SEO strategies for multiple retailers

If you are an online retailer that sells a wide variety of different products, finding the focal keywords for your site can be tricky.

Using your company name or brand sounds like an easy option, but it is often a wasted opportunity. If customers know to search you by your company name or brand, they will find you anyway, assuming your website address is similar.

The whole point of Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) is to help customers who do not yet know about you to find you. These customers are looking for specific products or services - those product and service names are what you need to target.

The challenge arises when you sell many different products. Google rankings depend on two key things - the content of your site, especially the page title and headings - and inbound links. For your page content to have an impact it needs to be focussed around a specific topic and thus a set of keywords. Any deviation will dilute the impact. So what can you do?

If you are selling seasonal products, one solution is to have a dedicated site for each of the seasons. This is exactly what Arctic Fashion has decided to do. Selling both wooden jewellery and a wide range of Christmas decorations, it is hard to combine the two. Thus they have just launched a dedicated Christmas site for their range of Christmas decorations including Christmas tree decorations and wooden Christmas ornaments.

Whilst it will take time to build the inbound links, this approach allows them to build on the Christmas theme year on year without having to take it down during the summer - and to build a following of users who just love Christmas.