E-Commerce SEO

E-commerce is a special category of SEO, in part because Google treats queries that involve selling or financial transactions with extra care, and also because these can be extremely competitive verticals.

E-commerce SEO also faces unique challenges due to product catalogs, out-of-stock items, site architecture, trust issues and more. You not only need a solid baseline SEO strategy, you typically need to excel in all of these other areas as well. Here, we've included some of our top resources on E-commerce SEO, as well as the latest blog posts on the subject below.

How to Craft the Best Damn E-commerce Page on the Web : E-commerce pages are a dime a dozen, but if you want to stand out, Rand Fishkin shows you how to win your category.

Pruning Your eCommerce Site: How & Why : In a very tactical post, learn why bloat in your e-commerce store is your biggest enemy to ranking higher, and learn how to clean the cruft.

Easy Marketing Investments to Improve Your E-Commerce Store : Even before working on organic traffic, it's important to put your best foot forward with your online storefront.

How to Do a Content Audit : For e-commerce stores, content audits are essential to SEO success.

Most Recent Articles on E-Commerce SEO

Managing Risk: Legal Issues for Merchants and Affiliate Marketers
Sarah Bird

Managing Risk: Legal Issues for Merchants and Affiliate Marketers

E-Commerce SEO

My goal is to present a checklist of legal issues and trends surrounding affiliate marketing. I hope this will be interesting to both merchants and marketers. Affiliate marketing has unfortunately gained a bad reputation for being particularly high risk. While the industry is unlikely to ever be risk-free, it is possible to manage your risk by (1) investigating your prospective marketing partner; (2) using and maintaining a tight legal contract that allocates the risk and provides for the appropriate indemnifications, and (3) keeping informed about the current technology, marketing strategies, and regulatory climate. Without further ado, let's take a look at risk identification and management for merchants and affiliate marketers.

Will SEO for Stock Options
Jeremy Dearringer

Will SEO for Stock Options

E-Commerce SEO

When does being an SEO consultant and investing in stocks become sketchy? Our firm has worked for several medium to large private companies, but lately we've been contacted by some publicly traded corporations. This can put a savvy SEO/Investor in a precarious situation. Knowing the success that our clients have achieved with our SEO campaigns, it can be tempting to ta...

Copyright: Sample Forms and Strategies for Registering your Online Content
Sarah Bird

Copyright: Sample Forms and Strategies for Registering your Online Content

E-Commerce SEO

I'm going to divide up the registration process into three parts because each application should include three things: (1) The Completed Application; (2) A Sample or Copy of the Work; and (3) the fee. Part One: The Completed Application Applications to register copyright are actually very short and pretty intuitive. Regardless, many people break out into a cold sweat at the thought of completing a copyright application. I have a feeling the paper part is what holds most people back. Because "seeing is believing," I am sharing with you the copyright applications I have created to get SEOmoz up to date on its copyright registration.

FTC Orders ValueClick to Pay 2.9 Million
Sarah Bird

FTC Orders ValueClick to Pay 2.9 Million

E-Commerce SEO

The FTC announced today that Valueclick has agreed to pay 2.9 million dollars to settle the charges. This is the largest cash settlement since the inception of the Can-Spam Act in 2003. In addition, Valueclick is barred from future violations of the Can-Spam Act. It must also place conspicuous disclaimers indicating that consumers are required to participate and spend money on other obligations in order to qualify for "free" promotions. The settlement also requires them to provide a list of the obligations – such as applying for credit cards, purchasing products, or obtaining a car loan – that consumers must incur to qualify for a free product. Valueclick must also put in place strict measures to protect consumer information. Valueclick's compliance with these measure must be monitored by an independent party for 20 years.

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Trademark Law and Domain Names: ACPA or UDRP?
Sarah Bird

Trademark Law and Domain Names: ACPA or UDRP?

E-Commerce SEO

Today I want to discuss how trademark law plays out in the course of a domain name dispute. We're going to compare and contract the Anti-Cybersquatting Consumer Protection Act with I-CANN's Uniform Domain Name Dispute Resolution Policy. As I see it, there are generally three kinds of domain name disputes. They are as follows: 1. Cybersquatting: You own a trademark and someone without a right to the mark is exploiting your mark in bad faith. 2. Two trademark holders, one domain name: You own a trademark, but someone else owns the same mark too and there is only one domain name. 3. No one owns the trademark, but everybody wants the brand: Not all domain names are trademark protected, but people inappropriately attempt to use trademark law to resolve domain name issues. While discussing each prototypical domain name dispute, we will also discover the different statutes and dispute resolution procedures available in domain name disputes.

Trademark Basics: Be First in Your Market, Be Distinctive, and Don't Confuse the Consumer
Sarah Bird

Trademark Basics: Be First in Your Market, Be Distinctive, and Don't Confuse the Consumer

E-Commerce SEO

⇒ What is trademark law? → Product marks versus service marks ⇒ Where does trademark law come from? ⇒ Isn’t trademark the same thing as copyright? ⇒ Do I have any trademarks? How do I get some? → Be First in Your Market → Be Distinctive ⇒Trademark Law's Guiding Principle: Don't Confuse the Consumer ⇒ Limitations on Trademark Rights → Trademark does not protect disparaging or lewd marks. → Trademark holders do not “own†the words, logos, or slogan’s themselves. → Parodies of trademarks are permissible. → Non-commercial uses are permissible. → News reporting and product comparisons are permissible. ⇒ Caution! The Very Famous Marks Exception! ⇒ Should I register my trademarks?

RipOff Report Responds: You Be the Judge
Sarah Bird

RipOff Report Responds: You Be the Judge

E-Commerce SEO

I invited Mr. Thomas B. Duffy, one of RipOff Report's attorneys to contact me with any corrections, feedback, documents, or missed cases that he thought might be helpful. I am very grateful to him for taking me up on my offer and contacting me last week. The phone call lasted for more than an hour. For today's Legal Monday, I want to summarize five of Mr. Duffy's responses.

Four Ways to Enforce Your Copyright: What to Do When Your Online Content Is Being Stolen
Sarah Bird

Four Ways to Enforce Your Copyright: What to Do When Your Online Content Is Being Stolen

E-Commerce SEO

One of the most common problems facing anyone who publishes content online is copyright infringement. It's happened to me. It's happened to you. And it'll probably happen to this post too. (Oh, the irony!) What can you do when your copyright is being infringed? Don't get sad. Get letter-writing mad! There are four ways to stop someone from stealing your content. Before we dive into each of those methods, I want to preemptively address some caveats, complicating factors, and limitations of the "four methods" approach.

Network Solutions Exploits I-CANN's Five-Day Refund Rule to Hoard Domains
Sarah Bird

Network Solutions Exploits I-CANN's Five-Day Refund Rule to Hoard Domains

E-Commerce SEO

Today, there are allegations flying around today that Network Solutions, a very popular internet registrar, has been exploiting that same five-day-refund rule to park domains and then sell them at an increased fee. If the allegations are true, then Network Solutions was operating a very cunning business. Here's how the scheme worked: Network Solutions would track what domains people were searching for. With this actionable intelligence in hand, it would quickly purchase those domains and park them. When an interested party went back online to purchase the domain, they would discover that Network Solutions had already registered it. Of course, Network Solutions was willing to sell it to them for a fee. This fee was more expensive than other competing registrars typically offer. Alternatively, if the interested party did not come back online to purchase the domain within five days, Network Solutions would simply take advantage of I-CANN's refund policy and void it's own registration. No cash out of their pockets!

Dell Whines About Tasting and Accuses Domain Churners of Destroying Evidence
Sarah Bird

Dell Whines About Tasting and Accuses Domain Churners of Destroying Evidence

E-Commerce SEO

Dell has stepped in where I-CANN and Verisign have feared to tread by filing suit against one of the largest domain tasting networks. Dell did everything right to put itself in a good position for this lawsuit. Unfortunately, documents filed with the court last Friday, January 5, 2008 indicate that Dell may lose the case despite its efforts. Part I of this post talks about Dell v BelgiumDomains, LLC. Part II of this post asks a few questions about domain tasting.

What's Fair About Fair Use? Defending a Copyright Infringement Claim
Sarah Bird

What's Fair About Fair Use? Defending a Copyright Infringement Claim

E-Commerce SEO

⇒ What is "fair use"? ⇒ Does the fair use defense only work in the United States? ⇒ How does fair use related to trademark, copyright and patent law? ⇒ What's the big deal about fair use? Why do we care? ⇒ There are four factors to consider when determining whether you are illegally infringing someone’s copyright or merely employing fair use of the material: → The purpose and character of the use, including whether such use is of a commercial nature or is nor nonprofit educational purposes; → The nature of the copyrighted work. → The amount and substantially of the portion used in relation to the copyrighted work as a whole; and → The effect of the use upon the potential market for or value of the copyrighted work. ⇒ But I thought I had a First Amendment Right to free speech. ⇒ Specific Applications. → Can I quote someone on my website? → Can I post someone else’s graphic on my website if I give credit to them? → Is my software vulnerable to fair use? → Is parody considered “fair use�