# Most Important Steps In SEO For E-Commerce



## Basikboy (Aug 28, 2007)

I am looking to outsource various SEO projects (If i can find anyone) rather then pay a company a lump fee per month. I just want to know what are the absolute most important steps to SEO in a numerical order format. For Instance most important step being number one and so on.
Example:
1. Keywords
2. Link Building
3. Blog
etc...

Rather then me hunt around for someone to create the link building for me can someone pm me with any trust worthy person you have in mind? I would appreciate it. Thank you!


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## EddieM (Jun 29, 2009)

I do not think any one thing is more important they another you must have a good mix of it all.
That is what works for me.

Keywords placed with in the text on the home page. A blog seems to work best for SEO.
Incoming links from other websites, The Website name can help a lot if it has your main keyword in the name, Photos with tag key words, Your own IP address can help so it is not shared with hunderds of other web sites, Age of your web site name helps (older the better). Lots of content text on the home page.

But in the end you are competing with other website's that have been doing all this for years so do not expect to show up at the top very soon it can take years and lots of hard work unless you are targeting a small range of customers.
If it was easy we all would be on page one and that would be a very long page one..LOL
Good luck i am working on some of my sites to.


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## veedub3 (Mar 29, 2007)

As the above poster stated it takes time and won't happen overnight. A blog is a great tool, links, link backs, and keywords. Verifying the site in google and bing, and constantly promoting your site. Get your name out there and it will turn around.

Good Luck,
Katrina


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## RM5 (May 6, 2009)

Agree with previous posts on this thread. Also, I found registering a masters account with the big G and reading thru info to be quite helpful.


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## jkruse (Oct 10, 2008)

The biggest question is why isn't your site it the signiture on this site?

that's a lot of back links you could be getting.


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## Joe Micheal (Nov 16, 2009)

Here are top five tips to increase website traffic.


1. Extensive Keyword Search
2. Original and Optimized Content
3. Web Page Optimization
4. Article and Press Release
5. Social Book Marking

Other than above

- Directory Submission
- Forum Posting
- Blog Creations
- Blog Posting
- Video Optimization
- Global and Local Classified Ads

etc.

Please keep in mind, this is not happen in one night, it takes time and efforts.


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## kristimck (Nov 2, 2009)

Hi BasikBoy

I agree with the others. I recently posted some SEO tips here: http://www.t-shirtforums.com/ecommerce-site-design/t101311.html#post592003

All the best.


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## sgood (Oct 17, 2009)

This from Google has a lot of good info. (if that link doesn't open it's on this page)


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## jkruse (Oct 10, 2008)

Had some article on my site written by Tim of Assault blog they helped me understand SEO.

All the things mentioned are important.


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## in2infinity (Dec 8, 2009)

You may also want to look at a tool like IBP (internet Business Promoter). There are a couple others out there as well which are similar but I've used this one and have done fairly well with it. The one nice thing is that you can research your keywords with something like the google adwords keywords tool and narrow down the words you'll be targeting. This is a must do - you have to know what people search for. Once you know that, IBP (or other tools like it) allow you to check the content of competing sites which do well for those terms. Look primarily at keyword densities in the different parts of the page (title, body, alt tags, etc.) and adjust your site to be similar (not the same as) the top performing sites for those terms.

It will take time, but its worth it.


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## Gottee (Dec 11, 2009)

Sitemaps are very important as well. Most of webmasters forget about it. Just google "sitemap generator" to find more info. There is alot of free sitemap generator out there.


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## wayneG (Dec 26, 2009)

The nature of SEO changes on a regular basis. What was good for Google last year, does not do well today. The search engines are always changing plus you cannot compete with the companies that pay for placement on the results page.

Some of the important things are: keywords, tag, image alt titles, etc. All of these should have a direct connection to the text on the page.

Read http://www.seologic.com/guide/ and it related sub-sites before you even think of hiring a SEO "Expert".

Never forget that a website is an electronic portfolio and your web-address should be on everything you mail, email, or use as advertising.

Good Luck, wayneG


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## shirtsthatgo (May 4, 2009)

A bit late to the thread. I have had good progress by doing all of the on page SEO myself and outsourcing the off pages stuff to a firm in India. These are great guys and I frequently engage developers from their team to help with issues and fine tuning my site. 

If you are still looking to outsource a bit let me know. The trick is finding the right team and also understanding SEO well enough yourself that you can manage it properly.

At this stage I really enjoy the SEO stuff and have considered doing an SEO company as my next business. Something for the startups and small companies.


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## Basikboy (Aug 28, 2007)

Does anyone know if it helps to have a description of the shirt on the opening page (not home page) like this: Sex Panther T-Shirt (Anchorman) - Vintage Cotton
Or does it not matter, just having the shirt name in the title is ok like this: Community College T-Shirt - Funny T-Shirts - BigtimeTeez.com - $6.99 T-Shirts! - COMMUNITY COLLEGE Funny T Shirt
Thanks for any help guys!


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## lindsayanng (Oct 3, 2008)

Basik.. You can't exactly say that having one description in one place will make a difference for the better or not. The reason being there is so much more that one little change like that will likely make such a small difference (if any) that its not hardly measurable. 

The best things for SEO are the following
Back Links - not just how many you can get, but QUALITY. The higher the page rank on the site that is linking to you, the better the link juice is. ALSO, the title for the link and the anchor text should be descriptive. So instead of just saying "CLICK HERE" and turn that into a link, have the clickable text say something like "Awesome T-shirt Company from Connecticut" There you have t-shirts and your location as keywords that help. 

DO NOT link out of your site to spammy type websites. A lot of web owners get emails saying "hey i saw your website and i think its cool. Would you like to do a link exchange" chances are that was a mass email sent to tens of thousands of website owners. ONLY do a link exchange with another website that is legit and something that has something to do with your business OR you have a legitimate reason for linking to them. In blogs, if you are linking to lots of other webistes (outbound links) use rel="noFollow" You will loose page rank for those pages that have that many outbound links

Comment on blogs that have a similar theme to yours that have doFollow in their comment links. There are lots of tools out there like Fast Blog Finder and Kahuna Commenter that you can use to search blogs for a certain keywork and it will highlight which are doFollow and which are noFollow. You can use google also to search for blogs by putting "noFollow Free" in the search inside of the quotes. 

And one this that SOO MANY PEOPLE LEAVE OUT.. Quality, clean, and SEO optimized code!!! Search Engines put a lot of weight on the way your content is formatted. They look at head tags <h1> as containing the most important keywords. Think of newpaper headlines. Anything between your <h1> tags should say exactly what the following content is about. 

Also the use of lists (unordered and ordered) are looked as a great heirachy of information and is good to use those for links because its easy for search engines to follow. 

I have written a bunch of posts about this, and there was one that had some good discussion if you're interested
SEO Crash Coarse for Newbie Web Designers | Web Design For Idiots

Oh, not to mention SPLASH PAGES.. lots of t0shirt website shave splash pages.. they are the worse ting for your website's SEO


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## in2infinity (Dec 8, 2009)

A couple more things to throw into the mix ...

Google has a couple very useful free tools...

Webmasters tools ... http://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/

and

Google Analytics ... Google Analytics | Official Website

The webmasters tools gives you some good info on things google doesn't like in your site like duplicate titles and other errors that you can have a hard time noticing yourself. It also tells what keywords and at what positions you're coming up in as well as what ones are being clicked on.

Analytics goes much deeper into traffic analysis and can be linked back to your pay per click campaigns.

For the price ... well worth looking into if you're serious about your site. Other search engines (bing, yahoo) have similar services which you should be able to find by searching in google.


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## lindsayanng (Oct 3, 2008)

ohh i also wanted to warn you about these SEO expert companies.. if they say that they can get you on the front page of google in ANY guaranteed amount of time - RUN!!!

Many of them have succeeded on getting you on the front page if not the first listing in google, but then a few weeks later, when google finds the little loopholes that the company slipped through on your behalf, they will blacklist you. Its called Blackhat SEO and its pretty risky for businesses like this.


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## Webo (Jul 3, 2008)

I agree, I prefer to educate myslef and learn and do my own SEO. Its a challange, but an educaation that can be viewed as an asset, since many people pay for that service


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## designnbuy (Jan 1, 2010)

lindsayanng said:


> ohh i also wanted to warn you about these SEO expert companies.. if they say that they can get you on the front page of google in ANY guaranteed amount of time - RUN!!!
> 
> Many of them have succeeded on getting you on the front page if not the first listing in google, but then a few weeks later, when google finds the little loopholes that the company slipped through on your behalf, they will blacklist you. Its called Blackhat SEO and its pretty risky for businesses like this.


Very true! I agree with you! SEO is a long term process. You won't be able to get immediate results from it. Lots of things you need to take care about...like keywords, content, page navigations and links, anchor text, ALT tags, headers, title tag, site map etc. At the same time you also need to get quality backlinks from other sites. So simultaneously you need to take care of both on page and off page jobs. Black hat SEO has so many brilliant techniques that can help you to get high ranking in Google very soon! But then you'll get caught one day by Big G...and result...you might get banned forever! So the people who guarantee you to give top ranking within fixed days (like 10, 15 etc.) ...please stay away from them!!


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