Shopping Cart SEO Practices

It is vital for products listed on your online store to be easily identified by search engine spiders. In order to do this your shopping cart software should be able to hold META data that is linked to products in your database.

Identify the keywords that best describe the products in your database and include the in the META data section of the cart. The software should be able to list your products based on the keyword tags that you have assigned for each product. Use keyword rich content when you are describing the products in your inventory – search engines love content.

A poor way of describing your products is as follows




• Product name – Engine Piston




• Page title – Car spare parts







The proper way to describe such a product is as follows




• Product name – Engine piston for Mercedes – manufactured, 1997, 1998, 1999




• Page Title - Engine piston for Mercedes – manufactured, 1997, 1998, 1999 – Spare Parts

Someone seeking to replace the piston of their spare parts will find the latter product before he/she finds the former.

The software should be able to list the products by the categories assigned to them. Select commonly used keywords for the products that are in your inventory. Generalized category names such as "our products" should not be used. Be as specific as you can be when assigning category names to your products.

If you have a large inventory, then use a sitemap to help search engine spiders to find items linked to your virtual cart. Site maps help in the indexing of you products according to the hierarchy of your web site. There are a variety of sitemap generators that can help you accomplish this task effectively.

Generate links within your cart to similar products that are for sale. The process of link building helps in search engine rankings. If you are an affiliate marketer, linking your cart to as many vendor products as possible will increase the chances of your site being listed first in organic search engine results.

These are some of the basic techniques of optimizing your virtual cart for your site to become a successful ecommerce enterprise.