There’s been plenty of articles written about the recent changes to the Google search algorithm (see original announcement, and this follow-up by Practical eCommerce).
Honestly, it’s not even worth it to spend time worrying about the technicalities of the algorithm changes. At the end of the day, it comes down to value: do you (and us) provide good value? In e-commerce, value comes from:
- Helping customers make good purchasing decisions
Provide useful, original content to customers and prospects, and it will pay off. Customers will come back, spread the word about your store, bring new prospects. To Do: (a) consider adding new Content Pages; (b) improve category and product descriptions (start with categories: they’re fewer and easier to improve: lots of store catalogs lack good category descriptions). - Good shopping experience
A nice store design, a sense of security, readily available customer service, alternative checkout options. To Do: (a) enable PayPal Express Checkout or Google Checkout: new studies have again confirmed that they help increase the overall conversion rate (e.g. see this: it’s a PayPal blog, but the info is interesting); (b) consider adding live chat to your store (i.e. at Early Impact we use Olark). - Good prices and reasonable shipping charges
Remember that shipping charges remain the #1 reason for shopping cart abandonment.
On top of that… well, not much else. Do the right thing for your customers, and you’re probably doing the right thing in terms of search engine optimization too. That’s always been the overall message of the Google SEO Starter Guide: design a Web site that makes sense for your visitors, and it will very likely make sense for GoogleBot too.
So instead of worry about SEO too much, the focus is always and only on doing what’s best for you and your customers. Time is your friend (quality always triumphs over scams in the long run). Social networks are your friends (recommendations travel as fast as ever). We like this approach a lot 🙂
