1.Friendly URLs
A website should have friendly URL that is easy to read and includes words that describe the content of the webpage. This type of URL gives benefits in two ways in two ways. It can help visitors remember the Web address. It can help describe the page to search engines. It contains keywords according to content that helps boost the ranking of the page.
Friendly URLs should be:
•Keep It Short
www.yoursite.com/category/subcategory/productpage/product
might be shortened to
www.yoursite.com/category/product
•Use Keywords
www.yoursite.com/dog-leashes-that-are-blue/blue-dog-leashes
might be better as
www.yoursite.com/leashes/blue-dog-leashes
•Be Descriptive
www.yoursite.com/category/item?23434
should be rewritten to
www.yoursite.com/category/dog-leashes
•Remove Special Characters
www.yoursite.com/category/john's-leashes
should be rewritten to
www.yoursite.com/category/johns-leashes
•Use Hyphens To Separate Words
www.yoursite.com/category/dog+leashes
should be rewritten to
www.yoursite.com/category/dog-leashes
•Keep It Lowercase
www.yoursite.com/category/Johns-Leashes
should be rewritten to
www.yoursite.com/category/johns-leashes
2.WWW & None WWW Redirection
When a website is accessed by users via the plain domain name and the www domain. That's means user can visit your domain with or without the "www." prefix, e.g. example.com or www.example.com, in a web browser. This situation refers content delicacy and put bad impact on website from search engines. Your website may get heavy penalty by the webmasters.
To resolve this problem, you can add one of the following codes into your
.htaccess. This is called a 301 Redirect to your preferred version.
•WWW to Non-WWW
RewriteEngine On
RewriteBase /
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^www\.(.*)$ [NC]
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://%1/$1 [R=301,L]
•Non-WWW. to WWW
RewriteEngine On
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} !^www\.
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://www.%{HTTP_HOST}/$1 [R=301,L]
3.Bread Crumb Navigation
Breadcrumbs help your visitors to navigate on your site. Build as html links they refer to your hierarchical site depth by showing assigned categories/tags/parent pages.
4.Alt Attribute for Images
The alt attribute provides alternative information for an image if a user for some reason cannot view it due to some reasons like slow connection, an error in the src attribute, or if the user uses a screen reader.
Alternative text aid search engines crawlers to better understand the content of images.
<img src="smiley.gif" alt="Smiley face">
5.Page Heading Optimization
•Ensure you are using one, and only one, H1 tag on your pages.H1 (header 1) tags often used as the main headline for a page and they usually contain the page’s main keywords.
•Ensure H1 tags are used before other header tags (H2, H3, H4).Your header tags should be used in a hierarchal order. For example, H1 tag text above H2 tag text and H2 tag text above H3 tag text, and so on.
6.Website Errors
Google and other search engines look unfavorably upon websites with errors because of the impact they have on user experience.
•HTML & CSS Validation Errors - Does your web site contain hidden errors? Even though you can't see them, the search engines can, and they don't like errors on your web pages. These errors can hurt your search engine rankings or even worse, make it so visitors can't see your site properly.
•Broken Links - Broken links look unprofessional and upset your visitors. Don't you just hate clicking on a link that doesn't work? This test will check all links on a page to make sure they lead to live web pages.
7.Social Media Integration
The use of social media to drive awareness and traffic to your core site is now hugely important, and no DMO should be without a Social Media strategy. New Mind has developed widgets to allow embedding of social media feeds and interaction buttons within the site pages. Social media is the best platform to share your content world-wide.
8.XML & HTML Sitemap
•An XML sitemap is a document that helps Google and other major search engines to better understand our website while crawling it.
•HTML sitemaps are designed for the users to help them to find content on the page, and don’t need to include each and every subpage. This helps visitors and search engine bots find pages on the site.
9.Robots Txt File
Some pages on your site don’t make for good landing pages for organic searchers. Checkout pages, thank you pages, wishlists and pages 2+ of site search results are some of these pages. You can tell the search engines not to crawl and index these pages by using a Robots.txt file. Add “disallow” directives to the Robots.txt file to indicate that these pages should not be crawled, and then upload that file to your server.
User-agent: *
Disallow: /
10.Adaptive Design
Google has always recommended responsive web design (RWD) and is actually due to roll out a big update on the 21st April which will work to rank mobile-friendly sites higher. Adaptive works to detect the screen size and load the appropriate layout for it. Adaptive design approach utilizes a separate website from the full desktop website, which offers the most flexibility in design.
11.You Home Page
•This is where many visitors will land on your site, so it’s important to get across what you do quickly and to show the variety of products that visitors might be looking for.
•Use large appealing imagery that clearly displays products, offers and other promotions.
•Include ‘Top Selling’ , ‘Featured Products’ and ‘Recommended for you’ sections.
12.Individual Product Pages
•This page should be clear and easy to take in within 3 seconds.
•Ensure ‘Buy’ buttons are clear and stand out from the page, making them brightly colored and relatively large usually does the trick.
•A wish list or ‘save for later’ button should be present but not as prominent.
•In your photographs, show a variety of angles and some with the product in context
•Include a product zoom feature so the customers can see the detail.
•If you can, include an option to embed video. Consumers are increasingly expecting this. They are also more likely to be shared if they are interesting.
•If there are lots of product details, make sure they are tabbed to keep the page tidy and ensure the visitor can find what they need to know quickly.
•If you are a re-seller, you could include product reviews from the media to further boost social proof.
•If options are out of stock, do not show them, or make it obvious they are out of stock. If possible, allow the user to enter their email address so they are notified when the item is back in stock.
•Clearly show the amount saved for items in sale.
•Clearly display your returns policy.
•Use social networking links to allow visitors to quickly ‘like’ or ‘share’ products.
•Trust seals, supplier logos and payment methods should be visible even at this stage, perhaps in the footer, so the customer knows they can checkout securely.
•When a customer clicks your ‘buy’ or ‘add to cart’ button, show a pop up or some other feedback.
•In the background, your pages should be generating automatic rich snippetsto encourage click through from Google.
•Ensure your titles have relevant keywords included – be as descriptive as possible.
•Below a certain threshold, show an “x remaining in stock” label to instill a sense of urgency in the purchase.
•If you can, show estimated delivery times and prices at this stage
13.Customer Reviews
Customer reviews are strong pieces of social proof that validate a purchase in your customers’ minds. When photos are included, it helps them see how the product looks in other’s people’s lives and gives them a realistic (non-professional) view of the product in use. Plus, customer reviews build trust, as they’re real, un-influenced thoughts from fellow shoppers.
14.Page Load Time
It is must for a good website and most important in overall user satisfaction. It provides better user experience to website users. Poor load time’s result in a negative user experience, and for e-commerce businesses, this means losing customers just because due to page loading speed.
•All of your pages should load in less than three seconds.
•Your images should be a size that means they don’t take too long to load. You want to focus on resolution and pixel sizes
•Use the correct types of images: .gif, .jpg or .png are your best options.
•Check that you don’t have too many plugins installed that are slowing your site down
•Turn off pingbacks and trackbacks to speed up your load time
•Use the Google Page Speed tool to help you identify how to improve
15.Blog Integration
•A blog is a best way to inform visitors about your brand and increase website traffic.
•Use social networking links to allow visitors to quickly like comment or share posts and products.
Allen Scott
20-Apr-2017