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Search Engine Optimization can be very difficult for ecommerce stores due to the amount of product pages that constantly appear / disappear as you add and remove products to your store. Simply having hundreds of product pages is not enough to improve your search engine rankings.

Below are four tips you can use to improve the SEO of your VPASP store:

Encourage Product Reviews
The majority of online shoppers these days look for product reviews before they make a purchase. If you don’t have product review functionality on your ecommerce store you are missing out on a large share of the market. Product reviews are also a free and effortless method of keeping your site filled with fresh content, something which Google loves.

Ensure Your Product Descriptions Are Unique
Product descriptions are a fantastic opportunity to add unique content to your store. DO NOT copy content from competitor sites that sell the same products and DO NOT use manufacturer’s product descriptions, Google will view this as duplicate content and you will be penalized. Instead, take the time to write unique product descriptions using the tips I provided in this blog back in May.

Ensure URLs Are Google Friendly
Using messy dynamic URLs is not SEO friendly, instead you should use the VPASP SEO Toolkit to convert your URLs into static, Google friendly URLs which are also much easier to read by the human eye and give your store a more professional, trustworthy look.

Remove or Hide Duplicate Content
Google hates duplicate content. If you have the exact same block of text on every product page (such as shipping info, terms & conditions etc) Google will penalize your store. You can combat this by using robots.txt to hide areas of duplicate content.

Also, if your shopping cart creates new URLs for the same product page (usually due to product reviews / comments) you should use canonical tags to hide the duplicate pages from Google.

Start applying these changes to your store today and I'm sure you will see an increase in your search rankings.

Happy Selling!

Gareth
VP-ASP Shopping Cart

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Comments

thanks (Sunday, February 3, 2013 00:00)
thanks for the advice. Do you have any tips on HOW to encourage product reviews?

Steve - MA
Thank you Steve (Monday, February 4, 2013 00:00)
The easiest (and most ethical) method of getting your customers to write product reviews is to simply ask them!

You can do this in a follow up email a week or so after the product has been delivered and has the benefit of showing your customers you care as well as boosting the SEO of your website with fresh content.

Another positive of having positive reviews on your products is they will encourage other customers to purchase as well via social proof.

Gareth - Melbourne
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