Those of you ecommerce folks who are building your stores pages and writing copy for your product pages and even your content pages.. well for that matter ANY copy you write, always keep SEO (Search Engine Optimization) in the forefront of your mind.

When writing copy for your website, always consider what you are saying and if you can say with keywords instead of just simple text. Utilizing keywords that represent the page and the content of the page will do you more good when it comes to search engine optimization than if you just use simple words.

When building your ecommerce pages consider what is important to get listed high on the search engines and then utilize those keywords, fill your pages rich with them.

Example: If you are talking about "Nike Tennis Shoes" don't just call them shoes, call them "Nike Airforce More 180 Basketball Shoes" Use the product title, not the generic term. This will help Search Engines define your page.

Now don't get carried away with this either, spend time writing copy that 1) People can read and THEN 2) What Search Engines will eat up.

Your Shopping site will benefit much more when you are paying attention and using keywords.

*** Note, See all the italicized words? Those are hightlights throughout this post that are utilizing keywords, ecommerce, SEO, Search Engine Optimization, Search Engine.. Just an example of how this page should rank for what words over time.

I hope this helps!

Sometimes in the design world, we get caught up in making everything on the website cool. Making things stand out, POP off the page. What happens if you are not careful is if you put alot of POP on your website, then nothing POPs at all.

Sometimes we make our ecommerce sites (the look and feel) the most beautiful thing about the page. Headers that rock and left navigation that's smooth and flashy. My thought is that if you get too much flash (not Adobe flash) but loud popping site designs, your actual content is washed out.

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In my previous Blog - SEO Whats it worth, I talked about the importance and how we can get caught up or freaking out about Search Engine Optimization. I did alittle thinking and came up with my list of important things that are easy for a storefront owner to accomplish as they tweak their site and not break the bank or cause sore fingers.

Jason Fill commented and I completely agree, content is the first and most important thing you can do, write good content, utilizing good keywords on your site (without overdoing it either). Organizing your content/product pages on your site should be your first step towards a quality site. Make it easy for customers/users/browsers to find information on your site. Make that information relative and informative. I mentioned this in another blog post It's All About Selling Your Product. If you give great information about your product or information, your users will return or buy from you.

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** Disclaimer -- I believe that SEO is very important, but this blog post gives you something to think about your efforts **

Over the last few years, SEO has become such a huge issue, there are so many Search Engine Optimizer's that have come on the scene. Many of these SEO's believe this or that and some say this will work and this won't while others say just the opposite. It can be horribily overwhelming and confusing for the average Joe ecommerce store owner to understand what they need to do and whats important to do on their site.

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Site Search is the Holy Grail for Ecommerce websites. You could have great products, great pricing, but if your customers can't find what they are looking for, then it's like having a website that no one visits.

If you are using a site search that doesn't allow for fuzzy words or mispellings, then you need consider upgrading. Another wonderful feature is some of the more popular site search engines is "related words". If someone types in a word, you can redirect that word to another more relevant word. Example; the correct word is a "fishing rod" NOT "fishing pole" No products are labeled "pole" so if someone searches for "fishing pole" you can re-direct that search to "fishing rod". This is very powerful and very useful. This allows your customers to search on what THEY know and not what YOU know, making the whole shopping process smoother.

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In my last blog entry It's All About Selling Your Product we discussed how it is so important to give your customers as much information about a product as you can. Trying to capture them and sell them when they view your product.

This entry is about your images and their importance as related to selling your product. This is a very common sense entry, but one that needs to be mentioned as it is sometimes overlooked because store owners are in a hurry to get their products online.

We talked about putting as much information as possible on the product page and that you usually have one shot to sell your customer. Along with all the other pieces of the product page, the image is one of the most important aspects of the product sell.

You have to have the highest possible quality image to display your product, anything less is almost a waste of time. If you were in a store and were looking at shirts, you wouldn't want to see shirts that are wrinkled, dirty, dusty or whatever would you? Take the extra time to get the perfect shot of the image or take the extra time to scan in a high quality image. Display your product with pride and not cut corners, you only have to do it once for each product.

Additionally depending on he product, you may want to have multiple images per product to completely display and sell the product. If a product has multiple parts or multiple views make sense, take the time and put the additional images on the page. This helps sell the product, shows that you care about the product, shows that you know about the product and this will in turn provide you with more opportunities to have the customer use YOUR site for their research on the product and raise your odds of selling that product to the customer.

To summerize, spend time using high quality images for your products. If your product would benefit from multiple images to display it well, then spend the extra time putting those images with your product.

Quality images = Quality website!!