Archive for the ‘E-commerce’ Category

Content organized well on the web is becoming more important.  If a page is too difficult to navigate through or too hard to find the information one needs, a visitor usually gives up and goes elsewhere. Having certain pages be created as a “list section” rather than just an HTML page helps you avoid this problem.

A list section is a “page type” that displays structured or record-like information really well. Articles, news items or photo/video galleries can be displayed cleanly—and better yet—can be sorted and searched by your visitors. Numerous book listings, for example, can be sorted and found based on a title or author’s name. The ideal vacation property can be pulled up first based on a visitors’ query.

Most Content Management System’s (CMS) don’t offer a list section, but Pixelsilk does. If your CMS doesn’t, you basically have two options: go research possible plug-ins or go hire a developer to build you the right fields for your list section.

With Pixelsilk, you won’t have to do either because it comes with default property fields that can work for any list section type right out of the gate. Pixelsilk lets you define how you want your list section displayed and used. Personalization can be done on a section-by-section (or page-by-page) basis giving you and your visitors many options.

I’m Susan Sano Berado—here are some samples:

http://www.blackbutteranch.com/accommodations/vacation-rentals/

http://www.blackbutteranch.com/Recreation/Whats-Happening-at-the-Ranch/

http://www.smartz.com/about/testimonials/

http://www.ironhorseprineville.com/Available-Properties/listings/

E-commerce catalog pages can provide search spiders with rich SEO content. However, if one’s cart isn’t well integrated within their CMS, it can block spiders’ access. You can probably guess the result: only some of your site is SEO optimized. Not good for online storefronts looking for new customers.

Pixelsilk’s flexible architecture gives customers seamless integration with BV software. Pixelsilk web developers have ensured that the CMS communicates with e-commerce cart via the API, allowing page layout consistency for branding—and page SEO rendering for spiders.

Through its tight integration, CMS and product information are under one roof.  Bet you can guess the result: your catalog pages rank better and your prospective customers find you.  Not bad, I’d say.

I’m Susan Sano Berado. Thanks for listening.

As content management systems and search engine optimization (SEO) have had their challenges, e-commerce and SEO have a significant divide.  Typically, e-commerce carts say they are SEO friendly with a check of a checkbox.  E-commerce solutions have a large amount of functionality and oftentimes the amount of code needed to complete that functionality may get in the way of a search strategy.  Enter, Pixelsilk – a content management system that connects to an e-commerce cart and handles what a search engine spider needs, namely product and category information.

You continue to manage your products via your store and Pixelsilk automatically updates your product and category pages when new ones are added, moved or deleted.  Pixelsilk offers the advantage of full HTML control for those pages, allowing full implementation of your search strategy.  Full URL (web address) control allows you to tie your CMS and product information under one main domain to leverage the power of links directed to your products.

Pixelsilk communicates with your e-commerce cart via the API, bringing products and categories into Pixelsilk, allowing full control over layout and SEO rendering.  In competitive online marketplaces, many factors needed to rank successfully are hindered by the HTML to content ratio needed for a spider to understand your products.  Many carts, by default, do not offer the opportunity to simplify the code behind product pages.

Pixelsilk For E-commerce SEO Best Practices Include:
• Product Specific Page Title (Browser Window)
• Meta Description
• Meta Keywords
• Keyword-rich URLs (Web Address)
• Product Heading Tag <H1>
• Streamlined Internal/External Linking
• Alt Attributes for Images, Links
• Content Editor is XHTML compliant
• Automatic HTML/XML Sitemaps
• Site and Store on Same Domain
• Full HTML Control
• Store and Site Ongoing Connectivity

One example is an e-commerce site that had 100 product pages indexed as a baseline and after site completion in Pixelsilk, went from 100 to over 10,000 (all of their products) being indexed in Google.

If you have questions about how to get your e-commerce site additional visibility and search ranking, contact us to show you a demo of how Pixelsilk helps e-commerce.