SEO: Nothing else is more important!

No matter how cool your site is or how great your prices are, if people can't find you in the search engines your site is going nowhere.  That great looking Flash site your neighbor's kid built for you might have dazzled you and the people you showed it to, but in reality it's working against you.  And don't think your company Facebook page is going to make up for that lost traffic.  Like it or not, search is still king.

Most online stores never reach their full potential because of this single area - if the search engines can't index your pages, customers will never find you!  Having dozens of our own e-commerce sites (more about our history here), we know a thing or two about SEO and it was a primary factor when we designed the Cartooga platform.

Unfortunately, there is so much bad information out there about search engine optimization, people often find themselves going in the wrong direction without even knowing it.  While there are reputable SEO firms out there that focus purely on content-driven solutions, most of the self-proclaimed "SEO's" focus on back-links or doorway pages.  Back-links are a method of tricking the search engines into thinking your website is relevant to a specific search term, even if that term doesn't appear anywhere on your pages.  This is usually done through a network of sites owned or maintained by the SEO, paid links, or by posting on blogs and forums.  Doorway pages are pages that are designed to attract the search engines, then redirect the user to the real page you want them to see.  These tactics will hurt you in the long run - and worse, could get you banned!  Getting banned from Google, Yahoo, or Bing is a virtual death sentence to your site.  No one will be able to find you and other sites won't want to link to you out of fear of getting their site banned.

Our approach:

1. Provide a platform that's naturally conducive to good search results.
   This means things like page titles and url's should be descriptive of the page's content - if your product is called "Widget", then your page title and meta info should reflect that, and your URL should be /widget.html - not /cart.php?productid=1234
   
   
2. Make it easy to create content-based pages.
   If you're writing content for your site but don't want to deal with making web pages, our WYSIWYG editor gives you the best of both worlds.  Just create a new page and start typing - the content you enter will appear inside the selected wrapper, and blend right into your pages.
   
   
3. Keep the code simple.
   If you view the source of a Cartooga-hosted store, you might be surprised at how clean the code is.  Our designs are pure CSS layouts with a low code-to-content ratio.
   
   

Another fun fact...

Did you know that most people don't type your web address into the address bar in their browser?  More than 80% of surfers will type your company name or domain name into the search box and then just click the first result.  This means that people who got your web address from a mailing, business card, or even those you spoke to directly are likely to "search for your site" without even realizing it.  What happens when they type in your company name, and another site comes up on top instead?  Congratulations, you just paid to market your competitor.  This is just one of the many reasons why this topic is so important. If you aren't in the search engines, you don't exist.

If you're looking for more advanced optimization for your site, or content-writers to help give you a boost, talk to us.  We'll put you in touch with a real SEO expert, with access to a team of web-savvy content writers who will take your site to the next level.