This document provides best practices for e-commerce websites, including: 1) Choosing the right e-commerce platform like Magento, BigCommerce, or Shopify. Maintaining a flat site architecture without too many sub-categories. 2) Implementing a flattened site structure to evenly distribute PageRank across pages, and using cross-linking between "vertical silos". 3) Avoiding duplicate content issues by properly implementing pagination and handling product variations with canonical tags. 4) Developing an SEO-focused e-commerce blog network around the company's niche with original content and internal linking to help educate visitors and rank product pages.

1. E commerce –Best Practices

2. . Choose the right ecommerce
platform
• Magento (highly recommended)
• Big Commerce
• Shopify
• Adobe Business Catalyst

3. Get the site architecture right
• Because you are just getting started, it is the best
opportunity to get the information architecture
of the website right from day one. When planning
the architecture of the website, make sure you
work towards a flat structure and don’t go crazy
on the product categories, sub-categories and
sub-sub-categories. This is important because it
will not only affect the crawlability and
indexability of pages but also affect the PageRank
(or link juice) distribution between pages.

4. Site Architecture

5. Flat Site Architecture
• The solution to the problem we’re introducing in this
diagram is to think carefully about the number of steps
from top to bottom your navigation takes the user.
This, very simple diagram shows a proces of increasing
the number of links from the homepage to the second
level content tier, and the number of links from the
second to the third, and so on. At this point, I’ll remind
you that I was talking about travel based sites, whose
architecture very typically comprises of a continent >
country > region > city based (vertical) hierarchy. With
that in mind, though we’ve solved quite a major
problem by flattening our site architecture, we could
easily be introducing a new one.

6. Flat Site Architecture

7. A flattened site architecture with
PageRank
• Let’s imagine for a moment that our homepage
and some internal pages have attracted external
links, perhaps enabling them to outrank their
competitor’s pages. You may even observe these
linked-to pages ranking generally higher than
other, similar pages on the same domain. This is
rather typical of any site and, in the diagram I’ve
highlighted how the pages with more external
links (and therefore more authority) might
distribute their authority down the hierarchy to
their lower tier child pages.

8. A flattened site architecture with
PageRank

9. Solving the vertical siloing issue with
a good cross linking strategy
• Why not consider your horizontal, cross
linking strategy as well as your vertical, site
flattening strategy? In the diagram above I’ve
tried to explain the likely impact by evening
out the PageRank in each page. By considering
ways to link across vertical silos that
otherwise may not recieve much juice, you
may be improving a significant chunk of your
overall search engine visibility.

10. Solving the vertical siloing issue with
a good cross linking strategy

11. Ways to cross link your site
• Similar destinations
• Nearby areas
• Most popular / top countries
• Most popular / top cities
• Recently reviewed locations / hotels / resorts

12. . Avoid duplicate content issues

13. Pagination:
• Implement Google’s recommended solution by using
the rel=”next” and rel=”previous” link elements.
According to the big G, these tags act very similar to
the canonical tag.
• An alternative is to use the rel=”canonical” tag to
canonical the paginated series back to the first page.
For example:
/shoes
/shoes?page=2 (<link rel=”canonical”
href=”http://www.website.com/shoes” />)
/shoes?page=3 (<link rel=”canonical”
href=”http://www.website.com/shoes” />)

14. Product Variations
• Personally, I don’t think there is the need to have separate
URLs (product pages for every product variation. Unless you
have unique content for every variation, search engines
aren’t going to be too happy. Include a drop-down selector
for users to choose on the product page. Here is a good
example from a US retailer, REI.
• If you are a rebel and still think that having separate URLs
for each product variation is a good idea, implement the
canonical tag. For example:
/nike-dunk
/nike-dunk?color=white (<link rel=”canonical”
href=”http://www.website.com/nike-dunk” />)
/nike-dunk?color=blue (<link rel=”canonical”
href=”http://www.website.com/nike-dunk” />)

15. Multi-Faceted Navigation:
• Once again the canonical tag will be your best
friend here. For example:
/shoes
/shoes?size=8 (<link rel=”canonical”
href=”http://www.website.com/shoes” />)
/shoes?price=50&size=8 (<link rel=”canonical”
href=”http://www.website.com/shoes” />)
• Another good solution is to use the <meta
name=”robots” content=”noindex, follow”> tag.
This will tell the search engines not to index the
page but to the flow of PageRank is preserved.

16. Proper keyword targeting

17. Content, content & more content
• worked for me in the past:
• Type of Page
• No. of Words
• Comments
• Category
• 150 – 200
• Introductory paragraph
• Sub-Category
• 150 – 200
• Introductory paragraph
• Product
• 300 – 500
• Product description, product, specs, video review
• Pro Tip: Do not use the default product descriptions provided by the manufacturer
– duplicate

18. SEO Best Practices for e-Commerce
Blog Networks
This is a sample of how blog farms could look like

19. There are several things to consider even before
going into technical setups.
• Your entire network should focus on your ecommerce niche solely. If you sell car
accessories, do not start a blog about oil paintings
• For each blog in the network you need to write great, original content. Do not
copy from other websites, PLR (private label rights) articles or automatically spin
articles. Remember, compelling content is the key to avoid Panda-like penalties
• Each blog in your network should focus on a single topic, usually targeting
subcategory or category keywords
• Start small, with 2-3 blogs to warm up and understand the challenges of
maintaining such a network
• Choose WordPress as your CMS platform (you may even want to consider WP
multiple install version)
• 20 blogs in your network will not raise any spam flags if you interlink them. More
than 50 will surely do
• It is important to also have a blog on your ecommerce site too, where you write
the masterpieces and link internally to home page, categories and product pages
with the correct anchor texts
• Don’t stuff the blogs within your network with ads. Remember, the purpose of the
network is to educate and impress with quality content

20. Breadcrumbs

21. Website Analysis Tool