Comparison Chart
Explanation
The
comparison chart explanation was written by SEO Expert Brian Rotsztein.
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to consult with him.
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Note:
This chart presents the most requested basics of SEO in a
shopping cart and that is reflected in the reviews.
A full SEO package would include the above and a lot more. Don't
forget, it's all about the conversions.
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| Demo/Free
Trial - Does the company offer a
free demonstration or free trial of the shopping cart and e-commerce
software. For those that offer a free trial, it is usually for
14-30 days which should be sufficient to test many of the important
features of the cart.
Titles -
Does the system allow users to alter the HTML title tag on each
page.
Meta-tags -
Does the system allow users to alter the meta-tags on each page.
Note that some carts allow any meta-tag to be placed on the page
while others are limited (such as only accounting for keywords
and description tags). If new tags come out in the future, some
modifications might have to made.
Alt-tags -
Does the system allow users to alter the Alt tags on each page.
HTML -
In order to be as universal as possible, many SEO professionals
insist on building sites in HTML. While it is true that Google
can read ASP, CFM, PHP, and other programming languages, many
business owners still insist on HTML in order to allow all search
engines easy access to their websites. Some shopping cart developers
have realized that building a site in HTML is important and now
offer it in their package. Note that in many cases, it is dynamically-generated
HTML that is served to the spiders, not straight static HTML.
The difference is essentially negligible since the search engines
should see it as HTML either way. Some
of these e-commerce solutions will let you build HTML pages along
side their coded product pages (with coded pages looking like
this: www.carproduct.com/id=?tires=4kmd?rimsProdID=54). One of
the most important factors is having a static HTML product page.
Some shopping carts offer variations to account for this but almost
none have it built into their system. The HTML column indicates
whether the actual product page is typically in HTML (not the
surrounding pages such as the "about us" or "general
products" page). After all, the point of an SEO shopping
cart is to have customers find your product directly. Also, HTML
means you can easily put H-tags into the page coding.
Hyphens -
Hyphens (or dashes) in page names are important. Some shopping
carts only offer underscores (for example: word_word.html) or
slashes (for example word/word.html) which are much less effective. |
Breadcrumbs -
Breadcrumbs are the navigation aids you see at the top of websites.
They usually look like this:
"You are here: Home > Services > Web Design."
This can be very helpful for websites, especially larger ones
with many products and services. Moreover, breadcrumbs can help
with search engine optimization because they allow for more
links around the site. Some shopping carts have breadcrumbs
built into their content management system. Note that you can
usually manually build these into your cart. Finally, the breadcrumbs
feature is more of a bonus that helps with SEO than a must-have
item.
Name Pages (search
engine friendly URL issue) - Does
the system allow users to name pages. It is important to note
that many shopping carts will not allow for page naming. Also,
in some cases when they do, users can only use underscores instead
of hyphens. In some cases, the file naming extends from naming
pages to also being able to name images and other files which
can be useful for SEO. Shopping carts will receive a check (
) if they allow page naming for their individual product names.
For a large number of products, page naming may be too time consuming
but from a search engine perspective, page naming is important.
Pricing -
This helps to compare the different approaches used by the various
companies. In some cases you must host with a specific company
in order to use their e-commerce system. This ensures that you
are locked in with them because you cannot easily change shopping
cart companies without re-doing all of your work. Upgrades to
new versions of the software are frequently free. An alternative
is to purchase e-commerce shopping cart software. This software
typically allows you to host with a company of your choosing and
is cheaper in the long run because you are not paying hosting
fees on a monthly basis. You can usually purchase add-ons to the
basic software. Note that some carts require you to purchase an
annual user license.
Type -
This is an important distinction. As people become increasingly
aware of search engine friendly shopping cart technology, there
is a tremendous demand to simplify our understanding of what the
various options mean in the larger scheme. A full discussion of
SEO Shopping Cart Classification
System can be found here. In a nutshell, Type 3 means the
shopping cart has no SEO features, Type 2 means that there are
some important SEO elements, and Type 1 is the best case scenario. |
