VPASP SEO Content Enhancements

Keywords Admin Tool and Template Fields (BYZ119)

Search engines use keywords they extract from websites to power their search results. They extract keywords from various sources within each web page, such as from within the page text, headings, comments, links and meta data (these are special tags that hold information about the page).

The BYZ VPASP Keywords Tool allows you to automatically include relevant keywords from your VPASP database and include them in your VPASP product pages using our powerful template fields add on.

The tool makes it very easy to extract keywords from your vpasp database. You simply identify which columns to check and the tool runs through the database and applies powerful logic to extract the keywords. The tool will extract SKU's, manufacturers names, sizes, colors etc. all of which can be relevant to internet searches your potential customers make.

When you have built your keywords you can then incorporate the keywords in to your product pages using the BYZ template fields add on (see below).

See demo

The BYZ Template Fields Add on (BYZ107)

This is a powerful add on that allows you to populate your vpasp pages with dynamic (i.e. straight from the database) data. It works with all vpasp tables but can be especially useful for search engine optimization.

Keywords Meta Data

The keywords meta data is used by search engines as a primary source of page keywords. The keywords meta tag can be automatically populated with keywords using the BYZ keywords / templates add on.

Keyword Clouds and Searches

The keywords tool and template tool can be used to power additional keyword searches via links. For example, if a visitor searched for the word 'Sony' to find your page you could display 'Sony' as a keyword link which will search for other Sony products.

See demo

Content Management Enhancements (BYZ110)

Good quality, well written and relevant content can help with search engine placements. The Content Management Enhancements add on allows content pages to be quickly and easily added to your vpasp powered site using page names of your choosing so they can be kept search engine friendly.

Enhanced Paging & Searching (BYZ116)

This is a powerful add on which improves the customer search experience but also (and importantly for SEO) it allows search engines to read all the pages generated by a query instead of just the first page. For example, if you wanted to place a link on your site using a query which showed all products on sale you might get 20 pages returned and a search engine following that link would only be able to read the first page. With BYZ116 installed the search engine would be able to read all 20 pages (Click here to find out more).
See demo

Related Categories Add On (BYZ121)

This allows cross / selling and linking of categories. Search engines use links as sign-posts as to content. For example, if I sell battery powered toy cars it also makes sense for me to sell batteries. For example, I have a category called batteries and one toy cars. On category (and product templates) you can automatically place links to related categories. On its own this can be useful for site visitors, but it also helps the search engines to find your category as well as helping them to pick up categorization information from the link text. Cross linking products works in the similar way.
See demo

SEO Tips for VPASP

SEO Guide for VP-ASP

Here are some top tips that can help improve your website's search engine rankings.

VP-ASP Setup & Configuration

Time spent on good configuration and setup will pay dividends.

Optimize at 3 levels, site, catgories and products. Use good quality, well written, content at all levels.

Chunk your content down and interlink it. For example, if your site sells cameras write some content pages about the different types of camera and their features (see how the BYZ VP-ASP content enhancements can help make this easy). Write content on technique which illustrates specific features of your cameras (like face recognition). Link these pages to category pages and specific product pages using the words people may use to search
for specific products (e.g. face recognition). Do the same with category pages. This will help the search engines build up a view of your site and products and it will help with their indexing and ranking of your pages.

Write good quality product descriptions. Include search keywords in headings and descriptions. Consider using the BYZ Keyword tool and Template fields to automatically create keyword links.

Pay special attention to headings and the first few words of product descriptions. Search engines often use these as their search results text.

Ensure that your category & product templates contain valid html (see below). Use heading tags for product names and alt tags on images. Use the BYZ keywords / templates to populate these automatically with your keywords.
Use heading tags and emphasis (e.g. use bold text and / or italics) in your product descriptions to highlight key words / phrases.

In meta tags use only words that appear in your page content. Use the BYZ keyword and template fields add-ons to automatically populate these.

Avoid using the same descriptions as your competitors, especially if you drop-ship or get product information from your suppliers electronically.

Eliminate duplicate content and Make Your Pages Search Engine Friendly

. Use the BYZ Content Management Enhancements and BYZ Enhanced Product File Management VPASP Bolt ons to create pages with search engine and human friendly names and to handle duplicate content.

Ensure that you place links from your homepage to your category pages and from category pages to sub categories and products so that search engines can follow them.

Using Pay Per Click (PPC)

. Find out what works by using PPC. Some people have great success using PPC (e.g. Adwords) but it needs careful mannagement and a close eye to be kept on results. It can also be a great way to assess which keywords / word combinations / offers work best. Use that information to optimize your site.

Make Good Your html & CSS

. Ensure that your html and CSS are reasonably valid. Sites with valid html and CSS are easier for search engines to index properly. You can check for free at http://validator.w3.org. Note that the validation errors reported can be compounded, so the validator results may look much worse than they actually are. Due to the way VPASP needs to work some minor errors are inevitable, so concentrate on the more important tags such as headings. If html isn't your thing then we can help with this - its definitely our thing :)

Linking Strategies

Inbound links are important. Search engines place a lot of emphasis in their rankings about 'what you know' - i.e. your content and 'who you know' - i.e. who links to you.

Get good quality links from relevant sites and ask them to use your important keywords & phrases as anchor text when they link to you. Writing relevant articles and making them available to content aggregation sites as well as offering reciprocal links can work well.

Ensure to interlink your pages. It can help search engines traverse your site and can be helpful to your visitor navigation.

Avoid dubious practices - you will get found out.

Consider setting up an affiliate program using VPASPs affiliate marketing features. As well as the potential to generate affiliate sales the affiliate links will come directly in to your site creating valuable inbound links.

Use Product Feeds

. Use product feeds in to search engines. To gain most benefit ensure that the product data you are providing is optimized (GIGO - garbage in = garbage out). Use the additional fields features in the BYZ data feeds to provide additional data, such as sizes, colors and weights.

Create a Sitemap

. Sitemaps are useful because they give search engines a list of your site's pages. A plain html sitemap will work fine because search engines follow the links to your pages. The inclusion of an xml sitemap works really well because you can list all your pages in a file stored on your server and include all content, category and product pages. The BYZ Google Sitemap Generator will do this automatically.

Search Engine Data Feeds for VPASP

VPASP Data Feeds

Our data feeds are an excellent way to get your products in to the search engines. The feeds automatically format data for uploading directly in to the leading product search and comparison sites. The advantages of using the feeds are that they pass formatted and identified product data which helps the search engines index product information more precisely and, therefore, return better quality searches.

For example, if there is a product made by a particular manufacturer with a specific code number the feeds pass that information in special fields identifying the data to the search engines as being the products manufacturer and code number. It would be very difficult for the search engines to make this categorization by simply reading the product webpage.

We’ve also built a very powerful Google Sitemap Generator. The generator automatically creates a special file that Google reads to find pages to include in it’s index. The generator will automatically add all the vpasp pages as well as any non VPASP pages you specify. Having a site map helps ensure that Google is aware of all your pages and helps get them included in it’s index far more quickly and comprehensively that relying on The Google Bot (Googles indexing spider) alone to find them.

Google-Base Feed (BYZ056) See demo
Shopping.com Feed (BYZ059) See demo
Google Sitemap Generator (BYZ095)

SEO Software for VPASP

BYZ 110 - Content Management Enhancements

Makes creating search engine friendly content pages from VPASP admin a breeze. An easy way to make useful search engine optimized content.
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BYZ163 - Product File Management Enhancements

Creates search engine friendly VPASP product pages automatically based on the criteria you select - such as product name. Great for search engines and humans alike. Resolves duplicate content issues** by using 301 redirects and canconical urls to ensure search engines index the page you want so you don't lose valuable 'link juice'.
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BYZ164 - Category File Management Enhancements***

Similar to BYZ 163 (Product File Management Enhancement) as it also gives complete control over the way urls are named but with category pages.

There are 2 types of category pages for non-bottom-level categories; the list of subcategories which are under your chosen category (ie shopdisplaycategories.asp?id=x&cat=y) *and* the list of products which are in your chosen category (ie shopdisplayproducts.asp?id=x&cat=y) - the bolt-on will create both types as static files.
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BYZ116 - Enhanced Paging and Searching

Turbo charges the vpasp search features and makes search query results readable by search engines.
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BYZ158 - Sitemap and Menu Generator

Helps humans and search engines navigate your site by automatically creating a sitemap page and/or category / sub category mouse over menus.
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BYZ095 Google XML Sitemap Generator

Creates a special XML map of your complete site to help Google find your pages.
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BYZ121 - Related Categories

Cross links products and categories to help search engines walk to related categories (as well as being a good cross-selling tool).
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BYZ119 - Keywords Tool

Intelligently extracts keywords from the VPASP database so they can be used in product pages with the Keyword Template Fields for example (see below).
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BYZ107 - Keywords Template Fields

Allows keywords generated by the Keywords Tool to be used on product pages to build links running search queries, meta data, tag clouds etc.
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Data Feeds

These create product data files which can be uploaded to leading product based search engines with built in flexibility to ensure that the data you want is made available to be searched.

BYZ056 - Googlebase Feed
BYZ059 - Shopping.com Feed