Search Strategies That Are Industry Specific (Part 2)
Watch out for duplicate content issues – e.g. is a search result page pointing to the same content as a static page.
Where there are blank pages turning up you can create a script to detect these and fire off an alert email to the relevant team telling them to create content for this page. I like this idea.
Use JS/CSS # solution for paginated pages – all pages are loaded as one page, avoids duplicate content cannibalisation for page 2,3,4 etc.
To make your listings stand out, use microformats on vacancy pages, specifically aimed at recruitment is H-Resume microformat (currently only available in beta).
David Fairhurst from Intelligent Retail – Retail SEO
David starts with the importance of understanding your visitors when planning your ecommerce navigation structure – most of the time users don’t want to be funnelled, they want to get straight to the product they’re looking for.The classic model of a complicated tree structure with categories and 4-5 branches before you even get to the product you are after is not the best way to do this. To SEO this kind of structure you need to spend a lot of time injecting unique content onto each of these pages – a big time drain. This also creates a “content vacuum” where you have pages that just have links to other pages.These are minimal value pages to search engines, especially when you consider that Google track individual bounce rates. These funnelling pages also don’t allow much cross-selling – high dropout rate, even up to 90%, and in the worst cases people start using internal Search instead – one step away from going elsewhere.
Instead – give visitors immediate access to exactly where they want to go – e.g. mega menus with loads of categories in the dropdown – sites like diy.com (B&Q) have switched to this. This gives you content heavy categories as standard and better opportunities for cross selling, but still options for refinements.Therefore the bottom line equates to less clicks equals less abandoment.
Of course if you choose the right company for your web design, they will always advise you on the best methods for your particular website
Tags: seo, web design