by Eira M.

Free Tools for Search Engine Optimization

SEO Friendly

As we have discussed in several of our previous articles, when are you developing a new website it is imperative that you use an SEO friendly shopping cart that will effectively assist you in not only managing your ecommerce website more easily, but that the shopping cart will also allow your site to become more visible among the major search engines. Today, there are literally hundreds of different web programmers and software development firms that specifically develop and sell SEO friendly shopping carts. This is primarily due to the fact that these software companies are well aware that the individuals purchasing these shopping carts ultimately want to have their content and their products effectively indexed among the major search engines.

As we have touched on before, it is not just enough to have all of your products offered in a laundry list format as you showcase your products to visitors that come to your website organically and through search engine optimization methods. You will need to not only dedicate a substantial amount of your website towards the products you sell (as ultimately this is how you make your income), but you also need to devote a substantial amount of time and effort into creating new commentary, reviews, discussions of industry trends, and other information that is pertinent so that your customers can make informed decisions as it relates to the products that you sell through your ecommerce platform. In one our future articles, we are going to discuss how you can properly monetize the content that you develop (or have developed on your behalf) so that in the event that someone does not purchase a product from your website – you will still generate income simply by having the visitor come to your platform. This is why it is especially important, when developing a new ecommerce platform, to use a SEO friendly shopping cart. In many instances, these new shopping carts feature functionality that automatically allow you to effectively monetize your content while concurrently making sales of products.

Additionally, when purchasing a SEO friendly shopping cart you want to make sure that the proper reports are developed so that you can continue to see where your customers are coming from, and what they are purchasing. In our previous article, we focused on the development of a SEO optimization report that should allow you to effectively determine the return on your investment as it pertains to your ecommerce sales. When you acquire a SEO friendly shopping cart you should, again, make sure that the proper reporting metrics are in place so that you can continue to make determinations as to which search engine methodologies are working best for you. A well developed shopping cart will have all of these software modules in place.

In regards to the expense of a SEO friendly shopping cart, you can anticipate that costs will range from ,000 to ,000 depending on the quality, number of modules, and customization that is available to you. In many instances, if you intend to operate a number of different ecommerce websites, then you may be able to use the SEO friendly shopping cart among a number of your platforms. Many software companies allow you to use the same program in conjunction with three to ten ecommerce websites. This is primarily due to the fact that they want you to continually upgrade the SEO friendly shopping cart software that they have developed. Additionally, the purchase of high quality shopping carts from reputable companies allow you to frequently have new modules installed in order to further drive your ecommerce experience and search engine optimization campaigns.

Of course, the alternative to purchasing an off the shelf shopping cart is to have a highly experienced software developer produce a SEO friendly shopping cart on your behalf. This can be a very expensive proposition as having a completely custom ecommerce platform that can both manage sales while monetizing your produced content can range anywhere from ,000 to ,000. However, in most instances, once the project is complete you can use the SEO friendly shopping cart an unlimited number of times for any new ecommerce platform that you develop. However, one of the cons of having a completely custom SEO friendly shopping cart developed is that there may be very little ongoing support once the software programmer finishes the development of the platform. Unlike major software companies, the individual programmer that you hired for the job may not be available to deal with technical errors or troubleshooting as you continue to progress through your sales and ecommerce SEO operations. As such, we only recommend that you hire an individual programmer (or small software company) to develop an SEO friendly shopping cart unless you are well versed on computer programming and can make any changes to the code on your own. It goes without saying, from time to time, your website will go down and you will need to have the appropriate technical experience (or technical staff) in order to bring the operations of the site back up.

One of the other issues that you are going to continue to face is the ongoing need to produce new content for your ecommerce website as part of your overall search engine optimization campaign. When you are investigating which type of SEO friendly shopping cart to use, it is – again – important to make sure that the software has the following capabilities (from a technical standpoint):

The ability to generate HTML files for each product that you sell through your ecommerce platform.
Blog and article posting capabilities so that you can seamlessly integrate new content into your website.
The ability to have SEO Optimization Report functions that will ensure that you can continually review the return on investment you have made as it pertains to your ecommerce SEO campaigns.
The ability to generate dynamic pages quickly so that users can easily find the products and content that is available on your ecommerce platform.
That the SEO friendly shopping cart produces an automated Robots.txt and sitemap.xml files that major search engines use in order to effectively spider the content that you continually integrate into your website.

The final two notes are typically the most important aspects in regards to having a website that is highly visible among major search engines. This is primarily attributed to the fact that your SEO friendly shopping cart will continue to inform the major search engines each time a new change is made to the website. This includes uploading new products, images of products, comments, articles, and commentary that relate specifically to the genre of ecommerce platform that you operate. The other important factor when determining which shopping cart to use is how this software can monetize the content that you have created specifically in regards to your search engine optimization campaign. As we have discussed, there are going to be instances where individuals come to your website, browse your products, and ultimately purchase a product from a different site or competitor. As such, your SEO Friendly shopping cart should have built in functionality that will allow you to generate income from referrals and advertisements that can be tastefully placed on the content pages of your ecommerce platform.

There has been a substantial ongoing debate as to whether or not the usage of advertisements and affiliate marketing programs on an ecommerce platform is appropriate. In certain circumstances it may be completely appropriate to fully monetize your website by offering customers alternative portals from which they can purchase products while providing you a referral fee for sending customers to a competitor’s website. However, some individuals find the usage of advertisements on ecommerce platforms in poor taste. Ultimately, when you acquire SEO friendly shopping cart software – it is up to you to determine whether or not it is appropriate for your site to feature banner advertisements or referrals that can produce additional income for your website but may take away from the professionalism that you are seeking to achieve each time a new visitor comes to your website. In regards to the actual acquisition of an SEO friendly shopping cart you need to make sure that you have all of your options available to you as it relates to monetizing your site most effectively while concurrently having your site listed quickly among the major search engines. Unfortunately, this is one of the issues that you are going to need to determine as you progress through your ecommerce SEO operations. However, there are several rules of thumb our there as it relates to whether or not affiliate marketing programs or advertising programs should be used in conjunction with your ecommerce operations and your SEO friendly shopping cart.

In regards to whether or not you should feature advertisements in conjunction with your SEO friendly shopping cart, you should first determine the type of products that you sell. If you are a general retailer of electronics (or other generic products) that it may be in your best interest to monetize the content that you have developed in regards to your ecommerce operations. However, if you have developed a proprietary line of information products then it may not be in your best interest to showcase advertisements by third parties. If you have a SEO friendly shopping cart then you can experiment, very quickly, as to whether or not the full monetization of your website is appropriate for you. One of the interesting things about using an off the shelf SEO friendly shopping cart is that you can make changes “on the fly” as it relates to experimentation for not only increasing your awareness of the content that you offer through your search engine optimization campaigns but also whether or not you should include third party advertisements as it relates to your ecommerce operations. If you have developed a large amount of new content that has been seamlessly integrated into your SEO Friendly Shopping Cart then you may want to seek to generate additional streams of income through the work that you have completed. This is especially important for new ecommerce platforms that are immediately seeking to generate revenue in order to recoup the costs associated with the acquisition of an SEO friendly shopping cart or other program that acts in a similar manner.

In short, when seeking to acquire a SEO friendly shopping cart you will need to make a number of decisions and comparisons regarding the numerous programs that are out there that tout themselves as able to not only being able to provide you with the software you need to effectively manage your ecommerce platform, but also provide you with the ability to frequently create and upload new content that will become highly visible via your search engine optimization campaigns. Again, you need to determine whether an off the shelf solution or a customized SEO Friendly shopping cart is your in your best interest specifically for the genre of ecommerce website that you have developed. If you have ongoing questions as it pertains to ecommerce SEO and related shopping cart software then you need to make the determination as to what solution works best for you. In our opinion, it is imperative that you focus on ensuring that any SEO friendly shopping cart software that you purchase provides you with the ability to effectively make sales, showcase newly produced articles (including commentary, reviews, and other pieces of information), and allows the search engines to become immediately aware of any changes that you have made to your website. If you able to find software that focuses on each of these aspects then you will be in an excellent position for developing a new ecommerce platform that provides you with the longevity that you expect through the continued and ongoing ecommerce SEO campaigns that you have worked so diligently to produce through your business operations.

As we have discussed earlier, you should always conduct a substantial cost benefit analysis as it relates to the acquisition of new software including SEO friendly shopping carts. As such, you also need to continually focus on the return on investment (again, in both time and money) for your search engine optimization campaigns and the acquisition of programs that increase your visibility among the major search engines.

In our next articles, we are going to focus on a completely new aspect of your operations as it relates to producing traffic for your website through the ongoing acquisition of small blogs that currently generate a significant amount of traffic through effective search engine optimization campaigns and a substantial amount of content. We thank you again for tuning in to our discussion as it pertains to SEO friendly shopping cart software.