Need Meta Tag and Search Engine Advice

[Guest]

Hello.

Finally got my custom shirt site finished and have even had my first sale! I'm still tweaking and working on the meta tag and SEO info. I'm using the SEO mod, which is great, but I could still use some advice.

I've found alot of great info from forum posts and sincerely appreciate those who posted it. In several posts, many of you stress the importance of putting keywords in the page descriptions and I have done that for all of my shirt designs (which I have made subcats). After reading how important text content is to search engines, I think I'm going to add text descriptions for each of my other categories and subcats as well. A good idea? Or not worth the effort?

Since many of my designs are licensed artwork from noted wildlife artists, I'm also thinking about adding anchor links to the names of those artists who have websites. Should I get permission from the individual artists before I do this? I've done this in my Ebay listings for quite some time and never got permission and never had any problems. In fact, I had an artist's assistant email me once, thanking me for acknowledging the artist and putting the link to the his gallery in my listing.

Also, is it necessary to add plurals for keywords (t-shirt, t-shirts, sweatshirt, sweatshirts, etc)? Where do search engines draw the line between keywords and keyword spamming?

Any advice or suggestions would be greatly appreciated.

Cedar Creek Trading Post

[roban]

I make my living doing SEO and I can say that meta tags don't hold the weight they once used to. Content using your key words and phrases are much more SEO-worthy these days. Plurals are not mandatory but well-researched key words should be your goal. Make sure that your images have 'alt' tags and that those tags reflect your site and key words/descriptions whether they contain the artist or not. This is all 'organic SEO' and will work for your site as it has worked for others.

Use the Overture Keyword Selector Tool to find out which words and phrases are the most searched for.

[kinetic]

Number one is stop redirecting your site from site root to /shop/ redirects will get you penalized by search engines...

Only if your site root contains other content or a different section to your whole domain should you put your store under a subfolder.

from 15 Minute SEO

"The <Refresh> metatag is one way to redirect visitors from your site to another. Only do it if you have recently migrated your site to a new domain and you need to temporarily redirect visitors. When used for a long time, the <refresh> metatag is regarded as unethical practice and this can hurt your ratings. In any case, redirecting through 301 is much better."

http://www.webconfs.com/15-minute-seo.php

I would also add that if you havent got Estelles free category descriptions mod that you do so

it has been shown over and over again that e-commerce sites w/o content in their categories will do less than those that carry good solid content even newegg was in this boat and hired a marketing firm to write content for their categories and it increased their sites traffic for things like hard drives

while meta keywords and meta descriptions dont hold the weight they used to they are still important and one shouldnt stuff your keyword list keep it short and sweet and relevant ketywords come from well written content

also the number 1 thing for SEO is backlinks

1 way links from other sites to yours not reciprocol links but one way links I would ask each of these artist whose artwork you are licensed for to link to YOU

and always remember if you are hoping to live off traffic generated by search engine traffic you will starve

you must do other traditional forms of advertising from your signature on forums where allowed to email signatures to print advertising and if you can afford it radio

Good luck!!!

Kinetic

[Guest]

I make my living doing SEO and I can say that meta tags don't hold the weight they once used to. Content using your key words and phrases are much more SEO-worthy these days. Plurals are not mandatory but well-researched key words should be your goal. Make sure that your images have 'alt' tags and that those tags reflect your site and key words/descriptions whether they contain the artist or not. This is all 'organic SEO' and will work for your site as it has worked for others.

Use the Overture Keyword Selector Tool to find out which words and phrases are the most searched for.

Thank you very much for your reply, Roban, and thanks for your other posts on the forum regarding SEO. I have several of them bookmarked.

[Guest]

Number one is stop redirecting your site from site root to /shop/ redirects will get you penalized by search engines...

Only if your site root contains other content or a different section to your whole domain should you put your store under a subfolder.

from 15 Minute SEO

"The <Refresh> metatag is one way to redirect visitors from your site to another. Only do it if you have recently migrated your site to a new domain and you need to temporarily redirect visitors. When used for a long time, the <refresh> metatag is regarded as unethical practice and this can hurt your ratings. In any case, redirecting through 301 is much better."

http://www.webconfs.com/15-minute-seo.php

I would also add that if you havent got Estelles free category descriptions mod that you do so

it has been shown over and over again that e-commerce sites w/o content in their categories will do less than those that carry good solid content even newegg was in this boat and hired a marketing firm to write content for their categories and it increased their sites traffic for things like hard drives

while meta keywords and meta descriptions dont hold the weight they used to they are still important and one shouldnt stuff your keyword list keep it short and sweet and relevant ketywords come from well written content

also the number 1 thing for SEO is backlinks

1 way links from other sites to yours not reciprocol links but one way links I would ask each of these artist whose artwork you are licensed for to link to YOU

and always remember if you are hoping to live off traffic generated by search engine traffic you will starve

you must do other traditional forms of advertising from your signature on forums where allowed to email signatures to print advertising and if you can afford it radio

Good luck!!!

Kinetic

Thank you very much for your reply, Kinetic. I got rid of the meta refresh and replaced it with an "enter store" link that goes to my /shop site. Will that type of redirect also cause the search engines to penalize me? I will probably move my site to root. I've got to check with Estelle before I move it because I purchased some of her mods that have third-party keys and I want to make sure I can transfer them.

I do have Estelle's category description mod. I made each of my designs a separate subcat and added a text description for each one. I'm in the process of adding descriptions for all of my categories and subcats.

Thanks for the tip of seeing if the artists will give me a link. Since I link to their sites in my Ebay listings, maybe some of them will give my site a link...plus they receive money from their licensing agreements with the design company every time I buy their designs, so it would help them as well. As far as other link sources, how do the search engines react to the shopping sites, such as shopzilla, dealtime, buy.com, etc.?

Thanks,

Jan

[Guest webicon]

Have you submitted a Google Site map and Google Base feed?

These are free and I have found that since I have been submitting these regularly I have much improved results...

[Guest]

Have you submitted a Google Site map and Google Base feed?

These are free and I have found that since I have been submitting these regularly I have much improved results...

Thanks for the reply, webicon. So far I haven't been able to get a Google feed to go through. I made a change to my admin/products/index file that I found on the forum and have submitted another feed, but I don't have much hope of it being accepted. Several of the fields that Google says are required did not show up in my download file. I emailed Google for help on how to add the fields myself and I'm waiting for a reply. I've used Google Base for a long time on my Ebay Store items and never had any problems, but I used Google's Store Connector to upload my files. I may try adding a single item to Google Base and see what happens.

I haven't had time to do a Google Site Map yet, but will try that as well.

Thanks,

Jan