SEO
SEO - Search Engine Optimization
SEO (Search Engine Optimization) is a subset of SEM (Search Engine Marketing). The aim of SEO is to increase the number of quality customers of your web or electronic store by securing the best results in search engines (organic searches) such as Google.com, Yahoo.com or Bing.com.
Aiming
The biggest and undisputable advantage of SEO is the precise aiming on a target group of end users. For example, if a search engine user looks for the key word "television", "satellite" etc., we can assume that there is a high potential that the customer is going to buy the product or services. This type of ad is usually much more effective than the classical banner campaigns.
Conversion rate
SEO effectiveness can be easily measured. Nowadays sophisticated online stores offer extensive information on words or phrases (so-called key words) that brought the customers to their shop or website and can also measure which specific search engines and keywords generate a specific fraction of the store's turnover. Please see Conversion rate.
As SEO arrangements usually require modifications in the application source code, it is more efficient to engage a software company who was also a shopping cart system provider. SEO is one of the free modules provided to ShopCentrik e-commerce software users.
The importance of SEO maintenance
SEO as a marketing strategy almost always means a good economic return if the realization is carried out by true professionals. Nevertheless, the results in search engines are not paid services and the algorithms of the search engines determining which page is going to be displayed first and which last are not public. The search engines also have the right to amend or fundamentally change these algorithms at anytime. In practice this happens very often and is considered to be the biggest difficulty of optimization. Many online stores or websites which had been well optimized and had achieved good results sank to the button of the search results after such changes. There is no position guarantee and it is crucial to maintain the code so it reacts to the search engine setup changes with a minimum delay.
The shopping cart software FastCentrik is very well optimized for search engines and its regular updates are part of the post-implementation support and the free system updates. This together provides our clients with the assurance of continuous development and good search engine positions in the future.
Black hat SEO practices and penalization
These methods aim to improve search results by the means of unethical practices, tricks, deception, etc. Black hat SEO can include invisible texts, text being concealed by the same color as its background, or hidden DIV (HTML tag) sections. Cloaking, a practice where a provider runs two versions of one website - one for the search engines and one for the regular customers - is also forbidden.
Search engines penalize such methods and the webs that practice them. These penalties are either run automatically or through the means of software algorithms and can lead to a significant drop in the search results for an extended period of time depending on the type of the search engine.
