SEO For Keywords Specific To Items?

[olimits7]

Hi,

I have an ecommerce website that has various items/categories; so it is not specific to a niche market (i.e. pet items) which would make selecting keywords for SEO a lot easier. Since you could link keywords like; dogs, cats, dog food, leashes, pet food, cages, etc...

Currently, I include the item title and categorny name within the <title></title> tags of the product info page; which I think helps with SEO for keywords specific to an item.

In the past for SEO, I've written articles and used links to general category keywords; which had ok results.

However, I'm looking to see what I can implement to do SEO on keywords specific to items. I can't write up articles for each specific item because I have way too many items to do this for.

Are there any ways I can increase my SERPS based on doing SEO on keywords that are specific to items?

Thank you,

olimits7

[bhartzer]

You may want to see if your ecommerce platform has a way to show "related products" and internally link to other products of the same category/type. Not only would that help sell more products (people might be interested in similar products and thus buy them also), it will help with the internal linking on the site.

[lorax]

Keyword anchor text from outside websites (reviews, product descriptions, how to articles) are a good way to get some traction on the keywords. Internally, bhartzer's idea is sound as would be helpful category level pages. An obvious question to ask is are you looking for SERP weight to be on the individual products or on the categories?

[olimits7]

Ok, thank you! I will definitely try adding "internal linking" on the product detail page; similar to a "related items" box.

Is "internal linking" something that Google give value to, and helps increase SERP positions?

I guess SERPs on both individual products and categories are a plus! :)

[Planet13]

Is "internal linking" something that Google give value to, and helps increase SERP positions?

Yes! Absolutely. If you have a product that you are trying to promote to the top of the SERPs, then don't JUST link to it from the bottom of the page where the other related products are at.

Link to it with a text link from within the first paragraph of text on that page, too.

For example, if Widget X is the widget you are trying hardest to promote (because your revenue is so good from it), you might say something like:

These widgets are our finest and they are the best-selling widgets after [link]Widget X[/link], which has been our number one widget for the last ten years. Blah, blah, blah...

I haven't been doing SEO a really long time, but long enough to know and appreciate that you are best on trying to promote a couple of keywords instead of trying to get all of them to rank. You should focus on the ones that are most important and try to get those to rank by good internal linking and by getting external links either to those pages, or to your home page with some anchor text that mentions the keywords for which you are trying to rank.

Also, look for which pages on your site have the most inbound links and if they don't already have a link to your most important product / category page, then try and ad one (without it appearing too spammy).

For example: I have some pages on my site that are article pages. They get lots of traffic and act as link bait; I don't sell anything on them, just provide good information. I can get people to link to those pages more easily than I can get them to link to my product / category pages.

So I have links from those pages to my most important product and category pages and I use that for funneling link juice to them.

[Luxoria]

This is what I do, I hope this is in the gist of your request...

<title> "Cat Wall Art, Feline Home Decor, Kitten Decorations" </title>: a nice mix of related keywords and product description

<h1> "Cat" </h1>: the product name

<h2> "Cat Wall Art" </h2> : extra heading right before the main body of text that adds emphasis to the main keyword and also integrates the main keyword into longer specific keyword.

Description: "Cat is wall art and home decor. Cat decorations make great art for cat lovers...." : I try to use a combination of several long tail keywords and possibly any multiple spellings of a keyword like Fluerdelis vs. Fluer-de-lys

Extra text: "Cat has 5 reviews." : a quick blurb stating "Cat" has 5 reviews. It adds to the key word density that makes sense when a human sees it.

Extra description (label as "Specifications"): "Cat is 5"x10" and has kitten paws both at the top and the bottom"

_

Also a really neat trick to pull off is to add a product type to each product, for example cat stuff marked as cat, dog stuff marked as dog, etc. Next with this marking you can create a few areas on the product description page that rotates text or images (with nice alt tags) based on the product type being displayed.

Maybe on the cat pages add cute cat quotes rich with keywords then on the dog pages have images with alt tags about dogs.

[Planet13]

One thing to keep in mind is that you WON'T rank for all your keywords. It just won't happen.

So you have to be selective as to what is the most important one or two keywords and build out from there.

As you get more and more external backlinks pointing to your site, you can expand the scope of keywords you are trying to rank for.

But until you do get lots and lots of external backlinks, you will need to keep it to just a few select keywords.

Hope this helps.