Saturday, June 15, 2013

E-commerce Platforms w/ SEO to Go!

So you want to sell products on the Internet? Years back you would need a team of developers and your own custom CMS system to launch your very own Internet store. Oh how times have changed! These days, it is relatively simple to have your very own web store full of chachkies and baubles to display and sell to the world. But, how will those dedicated customers find your storefront? That's where SEO comes in, it's important to optimize your website accordingly. It's even more important to pick an e-commerce SaaS solution that can fit your business needs. So, does one e-commerce platform have better search engine optimization than the others? Take a look at these solutions and find out:  

Magento: A longstanding major player in the ecommerce revolution, many big name retail sites use Magento for  the system does offer the ability to customize URLs to search engine friendly formats and modify <head> data extensively, it isn’t that user-friendly from a coding perspective.  If you plan on making advanced SEO modifications beyond what can be accomplished with the platform’s built-in feature you’ll need to know how to code or hire a developer.

Volusion: Volusion is one of the most widely used internet retail platforms out there because it offers a variety of different pricing levels to accommodate internet retailers at all stages of business growth. Volusion has multiple SEO functions that is a step above other platforms in terms of price and service.

BigCommerceFrom an SEO standpoint, BigCommerce offers all of the same built-in options as Volusion, with a few key differentiators:
  • H1 tags.  One weakness on Volusion’s part is the way H1 tags are handled.  Within Big Commerce, H1 tags are incorporated on the page level, allowing merchants to obtain an SEO benefit from incorporating product-related keywords into this important area.
  • Built-in nofollow support.  Another element that’s missing from Volusion’s service is built in support for nofollow tags, which allows merchants to control how PageRank flows between internal and external links on their pages.  This tag is incredibly useful when it comes to SEO, which gives the Big Commerce platform another advantage over Volusion.

ShopifyShopify isn’t quite as strong as Volusion or Big Commerce in terms of SEO because it doesn’t offer built-in support for the editing of the robots.txt file for the creation of public sitemaps. However, Shopify's backend UX is much cleaner and easier to use. Shopify also offers mobile optimization and an integrated blogging service. Running a blog is great for SEO because it allows retailers to build relationships with their customers and adds to keyword exposure.


*Other free solutions to check out: Zen Cart, OpenCart & OS Commerce


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