Don’t overoptimize
Every internet retailer I know wants to come up high in the search engine result’s page (SERP) for keywords related to their product line. This makes sense - with organic search engine traffic (ie, not sponsored links) there is no marginal cost as there is with pay-per-click.
The problem is that you’re not alone - all of your competitors understand the value of coming up high in the SERP’s so they are also optimizing their pages. One trap that I have seen a LOT of internet retailers fall into is over-optimization.
I know it’s tempting - you want to do everything exactly right on your page and you end up using the keywords you are targetting several times in hopes that the engines will think you are the authority on that keyword. There are 2 problems with this approach (called keyword stuffing):
1) Your copy doesn’t read well. In many cases your customers will think that it is either dynamically generated or written by somebody who does not speak english well - either way it turns them off.
2) The search engines are smart enough now to recognize when people are doing this and they have an over-optimization penalty (OOP). They know that no reasonable person would have a page so optimized for a keyword or phrase and hence it must be somebody trying to game the engines.
That being said, there is nothing wrong with understanding how the engines work and optimizing your site for them. Just make sure that what you are doing is not excessive and that it is something that you would do in the normal development of a site. I suggest that you check out some good SEO websites, build a decent link campaign and write natural, flowing copy (check out Sewell Direct - we have some awesome copywriters that know how to make it flow).
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