I have reviewed the website vitaminshoppe.com, including Category/Sub Category/Brand and Product Pages.
Please note that this is a preliminary review, however I uncovered a few substantial issues with this website and the following report contains a few of my SEO optimization recommendations:
In terms of SEO Analysis, the site has a few issues, including:
Mobile Optimization
Mobile/tablets are quickly becoming major mediums for users to access the internet. Having a good mobile website is no longer an option and will surely help bring traffic and conversions on the site. I’d recommend that vitaminshoppe.com prepare a mobile version of its website.
URL Optimization
Although, most of the website shows search engine friendly URLs. There are few pages that contain underscores and/or contain long tail URL’s that are not search engine friendly. I’d recommend to optimize these URLs based on the targeted keywords.
Text/HTML Ratio
The websites text to HTML code ratio is below 15 percent, which means that the website should contain more text content. A ratio between 25 and 70 percent is ideal, as long as the content is relevant and gives essential, quality information.
W3C Validation
The site’s home page shows a total 12 error and 4 warnings. I’d recommend to use valid markup that contains no errors. Syntax errors can make your page difficult for search engines to index. To fix the detected errors, we can use the W3C validation service.
Content Optimization
Most of us are aware that search engines index and rank the content available on most websites.
Done correctly, quality, user friendly content almost always helps a website gain higher rankings in a relatively short span of time.
At present the site vitaminshoppe.com does not have good quality content on most of its pages, including its Category/Sub Category and Brand Pages.
Below are a few recommendations that will allow the website to achieve higher ranking and visibility within the major search engines:
Category/Sub Category and Brand Pages Optimization
Most of the brand, categories/sub category pages do not present high quality content, including top pages such as:
- vitaminshoppe.com/c/whole-food-multivitamins/N-cp9a2c
- vitaminshoppe.com/c/men-s-health/N-cp99in
- vitaminshoppe.com/c/women-s-health/N-cp99io
- vitaminshoppe.com/c/healthy-aging/N-cp99ip
- vitaminshoppe.com/c/amino-acids/N-cp99ic
etc…
At present, vitaminshoppe.com provides only 35 to 50 words of descriptive content on most of its category pages. This is very low and it should contain 300 +/- words.
The available content is not well structured on the basis of targeted keywords. The site is also missing relevant content on most of its sub category pages.
To optimize the website, drive traffic and increase customer engagements, I’d recommend that vitaminshoppe.com conduct keyword research and include this crucial information within its content, URL’s, Meta-Descriptions, Images, Titles and more.
This will increase your website presence and the search engines will be able to index and rank site pages as necessary to build quality and relevance scoring.
I’d (Google’s Panda Guidelines) recommend 250 to 300 words of description content to explain page information, category type, products, brand information and more.
I strongly recommend to implement additional content (ATF/BTF) at the top and/or bottom of every category and sub category page.
Keyword rich content helps the search engines understand and index each site page and rank it against others for quality and relevance. To rank the website vitaminshoppe.com on top of SERP’s, we need to optimize the category and sub category pages. I’d recommend:
Step 1: Keywords/Key Phrase research, and targeting: Keywords should be page specific and should show a good amount of traffic.
Step 2: Add 250-300 words of quality content with proper keywords (a density of 2-4%).
Step 3: Hyperlink keywords and pages since Google looks at this to determine relevance and quality. Make sure that your content is well formatted and user friendly, since Panda can now provide a negative score to badly produced and/or duplicate content.
Step 4: Update Content Placement on the Category and Sub Category pages of the website.
Product Page Optimization
Although, most of your product pages have content, much of this is duplicate, which Panda rates as a negative This is a serious problem with this site.
Duplicate content may get the site penalized by Google and site pages will never rank higher than the original content, which is usually OEM data that is not sales or marketing focused.
I have reviewed several product pages and found the same issue with those as well. I’d recommend to develop unique, quality written content for all the product pages. This will surely help increase your ranking, drive more traffic and increase the conversion rate.
For product pages, I (and Google) recommend 200 to 255 words of content, including product introduction, use instructions and specifications, attributes, brand information, etc.
I’d recommend the same 4 step optimization process that I have shown above in Category and Sub Category Page example.
There are other factors to consider as well. Below are the details:
Buying Guide Missing
Heavy content, such as buyer’s guides and extended how-to information not only helps the buyer make a purchase decision but adds good quality, SEO rich content to your site. I’d recommend to produce numerous guides and add this information to key categories and products.
H1 Tag Missing
Most of the website pages are not having a proper H1 tag to highlight the targeted keyword on a specific page. I’d recommend to including the most important targeted keyword as H1 tag on every page of the site.
Schema Markup Missing
For a eCommerce Website, it’s important to use the valid schema markups to showcase the products in effective manner on SERP’s.
Site Speed Optimization
Website page’s file size is very large which reduces load speed and impact user experience. Try to keep website page’s under 5MB in total file size.
Things to remember about SEO
- Organic search provides 1-2X the clicks and conversions of PPC
- 40-60% of sales are driven by top 3 Organic results
- Almost every marketing activity you do is based on content.
- 81% of shoppers research and validate their online purchase decisions before they get to the store
The Bottom Line: Activities to perform to start getting website optimized:
- Fix the technical and non-technical SEO issues.
- Improve the website speed by reducing the objects and page site.
- Add category and product page content. Website is way below standard with a 7% html to code ratio.
- Do blogging on and off your site, and need to do it consistently.
- Add heavy extended content such as buyer’s guides and how-to docs. To add authority and relevance to the site through links and quality written, SEO rich content.
- Everything needs to be researched to find the most utilized keywords, so you can insert this info into all types of content, including meta descriptions, images, titles, product descriptions, etc.
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Dharam
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