Mercado adds search module for online catalogues

Online retailers can take advantage of Mercado's new Search Engine Optimisation module and service offering, increasing the accuracy of product searches conducted by web shoppers.

By using the Mercado SEO module, online retailers of all sizes can now expose the hidden jewels of their product catalogue to major search engines while decreasing dependency on costly SEM programs to drive valuable buyer traffic.

In addition, Mercado has added much more scalability and power with the release of its native 64-bit platform.

By doubling the total volume of SKUs supported, Mercado can handle the largest product catalogues while reducing hardware requirements.

Mercado's latest release introduces a new technology that streamlines the indexing process so that customers experience quicker search response times while being able to search and browse larger catalogues.

The new platform also makes it easier for business owners to manage advanced merchandising strategies across large catalogues by reducing the number of data sets created.

The SEO module is compliant with the sitemap protocol used by search engines such as Google and Yahoo!, making it easy for search spiders to crawl "hidden" product classifications and descriptions and enabling web searchers to more easily find the products they are looking for - no matter where the products reside in the retailer's database or how they are described.

In addition, Mercado-generated sitemaps expose value-add content such as promotions and special merchandising content to search engines and their spiders.

The SEO sitemap generation capability supports a variety of page types including category pages, product pages, landing pages and top keyword search pages.

In addition to the new SEO module, Mercado provides URL rewriting, meta-data consulting, and dynamic linking services.

By using Mercado's SEO capabilities, online retailers no longer have to play the SEO game - that is, trying to figure out which keywords will return the best results, gambling against their competitors for the best terms, and always trying to hit the moving SEM budget target.

"With search engine marketing costs climbing to more than GBP10 per order on average, many online retailers are depending heavily on natural search to drive more shopping traffic to their sites," said Corey Leibow, President and CEO of Mercado Software.

"Through our SEO functionality, online retailers can easily and automatically optimise their sites to obtain greatly improved natural search rankings, thereby reducing their marketing costs while increasing traffic and conversion rates".

Experts concur that retailers have an opportunity to greatly enhance search rankings and improve overall product exposure on the web by making their product catalogues 'search friendly'.

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