How does adding ecommerce to a site affect SEO? What are the negative and what are the positives?

[TeguarMarketing]

We are thinking of adding ecommerce to our website as a service to our customers. We generate most of our leads through online quote requests but heard that it may be beneficial to our SEO if we add ecommerce for a few products.  Is this true?  Does anyone have tips on best and worst SEO ecommerce practices?

[EGOL]

**....but heard that it may be beneficial to our SEO if we add ecommerce for a few products.  Is this true? **

If you start selling a few products you are going to need inventory, shopping cart, credit card processing, PCI certification, secure server, phone support, shipping containers, I could go on for a while longer...

If you want to start selling a few products because you want to get into retail then that is the right reason but if you are going this because somebody says it is good for your SEO, it might not work how they expected.

I have content websites with small stores and small retail websites with content libraries.   I can tell you that the content and not the retail drives the rankings and traffic.

[TeguarMarketing]

Thank you for the response. As a business, and in the back end of our site, we are already set up for all things ecommerce, but have not pressed the go button yet. SEO is one consideration among many for ecommerce decisions. We are B2B so ecommerce is different for us than B2C businesses. From what I understand, you are saying that ecommerce is a neutral for SEO?

It is all in how you manage it just like any other site?  My specific concern is if it is common to have duplicate content/ thin content problems with eccommerce pages. If so, would 301 redirects boost the authority of the page they go to or be a detractor?

[EGOL]

In general, my approach to ecommerce pages is to invest enough time and energy into them that they have no duplicate or thin content problems.

I try to create a generous description with facts and statistics about the item being sold.  When I can't do that I might have multiple related items for sale on the same page.

I do have some retail pages that have been on my site for a long time.  For those, I am working to improve them so there is very little risk of Panda problems.  On a site where I did have some Panda problems, I have noindexed the problem pages until I have them improved for indexing again.    I don't want to abandon these pages because I have a big investment in photography, writing, and inventory.

About 301 redirecting retail pages, yes, I do that, but I don't feel that they are really SEO assets to the site beyond being a page relevant for specific keywords.  In combination with that I view each retail page as dead weight on the site that must be lifted with popular pages in my content areas.

[TeguarMarketing]

Thank you. This is helpful insight.