June 2012 • Page 2 of 2 • Identity Developments

Excerpts from my latest article at Practical eCommerce: “SEO Report Card: MotoGP Store, Part 2.”

The MotoGP Store volunteered for an SEO Report Card. This is the second installment of my analysis of that site. In “Part 1,” I reviewed the home page and category pages, internal navigation, HTML templates, title tags and keyword choices on, again, The MotoGP Store. Now I’ll look at URLs and duplicate content, indexation, internal linking, inbound links and the store’s international SEO aspects.

I’d love to see this site implement some of the best practices discussed here, measure the impact, and write another “SEO Report Card” in a year or so. While the site is dominating the major phrases, it doesn’t seem to be doing as well on the long tail phrases for risers and specific products. It’s likely that SEO best practices around navigation, category landing pages and internal linking could improve the long tail while retaining the strong hold the site already has on the trophy terms for the MotoGP merchandise niche.

Read the article in full at Practical eCommerce »

Originally posted on Web PieRat.

Excerpts from my latest article at Practical eCommerce: “SEO Report Card: MotoGP Store, Part 1.”

MotoGP Store Homepage Every now and then an ecommerce site raises its hand for an “SEO Report Card” at Practical eCommerce. It’s a great way for the site to get some free advice and a good link, and an interesting way to give Practical eCommerce readers some, well, practical tips on how we’d handle SEO challenges with real ecommerce sites. Today’s volunteer is the MotoGP Store, the online merchandising arm of the official site for Grand Prix motorcycle racing. The store serves four countries in four currencies and sells MotoGP branded gear as well as fan gear for popular racers and teams.

Home Page Content

Like many ecommerce sites, MotoGP’s home page is jam-packed with images, branding, and featured content at the expense of actual HTML text on the page. When the images are disabled, the remaining text is entirely comprised of navigational links and alternative attributes for images. Neither can hold a candle to an actual piece of permanent body copy for anchoring a keyword theme and enabling a page to rank consistently. Even a short bit of text with 2 to 3 sentences focused on the primary keywords for the page will do the trick. The H1 heading for the home page is “MotoGP Official Store,” placed on the page using CSS image replacement to include both the logo and the HTML text on the page. This practice is above board as long as the words used mirror the words in the image.

Read the article in full at Practical eCommerce for insights into page templates, navigation, landing pages and conversion, keyword research and title tags. This is just part 1 of the report card, so stay tuned!

Originally posted on Web PieRat.