. Whilst the site is in dev or in a new server that is currently on a IP address, before you move it live, ensure that all the image src links and the links on your promotion banners and all links are corrected properly. Otherwise when you launch, the links will still be eg. http://91.225.68.2/images/beds/black.jpg. Most carts will do this automatically but sometimes things are hardcoded so it doesnt hurt to check.
8. Breadcrumbs: check that the breadcrumb trail, when it begins with your homepage, it points to “/” not “index.php”
   
9. Check for canonicalization issues on homepage level, product page level and catergory level.
10. Check your content: some WYSIWIGG modules in certain carts employ the <span style> attribution instead of eg. <strong>. I know to some people this does not matter but it’s always best to keep it as clean and simple as possible. I’d rather go for <strong> than span attributions.
    
11. Prepare your optimized Google Base Feed: prepare a feed of all your products, with its optimized descriptions and titles and competitve prices ready for submission
12. Try to make the first link on the top navigation to be the most important page / catergory on the site with the correct anchor text.

Ok I have to go now to a collegue’s leaving do but I will continue with part 2 soon!

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eCommerce, SEO Tips