The Business Exchange Swindon & Wiltshire Edition 31: June/July 2017 | Page 21

TECHNOLOGY REVVED UP INFINITY NATION’S TOP TIPS FOR EFFECTIVE SEO Digital marketing agency Infinity Nation works across the South West helping businesses grow online. Here they give us the findings of their latest research. If your ecommerce website is the lifeblood of your business, you’re doing things right - the majority of well-known retailers either trade or market online. With the development of the digital market and the growing competition in consumer industries, the race to the top (in this case Google) is fierce, and only the strongest players will survive. We have conducted extensive research and discovered that over 70% of large “big brand” e-commerce websites have technical issues. We’ve put together a list of the five most common technical errors on e-commerce websites that can affect SEO in 2017. We have included one of these in the following tips: DUPLICATE CONTENT QUICK TIP In 2017 duplicate content should be obsolete, however we still see many websites that have not dealt with tackling that problem. This is usually unintentional - many brand owners/SEO teams are simply unaware of it. The main culprits for duplicate content are as follows: If you are using manufacturers’ copy, or suspect your content may be duplicate, the easiest way to check is to highlight the passage of text on your website, and carry out a Google search to see if it appears anywhere else. You can also use online plagiarism checkers, a great tool to try is Copyscape & Siteliner. • • • • Metadata (page titles, meta descriptions, page copy) Filter and search pages Using manufacturers’ copy Product variants WHY We’ve noted that over 70% of e-commerce websites we’ve analysed have all had duplicate content in some form, relating to the above. In most cases, these can be easily addressed with best practice canonicalisation, meta level NOINDEX directives, and robots.txt crawl blocking. Eliminating duplicate content meets Google’s criteria and provides your site with targeted traffic through your optimised pages matching searcher intent. It also ensures you avoid any future Google penalties. For more help and advice on technical SEO for e-commerce websites, a full copy of our top 5 tips or for further insight on how to go about checking your site for technical quick win areas, please feel free to contact us. For more info: www.infinitynation.co.uk [email protected] 01793 238697 WE CRAFT ENGAGING EXPERIENCES INSPIRED BY DATA www.infinitynation.com 01793 238 697 @toinfinity THE BUSINESS EXCHANGE 2017 21