Product Page rankings - How to boost?

[DHS_SH]

Hi folks

I am responsible for an e-commerce website. Our website is doing very well but I believe that our product pages should be ranking more highly than they currently are.

When taking over my current role, it became clear that a number of changes would need to be made to try and boost the under performing product pages. Amongst other things I therefore implemented the following:

1. New Product content - we have placed a massive focus on reworking all product content so that it is unique and offers value to the reader. The new content includes videos, images and text that is all keyword rich but (I hope) not seen as overly spammy.
2. Duplicate content - the CMS was creating multiple versions of the same page - I addressed this by implementing 301 redirects and adding canonical links. This ensures there is now only 1 version of the page
3. Parameters - I instructed Google to not index certain URLs containing specific parameters
4. Internal links - I have tried to improve the number of links to the products from relevant key category pages

My question is, although some of the changes have only been in place for a month, what else can I do to ensure that the product pages rank as highly as possible. As an e-commerce website with so many products it is very difficult to link to these product pages directly, so any tips or suggestions would be welcome!

Here's an example of a product page link :

http://www.directheatingsupplies.co.uk/pid_37440/100180/Worcester-Greenstar-29CDi-Classic-Gas-Combi-Boiler-7738100216-29-Cdi.aspx

[Travis-W]

I too work with an ecommerce site.
It's tough.

Site structure is key.  Breadcrumbs will be your best friend in getting link juice deep into your site.
Once the structure is good, focus on getting links to your home page and a sprinkling down into your product pages.

[DHS_SH]

Thanks Travis - I think your 100% correct in saying that for eCommerce websites it is imperative to ensure the website structure is setup correctly to ensure that product pages can benefit from as much exposure as possible.

Where you say breadcrumbs are important , do you mean introducing DoFollow breadcrumb links to the top of each category or product page?

[Travis-W]

Yep, I mean a trail of category page links on product pages, like this - http://screencast.com/t/YSlLeuXeG
Personally I have noticed this not only reinforces the site structure, but helps more pages of my site get crawled because it makes it easier for Google's spiders to navigate my site.