Seo'n

[David M. Graham]

When I was deciding on a store/domain name, I spent over two months searching and working with words to try to come up with a name that would 'pop' and yet would still be short enough for the recommended dot com!

I offer personalized and custom-designed magnets and labels. No matter what I scribbled down, the domain name options, in my mind, kept echoing just one. . . www.magnetsandlabels.com

I realize it is plain and simple, but any other choice -
ie: stick-em-ups.com......oye, I could go on and on, nothing really stated outright - What product I am selling!

SO........magnetsandlabels dot com is what my name became.

I think you grasped the most important part of domain name selection for SEO impact quite well, Terri.   Another approach is to select one that is easy to remember and type so that folks can easily return - and you seem to have accomplished both objectives.

Then, I also added a 'slogan' to my logo and store name! It is: "We'll make your message 'stick' with our custom magnets and labels." This appears on every page of my site within my header and I need to know if the header 'text' counts when it comes to Bots?

Yes.  It does for some (though not all) search engines.  The header title tag won't be taken as gospel by very many (if any) search engines any more.  But it should certainly be relevant to page content, and should vary a bit from page to page to maximize that relevance whenever necessary.

When is it necessary?  I think that generally the store owner SHOULD be the best judge of that.  Ask yourself:

1. Does it describe what is on the page?
2. Does it add relevance to the page?
3. Will my readers "get the message" offered by the tag contents in the context presented by the page?
4. Does this CONFLICT with the page contents?

Since I could not really 'play on words' with my name - I tried to do so with my slogan. And we all know how well, "When it absolutely, positively has to be there overnight" has fared

Now, going back to your next point:

Is my slogan a possible 'phrase that pays'? or am I thinking inside the box instead of outside?

Finally, you say:

Exactly where is 'in there'? When I go to Admin - Config, there is one line for Store Name (and I do have my name in there) Are you telling me to add keywords 'there' in my admin on the same line as my store name???

Terri,

This refers to the Header Tag Controller found at Admin -> Design Control -> Header Tag Controller (with 3 submenu items:  Page Control, Text Control and Fill Tags.

More on that next post...

[terierni]

Thank you, Pitstop, for this valuable insight!

This forum is also beneficial because each time a thread is created and expert advice is offered, additional questions surface which is exactly what a university is about.

That said, I would like to explore a few of your verse in relation to my store (I do not use my info here for a free ad boost; I must use it in order to see if my info has followed your advice or if I need much more tweaking).

You said:

Ok so No1. Is it important? Does my shop name really matter? Does my domain name mean anything?

When I was deciding on a store/domain name, I spent over two months searching and working with words to try to come up with a name that would 'pop' and yet would still be short enough for the recommended dot com!

I offer personalized and custom-designed magnets and labels. No matter what I scribbled down, the domain name options, in my mind, kept echoing just one. . . www.magnetsandlabels.com

I realize it is plain and simple, but any other choice -
ie: stick-em-ups.com......oye, I could go on and on, nothing really stated outright - What product I am selling!

SO........magnetsandlabels dot com is what my name became.

Then, I also added a 'slogan' to my logo and store name! It is: "We'll make your message 'stick' with our custom magnets and labels." This appears on every page of my site within my header and I need to know if the header 'text' counts when it comes to Bots?

Since I could not really 'play on words' with my name - I tried to do so with my slogan. And we all know how well, "When it absolutely, positively has to be there overnight" has fared

Now, going back to your next point:

Add your Shop name then include "the phrase that pays

Is my slogan a possible 'phrase that pays'? or am I thinking inside the box instead of outside?

Finally, you say:

Put Your Store Name in there followed by a few Key Words.

Exactly where is 'in there'? When I go to Admin - Config, there is one line for Store Name (and I do have my name in there) Are you telling me to add keywords 'there' in my admin on the same line as my store name???

Thank you again for your post.

_{'Every spill of knowledge from those who know is eagerly soaked-up by the sponges who are desiring to learn!'}

Terri

[CypherUK]

Good to see you about again Darren

[pitstop]

Using CRE features to maximise SEO.

Ask your self a few questions. Best to start with about 5.

Who am I?
What am I selling?
Where am I selling from?
Why am I selling?
When am I selling?
How am I selling?

About 5 - let's face they are the ONLY five open questions you can ask of yourself.

Q. Ok so No1. Is it important? Does my shop name really matter? Does my domain name mean anything?

A. Your call. Go for a name that relates directly to your product line or go for a play on words or go abstract but remember there are two very different yet vital aspects to SEO - Human and Bot. The bot will crawl away (eventually - once we have cracked the basics) and look for words, the human is much more intuitive and will recognise and enjoy a play on words and even an abstract name. Bots are vital but they don't buy. Without the bots people can't see your site and can't buy.

This is where TITLE (inc name) and description are VITAL.

CRE has a very powerful tools that will completely manipulate Google. Very simple tweaks that are often overlooked.

Config - Store Name.  That is VERY important as it adds a suffix to a lot of pages, not duplicates as it is a suffix. Play that wisely and you can make tweaks to your store name over the weeks and watch Google pick it up and rank it high! It works. Add your Shop name then include "the phrase that pays" i.e. key a few Key words.

Put Your Store Name in there followed by a few Key Words.

E.G.:

Store Name : "DaddyDocks - MP3 Docking Stations & Speaker Systems & Headphones"

Some really BIG words and phrases there that just made it on to most of your pages in one of the most important tags "TITLE".

Good Stuff, and built in. Exploit it. Once listed in Google and crawled frequently you can use "Store Title" to push new key words with fantastic results very quickly.

[David M. Graham]

Terri,

The osCsid component is used to track a single user session on a web site.

This is necessary because HTML is a "Stateless Protocol" - which just means it does not track conditions from one page to the next.  If you are just displaying a page, this does not matter.  But when you are presenting INTERACTIVE pages, it very much DOES matter.

You strip it because analytics engines are rather literal about the urls.

http://www.yourwonderfulsite.com/product.php?products_id=1&osCsid=389487297423874

and

http://www.yourwonderfulsite.com/product.php?products_id=1&osCsid=839482859734726

are different to the analytics code.

Problem is, that for business purposes, they are the same page to us.  By stripping the session ID off, they become the same to the analytics engine, which is what we need.  Otherwise, you end up with information overload....

David

[terierni]

Thanks for this outline, David, it offers a straight forward plan.

As usual, however, your insight creates new questions (I guess that is what the forum is all about - we are all here to learn  ).

When I read about "removing the osCsid from urls" I had no clue. So I went Google-ing and found that (osCommerce session id) is a long string of numbers that an SE adds on to the end of a URL.

Someone asked about getting rid of it and this was one reply:

you cannot remove it, unless you upgrade to a full ssl certificate and then turn on Force Cookie Use

Another reply was -

not everyone will want to turn on Force Cookie Use because it will cost them a few customers here and there.

Well, now that I've read all that - I would like to know exactly

1) why the numbers are put at the end?
2) and why a shop owner needs to remove them?

BTW - I do have a full SSL!

Terri

[David M. Graham]

Terri,

I think most shop owners, if they have the time to dedicate to it, can learn to do SEO management themselves.   Not all of them have the time, and there are times when even the best need some expert help.

The best time to work on SEO is prelaunch.   The things to concentrate on there are not so much the search terms as the management infrastructure needed to make sound decisions.

My priorities are:

1. Install Google Analytics with ecommerce tracking
2. Create goals for account creation and purchases.
3.  Add some filters to remove the osCsid from urls, etc.
4. Make sure the darn thing works!

These boil down to one thing:

The ability to acquire traffic intelligence (of the "military" type) in a way that minimizes data overload.

As for the words - I start by writing product and category descriptions that are meaningful TO THE CLIENT!.

I can't emphasize this enough - Googles Spiders have yet to purchase their first item on the web.  They are NOT going to directly pay you the revenue a store operator needs to generate.   So, write for the customer first.

Then - select the MOST IMPORTANT words in the content.  These are the words that are most specific to your product(s).  The words that would make the very best search terms.  Because that is all keywords are - the search terms you expect customers to use the most to locate your product.

There are tools for that as well, and we'll discuss a few of those later.

David

[terierni]

Hey there,

I noticed this topic had been read 222 times but nobody had replied, so I was very curious to read (beside the fact that I have been seeking to learn all I can about SEO).

So I read your topic and then followed the link to the Google Webmaster's article. Once I read and re-read through their article, I was surprised at the abundance of information that Google makes available, FREE.

The difficulty I had with that plethora of information was being able to put it into perspective, as a newbie website owner/admin, and then trying to figure out exactly how and where I should begin.

The info presented talks heavily about hiring an SEO. My questions are:

1) Without knowing code, is SEO something I can learn to do myself without hiring someone to do it for me?

2) What is the best way for me to know what keywords I should use that will make my site SEO friendly (without spamming them unintentionally)?

I hope since this topic is old, my reply will bring this topic back into current focus. This subject is one I think many want to learn as much as possible.

Terri

 

[David M. Graham]

I particularly like the first quote they offer up:

"Dear google.com,
I visited your website and noticed that you are not listed in most of the major search engines and directories..."

David

[pitstop]

SEO (Search Engine Optimisation) using CRE Loaded.

I will visit this regularly, those of you who know me will know that I have written quite a few articles on SEO but I do not apologise for spouting off again as techniques get tweaked and changed. I will split this up into bite size easy to understand chunks, ideal for beginners but also handy for old sweats.

I will try to keep it logical but order may not always be so much of an issue.

To kick off the answer to getting you into Google is NOT an SEO Contrib....so hold back. Yes they make URLs pretty and we will come to that later - the human factor - can be worth its weight in gold but hang fire, if you want to get to the top there is a lot to do before you think about SEO URLs.

The first tip is to read, read and read. It may sound a bit off but understanding SEO is a must. There are loads of rarticles out there so I do not intend to repeat them, more feeding that knowledge into CRE. Don't go OTT but you need to know how pages are formed so that search engines can read them, remember they don't see the screen they read the code.  Seek to understand the relationship the search engine will have with your site. The more you know about how they operate the better. The first and most important thing to remember is Google and many other search engines are here to serve CONTENT to the enquirer - NOT your products. So you need to know how to ensure you have the content Google and others will serve up - oh and that happen to have your products within it!

I will concentrate on Google in these articles. I make no apology. They are No1 end of. We need to work with them first and foremost and then tweak for the others.

In the second Article I will talk about features of CRE and how to maximise initial exposure by formulating your pages and content as well as submission to search engines  and Adwords. (Yes Adwords…….they say there is no direct relationship but it can be a fantastic investment in the early days).

As a starter for your research so that you know what I will be talking about:

http://www.google.com/support/webmasters/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=35291