Search Engine Friendly Shopping Carts

What exactly does "search engine friendly" mean?

Search engine friendly means that the search engines like Google, Yahoo!, MSN, and Ask are easily able to find, read, spider and categorize your web pages. In addition, a search engine friendly website should improve your chances of getting higher rankings for the keyword phrases you select or "optimize" your pages for. A search engine friendly shopping cart allows you the maximum flexibility to optimize all your web pages for the search engines.

What are the key elements for a search engine friendly shopping cart?

There are a number of important criteria to consider when looking for a good search engine friendly cart. A good cart should offer the following as a minimum:

• Short, keyword-rich, customizable URLs

Many shopping carts create a long URL and assign a number to a new product rather than calling the product what it is. This can have a negative effect on search engine rankings since one aspect the search engines use are keywords in the URL of the page. Granted if you are Amazon, you can afford not to care about your URLs. But if you're like the rest of us, be sure that the shopping cart you choose offers search engine friendly URLs. Some carts will even allow you to name the URL whatever you want which gives you the most control to insert your own keywords you choose.

Good URL Examples
www.darbyworks.com/woodenpictureframes.asp?=pine
www.darbyworks.com/pine-wooden-picture-frames.html

Bad URL Example
http://www.darbyworks.com/gp/product/0375503595/ref=amb_link_809852_2/104-7230298-7056764?n=283155

• HTML Navigation

You definitely want HTML text links instead of images for your site navigation. Yes, Dorothy, there are ways around this, but for the sake of this discussion, let's keep it simple. I know there is always a trade off between search engine ranking and look and feel, but for now work with me. The search engines recognize and rank HTML text, so use it!

• Hierarchical Structure to navigation and overall site

The search engines like thematic order. They like to see pages linked together like this:  FOOD - FRUIT - APPLES - RED DELICIOUS.  You want the cart you select to allow you to organize your categories, subcategories and products in the most relevant way possible. Remember back in high school and college when you had to write those perfectly organized thesis papers They had to have that super focused thesis paragraph, supporting paragraphs and then the conclusion which summarized the thesis? Same concept here. Help the search engines find their way deep into your site by organizing your pages by theme. A better way of putting it is: "Help the search engines not to get lost in your site."

• Ability to create custom metatags for every page of your store.

The main metatags you want to be concerned about are the title tag and description tags.

• H1 Header tag around your page title at top of every page.

The H1 tag looks like this: <H1>Product Headline Here</H>. The H1 tag tells the search engines what the page is about and is very important for ranking. You want an H1 tag at the top of every single page.

• Keyword-Rich Site Map

A good cart will automatically generate a basic sitemap for you. A sitemap is a simple list of links to all the pages on your site on its own web page. Search engines like sitemaps since its...well...a road map to your web site. The saerch engine spiders can easily navigate and find all the pages within your site. Some shopping carts may also generate XML sitemaps automatically, but I don't know of any out there yet that do this. Google now accepts XML sitemaps.

• Ability for keyword descriptions on the page

You want to be sure you can provide adequate keyword-rich descriptions for each of your products.

• Ability to use H2, h3, h4 tags and other HTML within your pages.

Some shopping carts are very restrictive about adding custom html to your product pages.  Avoid these carts. You want be able to use header tags, bold tags, italic tags, and hyperlinks to other pages within your site at will. Finding a cart with built-in flexibility is key.

• Alt image tags

An alt tag is a simple bit of text that is used to identify images. This is another opportunity to integrate your keywords into your pages.

• Bread Crumb Navigation

Bread crumb navigation shows you where exactly you on within a website on any given page.  Bread crumbs usually appear at the top or bottom of pages and might look like this:

Search Engine Friendly Shopping Carts Overview > FAQs > Shopping Cart Recommendations

A shopping cart which has this feature offers you another chance to use your keywords.

Why is finding a search engine friendly cart so important?

Go build a store in the middle of the desert. Are you going to make much money? Not likely. You want your site to be found.  A beautiful site that can't be found is one big waste of time. Maximize your chances of getting free, targeted traffic to your site by finding a robust, search engine friendly shopping cart.

Why aren't all carts search engine friendly?

Because they were designed by programmers - not marketers.  I am not blaming them. Programmers are brilliant, and they do things with code I could never do. However, success in business is all about exposure and good marketing. Why not tip the scales in your favor and use software that enhances your marketing efforts?

Which search engine friendly shopping carts do you recommend?

I personally use GoEcart.com for my shopping cart. However, I took a close look at Volusion which is also an outstanding choice. Take a look at them both and see which one better fits your style

GoECart Shopping Cart Software
GoECart is one of the most comprehensive, yet cost-effective eCommerce solutions available today. Features include inventory management, point-and-click layout authoring, full integration with all leading payment processors and shipping carriers and much more! Take a Free Trail for 30 days.

Volusion
Volusion shopping cart software is packed with tons of useful features to automate your entire business. From building & managing your website, to processing orders, to marketing, you'll find Volusion to be your INTEGRATED solution.

Yahoo! Merchant Solutions
Yahoo Stores has come a long way toward being more SEO friendly than they used to be. Although, you'll need to make some coding modifications to really max out the SEO potential. You also get some perks by being part of the Yahoo! network.

I know a great search engine friendly cart that is not listed. What should I do?

Contact me, and tell me about it. I will gladly add it if it looks good!