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Before we get into more detail, you should probably be asking yourself why you would even care about microdata as a business owner, the answer is - Rich Snippets & Google Shopping.

By adding hidden microdata tags to your pages, products and other entities of your site, you make them more attractive to the user in Google search. For example, a regular search snippet looks like this:

Why Secure Your Entire Site? When you view a webpage, that information passes through a dozen or more servers to get to you. If that URL starts with https://, anyone in the path can view or even modify the contents of the page. ISPs insert their own ads in web pages, can now legally track & sell your browsing history, and many governments around the world collect massive troves of browsing data. Securing your entire site (instead of just the checkout portion) is now considered a very good thing to do for your users. It's nearly impossible for a 'man in the middle' to extract or change information on secure pages. It's a win for the user. Here is a more detailed explanation of HTTP vs HTTPS (https://ahrefs.com/blog/http-vs-https-for-seo/) if you want more background.

An XML sitemap is a computer and human readable file that website owners can choose to place on their site to improve the indexing of their pages. Before any page on your site can rank for organic traffic, it must first be indexed by the search engine. Normally, a search engine spider will go to your homepage, and follow links on each page it visits to index as many pages as it can on your website, according to your link authority (a measure of the number & quality of links pointing to your site). The more link authority your site has, the more resources a search engine is willing to invest in indexing your pages.
Search engines support reading a XML site map to add to its list of pages to index. In addition, we can provide other important details to the search engine spider, like how often a page is updated, when it was last updated, and details about any images we want indexed as well. Providing a complete and properly formatted XML site map is considered a basic requirement by many SEOs, and will go a long way towards getting the vast majority of your pages indexed.

The Problem: big brands are dominating search results pages (SERPs)

One of the most common complaints coming from SEOs and webmasters over the last few months has been about big brands taking over search results pages. Various (https://forums.seochat.com/google-optimization-7/biggest-online-retail-brands-dominate-serps-463208.html) webmaster and SEO forums (https://www.webmasterworld.com/google/4589243.htm) have threads on the topic, and the Internet retailer 2013 search marketing guide (https://www.internetretailer.com/2012/11/01/new-world-order-natural-search) had this to say (emphasis mine):

With the implementation of Google Panda in February 2011 and Penguin in May 2012, Google changed its search engine algorithm to lower the rankings of web retailers whose sites featured static and generic content available on many other sites. Moving up under the new rules are retailers that offer detailed content, such as unique product descriptions and images, are smart at using reams of customer information to create content that appeals to shoppers looking for a specific brand or SKU, or that bring original content to their web sites in the form of consumer reviews and other content drawn from online social networks.



The biggest retailing brands tended to be the winners from these changes, and that shows up in their dominance of the natural search rankings in the new 2013 Internet Retailer Search Engine Marketing Guide.

Big brands have bigger signals

If you think about it from the search engine's point of view, it's not that hard to understand why big brands like Amazon, Sears, or eBay would have an easy time ranking well.

What is SEO and why should I care?
While most website owners are familiar with the concept of search engine optimization (SEO), most that I have spoken to have an incomplete view of what it can do and its importance overall.

Ever since there have been search engines, search engine optimizers (SEOs) have tried various tactics to rank well - often straying into deceptive or 'black hat' techniques like auto generated content, websites, and link networks. As search engines have gotten better at detecting these spammy techniques, the spammers have gotten more clever. The latest major change on the Google side began in April 2012, with the Penguin update.

Two distinct but similar concepts that are important to understand, and easy to get wrong. SEO basically boils down to sending search engines the signals that they like, so every website owner should strive to ensure they are handling canonical and duplicate content issues properly.

I will detail some of the issues that can come up along with my recommendation for handling it.

Now that Google Analytics (https://www.google.com/analytics/) is available to anyone with a website for free, it's possible to bring an entirely new level of data-driven analysis to ongoing SEO efforts. This guide assumes that you have a basic understanding of analytics concepts and a functional web analytics platform that tracks conversion data that can tie back to the original source ( one of the most basic features). It doesn't have to be Google Analytics, but my examples will use their reports.

So what are canonical URLs? Due to a number of factors, it's possible to display the exact same page on some sites with a bunch of different URLs - this situation causes its own host of problems that search engines have to deal with. They attempt to solve it by figuring out what the canonical, or master URL for a page is. This way they can filter out all the other pages that have exactly (or nearly) the same content, and provide better results for their users. There is an excellent write up by Google web guy Matt Cutts on his web site (https://www.mattcutts.com/blog/seo-advice-url-canonicalization/)

Much of this can be applied to any type of site, but my focus will be specific to E-Commerce web sites. I've never put these concepts down on paper before, so I will likely be making changes over time as I refine my ideas. I believe this list covers the essentials to E-Commerce success - if any of these areas are weak, it will affect the others and the ultimate success of your site.

This article is written for a web-savvy user who is interested in optimizing their Netsuite hosted E-Commerce site for better placement in search engines' natural search engine results pages (SERPs). It assumes a good deal of knowledge about Internet basics, but anyone actively involved on the technical side of a Netsuite store should be familiar with the terms and concepts I use. If you have any questions, please feel free to let me know.