Setting SEO keyword for categories and products

I'm a newbie in SEO and have a number of struggling questions. Could any expert please give some advice?

Background

1. I'm selling "oil paintings" and my store have over 2000 items.

http://www.fineartmegastore.com

Questions:

1. I would like to write a introduction for my store telling the visitor and also search engine what my store sell. Where should I put it? Should it be keyword intensive?
   I've put such introduction on a EZ-PAGE "policy and faq". But it doesn't show up on search result.
2. My main keyword is "oil painting", should I put some synonym as well e.g. drawing, portraits, prints etc? Should such synonym appears on each categories or simply put in store introduction?
3. Do I need to include the keyword "oil painting" in all my categories and product names?
4. Do I need to include the category name in the product name e.g. include the keyword "animal" for a lion painting inside animal category
5. Since it's not possible for me to tailor-made a nature description for each of the painting (there are over 2000 paintings). I simply put all those related keywords together. Will it regarded as keyword spamming? Below is an example:

http://www.fineartmegastore.com/animals-oil-painting-color-melody-p-207.html

If it can cause spamming, what suggestion are you recommending?

6. I've read a SEO guide, it said in the category description, you should add the links for its sub-categories. Is it necessary? I would be quite inconvenient if you would like to add/remove a subcategory.

7. Is there any good zen-cart SEO guidebook for recommendation?

8. Is there any shopping cart with good SEO infrastructure for recommendation?

9. One final question, how do you feel of my site? In turn of outlook, user-friendly, product diversity etc?

Thanks a lot.

1. I would like to write a introduction for my store telling the visitor and also search engine what my store sell. Where should I put it? Should it be keyword intensive?
   It should reside on a page accessible for crawling and indexing. You should not concern yourself with keywords, but rather write great content, very descriptive.

2. My main keyword is "oil painting", should I put some synonym as well e.g. drawing, portraits, prints etc? Should such synonym appears on each categories or simply put in store introduction?
   Yes, other variations or longtail phrases are necessary to grab a larger search base. Every page has the ability to rank... No one page will sustain your business, they must all have great content.

3. Do I need to include the keyword "oil painting" in all my categories and product names?
   No, Include an additional heading tag and include it in the text. You do not want your main term (any term) to be overly dense and set off the spam algo.

4. Do I need to include the category name in the product name e.g. include the keyword "animal" for a lion painting inside animal category
   No, just in the category description to grab broader phrases, and your "Lion" painting page should be very targeted content for just that item.

5. Since it's not possible for me to tailor-made a nature description for each of the painting (there are over 2000 paintings). I simply put all those related keywords together. Will it regarded as keyword spamming? Below is an example:

http://www.fineartmegastore.com/animals-oil-painting-color-melody-p-207.html

If it can cause spamming, what suggestion are you recommending?
Thats probably not enough for spamming, but its of no help to your as the textual content of the page dopes not support those words... They are considered generic terms listing and will be ignored. No matter how hard you think it is, to rank a page well you need good relevant and unique text.

6. I've read a SEO guide, it said in the category description, you should add the links for its sub-categories. Is it necessary? I would be quite inconvenient if you would like to add/remove a subcategory.
   Necessary, no.... Effective, YES. Again, you get out what you put in. Ranking your business should not be inconvenient.

7. Is there any good zen-cart SEO guidebook for recommendation?
   No book needed... Create unique rich content for all of your pages... Just like any other site.

8. Is there any shopping cart with good SEO infrastructure for recommendation?
   They all have their innate issues, but Zen Cart is very good with content, on page SEO, navigation, linking and many other top notch SEO SEM necessities. There is NO CART anywhere that can help you rank pages with little or no text... Nothing to rank on such pages and the duplication within your own site runs rampant.

9. One final question, how do you feel of my site? In turn of outlook, user-friendly, product diversity etc?
   The site looks great.... You only lack the text and effort needed to make it rank.

~Melanie

Thank you for the useful information. May I have a few more addon questions?

1. I would like to write a introduction for my store telling the visitor and also search engine what my store sell. Where should I put it? Should it be keyword intensive?
   It should reside on a page accessible for crawling and indexing. You should not concern yourself with keywords, but rather write great content, very descriptive.

The default landing page of zen-cart is the category page. There is little text on it. Should I change it to a text riched page e.g. introduction of my store product and service. What I'm thinking is that such page will have the highest click rate and does have higher rank.

3. Do I need to include the keyword "oil painting" in all my categories and product names?
   No, Include an additional heading tag and include it in the text. You do not want your main term (any term) to be overly dense and set off the spam algo.

I have included the keyword "oil painting" or "pop art" in my ebay store. It seems the ranking is quite satisfactory, because I can sometimes see them on the 1st page of search result. It does not seems triggering any spam rules. As product name rank the most, may I double confirm if it is really not recommended to add the keyword "oil painting" to each of the product name?

http://stores.ebay.com/Fine-Art-Mega-Store

5. Since it's not possible for me to tailor-made a nature description for each of the painting (there are over 2000 paintings). I simply put all those related keywords together. Will it regarded as keyword spamming? Below is an example:

http://www.fineartmegastore.com/anim...ody-p-207.html

If it can cause spamming, what suggestion are you recommending?

Thats probably not enough for spamming, but its of no help to your as the textual content of the page dopes not support those words... They are considered generic terms listing and will be ignored. No matter how hard you think it is, to rank a page well you need good relevant and unique text.

That would be a big headache then.....It's really impossible to tailor made a unique text for over 2000 items. Base on your expertise, is there any workaround solution?

New Questions:

1. There are still some SEO guides telling people to format meta tag keyword and meta tag description for ranking. But some said it's being ignored by the major search engine now. Which is true? Should I still spend effort on this? If I do need to format the meta description, should I just copy everything from the product description?

2. There are also guidelines on formating product description. It recommend you to repeat the product name with <h1> tag and repeat the product links. Is it work? What else is recommended?

3. There is also recommendation to include the review feedbacks from customer in order to generate unique description. Right now, user need to click the "view review" button for that and it jump to another page. should I need to extract the reviews and include in the product description page?

4. A guideline said it requires a minimum of 25% difference of each page in order for search engine to consider as a unique page. Otherwise it will not cache it. I have included a few paragraph of common message in my product description. Should I make it as short as possible? Because even I add in some unique text, the common message may consist over 75%.

Sorry for so many question. Thank you for your time.

alimtlai:

The default landing page of zen-cart is the category page. There is little text on it. Should I change it to a text riched page e.g. introduction of my store product and service. What I'm thinking is that such page will have the highest click rate and does have higher rank.
There should be ample text on every page... and IF your content is correct product pages will be the top landing pages per term as their content is more narrow or targeted for more specific terms. EVERY page needs text to rank and be unique from your other pages... If you take 3 rods bobber fishing and only use 1 what have you lost?

alimtlai:

I have included the keyword "oil painting" or "pop art" in my ebay store. It seems the ranking is quite satisfactory, because I can sometimes see them on the 1st page of search result. It does not seems triggering any spam rules. As product name rank the most, may I double confirm if it is really not recommended to add the keyword "oil painting" to each of the product name?
eBay store pages have MUCH text so even though you have done this the density, which is just an old fashioned percentage, is acceptable.. Again, you need text...UNIQUE text.

alimtlai:

That would be a big headache then.....It's really impossible to tailor made a unique text for over 2000 items. Base on your expertise, is there any workaround solution?
Don't bother with product pages, as their ability to rank (as long as they have unique text) is very targeted... So do category pages to start. Workaround?... Sometimes there is no substitute for hard work.

alimtlai:

1. There are still some SEO guides telling people to format meta tag keyword and meta tag description for ranking. But some said it's being ignored by the major search engine now. Which is true? Should I still spend effort on this? If I do need to format the meta description, should I just copy everything from the product description?
   The major search engines completely ignore the Meta keyword tag. Your description is NOT used to rank your page, but should be cared for and offer great sales text to promote search engine result page click throughs.

alimtlai:

2. There are also guidelines on formating product description. It recommend you to repeat the product name with <h1> tag and repeat the product links. Is it work? What else is recommended?
   YOUR DESCRIPTION IS NOT CONSIDERED FOR THE PURPOSE OF SEARCH RANK NOR DENSITY. Heading tags and title tags have the same requirements for optimization.... Short, concise and using a varied keywords ordering and structure.

alimtlai:

3. There is also recommendation to include the review feedbacks from customer in order to generate unique description. Right now, user need to click the "view review" button for that and it jump to another page. should I need to extract the reviews and include in the product description page?
   Yes... Find a good organic way to market your reviews.

alimtlai:

4. A guideline said it requires a minimum of 25% difference of each page in order for search engine to consider as a unique page. Otherwise it will not cache it. I have included a few paragraph of common message in my product description. Should I make it as short as possible? Because even I add in some unique text, the common message may consist over 75%.
   Remember this is the WHOLE page, including template text... in a Zen Cart category or product page it will take more the 25% of the category or product description to be considered unique. Rule of thumb for us is and bare minimum of 350 totally unique characters of text.... More is better

alimtlai:

Sorry for so many question. Thank you for your time.

No worries.... But seriously, 2000 products or 20 this is exactly what you need to do and no matter what else you do you will never be as successful if you don't.

Remember, even PPC, pay per lead feeds, free shopping feeds whether you pay or not are based on some type of content score to be better ranked. For example, if you do what I say and are using Adwords, your ad score will improve and your ads will display more prominently for the same or less cost per click.

~Melanie

Thank you so much for answering my questions so quickly. After digestion, I come up with the following ideas. See if they are sensible:

1. In order to provide unique text, I think I have to mention the major attributes of my product (oil painting). That is style, color theme and the objects inside the picture. As you said they will be considered as generic terms if I just put the keywords together. What if I use complete sentences to link them together? Will it provide a better support of the keywords? But then as most of the pre-fix and suffix of the sentence are the same, the percentage of different words would then be lowered. Will it be another concern? Here is an example

http://www.fineartmegastore.com/animals-oil-painting-color-melody-p-227.html

2. If I change the order of this sentences said on one instant, sytle then color then object. In another instant, color, object then style. Will it considered as unique text?

3. Regarding to include the product name into the description. I didn't catch your meaning. Is it recommended?

4. I have used the below sentences as the first sentences in the product description. Is this the kind of text that could increase the click thru rate? As google will take text from the product description, do I still need to format the meta description tag?

"This is a 100% handcrafted oil painting with great discounted prices."

5. I also have a number of common messages e.g. "product details", "note". Should I minimize them in order to increase the percentage of unique words?

6. If I add the review comments of customers in the product page. Will it make a different if I put it on top or at bottom of the page? Of course, at the bottom seems to be more natural.

alimtlai:

Thank you so much for answering my questions so quickly. After digestion, I come up with the following ideas. See if they are sensible:

1. In order to provide unique text, I think I have to mention the major attributes of my product (oil painting). That is style, color theme and the objects inside the picture. As you said they will be considered as generic terms if I just put the keywords together. What if I use complete sentences to link them together? Will it provide a better support of the keywords? But then as most of the pre-fix and suffix of the sentence are the same, the percentage of different words would then be lowered. Will it be another concern? Here is an example

http://www.fineartmegastore.com/animals-oil-painting-color-melody-p-227.html

2. If I change the order of this sentences said on one instant, sytle then color then object. In another instant, color, object then style. Will it considered as unique text?

3. Regarding to include the product name into the description. I didn't catch your meaning. Is it recommended?

4. I have used the below sentences as the first sentences in the product description. Is this the kind of text that could increase the click thru rate? As google will take text from the product description, do I still need to format the meta description tag?

"This is a 100% handcrafted oil painting with great discounted prices."

5. I also have a number of common messages e.g. "product details", "note". Should I minimize them in order to increase the percentage of unique words?

6. If I add the review comments of customers in the product page. Will it make a different if I put it on top or at bottom of the page? Of course, at the bottom seems to be more natural.

Yes, on the product page talk about the product. The text you provided is ok, but it mentions nothing about the specific painting. For example, the painting is a lion... but you mentioned nothing regarding the lion, his pose, colors etc...

It is believed the Google determines duplication in shingles... strings of 10 words.

I did not tell you to put the product name in your product description, you misunderstand. Your product description should contain specific and unique sale language for the specific page. Something to elicit a click through from search results.

~Melanie

Yes you are right, I should put more description about the Lion painting. But I didn't catch some of your answers. May I double confirm a few things specifically?

1. Does the complete sentences format provide better support of the keywords even only the keywords are the different while the prefix and suffix are the same.

2. Does changing the order of these sentences made it a unique paragraphy? Of couse the keyword inside each sentence is different each time.

3. Should I minimize the common message so as to increase the percentage of uniqueness?

4. Do I need to format the meta tag description if I put something like "great product, discounted price" as the first sentence of my product description so as to drive click thru rate.

5. Does putting the review comment of customer on top or bottom of the page making a difference?

6. Do you personally own a website that with good SEO for reference?

Thanks for replying.

alimtlai:

1. Does the complete sentences format provide better support of the keywords even only the keywords are the different while the prefix and suffix are the same.
   Listing, is not recommended... Google considers generic lists of terms to be spam. Again, it is believed that Google use 10 word shingle... Therefore every 10 words requires a unique word. We actually tell our customers to add or change a word every 5.

alimtlai:

2. Does changing the order of these sentences made it a unique paragraphy? Of couse the keyword inside each sentence is different each time.
   Again, it is believed that Google use 10 word shingle... Therefore every 10 words requires a unique word. We actually tell our customers to add or change a word every 5.

alimtlai:

3. Should I minimize the common message so as to increase the percentage of uniqueness?
   You should create rich content that is unique and relevant to the page.

alimtlai:

4. Do I need to format the meta tag description if I put something like "great product, discounted price" as the first sentence of my product description so as to drive click thru rate.
   It should be none spammy describe the individual page with promotional type language so that people want to click in.

alimtlai:

5. Does putting the review comment of customer on top or bottom of the page making a difference?
   None

alimtlai:

6. Do you personally own a website that with good SEO for reference?
   Feel free to check out my website and portfolio as you wish....
   ~Melanie