SEO Friendly Web Design

If you're looking to make your business website not just SEO-friendly, but specifically local SEO-friendly (that is, your business targets keywords that contain a geo-modifier like "plastic surgeon Traverse City",) then this is for you. Without further introduction, here are a few powerful and local SEO-friendly web design and development tips.

Ensure Fast Load Speeds

First and foremost, if your website load speed is slow and choppy, then this is the first thing to address. A slow site is either bogged-down with huge media files (i.e. massive images, Flash media videos, etc.) or worse, cumbersome coding structures.

The former web development rule of thumb can be addressed rather easily. You can also optimize the new images and videos that you use to replace the existing files. When done right, this can really help boost your SEO.

The latter, however, is more serious. It usually means your site is on a crappy CMS (content management system), or whoever developed your site didn't seem know much about SEO. In this case, you can migrate your website to a faster CMS platform like Wordpress or Exponent. Or you can hire an SEO-savvy web developer for website optimization services.

A good tool to troubleshoot a slow loading site is the website load speed tool at Pingom.com.

Integrate LocalBusiness Schema Markup

Because not a lot of webmaster and common SEO's out there are using Schema, integrating this markup throughout your website is a great way to gain a competitive SEO edge. In short, Schema is a markup language (or a bunch of unique HTML tags) that better communicate your site's content to Google and other search engines. With it, your site can not only rank harder, but also generate rich snippets in Google's search engine results.

LocalBusiness Schema markup is exactly what it sounds like - Schema for local businesses. Implement this Schema for local SEO and take your site to the next level in terms of SEO-friendliness.

Properly Cite Your Business' NAP

In other words, accurately mention the Name, Address, and Phone Number (NAP) on your website. Ideally, you'll want to include the business' NAP in site-wide placement, such as a header or footer.

This seemingly simple yet incredibly important element is vital for local SEO, specifically ranking well in Google's local listings that are displayed with Google Maps. When Google crawls the NAP cited on your website, as well as the citations (or NAP's) mentioned on other website (i.e. Yelp profile, Facebook page, Yellowpages listing, etc.), it assesses the accuracy and consistency of the NAP. Any inconsistencies or inaccuracies will hinder the preceived local legitimacy and credibility, and thus diminish your local SEO efforts.

For this reason, running a thorough citation audit is a wise idea for any business' local SEO strategy. For more information, visit the Traverse City local SEO guide by the organic SEO experts at www.TCTopofMind.com. In this local SEO guide you can get more specific insights of the latter mentioned tips, as well as much more.

In essence, a well-optimized (fast) website that's marked-up with LocalBusiness schema, and properly NAP cited is the foundation to on-site local SEO. The remainder of getting ranked centers on generating citations (more NAP's on authority domains) and generating links.

Many SEO-friendly web design projects can be found online right now. These include projects that have been made to feature plenty of content while also having a user-friendly design that works well for SEO purposes. Here's a look at a few of the best SEO-friendly websites around and how you can learn quite a bit from them.

Reddit

Reddit, a popular social media site, has a great SEO-friendly design that entails the use of plenty of simple features. It places a strong emphasis on content while also creating a setup that is easy to load up without taking too much time to start.

In addition, it is rather easy for people to go from one section on the site to the next. The front page has links to go to every major section. It only takes a few moments for anyone to get to the next sub-section on any major Reddit site as required.

Zappos

Zappos has become a popular place for all kinds of quality shoes. Zappos has become a big hit among SEO designers because it incorporates a very simple interface that is also easy to search through. The shoes are also represented by pictures that are linked with specific keywords that match up with all kinds of key details including the names and descriptive features of the shoes. This makes for a site that will quickly get up in its ranking on any search engine.

Optimized Surgeons

Optimized Surgeons is a new Wordpress based website that's prime example of seamless SEO-friendly web design. Coincidentally, Optimized Surgeons provides SEO and web design services, so naturally, the site has been developed as such. The HTML backend is very fluid, as it's based on a simple and slim Wordpress theme. Additionally the front-end of content of this surgeon SEO company website is clearly portrayed with exceptional user experience.

Also notable about Optimized Surgeons is how this website is only a couple months old, and yet it ranks for many surgeon-specific SEO keyword targets. In fact, Optimized Surgeons is about to break page one of Google for rather competitive keyword phrases around plastic surgeon SEO company and SEO for surgeons.

WebMD

WebMD has become a big name in the world of medical information. This informative site has become noteworthy for offering a full site map that links people to medical topics about all kinds of key aspects of health. The information listed here is very descriptive and is not all that hard for a typical person to use.

Project Gutenberg

While it may not be the most appealing-looking website, Project Gutenberg is a great example of how to do SEO. This site is clearly labeled with a large site map that is all the way on the front of the page. In addition, the site has images that are labeled carefully and are compressed to where it will not take long for them to be loaded up as needed. Users can get in and quickly find old public domain books on the page with relative ease.

The Onion

The humorous and occasionally dirty satire website has made people laugh for years. It can also be helpful for those who want to learn how to do SEO right. The site is not only consistently updatd with new posts but also has its own internal search engine and sections that are very easy to leaf through. The description and title tags of the pictures and videos on the site are clearly organized as well. This allows for the site to become more popular with sponsors who want to place their advertisements on the page.

If you wish to get the most out of your ecommerce web design, than incorporating SEO during the early stages of website design can offer a plethora of benefits. Ecommerce websites are much different in that they are architecturally deeper and more robust. As a result, coming up with a SEO-friendly web design framework is critical.

So whether you're seeking professional services for ecommerce SEO or trying to make it happen with a local local web design company, below we share some general yet essential tips to incorporate ecommerce SEO during the web design process.

Creating Dedicated Product Pages

A great way of achieving this feat is to ensure that each product has its own page that is complete with its own title, meta data, and content. The title tag forms the real estate of the SEO and hence should be focal to each product page (not a general sum of products.)

Try to avoid using the title tag that is branded on every page. Rather, you should only use keywords that are specific to a particular page. This is helpful as the search engine spiders usually crawl the individual pages and not the whole website.

It is important to note this fact as the spiders will not get information on what you are offering if you do not provide it with any page specific information. You should ensure that each page has its own uniquely-written product description that is optimized for the product and the keywords associated with the product.

Incorporate Video and Images

In order to boost your sales conversions (and ecommerce SEO keyword relevancy), you should consider providing your prospective customers with all the useful information needed to make an informed purchase decision. In order to fully inform the customers, you can incorporate videos and quality images that will be able to give your prospective customers the much needed explanation on how products are used or should be assembled for use.

Try to include alt tags to the images and videos in order to enable the search engine spiders to understand the content of the media. The alt tags can incorporate some keywords (with some limitations) and be readable. In addition to ecommerce SEO, alt tags are also extremely important to customers who use screen readers to read information from your website.

Optimize the Navigation & Linking Structure

It is important to think about the linking structure you use for your ecommerce website. As the main goal of ecommerce websites is to sell products and services, so it's key to ensure that the website is as simple to use as possible for any visitor willing to make a purchase. The secret to making visitors come to your page again is by making the navigation through the ecommerce website simple.

In addition to usability, this element also contributes greatly to ecommerce SEO. You should incorporate breadcrumbs as well as ensure that you use keyword phrase and keyword anchor text for linking your pages. This is helpful for your visitors as they will be able to navigate the site well and the search engine spiders will get to understand what you are offering to the market.

It's fact among the search marketing community: not all ecommerce SEO companies are created equal. In fact, the top companies for ecommerce SEO services are few and far between. What some SEO providers claim to be best practice could very well be outdated techniques that result in more harm than good.

Beyond just ecommerce, all situations in which a business needs the help of an SEO company should be pursued with caution. SEO is a very meticuluous practice that, although intentions are good and righteous, can have adversive, negative repercussions if not done properly.

For this reason, it's extremely important to choose only reputable and well-established ecommerce SEO companies that have a track-record for success. Your online store's search engine reputation (and overall ranking potential) can not be put into the hands of amatuers. You need a top ecommerce SEO company that can deliver the goods.

Top-Rated Ecommerce SEO Companies

To help steer you in the right direction in finding the best ecommerce SEO company for you, below we share three of the top-rated ecommerce SEO providers who are leading the market.

Netmark

Since 2007, Netmark has grown to be a 70-person interactive marketing agency that specializes in ecommerce SEO services. The company is known for its scientific approach to search engine optimization and internet marketing strategies. Serving an international client base spanning all over the globe, Netmark is agile and adaptive in its offering of SEO services.

Boostability

Boostability has earned a reputation as one of the most affordable and effective SEO companies in the search marketing industry. Boostability provides its SEO clients with complete transparency, which is often of great value to high profile clients. The ecommerce SEO company centers its practice on measurable results and proven client success.

Click Centric SEO

As one of the fastest emerging ecommerce marketing companies, Click Centric SEO has quickly gained a positive and prominent reputation for its ecommerce SEO services. The company specializes specifically in ecommerce and offers a full range of services in SEO, PPC advertising, social media, content marketing, and more. Click Centric SEO is small yet powerful team composed of creative strategists and technical experts. Together, the firm provides custom-tailored SEO solutions for a wide rnage of online stores.

OneIMS

OneIMS (Integrated Marketing Solutions) is a well-known SEO company that offers full-service solutions for many different clients. In addition to providing ecommerce SEO services, OneIMS is unique in that it provides more a branding approach in creative an effective and powerful web presence for the businesses it services. The company takes in integrated approach that focuses on far more than just higher rankings.

Bruce Clay, Inc.

Bruce Clay, Inc. is recognized as a company that delivers a complete range of web marketing services, consulting programs, tools, and assessments. Bruce Clay delivers top-quality SEO service programs that focus on helping clients achieve their underlying marketing goals, beyond attaining top rankings in search. The company is well-known for its abundance of SEO resources and offers several downloadable white papers and documents that have defined ecommerce SEO best practice.

The web design process requires a high level of focus, skill, and intuitive understand. The major problem is that most web designers oversee user requirements (or usability) and start developing and designing according to their preferences.

In countless cases, creativity becomes a priority in the web design, rather than practicality and usability. Our Peoria web design company sees this all the time when we audit websites. We call these mistakes deadly sins of web design.

After years of reviewing hundreds of websites, we decided to put these sins an article. So here they are: the 7 deadly sins of web design.

1. Hard to Find Contact Information

This is primarily applicable to businesses that are involved in selling goods and services. In your web design, you need to provide your viewers multiple ways through which they can contact you, and this information should be easy to fetch. The link for “Contact Us” page should be carefully located at each and every page of your website for easy access to your contact information.

2. Disabled Back Button

The back button is subsequently the lifeline of web-user and one of the most used navigation feature. Browser users know that they can explore anything on the web and if something does not interest them, they can always push the back button and go back to their familiar territory.

However, some web designers decide to break the back button to keep users on their site for a long time. As a result users have to open a window on the browser to get rid of unwanted location. Our advice is to avoid getting into such hassles as it only annoys your viewers, forcing them to never get back on your site.

3. Site Not Linked To Social Networks

These days, every business has its social media presence and it is important to keep your viewers connected to your social media profiles. Social media is booming and forgetting to integrate social icons or links in the web design is a waste of this valuable resource. Using social media to market your business will drive more customers to your site and also make it easy for them to share your site’s content with their social circle, attracting more traffic.

4. Broken links (404 Errors)

It is important to test your website and all the web pages to look for broken links. Make sure all the links are working properly. The 404 error is one of the biggest mistakes that can heavily cost you clients, viewers or customers. Dive into the web design (before launch) and find the errors and fix them immediately.

5. Outdated Information

Outdated information can work as an evil for any website. Your users will not come over and over again to read same things and if you won’t update the content as per changes taking place in the current market, chances are that you’ll even lose the existing audience. Credibility and loyalty comes from only updated content.

6. Poor Navigation

Internet is all about speed and if your users will not be able to figure out the path that will lead them to desired page on your website, then they will quickly find alternative source. It can be really frustrating for users to go back three to four pages of the web design to reach to the information they want.

When undergoing the web design process of putting together the site's framework, there should be a well placed navigation bar on every webpage to guide visitors. You can also add easy-to-find sitemap to provide visitors a glance view of your site.

7. Slow Server Times

SEO and web design, although two different sub-sets of web marketing, in many cases go hand-in-hand (especially when undergoing a website redesign.)

There are countless web design elements that can impact the flow and purpose of SEO. This article is intended to reveal some of those elements and highlight important SEO considerations when redesigning a website.

Good Usability = Greater Conversion Potential

Usability should never be neglected as it's the foundation of giving offering the ability to access information in a fast and efficient manner. Good usability often yields greater conversion potential, which is extremely important for various types of sites spanning from local businesses to ecommerce. And site that's investing in SEO should always maximized its conversion potential.

There are common characteristics that user-friendly websites have. For instance, some of these include:

compatibility with all mobile phones (since most people in the world access the internet using their mobile phones)

accessible and readable by everyone (like the elderly)

offer fast load speeds

render consistently in all web browsers

free of errors too help the website get crawled and indexed easier (helping with SEO)

a creative contrast existing between the site's background and content (to interpret easier)

usable forms that allow the user to interact with the site

ensure seamless navigation and good organization of pages and content

Website redesigns are very necessary for business websites. There are various benefits achieved when doing a website redesign. From faster load speeds from website optimization to better branding and lead acquisition, redesigning a site can have a momentous impact on a business's marketing.

Some considerations that businesses should keep in mind when thinking about a redesign include:

If it is not user friendly to search engines and visitors of the website

If it is not credible or does not contain useful information to readers

If it is not meeting the owners business objective

If it does not have calls-to-action and other important conversion elements

If the owner feels the website is outdated

SEO Elements of Web Redesign

As stated by the Peoria web design and SEO company Online Innovative Creations, there are common SEO practices that should always be kept top of mind when performing a website redesign. Theese practices include:

One should always make sure that he keeps the page that the old system was using and continue using it to avoid incidences of changing URL’s that may lead to losses of traffic in the search engine.

An individual should always avoid putting his/her navigation on a flash because this may end up into pages not being indexed by the search engines. They should not also put content describing the business into the flash.

One should always avoid doing away with all of his/her optimized old content in favor of new ones. This always happens more often thus the website owner can always only realize through traffic coming to a halt. It is therefore always wise to consult with an experienced SEO expert.

Product pages are known as the bread and butter for ecommerce SEO and on-site optimization. Although there are various elements for optimizing ecommerce product pages, five of them are absolutely critical to compete with authority retailers like Amazon, Best Buy, and Walmart. Below we provide tips as what these 5 elements are and how you can optimize them for ecommerce SEO.

Ensure Seamless Usability & Checkout Process

Although more focused on CRO (conversion rate optimization), ensuring that your ecommerce site offers clear and intuitive usability and a seamless checkout process is vital (otherwise your ecommerce SEO efforts are wasted.) This step should be a priority for ecommerce site owners. If there are malfunctions or nuances in the way people individuals interact with your website, then these issues need to be addressed, ASAP.

Use Proper Headers & Page Copy Elements

The front-end SEO of your product pages will thrive by using a certain structure. For instance, the main header of each product page (usually the name of the product) should be an H1 (header one.) Any sub-headers used on these pages should be H2's and H3's.

In addition to headers, try to allot space on the page layout for at least 50-100 words of product page copy. Another mistake commonly made is using manufacturer-produced product descriptions. The issue is that many other websites selling the same product will use this copy. Duplicate content is problem, which diminishes any SEO value of the page. Hire a professional SEO copywriter to write unique and creative page copy, or have someone on your own team handle the job.

Integrate Social Sharing Widgets

Social media has a significant impact on website's search engine credibility and overall ranking potential. The more Likes, +1's, Shares, Pins, Tweets and Re-Tweets a page has (especially an ecommerce product page), the great authority the page has for SEO.

At the very least, integrate social sharing widgets on every product page of your ecommerce site. You can take your SEO'cial strategy even further by implementing other creative techniques, like:

the "Spread the Word" approach - ask customers if they would like to share their recent purchase with their friends on Facebook or Twitter.

the "Build Loyalty" approach - ask customers to follow your ecommerce brand on social sites after making a purchase.

the "We Scratch Your Back, You Scratch Ours" approach - Dovetailing on the previous approach, you can incentivize customers with discounts. The loyalty (and possibility of repeat customers) can go a long way.

By acquiring more social media followers, especially individuals who have made a purchase on your website, is a golden opportunity for marketing. These people are "opted-in" to your social media posts. So not only are you getting brand exposure (and recognition), but you increase loyalty and the likelihood of repeat purchases.

Have Product Sitemaps & Solid Internal Linking

An HTML sitemap linked on your website (site-wide in the header or footer) is essential for SEO. But not all HTML sitemaps include links to all product pages.

To truly maximize the SEO value of your sitemaps, build specific sitemaps for certain product categories or brands. This provides the ideal doorway for search engines spiders to find, crawl, and index your product pages.

In addition to sitemaps, internal linking between pages (e.g. homepage > category pages > sub-category pages > product pages) is also important for ecommerce SEO. One solution to ensure solid internal linking is to include crumb trail links on all pages of the site (with exception of the homepage). Not only does this facilitate better crawling and indexing of your ecommerce site, but it also aids with usability.

Optimize & Use Rich Media

Rich media is a fancy way of categorizing high-quality images, graphics, and video. Using (and optimizing) rich media can help in many ways, beyond just ecommerce SEO. Not only does this form of media bring more SEO and conversion value to a product page, but images and videos themselves can appear in Google's search results.

Before uploading any images or videos to your website, you can keyword optimize the file. Check out this article on image optimization (the same rules apply for videos, too.) There can you learn the simple process of keyword optimizing media files. This will bring even more keyword relevancy to your product pages, and in a natural way.

Investing in the services of an ecommerce SEO company is game-changing decision that will influence the course of your marketing efforts for months, perhaps years to come. When choosing an ecommerce SEO company, you must recruit a team of ecommerce SEO experts that are experienced and have the right resources and processes in place.

The true tells of a proficient ecommerce SEO company can be realized from the beginning. So if you're an online store owner or marketer seeking services in ecommerce SEO, then you might want to take note of the following attributes that define quality SEO companies.

Does the Company Offer a Free Ecommerce SEO Audit?

This part of the program entails analyzing your website and overall search engine presence to reveal weaknesses and opportunities in your site's current SEO standing. This initial phase of ecommerce SEO provides the essential information needed to build a solid ecommerce SEO strategy that offers long-term results.

Ecommerce SEO audits will reviewed various elements like: site architecture; web design and layout; functionality; internal linking; Meta data; HTML markup; keyword useage; page copy; and use of media. Some ecommerce SEO companies, such as www.ClickCentricSEO.com, will even go as far as providing keyword ranking data in their ecommerce SEO audit reports.

Does the Ecommerce SEO Company Request Analytics Access or Data?

In conjunction with a thorough ecommerce SEO audit, request for analytics access (or specific data) is vital to assess the current standing, SEO potential, and other weaknessess and opportunities for strategy development. If not included in the ecommerce SEO audit, the company should request access as part of the initial phases of planning and launching the campaign. If not, then it's a tell that the SEO company is less concerned about profitability of the ecommerce SEO campaign (and driving you sales,) and more concerned about rankings and out-dated metrics.

Are Insights About Your Site's Backlink Portolio Given?

There's no question that a majority (yes, over 50%) of a solid ecommerce SEO strategy will center on link generation. However, only the best ecommerce SEO companies will have the resources and know-how to scan and analyze a site's backlink portfolio. Awareness of the current backlinks pointing to the site (and the nature of those backlinks [e.g. anchor text used, authority of sources, etc.]) will utlimately shape an effective link generation campaign.

Less proficient SEO companies will simply start building links without any information of the like. Mindful link builders, at the very least, will use a blend of anchor text and only build links from quality, relevant sources. So another good question to consider when prospecting for ecommerce SEO companies is: "how does your company generate links?" That questions alone can reveal a lot of information about the effectiveness of their overall program.

Each and every ecommerce website has the primary goal of earning web traffic and converting visitors into paying customers. SEO is vital source of such traffic and sales conversions.

However, what many ecommerce search marketers and online store owners fail to recognize is that the success of an ecommerce SEO campaign often hinges from the design stage. Below are a few vital web design tips that will help in establishing an SEO-friendly ecommerce website.

Ensure Website Usability is Intuitive & Logical

Just attracting visitors to your site alone will not suffice for many ecommerce sites. The goal of earning visitors is so that they will more apt become paying customers. This is usually achieved through conversion rate optimization (or "CRO") where usability plays a critical role.

The placement of links, forms, buttons, images, calls-to-action, and other vital website design elements must be considered. Thorough and reliable research results on customer preferences, eye tracking studies, and website usability best practices, the ever-important design stage should focus to improve the chances of converting traffic from SEO, and thus maximizing the traffic that stems from organic search.

Design the Ecommerce Site to be Rich Media Intensive, But...

As it is aptly integrated in most authoritative ecommerce sites, a picture is indeed worth a thousand words. For an SEO-friendly ecommerce site it is valuable to bring in video, photos, images, and social media buttons, not only for CRO, but as rich media that engages with users and better promotes the online brand. Such media can also be optimized to appear in the organic search results (such as product review videos and optimized images.)

A results-oriented ecommerce site will be designed in such a way that both text and media are balanced and not cluttered. The use of white spaces to separate units of information and create some balance is highly recommended. Space should also be used to include keyword optimized text-based content so as to allow for successful SEO. Appropriate use of color, site ambiance, and size variations for web design should also be taken into consideration.

Construct the Site to Be Easy to Navigate

The ease at which users can navigate through the site is another key factor which SEO-centric ecommerce sites must take into consideration. This is especially so if one is keen on developing specific conversion funnels for services such as pay per click or cost per mile advertising.

Easy to navigate sites will also help to ensure that your site's "time on site" metrics are higher, which also contributes to better SEO performance and lower bounce rates. To promote return visits, it is critical that you make the user experience interesting, efficient and stress free. At this point it is important to remember that attention to detail often makes a greater impact.

Make Your Ecommerce Site Mobile-friendly

The phenomenal growth of mobile internet marketing can no longer be ignored. For any ecommerce website to reach its qualified clients, it is imperative that the site is mobile friendly as a vast majority of the population currently uses their Smartphones devices such as iPhone, Android operated phones or any other mobile device to transact business.

Ecommerce sites that are not mobile friendly tend to offer pathetic user experience to prospective clients who try to access the service through a mobile device. Whichever way you look at it, a mobile friendly website is a conversion optimization strategy as it is bound to make it easy for visitors to navigate the site and make the necessary commitments by maybe using a click to call button.

Choose the Correct CMS and Associated Plug-ins

The importance of a good, easy to maintain and secure content management software (CMS) when designing your website cannot be overemphasized. This is especially so if you are keen on an SEO friendly CMS. Depending on the type of CMS you have chosen you will most likely need to get a third party plug-in so as to fully optimize your site. It is important to have plug-ins which make configuration and editing easy; all configurations and modifications should be done on one page if possible.

Atlanta SEO company, Captivate Search Marketing, was generous enough to share some valuable process insights about SEO-friendly web design in this guest post. As one of the leading web development and SEO companies in Atlanta, Captivate Search Marketing has successfully built and managed comprehensive web projects spanning from local SEO to enterprise-level web design.

The backbone to our Atlanta SEO company's success stems from its foundation in SEO-friendly web design. Even if clients are solely interested in a new website (without SEO,) all site's are developed to be crawler friendly and set-up for future SEO.

Let's dive right into this Atlanta-based company's SEO-friendly web design process.

Construct an SEO-friendly & Intuitive Navigation

The website's navigation will ultimate impact both SEO and CRO (Conversion Rate Optimization.) Not only do you want users to easily navigate through a website, but you want to construct the site's blueprints with SEO in mind. This process will translate to your URL naming tasks (which we cover next.)

First, define the top-level pages of your website. These are the pages that will be in the primary navigation of your website. An example would be having the following top-level pages: Home, About, Contact, Services, and Case Studies.

Next you'll want to determine the category-lvel pages that will support some of the top-level pages. Home, About, and Contact pages will be fine as is, but the Services and Case Studies are pages that you'll build upon. Perhaps you offer local SEO services, ecommerce SEO services, enterprise SEO services, and so on. A similar break-down might be applicable for Case Studies (i.e. "web design case studies, local SEO case studies, etc.").

Use an Excel spreadsheet or image mapping program to construct an intuitive navigation. It might seem like this process is more usability-focused, but the navigation structure will most definitely influence the on-site SEO aspect of your strategy.

Write SEO-friendly URL Naming Conventions

What are exactly are SEO-friendly URL naming conventions? In short, these are URLs that will include your keyword targets in an appropriate manner. Let's use an example from above.

Because we are an Atlanta SEO company our Services page URL will be named domain.com/seo-services/. Each supportive page under our Services page will be an extension of that URL (thus defining the "naming convention.") So for local SEO services (which are focused in Atlanta) will have the URL domain.com/seo-services/local-seo-atlanta/ and our ecommerce SEO services will have the URL domain.com/seo-services/ecommerce-companies/.

Notice how we used the word "companies" for the latter URL. This is becase many individuals search for "ecommerce SEO companies," and as a results, we want to optimize this page for that keyword. Essentially you'll want to play to your keywords in the URL, but stay very focused in doing so. Avoid writing super long URLs. 10-word URLs are not SEO-friendly from a technical perspective.

Integrate SEO-friendly Elements in Your Page Templates

The actual design behind most websites we built will center on a few primary templates. Although we custom design web templates for clients, each client site will use 3-6 different formats, depending on the depth of the site.

Examples of these web design templates are: the homepage, top-level pages, category-level pages, product or service-level pages, blog or article pages, and contact or form submission pages. The idea behind developing each page template is ensure each integrates SEO-friendly (as well as CRO-friendly) elements. These elements include:

Proper header structure using H1, H2, and H3's appropriately

Sufficient room to cleanly include text on the page (for some templates, at least 300+ words)

Space for images, banners, and other graphic elements that make pages more appealing

Locations to integrate calls-to-action and other conversion-focused buttons

SEO-friendly linking, such as bread crumb links, footer links, etc.

Adequate header and footer section to include important info like the NAP of the business

Beyond having an SEO-friendly web design, there are two primary components that make up a successful ecommerce SEO strategy. These include on-site ecommerce SEO and off-site ecommerce SEO. Each are paramount to achieving success in the search engines, and below, we go into a bit more detail about each approach.

On-site Ecommerce SEO

On-site SEO for ecommerce sites involves checking and modifying the content (as well as web design) of the ecommerce site to improve its keyword relevancy, functionality and usability, and overall technical fluidity for efficient crawling and indexing. The purpose of on-site SEO for ecommerce websites extends far beyond keyword optimization and technical SEO, but also focuses on user intent and providing a quality experience for visitors.

Most search engines have issued certain webmaster guidelines and they rank websites based on these guidelines. A proficient SEO company will check if the website complies to these webmaster guidelines and will make changes accordingly. The content of the website will be reviewed and modified based on the main products or services sold by the business. The ranking of the website for the main keywords corresponding to the products being sold will be checked, and new content will be added to the website to improve the ranking.

Off-site Ecommerce SEO

In essence, off-site ecommerce SEO includes building links to the website from external sources, as well as proper ecommerce branding via social media marketing. Link building should be done slowly and mindfully (using the right balance of link anchor text) to avoid penalization by search engines.

Furthermore, text-based links and banner links on relevant websites in the same niche can drive traffic and also improve the ranking of the website in search engines. Backlinks from forum posts, press releases, article posting, blog posts also help improve the rank of the website in search engines. But again, quality and relevant sources are the essential proponent to successful off-page ecommerce SEO.

Statistics show that the number of ecommerce sites on the Web almost doubles every year. And yes, as a result, the competition is getting tougher and tougher. Almost every ecommerce store, from the smallest boutiques to the biggest e-retailers utilize ecommerce SEO and Internet marketing to attract more in-market customers.

Added to the list of search marketing competitors are affiliate sites as well as individual sellers who also utilize blogging and simple website building to get noticed. So if you're thinking of ways to make your ecommerce site stand out in search, them you're probably scratching your head right now while asking yourself "how can I get to the top of search engines with such intense competition."

The emergence of millions of websites made Google and other search engines strategically choose only the most well-optimized and authoritative ecommerce sites to rank at the top of the results. Search engines are responsible for delivering relevant and quality information to search engine users. This is your foundation. Developing a quality and meaningful ecommerce website that offers an exceptional user experience.

While it's important for a website to be attractive and easy to navigate for users, it's of equal importance to ensure that your site is optimized for search engines.

The main purpose of having a website is to promote a brand, and if only very few people are able to find your site in Google search, its potential is drasitically limited.

An SEO friendly website can rank much higher in search engine results, which helps you to dominate your search market and attractive quality visitors to your site.

To help ensure that your website is SEO-friendly, mentioned below are the key elements to consider when designing and dveloping an SEO-friendly website.

Optimized HTML back-end: For usability and SEO friendliness it's important to design a website that loads fast enough. The website designer should address the back end such as ensuring the site is optimized for fast loading and rendering. People don't waste time on slow sites and quickly move on to faster sites making website optimization important.

Avoid using flash and frames: Search engine spiders don't index flash and if it's necessary to include a textual description for your flash file as an alternative. In addition, the content inside frames is also not indexed by search engine spiders, however if you have to use frames, make use of a ?NOFRAME? tag to allow some of your content to be indexed.

Integration and verification of Google analytics and webmaster tools: Integration of these tools is important to ensure proper tracking of your website, analysis and creation of reports for constant improvements.

Calls to action: It's important to have calls to action on almost all the pages on the site. Having points of contacts integrated on the website to prompt visitors for more action is important. After visiting and understanding what your website is all about visitors need to know what to do next.

Optimized robust media files and images: There are a couple of robust media files, which end up slowing down your site. The files can be optimized by reducing their size with respect to indexing and rendering. For better SEO value files and folders must be optimized by including important keywords.

Verification of Google authorship: In this SEO era it's important to run a Google+ page. Your SEO compliant website should not only create a Google plus page but should properly link and verify with the business website to set up Google authorship and publication.

Using keywords properly: Though its sounds obvious some SEO website designers don't include keywords in the right places. The most important places being the URL, title of the page, in the Meta description and courteously throughout the page.

In addition to having a SEO-friendly web design, WIll Dayble shares some creative ideas for user interface (UI) and user experience (UX) design testing.

Mobile-based search is continuously on the rise and it's growing fast. It's thus important to create a mobile-friendly website that's both well optimized for usability (via mobile web design) as well as search engine optimization (SEO).

Mobile SEO apps can be big aid in helping you dial-in your mobile optimization efforts. With respect to the iPhone being one of the most popular smartphones on the market, in this article we share the top five mobile SEO apps for the iPhone (iOS).

These mobile SEO apps will enable you to track, monitor, and analyze data more efficiently on your smartphone. So let's jump right in.

5 Awesome Mobile SEO Apps for iOS

iSEO

The iSEO mobile app is an ideal option for competitive and SERP analysis. As a rather cost-efficient mobile SEO app (priced at $1.99,) iSEO can help you analyze competitor's keyword rankings, as well as the content that's supporting their search engine exposure. The nice thing about this mobile SEO app is that it displays data in a very easy to absorb format. You can even share data and key findings with others via email.

SEO Automatic

SEO Automatic is great mobile SEO app for business owners or entry-level search marketers who have little to no experience using applications for SEO analysis. The unique qualities about SEO Automatic is that is provides SEO recommendations based on data gathered from competitors, in addition to offering information regarding the level of optimization of your website.

Raven Tools

Raven Tools is perhaps one of the most powerful mobile SEO apps for iOS. There are both free and paid versions of the app, however the free version's features are limited. What separates Raven Tools from other mobile SEO apps is the ability track SEO performance based on social signals. Additionally, users can benefit from highly detailed analytics metrics and can measure ROI based on a number of elements.

Ego

Ego is ideal for data collection, and it also happens to be a low-cost mobile SEO app. Like iOS, Ego is priced at $1.99 and is great option to supplement other SEO programs that you may use. Ego extracts valuable data from various sources, enabling your to create your SEO strategy accordingly.

LinkJuice

Also for $1.99, LinkJuice is a great mobile SEO app for more advanced search marketers. Due to its complexity, it's a mobile app that is recommended for professionals who have a good understanding of SEO. LinkJuice provides detailed metrics about specific webpages, including a page's backlinks, as well as the source's authority, URL, and anchor text of each link.