SEO shopping cart / search engine friendly ecommerce software

Most shopping carts on the market today have a big problem. True, they will all organize your product and inventory data and help customers through the checkout process.

But most of them won’t do anything to help customers find you in the first place. In fact, the programming and design of most shopping carts actively discourage search engines from finding you. And whether you’re just starting out on the web or managing an already-successful web shop, that’s a big problem.

SMART-SHOP is different. SMART-SHOP is an e-commerce shopping cart solution that was designed with search engine optimization in mind. SMART-SHOP was built not only to provide full shopping cart services but also to address the problems that make most shopping carts unfriendly to search engines. In the process, SMART-SHOP actively harnesses the power of search engine technology, to help customers easily find your web shop and purchase your products.

PROBLEM: Dynamic URLs for product pages. Most shopping carts create product pages dynamically when they’re requested by a specific customer. And in most cases this means that the URL or web address for a particular page is created with dynamic scripting, resulting in a URL with multiple parameters and no keywords, or, in other words, a URL that looks to the average computer user – or to a search engine spider – like a lot of gibberish, with symbols such as ‘?,’ ‘=,’ $,’ or ‘%.’ (For example, a typical dynamic URL might look like this: http://yourstore.com/store/CategoryPage?pls=id5&clist=03258f0014009f. This is not a format a search engine could easily follow.)

SMART-SHOP SOLUTION: Stable, search-engine friendly URLs. With SMART-SHOP, on the other hand, all URLs for products and catalogs are created in search engine-friendly format, with no session IDs or special characters. Product URLs automatically use the product name to help customers find a specific product through a search engine. If you wish, SMART-SHOP will even allow you to add more specificity to product page URLs.

PROBLEM: Non-hierarchical catalogs. Most shopping carts, because they create product pages dynamically, don’t bother to organize them into a hierarchical structure. But that makes it difficult for search engines to find similar types of products and makes it hard for a customer using a search engine to see that you’ve got related groups of products.

SMART-SHOP SOLUTION: Clear, hierarchical catalog files. SMART-SHOP knows that the more a search engine spider can learn about your site and the folders you have for different product categories, the greater the chance that your site will rank high on searches. As a result, SMART-SHOP provides a clear, hierarchical catalog file structure that groups similar products together in an easily identifiable manner. A sample hierarchy could include:
www.yoursite.com/catalog1/
www.yoursite.com/catalog1/product1.html
www.yoursite.com/catalog1/product2.html

PROBLEM: Lack of textual content. Many shopping carts don’t allow for much in the way of product description. But that’s a problem, both for customers who want to learn more about products’ attributes before buying, and also for search engines that look for keywords to help them organize information and provide the description that follows your page ranking.

SMART-SHOP SOLUTION: Easy-to-enter, form-based product content. SMART-SHOP allows you to enter comprehensive information for any product or catalog page by completing a simple form. There’s no need for technical knowledge; just enter your description and SMART-SHOP will incorporate it into the product page. In addition, SMART-SHOP includes a customer review feature so that customers can rate and comment on individual products. This feature provides even more text for search engine spiders, as well as giving customers an opportunity to interact with your web shop, increasing both the amount of time they’ll spend on your site and the likelihood they’ll return.

PROBLEM: Undifferentiated page titles and meta tags. Most shopping carts provide only one page title and meta tag for an entire site. But a customer using a search engine probably isn’t looking for your site (yet!) but instead looking for a specific product. Without individual page titles and meta tags, search engines can’t easily find individual product pages.

SMART-SHOP SOLUTION: Unique page titles and meta tags. SMART-SHOP allows a different meta tag (including title, description, and key words) for every page of the store. For a shop with many products, a customizable SMART-SHOP template makes assigning unique and descriptive page meta tags easy.

PROBLEM: Lack of “breadcrumb trail.” A “breadcrumb trail” is text that shows the path the user followed on your site in relation to the site’s architecture. It’s helpful for users (who can use the breadcrumb trail to retrace their steps or follow another path), and also very attractive to search engine spiders. Unfortunately, many shopping carts don’t generate breadcrumb trails.

SMART-SHOP SOLUTION: A breadcrumb trail on every catalog and product page. SMART-SHOP makes navigating your site easy for customers and search engines alike.

PROBLEM: Images without alternative text tags. Most shopping carts don’t allow alternative text tags (or alt tags) with product images, making these images all but invisible to the major search engines.

SMART-SHOP SOLUTION: Alt tags for every image. SMART-SHOP allows you to set a different alt tag for every image you upload, giving search engines more of the keyword text they need to work for you.

PROBLEM: Not ALL pages need search engine page rank. You don’t want to drain search engine page rank away from your site by having search engine spiders crawl aimlessly through pages such as “My Account” or “Add to Cart.” Search engines don’t need to see these pages – they’re for shoppers, not for search engines – but having spiders see them takes away from your overall ranking. Unfortunately, most shopping carts treat all pages within your site the same.

SMART-SHOP SOLUTION: Un-index pages that don’t need search engine rank. With SMART-SHOP, only the pages you want people to see will be visible to search engines. All other pages will be tagged with a “no index” tag, which will prevent search engine spiders from visiting them.

SMART-SHOP: Giving you the tools you need to succeed: Neither SMART-SHOP nor any other program that assists with search engine optimization can guarantee top results in your search engine page rankings. Page rankings result from many different factors. However, SMART-SHOP can do what few other shopping carts can: it will give you the tools to make your web shop as friendly – and noticeable – to search engines as possible, helping you launch your web shop with the best possible chance for success.
 

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