As you know, SEO (search engine optimization) is all about optimizing your website (On-Page Factors) and getting those valuable links pointing back to your site (Off-Page optimization). It’s a hard work and results aren’t instant – that’s why it’s essential to do it RIGHT from the very beginning. You really don’t want to spend months on optimizing your website just to find out it was a waste of time.

On-page optimization is all about making modifications to websites, which can help attract more visitors, ultimately converting into sales. When you design your e-commerce website you ought to make sure that you use techniques that will bring in “natural traffic” from search engines.

However, sometimes in spite of spending a substantial amount of money you may not get the expected results. Though you have taken the effort for SEO there may be some mistakes that led to losses. You should be aware of some typical mistakes often made and ensure that you avoid them.

• Bad selection of keywords: When you select keywords make sure that you do not select highly unique or highly popular keywords. If you use unique keywords, though you would list at the top of search engine rankings you may not find yourself any relevant customers. Similarly, if you use some very popular keywords, you will face stiff competition from those already at the top.

In e-commerce world, newbies often optimize their sites around generic keywords. For example, selling un-branded MP3 players they optimize website for keywords like “mp3 player”, “ipod” and similar. This is a HUGE mistake!

Always start with smaller, long tail keywords with less competition and build it up from there. It’s more valuable to get 10 visitors from that long tail keyword than 0 – from generic one.

The idea behind this is very simple – the less competition each particular keyword has, the better chance for you to get on the first page in Google’s results.

• Ignoring title tags: Many times people ignore the title tags that can greatly improve SEO. Using keywords in the title tag helps, as the search engines can find relevant keywords in the very beginning, which can make it easier and faster.

Title  is the most important part of your On-Page optimization process so make sure it’s SEO & user friendly.

• Not providing HTML version: If you have designed a website only in Flash then it becomes difficult for the viewers with a slower connection to download it. Similarly, it becomes even more difficult for the search engine spiders to crawl. Rather, search engines ignore such sites. In such cases, it is necessary that you provide a HTML version also for your website, which is useful for your search engines to find you.

That’s why you want to choose shopping cart software that supports HTML pages. Usually these are “virtual” HTML pages generated on the fly by shopping cart, using PHP or ASP. These are NOT real HTML pages – however in search engine’s eyes, they’re as good as the real thing.

Personally I’m a huge fan of 3DCart.com – a shopping cart that offers HTML pages plus all kinds of useful tools & features. I strongly recommend using this, hosted shopping cart service for maximum results.

• Failing to provide sitemap: Often when you make JavaScript menus and do not provide sitemaps your site fails to make better impact on the search engines. What it means is that search engines cannot read JavaScript menus. With sitemaps you can enable indexing and crawling by search engines, failing which you would not get higher rankings.

When launching your online shop, make sure to submit your website’s Sitemap to Google using Google’s Webmaster Tools.

• Focusing too much on Meta Tags: Many experts feel that Meta Tags are fast becoming obsolete, so avoid focusing too much on them.

• Using too many images for menus and headings: Though images make your page look good, using text for menus and headings helps search engines to find what they are looking for easily. The search engines cannot read images, which mean a zero effect on your attempts to improve rankings.

• Resorting to back link spamming: Avoid getting back links using link farms, hidden links etc. You will benefit by creating back links from relevant and authentic sites like article directories. Similarly, using too much interlinking is also considered as back link spamming.

There are other small things like using fancy fonts, too tiny fonts. Similarly, using FrontPage is not advisable. There is a possibility that the output may be poorly crafted and may not even be compatible with all browsers. A good shopping cart will create SE friendly, clean code with low code/text ratio.

Though a small spelling mistake can be of help to get visitors, it is not advisable as they do not speak to well of the quality of a website. Your links should never have any spelling or grammatical mistakes.

Remember that you should regularly update and keep your website fresh. Ensure that you do not make these SEO mistakes or all your other efforts will be in vain. In future blog posts I’ll cover different SEO aspects for e-commerce in detail.