7 Must-Know SEO Tips For Volusion

Volusion is one of the most reliable and respected online shopping carts on the web. They make it simple and fast to get a beautiful online store up and running (a lot faster than you might think). But when it comes time to market your new ecommerce store, well, that’s where things can get a bit tricky.

Since most Volusion e-retailers are not SEO (search engine optimization) or online marketing experts, some SEO tips for Volusion can help you do-it-yourself and get your SEO in motion for your Volusion store while evading having to shell out hefty sums of cash to pay an SEO expert to do these same things for you.

To get started, you will want to make sure that the URLs of your products, nested content, etc., are visible to the major search engines. To access the menu that you will require, start at the Volusion Dashboard. From here, navigate to: Marketing > SEO > Enable Search Engine Friendly URLs. Assure that the canonical links box and the SEO friendly settings have both been enabled.

Doing this will update your URLs to include the primary keywords, in the URL, of the parent page (the page that all of your products are nested under). It will, similarly, also create friendly URLS that use the primary keywords of any sub-categorized and nested pages. This is one of the simplest, surest ways that you can gain more organic traffic from your Volusion store, simply from checking these two boxes.

Head to the backend of your Volusion store. Take a look at the Search Engine Optimization menu. Here you can update the canonical meta descriptions of your pages.

You will want to assure that the following elements are in place:

• Meta tag title: Make sure you use the primary keyword of the page at least once, and focus on long tail (two or more words) keywords to help get the best traction. Stay on par for the topic or products being offered and limit character count to 70 characters; the maximum amount displayed in the Google search results.
• Meta tag description: Here you will want to enter a short description about the page you’re optimizing, making sure to include the primary keyword at least once. Don’t exceed 155-160 characters, as this is the limit set forth by the search engines; it’s the text that is displayed under the link when the results are shown by the search engines.
• Use long tail keywords: these are keywords that include at least two or more keywords, and are less competitive and therefore are easier to rank. A great tool for finding the best long tail keywords to use with your Volusion store is called Hit Tail – plans start at about $9.95 per month.

Here’s where you will need to roll up your sleeves and get dirty. For every single product that you are listing in your Volusion store, you will want to incorporate unique meta title and descriptions and unique long tail keywords.

The same goes for when you add a product photo to Volusion. You can update these fields with a unique title, description and tags for your photo. It will take some time, but if you spend the time doing this right away, those product pages will ultimately – at least many of them – rank for certain long tail keywords.

For example, a picture of a blue sun dress can be labeled “cute blue sun dress” and titled as such with an ample description in the meta field. If you name the file the keyword that you want, before you upload it, this will shorten the manual data entry that’s involved.

One of the best SEO tips for Volusion that can be offered is that good SEO takes time and fast SEO is usually not good. Google has to scan trillions of pages online and index them each time around. This method and process takes time. It can take anywhere from three to six months to see ranking results for your efforts. Consider using a program like Moz to track your keywords and index results so you are always in the know.

This method is only advised for advanced users who are well familiarized with HTML coding and SEO. You can use the “HTML Overrides” to place custom overrides into your page’s HTML code that can help your SEO rankings. Again, only use this function if you are an advanced user with HTML coding experience and SEO knowledge.

One of the commonest SEO problems found with ecommerce stores are broken links and broken 301 redirects. Make sure that all your 301 redirects are tested, functional and valid. Furthermore, test all of your pages and make certain that there are no broken links. You can do this by accessing “Config Variables” from the Volusion settings menu. In this menu you can select “301 Redirects” and make any appropriate changes.

There is one powerful tool that tops the list of SEO tips for Volusion: quality content. Search engines are looking for relative, niche, authoritative and quality content these days over almost any other factor. Provide this to the search engines and you will be rewarded with more rankings, more traffic and more sales. What quality content could you add to each page, image and meta description to help improve your rankings?

Last but not least, blog like it is going out of style. Blogging adds a continuous stream of unique content to your website, which helps you gain more search engine rankings. When users find your blog to be useful, they’ll even share it with others, helping you gain social signals and traffic, two pertinent factors to getting better online rankings.

For even more insight, take a look at this awesome infographic detailing SEO tips for Volusion that was created just for you by our partner, Volusion.