There are several good steps you can and should take to improve the seo for your ChannelAdvisor store pages and categories. This is part two of a two part article where I first outlined some steps you can’t take from within the store administration pages that are items you probably would like to implement in good seo practice, but really can’t for one reason or another, What SEO Steps You Can’t Take With ChannelAdvisor. I will now take a look at what you can do to keep your store’s SERP as high up as possible (titled: SEO Steps For a Better ChannelAdvisor Stores).
I realized that some may not be that familiar with using a ChannelAdvisor Store itself, even when using the products that put in place for eBay. Most of ChannelAdvisor’s business is in the auction management software area, so if you haven’t tried their store services as well it might be worth a look. It is another channel opportunity for those who don’t want to be so dependent on eBay for all their sales. For many online retailers, this is the key, finding alternative channels to selling on eBay so if an eBay crash comes your business isn’t dead. Infopia is another company looking at these types of alternative channels to eBay, embracing multi channel – cross channel selling companies (I will review their services in full in a later article) to go beyond eBay.
For many PowerSellers, eBay is just the beginning. With Infopia’s Marketplace Manager, you can drastically increase your sales by pushing your products out to more online marketplaces and create a multi-channel, online selling strategy.
ChannelAdvisor also has several other very useful products but this is in specific reference to the storefront. So, assuming you have opened a ChannelAdvisor Store, there are some needed steps to get the most out of your eCommerce storefront.
Customize Store Name and Logo
This would be the first stop. Log into your administration panel and click on the menu at the top for “store”, then go to “store name & logo” and you will see several fields explained below. This is usually completed during the setup of the store, but double check, you may have only put in your url store name. You will see several different boxes, store name and url, logo, and html page information. Make sure all these fields are filled in, this is where all the meta data is taken from when your index page is shown.
Store Name
If you are choosing your the store name, keep is short. Use your company name but don’t use something like “my store and all my products where you will love to shop store”. It will be used in many different places on your store, so think about it like a good domain name. If you have a company name just place it here. Think about dashes or underlines ahead of time, changing this after the fact is not going to be an easy move, especially when your customers have bookmarked where to find you.
Store URL and Domain Forward
Store url is what domain name you are going to have, so follow the above rules and all that you know about good domain names, keep it short, easy on dashes, try not to use mis-spelled words if possible, in general, use your company name or a version thereof. If you have an existing domain name you can use the same thing here since it will render the url from within the servers from ChannelAdvisor.
There is also a link where you can make any existing domain name url’s forward to the ChannelAdvisor url you just created. You will have to change the name servers on your hosting company so proceed with a little caution. It is not difficult but it does require a little more than just filling out a keyword. Using their forward will render your own domain name on the storefront and is certainly a good option if you can do that.
Store Title, Meta Description, and Meta Keywords
This is probably the most important set of fields, and probably the most commonly left blank. These fields will be visible to customers, show in the search engine results, and help in your rankings. Your competition is probably using these fields and if you are not they will have an unneeded advantage over your store.
Store Title
This is what shows on the top of each page viewed by your customers. Not only that, it is what will show as the first line in the search engine results when someone does a search on Google or Yahoo. It should usually include your store name and a few details about the products you sell or your slogan or tag line. Make it descriptive but not too long. When someone clicks through to a category page it will show all the information on the categories and also the store title. Using ChannelAdvisor as an example their title reads: ChannelAdvisor – The Leader in Online Channel Management Solutions and Services.
Meta Description and Meta Keywords
The meta description is the most important field on this screen to complete in my opinion. The meta description is what will show as the first line or two of the search engine results and are often given more search engine relevance then the keywords themselves. Keeping with the ChannelAdvisor example, look at the screen shot below. The first few lines are the description of their services. Use full short sentences with good keywords, but don’t use just keywords only. Notice the quote below, it has some good keywords but is not just keywords separated by commas.
ChannelAdvisor combines best practices, innovative software and integrated technology to help retailers maximize their profits across multiple e-commerce…
The keywords are just what they say, a set of keywords that best describes your store products or services. Pick these carefully and do not use the same word more than once. Use 10 keywords at the most, more and it starts to make the other words a little less relevant.
Manage Categories
This would be the next big thing to complete in the store administration pages. This will be a little more time consuming if it has not be completed before and if you have already established categories. Go to your admin console and click on the menu for “store” then “manage categories” and it will take you to the category pages.
Category Names
If you have already created your categories (and sub-categories) you will see a list of the categories on this page. If you haven’t created them yet, use short one or two word category names, these will be used in the url in your store and should be something keyword friendly. Keep the caps in mind too. Either will work but what ever you use will be a permalink from that point on. If you create a category with a blank space in the name it will render on the url in ChannelAdvisor as “%20″ which is not something all that great for the search engine bots.
A category name called Non Fiction will show up on the url address line as /mystorename/Non%20Fiction/ and the category name called Non-Fiction will show as /mystorename/Non-Fiction/ and it works the same for all the sub-categories down the line. Use three or four letter words with spaces all the way down the line and it will not look so great. A screen shot example from ChannelAdvisor’s case studies on their website shows a url with categories that have spaces used in the names along with the subcategories. You can see the results below.
Images, Keywords, and Descriptions
Next will be a short description and long description, basically meta keywords and meta description, sort of. Use the same rules as listed above for these two items, keeping in mind the self imposed 10 keyword limit and perhaps show a few less on the categories. When you enter this information it will show up on the title page just after the main page title, so if you use a big list of keywords the title will look a little strange.
It may take a little time to put all this information into each category but it will improve the quality of each category listing and should improve search engine results.
The steps listed here are some very basic seo steps for your ChannelAdvisor store, but they are needed. If your competition is not using them you will have a little ahead, but they probably are and you don’t want to be a little behind. These steps can also be applied across several different sales channels, including eBay and Amazon. eBay in particular allows their store users to adjust the keywords of each category, but not quite to the extent that ChannelAdvisor allows.
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If you operate a ChannelAdvisor store as part of your service with them, there are some good basic SEO steps that you can take to improve your traffic results that do not require a high technical skill level and will not take to long to implement. If you are not familiar with ChannelAdvisor, their service is mainly an integration software between multiple sales channels like eBay, Amazon, and even in to some of the online feed channels like Shopping.com. Their tag line reads:
ChannelAdvisor combines best practices, innovative software and integrated technology to help retailers maximize their profits across multiple e-commerce channels – including marketplaces like eBay, Amazon.com and Overstock.com; comparison shopping sites like Shopping.com, Shopzilla and Pricegrabber.com; and across all the major search engines
and for the most part they do a good job integrating different channels into their software. They also just purchased Marketworks (see ChannelAdvisor to Acquire Marketworks), one of their main competitors, so the company is a large force in the online eCommerce marketplace, but there are always those wondering if and when eBay will swallow up this auction management software company. One would not think so any time soon with press like, ChannelAdvisor Adds Over Ninety New Customers to Rapidly Growing Retail Base, but who knows. eBay has deep pockets and some price has to be right, and eBay actually owns a smaller share of the company already. You always have some bloggers speculating about the prospect as well, (see 10 Reasons Why eBay Will Eventually Acquire ChannelAdvisor and eBay Buys AfterBuy! Is ChannelAdvisor Next?), but that is for another subject.
One thing that has been lacking in the past is their ability to automatically render store functions in a SEO friendly manner, and there are still some of those issues existing today, but there are steps you can take to improve what they have put in place. This will be a two part article, I will first outline some steps you can’t take from within the store administration pages that are items you probably would like to implement in good seo practice, but really can’t here for one reason or another (titled: SEO Steps You Can’t Take With ChannelAdvisor). I will then take a look at what you can and should do to keep your store’s SERP as high up as possible (titled: SEO Steps For a Better ChannelAdvisor Store).
Many of these steps listed below are going to be short comings for just about any server hosted store site, these are just specific to ChannelAdvisor as I have tested them specifically on the ChannelAdvisor platform for this article.
What SEO Steps You Can’t Take With ChannelAdvisor
Some changes just have to be made on the corporate level and aren’t an option at this time for their end users. [On a side note, I do have to say that ChannelAdvisor has always been quite open to making changes and improvements. You can actually get a hold of this company, offer a suggestion or improvement, and I have found that many times that they will add it to their service. A recent example of this would be the integration with Amazon Stores (not the Amazon Marketplace sellers but Webstore by Amazon two totally different selling platforms) and their store systems. Scot Wingo (President, CEO, Board Member and Co-Founder) has often led the charge to fight against correct some of the short comings of the eBay system, making eBay sellers more successful, and he has now taken this into other aspects of Internet eCommerce channels.]
There are some things that are not so SEO friendly on the ChannelAdvisor stores platform and we can’t do anything about those, but it is a good idea to know what they are so we can adjust for them where we can.
No Access to Adjust a Robots.txt File
This is really no surprise, but you can’t access or add any robots.txt file to tell Google or Yahoo what to disallow on your store. I only mention this because it is pretty standard to address this on a root level domain that might give you access. ChannelAdvisor stores are run from within directories of their servers so this just isn’t possible (i.e. the url will be http://stores.channeladvisor.com/your-store-name). Robots.txt files really only work on the root level anyway, so to implement something like this ChannelAdvisor would have to make some global changes.
It does HAVE a robots.txt file that it reads on the store html code, but as far as I know it can not be modified and it reads all=index,follow which just tells the bots to follow everything. It isn’t as big of an issue with a ChannelAdvisor store as it would be with something like a wordpress blog that generates a ton of duplicate content, but I would still like to be able to make changes to it accordingly. With that said, I don’t think the core ChannelAdvisor store generates a ton of duplicate content.
No Way to Render URL’s in a Permalink Structure
It isn’t really called a permalink structure, a better way to say it might be that you can’t make seo friendly url’s for the end product sku’s. ChannelAdvisor does do this on the category level, but not on the sku level. In this case, eBay has them beat in their Prostores setup. Prostores isn’t perfect either, but it is better that the dreaded “?” question mark at the end of the address (or anywhere in there for that matter). In the same accord, they don’t use the category structure to create the url, all sku’s are listed in the “items” list like: http://stores.channeladvisor/your-store-name/Items/12345?
Instead what is should do is render the category and item name in a keyword type format like /category/sports/baseball/gloves or something of the sort, but it doesn’t, so just be aware of it. I have two screen shots below that show the difference between eBay’s Prostores way of doing it and ChannelAdvisor, neither are perfect but I would rather have the keyword structure.
Another quick observation from the screen shots is that the url taken from prostores url is a dot com name and the ChannelAdvisor url is a server hosted name. Now ChannelAdvisor does support your own url by listed a forward (you have to change the name servers on your domain account), but not in the same way, it is much different, almost something you can’t compare because Prostores is a platform that uses your own domain account, ChannelAdvisor is not. They do have a structure in place for forwards, but it isn’t like using your own name. Like I mentioned, neither are perfect. All those “,” and “-” marks render a % when clicked through, which isn’t great either.
No Good Way to Customize with .css Stylesheets
One standard of good SEO is to use proper and up to date html / xhtml code on your site, like no font tags, center, bolds, and all those things that belong in a stylesheet file. To make these stylesheet type changes to customize your store you just have to put the stylesheet itself in the header code on the main store page (which isn’t all that easy to figure out how to do in itself). This does work but it isn’t a great seo practice and it puts a bunch of non Web 2.0, non-valid xhtml code on your store page.
Doesn’t Make Good Use of Headings and Sub-Headings
This is just a personal preference I guess but I would like to see a good use of heading tags on the front store page. There are several featured items that could use the <h3> or <h4> heading tags and it would show very nicely in the search engines.
Skewed Traffic Results and Information
This is something that you really just deal with on any server hosted store pages where you are under the url address of another company name. When you try to look at your rankings for Technorati, Alexa, or Google’s indexed pages you get the results of the root domain, depending on how you look at it. I looked up a few stores and it gave me an Alexa rank of stores.channeladvisor.com not the actual store page, no surprise there.
This is also the case when you go to put a good traffic rating process in place like Google Analytics. You can get it done and working, but it isn’t the easiest thing to do and if you are using forwards from your own domain names it can be a little more complicated and confusing as to what results you actually want to look at.
Don’t despair, coming in the next article I will show you those all important steps you can take within your ChannelAdvisor store site. They do make go use of the meta tags and other good seo practices.
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When you logged on to ChannelAdvisor this morning you might have been greeted by a special notice about an inventory bug that was causing the quantities of SKU’s in the inventory management module to be inflated. ChannelAdvisor says they are working on reverting the inventories back to what they were on Sunday October 14th before the problem was found. I am not sure what all that means just yet but those with a ChannelAdvisor store should keep up with this issue, it could effect the accuracy of your inventory.
The exact post from ChannelAdvisor is listed below, but the most current information being posted right now is on their forum site. It looks like it was only an issue with inventory items that were using multiple attributes with their products, so it might not effect as many people as the release of the issue stated. Still, Matt with ChannelAdvisor customer service is stating:
I would recommend that you do double check inventory counts at your convenience to make sure there are not any lingering issues going into the next few weeks/months.
As Howard noted below, this bug actually has been around for a while, however it was so uncommon it wasn’t known to be an actual issue at the time. With the release on Saturday, some back-end database maintenance caused this to become widespread very quickly.
I think stores with very large quantities of inventory would have a very hard time even addressing this since doing a quick count of 20,000 sku items is just about impossible. Hopefully it not make a big impact on the inventory counts and on hand inventories will match as closely as they can. ChannelAdvisor seems to be interacting on the forum frequently to answer any questions shop owners might have about the inventory module and the best alternative right now would probably to make a spot check of a few items to double check your on hand quantities of inventory with what your ChannelAdvisor store inventory shows.
The Original Message is below as there is no permalink associated with the message (as far as I can tell right now):
Early this afternoon our engineering team uncovered an issue that has caused the quantity of several SKUs to become inflated within the Channel Management module of Merchant.
We are currently working to revert these inventory quantities back to what they should have been after the incident took place on Sunday, 10/14. Any SKUs that you have manually fixed will not be changed by our updates.
We have made a post on the SSC Forums and will be updating that thread with further information.
http://ssc.channeladvisor.com/forums/viewtopic.php?p=2069#2069
Rick Watson
Director of Product Management
I will post an update to this issue if it seems to become a large problem or other important information comes up.
