The time it takes to load a web page is called the page download speed, or load time. Your site's average load time is an important factor in Google's site ranking algorithm. Web users expect pages to load quickly, and pages with longer load times tend to have higher bounce rates, and those sites are seen as less important. For more information on the effect of site performance and organic rankings and conversion, see Cloudflares article on Website Performance and Conversation Rates (https://www.cloudflare.com/learning/performance/more/website-performance-conversion-rates/).

To measure site speed, Google released a SEO tool called Lighthouse back in 2018 that offers some insight on the performance of your website and its pages. This audit gives a mobile and desktop score across four areas: Performance, Accessibility, Best Practices, and SEO. For the sake of this article, we will be focusing on solely the "Performance" category of the testing and its associated fixes. So, let's dive in!

Responsive design in a nutshell is when your site automatically fits within the user’s device. Thus, if the user has a small screen (width-wise), the elements will rearrange to show you what really matters (CTA buttons, other actionable items). You’ll often see bigger buttons, more blank space between the various web elements in hopes to avoid accidental user actions, smaller font-sizes, etc.

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.

Power Reviews (now BazaarVoice) allows websites to add product reviews for each item. One of the best side benefits of adding reviews to your site is the user generated content, which is rich with long tail keywords (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Long_tail) that users are searching with to find your products. The typical methodfor enabling search engine friendly reviews with Power Reviews is called their 'in-line SEO' solution. Unfortunately NetSuite companies haven't been able to implement the solution due to limitations within the NetSuite platform. Fourth Wave Consulting has developed a fully automated solution that works around these limitations, and provides the full SEO benefits.

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.

Product pages. For most Internet retailers, these are the most numerous pages on their site, and a perfect place to optimize for long tail keywords. In this guide, I will cover the options within NetSuite's template driven e-commerce platform for optimizing product pages for search engines, and give the pros and cons of those choices.