When I was first asked to help with search engine optimization on a client’s website that is through a 3rd party shopping cart I was hesitant and told them I would have to log in and see what it was like because I came across quite a few limitations in other one.

It is safe to say that I was pleased with this companies shopping cart, so this article is both a review and a helpful guide to help optimize your web site for the search engines.

Upon logging in I was very happy to see that you have the option to edit the HTML code directly to help customize the look of your site. BONUS! If I needed to provide a link back to a partnership for link building it can be done quite easily for a web designer and an employee who is computer savvy. At first I couldn’t find where to upload custom graphics so I just put in a link to one from my website, but later one I found out that you can upload images to a folder instead. (Thanks to the online help that Network Solutions provide.) They also have a manual for you to read and a forum with other users to get in contact with. This is a big BONUS for me, since these are very valuable resources to use.

Since I did the keyword research and the list of keyword phrases that they wanted to rank for (The ones searched for the most with the least amount of competition.) I was able to optimize the site for the aforementioned phrases. Since title tags, headings, etc. are still fairly important in the search engines it was good to be able to do this.

Next in line was optimizing the products and I was pleasantly surprised to see that the shopping cart has the option to create a custom URL (website address) for the product, title tag, meta description, and meta keywords tag under the SEO tab. Although the meta keywords tag has been useless for years it only takes a half of a second to past information in there so I didn’t mind. However the custom URL, title, and meta description was well worth it!

Under the general tab of the product you have the option of doing a short description and long description which is also helpful but not as much as adjusting info under the SEO tab. The advanced tab helps the company with adding special messages for shopping and so forth. The gallery tab allows you to upload product images as well. Don’t forget to rename the file name to the product name and remember that Google Image Search takes this into consideration as well as links pointing to and from it, and the surrounding text around the image. You can read more about this from my article, "Search Engine Placement using Google Image Search". (Just Google it and you will find it online.) For a good customer experience there is a personalization tab where you can customize the products with questions such as, "What name do you want embroidered on this shirt?" and other similar questions to help the customer out. If you are interested in Search Engine Marketing then the related products tab is for you! For example on the drill product page you can suggest drill bits as a related product and help increase sales. So far I have not seen where this can be done automatically showing that, "People who have bought this have also bought…" but perhaps this will be done in the future or someone can tell me if it is indeed available on their shopping cart.

I will talk about one more thing before I run out of space. This shopping cart has the ability to create product feeds for Google Base (Now called Merchant Center), Shopzilla, and Shopping.com. Since the shopping cart already knows their specific rules that helps out a lot when submitting to these places.

In my opinion I give Network Solutions Shopping Cart both thumbs up!

Sincerely,

Michael Rock