Now that you have build your e-commerce website after putting in a lot of money and effort and are ready to go live, what is the next step in the process? Probably you need to check whether you have good chances of impressing the search engine spiders and ultimately their results.

301 Redirects and URL Canonicalization
URL canonicalization has a major impact on the amount of inbound links that your site shall enjoy. It is always a better practice to point to the www’s because people usually employ the full URL for linking to you. Any variation or edits in the URL can be performed by modifying the .htaccess file. The homepage URL can be modified through the /index.php file and making it redirect to the site’s primary URL. Basically it is all about making sure that all URL variations point as per our settings. Another important thing is making sure that no dev links are existing that are required to return 301 (redirected) to new addresses so that the site is prevented from the presence of dead or bad links.

Making It Searchable
The CMS that is being used by you should be friendly with search engines. Keywords should be properly placed in your content and URL for making them discoverable by the search engine spiders. Inclusion of alt tags and header tags should also be properly done.

Unique Meta Data and Title Tags
This includes the verification process of seeing whether all the pages of your website are indexable and no duplication of content is occurring throughout these pages. All the pages should be unique as far as their meta data and title tags are concerned.

Google Webmaster Central Submission
Submission of your website to Google enhances the ease with which your site will get indexed by Google and it also provides you an opportunity to correct any possible errors that the Webmaster shall point out to you. A number of beneficial tools can be found at this place.

Discard Content Duplication
This is one of the most important criterions for earning good revenues for your online venture. If your site is unable to offer anything different than others, it is sure to get lost in the crowd. You should leave no stone unturned for ensuring that your site does not host duplicate content.

The above factors shall make you aware of the requirements for Search Engine Optimization and making money online. These are nothing more than simple things that most of people go wrong upon.

Tags: 301 Redirects and URL Canonicalization, Discard Content Duplication, e-commerce website, Google Webmaster Central Submission, inbound links, Making It Searchable, Unique Meta Data and Title Tags

This entry was posted on Monday, August 24th, 2009 at 6:33 am and is filed under SEO News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.