Im just trying to understand what keywords go where and

Home page:
keywords would be manufacturers,category names.
example:xcel wetsuits,dakine,surf boots,surfboard fins,ect ect.
Meta description would be something like Seaside Surf carrys the hottest crap from dakine,xcel ect.

Category Page
Then in the category sections the keywords would be - lets say its the wetsuits category.
the keywords would be the wetsuit manufacturers like xcel,quiksilver, and product names of each suit.
example:matuse wetsuits,xcel wetsuits,roxy wetsuits,Xcel Infiniti 543 drylock, ect
The meta description would talk about cold water wetsuits available from this mnfctr and this mnfctr. Free shipping and whatever. Basically a two sentence paraphrase of the category.

Subcategory Pages
then when you clicked on say xcel wetsuits category
then the keywords would be 543mm wetsuit,spring suit,hooded wetsuit,drylock wetsuit,infiniti wetsuit,infiniti,drylock ect ect basically the names of each suit model.
The meta description would talk about Xcel wetsuits and their line of cold water suits using this great stuff ect ect.

Product Pages
and then...when you clicked on the actual product(for example a hooded drylock wetsuit) the keywords would be the product name, part numbers,specific details such as:
drylock wetsuit,thermobamboo,ultrastretch,hooded 5/4/3,hooded 543,543mm wetsuit,xcel hooded drylock ect ect
the meta descript would basically be the short descript. example: 2009/10 Xcel Hooded Drylock 543mm Mens Wetsuit. Nominated wetsuit of the year twice. Stay warmer longer and surf longer. No tax and free shipping in US.
question about this:(if i put no sales tax and free shipping in US, do i have to have the ACTUAL text of "free shipping in US and no sales tax" in the long and/or short descript?)


Am I on the right track? Ive looked all over these forums to see if someone has a basic breakdown on how to correctly apply your seo info but have not.


Once i can understand this then i could do a keyword search on the google analytics and look for keywords that i WOULD use for each level of the main, category,subcategory, and product page. Its my understanding that you want to use keywords that have little or no competition- so the word wetsuit is used by everyone so if i had a keyword that said mens wetsuits, or cold water wetsuits, or 5mm wetsuit which doesnt have a lot of competition that would be the ideal keywords to use?


Sorry for the long post but i would like to see a breakdown of how those of us who cant hire seo guys to do it to those of us who want to do it ourselves.

Yes, you are on the right track. I've posted this tool in another thread but it bears repeating, EVEN THOUGH this isn't a magic bullet, but the information it provides is quite useful.

Submit Express Analyzer

One thing you should keep in mind with Categories and Sub Categories, these pages allow you enter "CONTENT" as well show your products, take advantage of this by using keywords in your CONTENT as well as your product titles that will show up under these cats and sub cats. If you are going to use "wetsuits" as a keyword be sure the description in that category is about wetsuits and be sure your products show up as "XXXXXX Wetsuit"

This information is also useful as a reference at wikipedia.

"Sorry for the long post but i would like to see a breakdown of how those of us who cant hire seo guys to do it to those of us who want to do it ourselves."

Quite honestly, we did hire them to do an SEO package and they never touched any of this stuff. They wrote, poorly I might add, several content pages that link off of our homepage, but as far as entering product keywords, meta-tags, etc, they didn't do any of that. None of our urls were re-written to be search enginde friendly, so I have been spending copious amounts of time doing it all myself. We have been online for two years now. Our google rank started at a 2, jumped to a 3 last spring after we added roughly 250 products to our existing 900 or so, and has stayed a 3 since. While it is hard to say what we might have been without the SEO package, there was so much that they never did, so maybe it is better to just save the money and do it all yourself anyway? As for which keywords to use, I wouldn't always shy away from the broader terms with more competition. Not all of potential customers know exactly what brand, style, part number, etc. they want to buy, so it may be best to include any term they might search for. As for urls, I am re-writing all of ours now so that they are descriptive of each product. For instance, if you have a product page with the url www.widget.com/file3j3h3j3./blahblahblah.aspx, a search engine spider has no idea what that page is about except for reading whatever content is on the actual page, but if the url is www.widget.com/small-blue-widget.aspx, it does know and can index it better. Just make sure that if you change them, you also check any links to that product to make sure it still works. Also, make sure to use hyphens in between words in the url otherwise the search engines will read it as all one word, which is no better than jibberish! Good luck! (IMG:http://forums.networksolutions.com/style_emoticons/default/wink.gif)