If youre ready to embark on a search engine optimization campaign, youll want to take a close look at your competitors. Either theyll be ahead of you in the SEO world or youll detect their deficiencies and rush right past them in terms of search engine visibility.
Here are 8 key considerations.
1. Page Titles
See what kind of page titles competitors use. Do they only include their name or a page name How much do they vary Is there a different page title for every page Do they seem to contain reasonable search terms Are they dominated by keywords or marketing messages
2. META Data
Do they do a good job of providing keyword-rich META descriptions What balance do they strike between mentioning the companys value or special offers and conveying core keywords
3. Quality of Content
How much copy is apparent in each page Is there any emphasis on the visible text Can you even count 250 keywords on critical pages How are the headers organized Does the company take advantage of text navigation
4. Robots.Text File
See what the Web site owners are telling the search engines. Are search engine spiders encouraged or discouraged by the directions listed in the robots.txt file
5. Link Building
Find out how many places are linking to the competitor. You may not have time to determine the quality of all of the links, but see how many they have compared to your Web site.
6. Saturation
Determine how many pages of the Web site have been indexed by the major search engines. How does each competitor compare to your efforts to provide relevant content that can be crawled by search engines
7. Site Design, Architecture and Technology
Is it professional How would you describe the design Is it SEO-friendly Does the site rely on static pages or dynamic content Are there frames or Flash with the familiar skip intro button
8. Rankings
As best you can, select 10 keywords and phrases and find out how well theyre ranking on the major search engines. Do they rank well Can you catch up
If you need help with the assessment or whether SEO even makes sense for you, start with our complimentary Keyword Marketplace Activity Report.
Michael Murray is vice president of Fathom SEO, a search engine optimization firm in Cleveland, Ohio. A member of SEMPO and OSEOP, the firm specializes in organic search engine marketing campaigns, permission-based marketing and other SEO services for clients across the US.
Miva Merchant 5 is the latest version of Miva and offers a revised look and feel and several new backend features than previous versions but the path to successful Miva search engine optimization is almost still the same.
Heres what stays the same!
*Good, revelant content
*Meta tags that dont overuse keywords
*Descriptive product titles with keywords
*Rich product descriptions with relevant content using keywords effectively
*Text links using keywords when applicable
*Sitemaps - for use on site and Google
*Good, relevant links pointing to your site
These basic search engine optimization steps will give you the foundation to have success in the search engines.
Heres what changes.
*No SEO modules currently available
*No ability to control meta tags thru OpenUI code
Since Miva 5 is the first major version release after the company was taken over by FindWhat all of the modules that have been available to previous Miva versions are not available for Miva 5 yet. This includes the SEO oriented modules but read nothing into that, it is not uncommon when a revised software version comes out that not all external pieces which were available for previous versions are available or compatible with the latest version.
This being said, we have already launched several stores using the Miva 5 platform and by using the steps above (and of course our 8 years of SEO experience) we have already had numerous front page rankings in all of the major engines with these stores. Does that mean the basic Miva 5 store is search engine friendly Not anymore so than previous versions, what it does mean is that engines now can spider dynamic sites much easier and if the optimization on those sites is done correctly than high rankings can be achieved.
Miva Merchant 5 is an exciting product so much so that we are banking on it as it will be the cart we focus on for all of our ecommerce clients. The Miva SEO modules will come and they will offer easier and more efficient ways to optimize your store but if you dont follow the basic steps listed earlier in this post... the module wont matter.
Mark Stone is a SEO Expert with more than 8 years of experience placing websites on the front page of major search engines. His company is . People interested in Miva search engine marketing or web design should visit, .