Many ecommerce sites have session IDs or user IDs in the URL of their pages. This tends to cause either the pages to not get indexed by search engines like Google, or to cause the pages to get included many times over and over, clogging up the index with duplicates (this phenonemon is called a “spider trap”). Furthermore, having all these duplicates in the index causes the site’s importance score, known as PageRank, to be spread out across all these duplicates (this phenonemon is called “PageRank dilution”).
Ironically, Googlebot regularly gets caught in a spider trap while spidering one of its own sites - the Google Store (where they sell branded caps, shirts, umbrellas, etc.). The URLs of the store are not very search engine friendly: they and are overly complex, and include session IDs. This has resulted in 3,440 duplicate copies of the Accessories page and 3,420 copies of the Office page, for example.
If you have a dynamic, database-driven website and you want to avoid your own site becoming a spider trap, you’ll need to keep your URLs simple. Try to avoid having any ?, &, or = characters in the URLs. And try to keep the number of “parameters” to a minimum. With URLs and search engine friendliness, less is more.
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Our favorite tips for online catalogers: automatic spell correction on search queries, breadcrumb navigation, keyword themes, top 10 lists, open source, 1-click ordering, and more…
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In an interview with MultiChannelMerchant, Stephan Spencer had this to say to the announcement that Yahoo! would stop using Google’s technology in favor of its own search engine, and what it would mean for catalogers.
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Many creative strategies are emerging to help merchants tap into this dynamic new search marketplace. As search becomes more embedded into consumer buying behavior, Google’s success provides both a framework and a reason for thinking about search engine friendliness as an integral part of Web design - rather than as an afterthought.
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If consumers find e-commerce appealing because it helps them find and buy products easily and in less time, then your Web site is no longer the shortest distance between points A and B: Google is. This means that the notion of an e-commerce site itself becomes entirely fragmented, as every page becomes a potential entry point and selling opportunity.
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Why did Van Dyke’s, a South Dakota supplier of equipment to animal trophy-makers and collectors and a subsidiary of Cabelas, chose Netconcepts to overhaul its website and ecommerce strategy?
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“Thanks to Netconcepts, in the first six months, we improved our Google search results 300 percent and increased Google traffic 500 percent.”
