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Build a Niche Store Website Search Optimization

August 8, 2007 | Author: Mark | Filed under: Build a Niche Store, Tools of the Test

I have been in several discussions about how to best optimize a Build a Niche Store website for search engine placement. I have a breakdown of general search engine optimization tips for any website in another post, but for now, I am going to get into the search optimization of Build a Niche Store, using www.carolinacloseout.com as the example.

Why should you optimize a Build a Niche Store Website? 

When you bring up the home page of Wholesale Closeout and Apparel site - the very first bit of text anyone (including search engines) can read is in the yellow bar across the top. That section was a part of the custom template I put together and changes on every “category” you visit from the left menu. Go ahead and click around… at the time of this article, I have almost  completed the optimization to the 3rd category/subcategory level.

If you view the source code of the main page, you will see the following meta-tag information:

<head>
<title>Wholesale Closeouts and Merchandise</title>
<meta name=’keywords’ content=’Wholesale,closeouts,Clothing,Shoes,Accessories,Men,Women,Children’>
<meta name=’description’ content=’Clothing, shoes and Accessories from Carolina Closeout. The wholesale closeout selection of products generally include many famous brand names in several categories for Men, Women, children, Misses, babies and infants! Compare the best prices of clothing,’>
</head>

Lets look at how this all comes together… First, a search spider reads the meta information on a page. In this case, I have told the spider that the page is about: <title>Wholesale Closeouts and Merchandise</title>, and users who may be looking for info or products related to: <keywords>Wholesale,closeouts,Clothing,Shoes,Accessories,Men,Women,Children</keywords> Finally, the meta-description tag is used for some search engines to display a short, descriptive summary on the search engine results pages. (SERP’s)

After the search engine spider reads the meta information, it then looks at the remainder of the page to see if the content is actually related to what we claimed in the meta tags. In this case, the very first bit of text displayed in the page is in the yellow bar at the top: “Wholesale Closeouts and Merchandise - Clothing, Shoes & Accessories” - so far, the site is actually talking about the right stuff! As the spider continues to work through the page, it sees the next important piece of the puzzle - the main name of the website: “Wholesale Closeouts and Merchandise”, which is tagged with an <h1> markup. h1 stands for Header1, meaning, hey - this is important header information about what the page content contains! Even deeper into the page, there is a blue bar just above the product listings - this too, is tagged with an h1 to tell the search engine that we really mean business about this topic!

Aside from the main page of the wholesale closeouts and merchandise website, you will notice that ALL of the main categories will add one additional piece of text to each page at the bottom. If you look in the yellow bar that spans the bottom of each category (not the main page) you will find that the category name is listed as a return link, leading right back to this same page. This was done to tell the search spiders… Hey - if you want a link back to this page - here it is! I have found this return link to be very helpful in getting the pages indexed thoroughly!

So… back to the original question - Why should you optimize a Build a Niche Store website?  Simple, the search engine spiders like to see that they will be representing the site as it is truly displayed to the visitors it sends your way! The closer you have it to what your meta tags describe, the more likely they are to believe it and send the visitors!

Next - HOW do you optimize a Build a Niche store website?

This entry was posted on Wednesday, August 8th, 2007 and is filed under Build a Niche Store, Tools of the Test. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Responses are currently closed, but you can trackback from your own site.



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[…] Build a Niche Store - Another New Tool! Build a Niche Store Website Search Optimization […]

» Build A Niche Store Review - Part 1 - My First Store! | Domain Monetization - The Project of Time » Blog Archive wrote on August 17, 2007 - 10:04 am |

[…] MAIN categories only - save the first level subcategories for another day! (For more info, see the Search optimization for Build a Niche store […]

» The 10 Essentials for Build a Niche Store Success | Domain Monetization - The Project of Time » Blog Archive wrote on August 21, 2007 - 9:24 pm |
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