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Improve Your Search Engine Optimization with Our Shopify SEO Services

There’s no shortage of reasons that you might want to consider using Shopify as a platform around which you can configure your online store. There are a load of user-friendly features that can almost make it easy for you to build an online business from the ground up.

In many ways, Shopify is the ultimate eCommerce platform. While every software has its benefits and drawbacks, with Shopify there’s almost no limit to how you can customize your store. It’s a great overall solution for online merchants who are looking to build an appealing store that integrates a lot of features.

While you can go your own way with your branding in the layout and design of your site, you’ll probably also be drawn to the fact that you can integrate tons of applications into your Shopify site that offer your visitors and customers additional functionality and engagement.

Shopify is also secure and offers some of the best uptime available to eCommerce entrepreneurs. As digital security becomes one of the main concerns – both for online buyers and sellers, you’ll appreciate the fact that Shopify has some of the best available security features available. Then there’s the fact that Shopify offers its users practically unlimited uptime, so that you don’t have to experience headaches and lost sales associated with downtime and customer complaints.

In short, Shopify offers a few solutions for online businesses with varying needs. The thing is, almost regardless of your marketing strategy, your business will face a lot of competition from other sellers online who are offering similar products and compete on similar or the same keywords to get in front of customers. In many cases, though your products might be different, your target markets might be the same.

How do you get in front of your customers before the competition gets in front of them first? How can you ensure that your page ranks sufficiently to be visible to those in the market that have an interest in, even a need for, your products or services?

You get in front of them with our Shopify SEO services. Here’s how.

Invest in Keyword Research and Develop A Strategy

One of the most significant ways to make changes to your website is by addressing the layout of your website, but that will take on many facets, so bear with us. We’ll start with the importance of keyword research and strategy.

In order to rank your website, there are a number of things that search engines must be able to identify as they crawl your site’s pages. It can be tough to find a place to start since all of the different factors affecting overall SEO are interrelated, but the way your site is laid out and the keywords it contains are a great place to start.

Let’s consider a keyword strategy, as a solid keyword strategy will affect both the way your site’s structure is addressed as well as nearly everything other aspect of your SEO endeavors. It all starts with taking a look at the greater market and conducting research into what keywords customers are searching for.

We’ll look for high volume keywords that search engines will be looking for when they crawl your website. In-depth keyword research entails understanding the relationship between customers’ reasons for searching for those keywords as well as what they expect to find.

Customers have a need for searching for keywords that drives that intent. While it’s impossible to read the customer’s minds, we can see what keywords are being searched for repeatedly as well as how competitors within your market are using those keywords to their advantage and ranking well for them.

If a competitor is successful at driving traffic to their website with a specific high volume keyword, then you can start to develop confidence that that website is offering some value to those who enter that word – that word might be a good word to target for your own use to try to grab some of that business – particularly if you offer similar or superior products.

Yet that is only one keyword, and keyword research will uncover a laundry list of words and terms that might be valuable to chase down. We’ll investigate their volume and relevance and come up with a list that will be effective for your business based on several indicators.

Once we’ve compiled a list of keywords for you to target in your efforts, we can get into your site structure, content production and garnering links to your website to gain authority for you.

Optimizing Your Site Structure

Optimizing your site structure is one of the primary ways that our Shopify SEO services can help you build more targeted traffic to your website, and some of that starts with the keyword research we hashed out above.

Before we get into the specifics of some of the many ways we can help to streamline and optimize your website, there’s some really good news in all this. Optimizing your Shopify stores for search engines won’t just help to generate more traffic to your site and help you boost conversions. It’s actually married to user experience. Know that as you develop an effective design that catches the attention of search engines, you will create a better user experience and interface as a by-product, so investing in SEO is a win-win for your business.

A large part of making your site structure more effective is tied to making it easier for search engines to crawl your website in a logical progression, which, as we stated, will also make your website easier for customers to navigate, another win-win scenario. The internal linking structure of your website must make sense, and not be overwhelmingly convoluted or circular.

Laying out your site structure in a basic fashion that only requires a few clicks to get to the page on which you want the ultimate conversion to occur is a pretty basic and effective design. It shouldn’t be counterintuitive or productive to find your products, services, sign-ups or anything else you want your customers to find. Think of it this way – if it’s hard for thinking customers to get there, it will probably be that much harder for an unthinking algorithm to do the same thing.

That’s a bit of a metaphor, but if it puts things in perspective, it’s worth it. There’s more to it than that, but that’s where our expert Shopify SEO services come into play. We handle the technical work so you don’t have to.

There’s so much more to optimizing your site structure than just the internal linking, though. Consider also the fact that our experts will take a look at your page titles, meta titles and meta descriptions, for example, to ensure that they are optimized as well.

Remember we stressed the importance of keyword research and strategy above? Here’s where it starts to come into the picture. What are your page titles, URLs, meta titles and meta descriptions made of? What are your category pages titles and descriptions composed of? All of the content, on and off your site that takes a written form, is composed of words.

So when we look at your site structure, we’re not just looking at the internal linking and hierarchy of the site. We’re looking at the keywords and phrases that appear in your meta titles and descriptions and on your category and product pages. This starts to enter the realm of content production as part of an SEO campaign, though we’re not entirely there yet.

Ultimately, we will address all of the titles and descriptions associated with your site to ensure that they are rich with keywords that will drive traffic to your site and ultimately to those pages. We don’t lose any opportunities to enrich your page titles and descriptions with keywords and phrases that customers are looking for to help generate traffic to your store. We also eliminate duplicate content in those titles and on those pages that can do more than confuse search engines and visitors to your site. It can even result in a penalty, but we’ll get to the dangers of duplicate content in a bit.

We Can Create A Responsive Design

As part of developing Shopify websites that are SEO friendly, our Shopify SEO experts can help your business develop a responsive design that will be adaptable to the small screen. This can and will have far-reaching benefits for both your SEO efforts and your customer friendliness.

If you need convincing on this front, know that M-commerce is rapidly growing and that every year, more and more online transactions take place on mobile devices. Shoppers are turning to their phones and tablets to research products, read reviews, communicate with other users and then ultimately make their purchase decisions. Over the course of 2020, mobile transactions are expected to surpass the halfway mark – that is, they are expected to account for over half of all online sales.

eCommerce shop

What does that mean? A website that doesn’t scale to the device to offer a flexible user experience will be left in the dust. If your desktop website is stellar, that’s grand. If it doesn’t fit the device, showing up as text-heavy, curtailed or disproportionate on a phone’s screen, that’s bad news.

We don’t feel the need to dive further into why this will adversely affect your conversion rate, but we will do you the service of elaborating on its impacts on SEO. Google has begun mobile-first indexing, which means that it will first evaluate a website on its mobile design and then on other factors. That means a responsive design is becoming more and more important to how your Shopify store will rank in search results. A user-friendly, engaging mobile site is just one more thing our Shopify SEO services can offer you.

Use Content Production to Your Advantage

Content production is more than just a component of your marketing efforts. Content can be used directly to optimize your website for search engines and it can even be used to generate backlinks to your website to gain your business referral traffic.

Content production is also, obviously, tied directly into the keyword strategy that we develop for your business. One of the aspects this takes on is on your product and category pages. We will conduct an analysis of these pages to investigate the content they contain, as this is one of the main areas in which businesses are guilty of offering duplicate content.

Category and product pages with duplicate content aren’t just boring to customers. Search engines will immediately recognize it as duplicate and defer to the original source as the authority, which will rob you of traffic. It can be tempting to take a manufacturer description but don’t fall prey to that trap.

As part of our Shopify SEO services, we will craft original, keyword-rich content for your category and product pages to drive customers looking for those keywords to those pages. Sounds effective, right? That’s because it is. You’re basically placing the solution right before the person with the problem.

We will also create content for your site’s blog to entice readers with valuable information on your company, on the solutions your products offer, and other engaging topics, and you guessed it, it will be original, keyword-rich, and highly targeted to your audience. But posting original and informative content on your website to engage readers and drive traffic isn’t our only strategy. We will create similar content and post it elsewhere on highly authoritative sites directing traffic back to your website indicating you as a reputable source. It’s genius (see: Genius eCommerce) and effective.

Of course, this is a highly simplified overview of the efforts we take as part of an SEO strategy to generate long term organic traffic to your site and craft the ideal user experience for your customers, but they all work together to achieve results. To learn more about our processes and see how we can impact your web design for the better, reach out to us at info@geniusecommerce.com or at 267-225-1946.

March 06, 2020

Michael Esposito

Blog, Ecommerce, eCommerce SEO, Mobile, shopify seo
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Now Serving: The Best eCommerce Marketing Tips

The eCommerce marketplace is one of the most competitive landscapes in today’s environment. It’s more competitive even than a row of similar businesses selling commoditized products in a bustling square where consumers can take their pick.

The eCommerce marketplace is like that bustling square, except consumers can pick and choose between options nearly instantaneously and with the greatest of ease.

If a consumer wants a review of a specific product, it’s right at their fingertips.

If a consumer wants to compare prices for the same product from five or more different vendors, it’s also right at their fingertips, and they can have the answer in mere moments.

If a customer wants to find alternatives to that very same product – you guessed it, all of the answers they’re looking are right there at their fingertips.

These days, time and choice are in the camp of your consumers, and the online marketplace is stiff with competition. But that doesn’t mean it’s impossible to be successful in selling products or services online. In fact, that couldn’t be farther from the truth.

The factors that come together to make the online marketplace so competitive largely stem from the fact that it’s completely saturated with customers. People are increasingly turning to the internet to fulfill purchases specifically because it offers them so much convenience.

Global eCommerce sales are expected to surpass 4 trillion dollars this year. It might seem tough to get a share of that pie, but it is a very large pie, and there are definitely ways to take a share for your business.

One of the greatest ways to compete effectively is with an expert marketing strategy, and we here at Genius eCommerce specialize in solving complex eCommerce problems. A marketing strategy taking advantage of some of the best eCommerce marketing tips will have quite an impact on your business.

A successful marketing strategy will create a robust brand, speak to your target audience, cultivate loyalty and more. With some of the best eCommerce marketing tips at your disposal – tips that you’ll find outlined here – you could be well on your way to reaching the right market and differentiating your products effectively.

Create, and Strengthen, a Unique Brand for Your eCommerce Website

A unique brand that speaks to your target audience is hands down one of the strongest assets that your business can list. In short, a strong brand is critical. It represents a statement of value and provides an experience that customers can’t find elsewhere. The thing is, it takes attention and dedication to build one that is not only strong, but unique and focused.

Develop an intimate knowledge of your business. It is your business, after all. Get to know your customers. Get to know how they use your products and why. Build your brand around that relationship, and you will thank yourself in the long run.

Publish Original, Targeted Content to Your eCommerce Sites

The use of content in marketing is expected to grow significantly in the coming years. The overwhelming majority of consulted marketing professionals agree that content is one of the most effective ways to reach and engage audiences and the use of content in marketing is central to this.

Create a blog and post original, insightful content on your product and the problems it solves. For those who prefer to consume content in the form of a video, consider publishing a vlog. Consider sending emails as part of a targeted campaign. The sky’s the limit when it comes to being inventive with how you want to reach your audience.

Utilize User Generated Content, Too!

While you should offer creative, original content, sharing and promoting user-generated content is a great way to build trust with customers and get them excited about your product. Not only does it potentially save you time, but It can make you seem more authentic and more engaged with your audience, and that can go a long way. Trust is one of the strongest elements in building a successful brand. After all, if you know you need to be engaging with your audience, shouldn’t you engage them?

Personalize – Wherever You Can – to Increased Sales

Personalization is the future of marketing endeavors. Customers are increasingly expecting to be the audience for relevant advertising material and content. To offer a personalized experience, you’ll need to be in touch with your customers.

Reach out to them, ask for their feedback for improvements or reviews. Giving your customers the feeling that they are a part of the success of your business will build rapport and trust, and will positively affect your conversion rate.

The Mobile Marketing Channel Is The Future

One more thing to consider here – make sure your online store is optimized to provide a high-quality mobile experience. More and more customers are using their mobile phones and tablets to research products and make purchases. Make sure that your advertising and your marketing efforts are well adapted to the mobile landscape – if not, they will not be as effective as they might be.

We could go on, but we’d love the chance to be able to give you advice based on your unique situation (see, personalize wherever, above!). In order for us to do that we need to get to know the challenges facing your eCommerce business, and the only way we can do that is by speaking with you. If you’re interested in learning more about tackling the marketing opportunities before you and getting some more of the best eCommerce marketing tips, contact us at info@geniusecommerce.com.

February 27, 2020

Michael Esposito

Blog, Digital Marketing, Ecommerce, eCommerce SEO, Marketing & Branding, Mobile
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Magento SEO: Eight Important Considerations

Magento is a powerful, open-source platform that can be used to build very successful eCommerce websites. It offers a lot of options for customizability to its users, but to get the most success from the platform, it requires an in-depth knowledge of how it operates. When you’re running a business online, you have plenty on your plate as it is. If you need to ramp up your traffic and get your website in front of the eyes of more customers, you might want to consider a Magento SEO campaign, and here are some very important things to consider.

Focus On Keywords And Key Phrases

There are so many different factors at play during a professionally crafted Magento SEO campaign that it can be very difficult to focus on just one. However, perhaps nothing is as important to the success of a campaign at the keyword research that precedes it and the keyword strategy that defines it. Almost all of the following advice we offer would be impossible to use or ineffective without a keyword strategy to guide it.

A keyword strategy will help define all of the content you produce, both in the form of short and long-form consumables as part of your marketing efforts and as descriptions on your pages, page titles and more.

A Magento SEO campaign will need to begin with keyword research to understand what words consumers are using in their searches and why; what information and content they find valuable; what sites get traffic, and what keywords they are using for success.

When you have identified a list of keywords and key phrases that you will use as the foundation of much of your search engine optimization initiatives you can then progress into content product and optimizing much of the rest of your Magento website.

Create An Optimized URL Structure

One of the most basic improvements you can make to your Magento website to increase its search engine optimization is to clean up the URL structure of your site. Once you have developed a keyword strategy, developing a simple and effective URL structure can become much easier.

In practice, a team of skilled developers and designers can take a look at the overall structure of your site and help you identify areas for improvement. Generally, optimized URLs contain the right mix of keywords that are relevant to the page itself and are as short as practical. Long URLs with lots of nonsense letters and numbers tend to generate their own issues. Where they can be avoided, they should be. There’s no sense in letting something as simple as a URL hurt your Magento SEO.

Creating an effective URL structure won’t just make it easier for search engine algorithms to recognize and rank your site, but they’ll offer value to visitors as well. A URL structure that contains basic information on the contents of the page will help search engines put those pages in front of the people searching for those words in the first place. The effect is twofold.

Use The Right Default Titles: Optimize Titles And Meta Descriptions

This is another really simple way that a Magento website can miss out on a lot of potential. When something as simple as meta tags for categories or something like a title tag is hurting the optimization of your website, it’s time to fix it.

As with URL optimization, optimizing your meta titles and meta descriptions starts with the foundation of a solid keyword strategy. With respect to your titles, they should be specific, make sense, be easy to read and be relevant to the page. They should also be short – in fact, they should be as short as is practical. This will once again prove value to the search engine evaluating it and any customers that happen to read it.

Focusing on and optimizing the meta descriptions of your pages provides plenty of opportunities to offer value to your potential customers and improve your click-through rate. Provide relevant information in the meta description for what is contained on the page into which you want the viewer to click through. It should be short, but it should also be enriched with keywords, provide some insight into the page and where possible include some sort of call to action or incentive. Once again, this is valuable to search engines that view it as well as any human eyes that read it. Don’t miss a chance to optimize these portions of your web pages.

Add A Blog Page To Your eCommerce Platform

Adding a blog page is an excellent way to provide value to your customers and to increase your Magento SEO. Make no mistake about it, if you don’t have a blog page to organize your written content and you aren’t regularly publishing, you are not giving it your all to drive visitors to your site.

As with the opportunities we’ve explored so far, regularly publishing a variety of content to a blog page on your website will offer value to visitors to your site as well as provide additional positive metrics by which search engines will rank it.

It is essential to provide written content intended for your visitors to consume for a variety of reasons. First, it gives visitors something to read that will provide relevant value and insight into the products or services you sell. The higher the quality of the content, the more likely you will be to have repeat visitors. Sessions on your pages will be longer as visitors consume your written content, which is another thing that search engines look out for and use to evaluate your site. In addition, high-quality valuable content is likely to be shared by readers, which will build backlinks to your site – another critically important process that will improve your SEO and alert search engines to your website as an authoritative source that customers trust.

Search engines will evaluate your site based on how customers interact with it, and if they are spending plenty of time reading what you have to say and sharing your links, they will rank you more highly. There are a few components to this, but the two most important are the subjective quality of the content from the perspective of a reader, and the objective value of your content based on its keyword density. Again, this goes back to the keyword strategy, but it also requires skilled and informative content production. That is another component of what goes into making a Magento SEO campaign effective.

Eliminate Duplicate Content

Speaking of creating a blog and regularly publishing high-quality content brings up the importance of eliminating duplicate content on your website. Duplicate content can take many forms and isn’t limited to anything in your blog posts, so it’s worth exploring what this means and why it’s important to get rid of it.

Duplicate content is just what it sounds like. Any content, in basically any form, that appears on your website and appears somewhere else in the exact same for. That means on and off your website. Allow us to explain.

First, you’ll want to eliminate duplicate content that appears on your website. It will make your site more navigable and won’t confuse search engines, or readers for that matter. You don’t want blog articles that say exactly the same thing, but you also don’t want to use the same image file multiple times or the same page titles, for that matter. It’s damaging to your user experience and your optimization.

But there’s more. It’s an unfortunately common practice for site operators to find information on other sites and publish it to their own, either because they appreciated the content or couldn’t come up with their own. Don’t ever do this. Not only is it plagiarism, but search engines will recognize it as duplicate content and will penalize your rankings as a result.

Along with the other benefits that an experienced team of technical experts can provide, they can make it easier for you to eliminate any duplicate content that exists on your site as well as providing you with fresh, engaging content to post.

Optimize The Internal Linking Structure Of Your Site

An optimized internal linking structure is not only critical to the manner in which visitors interact with your website and navigate it. It will also affect the rankings that search engines give to your website. Just like everything else investigated so far, the value of a well designed internal linking structure is multifaceted.

A well developed internal linking structure makes it easy for visitors to your site to find what they came for. Generally, it should only take a couple of clicks for visitors to find the product pages they came looking for in the first place. This is valuable because it will minimize the risk of users becoming frustrated or “lost” on your website. As we’ve explained previously, a website that is difficult to navigate offers a poor user experience and damages your chances at repeat visits – and your conversion rate.

At the same time that a well developed internal linking structure provides value to visitors, it also enables search engines to crawl your site structure more readily. The more logically your site progresses, the more highly search engines will rank your site. Therefore, by creating an optimized structure, you can generate higher organic traffic to your site, which has its own benefits.

External Link Building Is Important

While you don’t necessarily directly build external links, they are an important part of a Magento SEO campaign. External link building will start to develop naturally if your website offers fresh, original, informative and engaging content. As users interact with your site and consume your content, they will share it on social media or elsewhere. Any links they post that direct traffic back to your site are called backlinks and they are an invaluable resource for convincing search engines that your site is an authoritative source and most importantly, a source trusted by visitors.

Backlinks to your website are an invaluable component of an SEO campaign and are another indispensable in driving traffic to your site. Nothing says that your site is trustworthy like a reader who asks other readers to take a look at what they found on your site. Understandably, the quality of your content and the success of your content marketing will have a great impact on the backlinks you are able to generate, so that is just another way that all of these components of a Magento SEO campaign are intertwined.

Optimize Your Site For Speed

Here’s another component of an SEO campaign that sometimes takes an unfortunate backseat. Your website should be optimized for speed. As with some of the other considerations to account for during an SEO campaign, a site optimized for speed will have a few effects on the success of the initiative.

The first is that the process of optimizing your site for speed will have a positive effect on the structure of your site and eliminate any fluff that might be present on your website. Streamlining your site design for speed will make it easier for search engines to crawl your pages and analyze the navigational flow and hierarchy of your web store. The first effect here is that it will make it much easier for search engines to recognize your site as a trustworthy source and afford it the rankings you want.

The second effect that will result from optimizing your website to make it faster is that you will improve your user experience significantly. All of the changes you may have made to make your website faster will probably make it much easier for users to navigate your site and find what they were looking for. Even if the changes you made were invisible from a user level, the fact that your pages will load faster cannot be underscored enough. Most users will bounce off of a page if the load time is over three seconds. In other words, online shoppers have no tolerance for web pages that load too slowly. Optimize your site for speed and you can prevent these unfortunate circumstances.

It’s time for you to optimize your eCommerce store, and here’s why. With a free SEO audit by Genius eCommerce, you can see where your web store stands. If it’s healthy, you have nothing to lose. If you could make any improvement, any changes you make today to improve the visibility of your website online and increase its rankings will pay you back in the long term.

And not only can you get a free SEO audit from Genius eCommerce, but we can handle your entire SEO campaign as well. We have years of experience streamlining clients’ websites to help them generate more traffic and boost sales. There’s no need to wait – give us a call today at 888-982-8269 or contact us at info@geniusecommerce.com.

February 14, 2020

Michael Esposito

Ecommerce, ecommerce platforms, eCommerce SEO, Magento
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Take Advantage Of eCommerce SEO: Grow Traffic and Enhance User Experience

Search Engine Optimization, or SEO, can seem like an intimidating and confusing buzzword to many owners of online stores. It might seem like a mystifying collection of practices that requires rare and exquisite technological erudition to unlock. In reality, it’s a lot less lofty than that, and it can have a real impact on the organic traffic to your web store and on the quality of the user experience it offers.

Taking advantage of eCommerce SEO does require experience and a fair amount of technical expertise, but it’s far from magic. What you need if you want to bring in some of the benefits associated with eCommerce SEO is a team of professionals like those at Genius eCommerce.

Through their keyword research, statistical competitor and industry analyses, content production and web design and development, they come up with an eCommerce strategy for you to optimize your online presence and offer you more business and your users a better experience more in line with their expectations.

An Optimized Site Will Be More Visible

The first benefit that an optimized site will offer your business is that it will be more visible to online users, and the ultimate result is higher organic traffic to your site. Through a combination of content product and link building, optimizing category pages, headers and tags, an in-depth look at the layout and design of your website and if necessary repositioning efforts, the team at Genius eCommerce can revamp your website to make it optimized to drive organic traffic

What this means for you is that your ranking on search engine results pages will steadily grow over time, making it easier for potential customers to find your site and thus your products or services. When more potential customers can find your business based on an organic search using targeted keywords, it gives you a much higher chance for conversion and will have a net positive effect on the growth of your online business.

An Optimized Site Will Be Faster

Oftentimes a part of an SEO project involves the removal of duplicate content and pages from your website and efforts to make your site more crawlable. In these ways and others, your website will experience a shift in load times to make it much faster. The intended effect is to improve your search rankings, but a faster site has much more value than just being more agreeable to search engine algorithms.

A fast website will have a serious impact on how customers view your company as a trustworthy and reliable source of information. Not only will they view your site more favorably, but they’ll be less likely to bounce right out of your site out of frustration. Since visitors to your site need to stay on your site to be customers anyway, this is a win-win situation that results from an eCommerce SEO project.

An Optimized Site Will Get Visitors In Front Of What They Want

An optimized site won’t just be faster, it will get visitors – potential customers – in front of what they want much faster as well. The sooner visitors can find what they’re looking for, the sooner they can become customers.

Having optimizing search capabilities is another component of advanced user experience and it will also help with conversion rates, but this is concept is even more basic. Since an optimized website will be ranked more highly by search engines and thus be more visible to the denizens of the web, it will put clients in front of what they want much more naturally.

For example, an effective keyword strategy will link up clients with your website based on what they were looking for in the first place. Customers will treat the organic search results much more favorably and will be more likely to engage with your site.

Quality Content Can Result In Link Sharing

The production of quality content is the cornerstone of an effective eCommerce SEO campaign. Not only does quality content strengthen your brand image and awareness of your products, but it can also be particularly valuable to your readers – here’s how.

When visitors to your website read your content and are interested, entertained or informed by what they’ve read, they’re much more likely to share it. Sharing your content builds links back to your website pointing to you as a valuable source that people should look to. It’s one of the best ways, if not the best way, to engage customers.

An effective eCommerce SEO campaign can have all of these benefits for your organization, but it is likely to have many more, and all with the end results of getting more potential customers involved and engaged with your online store. All it takes is to partner with the right organization, with the right skills and experience to put together an unstoppable SEO campaign to get you those results, and we here at Genius eCommerce have the grit and the experience to help you make those gains. If more traffic to your online store is something you’re not entirely against, visit our site or contact us at info@geniusecommerce.com.

January 30, 2020

Michael Esposito

Blog, eCommerce SEO
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Steps You Can Take for Higher SEO Rankings

For many eCommerce business owners, SEO seems like a complicated endeavor. You are told to be patient with the results. You are told that it takes extensive research. You are told about the importance of search engine optimization and the things you should update for better optimization.

As complicated as it seems, SEO is not a hopeless endeavor. It’s quite the opposite in fact. You know that you want to improve your SEO rankings, but just need the guidance to take the best practices to get you there.

There are five things that you can do, or find a digital marketing agency to complete, that will help you be set up for SEO success. Check out these steps with us here at Genius eCommerce. This is who we are and what we do.

Coding – One of the most important parts of SEO rankings is the behind the scenes work that coding does. Having a good code to your website does not achieve rankings alone, but if your code is not in order, it can prevent you from reaching the success you want even if everything on the surface is being done well. Technical SEO is an aspect that you simply cannot overlook.

Content – Your content still rules overall. After all, Google reads words first and foremost and looks for the ways it is relevant to search terms. For better Google rankings, you want to have a content marketing plan that focuses on specific keywords and carries some meaning. Relevant and meaningful content helps to boost your domain authority and quality content connects with people who will be reading.

Link Building – A piece of advice you hear a lot when college students are preparing for graduation is to make connections and start networking. Essentially, that is what link building is to your SEO efforts. Building links is making new connections and increasing your domain authority.

Social Shares – Social media has no direct effect on your SEO, but it does go hand in hand with building domain authority and backlinks. Creating connections helps increase your relevance and authority as a leader in your industry. The more shares you can get by promoting your content on social media, the more people will see it organically. This, in turn, helps build up your brand and give it a recognition, which can help you get more clicks from results in search engines because of recognition. Because people may already know the brand from social media, your bounce rate could go down with people visiting having an idea of what to expect from you. That can only improve your conversion rate, establishing that trust in people.

Keyword Ranking – A key part of SEO is choosing keywords that can help improve your overall rankings. The problem is that far too often, SEO clients choose to keep it basic and target words that are broadly searched. With so much competition for the top spots for these keywords, you can easily get lost in the shuffle. That’s why the best way to start your campaign is to do extensive research on keywords where there is an opportunity to achieve the top ranking spots. Using keywords that are more specific to your goals can help you get to the places you want to rank.

With SEO, there are no guarantees or shortcuts to achieving success. It does take patience and research to get the results. With that in mind, having the right team to guide you along the way with the research and strategy can put you on the right track. Taking these steps may not be the easiest thing to do, but it is the most effective in the long run, and that is ultimately what will allow you to achieve the success you desire.

July 25, 2019

admin

Digital Marketing, Ecommerce, eCommerce SEO, Latest eCommerce
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How To Write SEO Friendly Content for eCommerce

You’ve heard the saying that content is king and it really is true. Content marketing has a number of benefits that include building a brand, increasing sales, and generating new leads, and it continues to be an effective method for not only connecting with readers and turning them into customers but also in building authority with search engines.

Content marketing is a fit for every type of business, but there are certain tactics you should take when writing SEO content for eCommerce. Today, we will review some tips for writing SEO friendly content.

Set Goals – Before you even begin to start writing content, you need to set some goals for yourself and your business. What are you trying to accomplish with your content marketing? You may be more focused on establishing your brand or demonstrating why people should buy your products. You may be targeting a new audience. Maybe you are writing for the purpose of gaining better rankings on search engines. Whatever the reason may be, establish it early and use it as motivation when creating content.

Know Your Audience – As you prepare for writing, you want to identify the audience you are writing for so you can produce content that is specifically for them. You can ask yourself a variety of questions about your audience and determine certain things like the age demographic, the type of work they do, what their interests are, what their needs are and why they may want to buy your product. All of these things can help you determine who you are writing for so you can specifically target your audience.

Content Types – Content comes in all forms and you don’t have to be married to one in particular. You may write a few blog posts or articles that are informative. Videos or infographics can be used for a more visual approach, or you may choose to record an audio podcast for people to listen to. All of these types of content help distribute your content marketing across a variety of platforms so that people can connect with you in different ways.

Quality Writing – Content marketing is not just as simple as writing content. You have to make your content, your articles, videos, podcasts and anything else you produce informative and provide value to the customer. Your content should help answer the customer’s questions and solve their problems. The writing should flow naturally and include the keyword you choose to target in a natural way as well. You do not want to stuff your content with the keyword too many times or force the keyword into your content. You also want to check for any grammar or spelling errors and should keep your writing clean and polished.

Share Content – Once your content is published, it should be shared with any followers you have on social media and any other places where you post regularly. Making an announcement of new content attracts readers and bring back loyal followers. It will also help you get on a schedule as you post new content in the future.

Track Your Progress – As you produce content, check your progress. See what kind of results it has on traffic on your website. See what type of content brings the most visitors. Compare these results to your goals set before you started your content marketing campaign and track what connects with your visitors and what isn’t working and adjust your campaign accordingly.

At Genius eCommerce, SEO and content marketing is who we are and what we do. We help you get the tips you need to achieve success in your SEO campaign. Continue reading the Genius eCommerce blog for more.

July 17, 2019

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Digital Marketing, Ecommerce, eCommerce SEO, Latest eCommerce
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BigCommerce and Your WordPress Site

WordPress is an amazing option for businesses that are just starting out with their online presence. The WooCommerce plugin allows businesses to easily add eCommerce functionality to WordPress websites. Since late 2018, there has been a new option for WordPress users to dip their toes into the eCommerce world. Businesses no longer have to choose between WordPress’ flexible platform and BigCommerce’s proven eCommerce engine. For WordPress-based entrepreneurs wondering if they should consider adding BigCommerce to their site, here are some factors to consider.

Your Content and Your Commerce

If you have a well-established WordPress site, you undoubtedly have built a network of content related to your business. While migrating that information to a new platform is possible, it is a time consuming and sometimes risky procedure. If you have dedicated time to building your brand through WordPress, the BigCommerce plugin is a great way to add the checkout options your business needs. 

Increasing Your Scalability

If your business is growing, adding BigCommerce’s functionality is a great option. As you start to do more business on your site, the increased activity can drag down your page’s performance. Letting BigCommerce handle the eCommerce side of your business will leave your content pages running smoothly as your user interactions grow. You get all of the advantages of your WordPress site and BigCommerce’s powerful eCommerce platform. 

More eCommerce Options

Choosing BigCommerce for your WordPress site means WordPress developers can quickly add a huge array of eCommerce options to your site. For example, with the BigCommerce plugin, you have access to 65 payment gateways and seamless access to all major global carriers for your shipping needs. Shopping carts developed through this BigCommerce platform can easily integrate sales and discount codes from your website and make the user experience quick and easy. You can also use this BigCommerce plugin to expand your business’ sales across multiple popular platforms like Facebook, Amazon, and eBay.

Additional Security 

Adding BigCommerce to your WordPress site means that you can use their secure checkout service. Working with BigCommerce means that your checkout process is PCI secure out of the box. You will not have to worry about securing your customer data as your business expands. 

 

If you feel like your business is growing beyond your WordPress’ sites current capabilities, adding BigCommerce’s plugin might just be the perfect way to handle your checkout process. If you’re not ready to move off your established site, but you need to broaden your eCommerce horizons, this plug-in is a perfect way to get the best of both worlds. 

Here at Genius eCommerce, we are dedicated to helping your eCommerce business succeed. To stay up to date on the latest eCommerce news and tips, check back in with us for regular updates.

 

July 01, 2019

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BigCommerce, Digital Marketing, Ecommerce, ecommerce platforms, Latest eCommerce, Uncategorized, Website Platforms
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Choosing a Design Theme for your eCommerce Site

The web design theme you use for your eCommerce site can have a major impact on your business. Whether this is positive or negative depends on how much research you put into your decision.

Consider your users: The number one criteria when choosing a theme is your user base. Many businesses that are trying to appeal to a young and trendy audience will have the most success with modern minimal templates. This style is currently in vogue and does not provide an abundance of distractions from your call to action. Flat themes typically feature light backgrounds and darker text, making your content really pop off the page.

A full-width template is a great option to achieve a very contemporary look. For a more traditional design, a boxed width design is another great choice. These templates include a border around your content and tend to be perfect for websites marketing to other businesses.

No matter what theme option you choose, you will have some empty space on your page. While it might be tempting to fill that negative space, it’s important to avoid over-saturating the user. If you have a lot to say, consider a simple link to another page where you can go more in-depth.

Choose the right header: A strong header sends a strong message. As soon as a user lands on your page, the header should be the first thing that draws their eye. A bold, bright image is truly worth a thousand words. You can tell an entire story about your brand with the right combination of graphics and text at the top of your page. If that story appeals to your user base, it will leave them hungry for more information.

You also want to be sure that your header leaves enough space for users to want to continue their journey through your site. A header that takes up half of your page might make your website appear underdeveloped.

Instead of extending your header vertically, you might want to extend its width beyond the rest of your content, guiding users from the literal big picture to the important details about your business. The right balance between the “curb appeal” of your header and the substance to back it up will be what keeps users interacting with your website.

Check out your competition: If your business has competitors with a successful website, take some time to navigate them. It’s never a great idea to use the exact page template as a competitor, noting their successful layout features will help you improve your own site.

Does your lead competitor place their menu above or below the header? How do they lay out their links or organize their products? All of these factors can contribute to their success and might be a huge help when deciding what your customers want to see for your business.

You should also consider the inverse, what does their site lack? Are there clunky or unnecessary features on the competition’s website? Avoiding their mistakes is a great way to give your site a superior layout.

Menu designs: Your menus are your user’s travel guide to the rest of your website. You need menus to point users towards your products and more information on what you offer as a brand. Whether you feature a simple dropdown menu or what a custom designed mega menu, making your site easy to navigate is key to retaining users and increasing visit durations.

Factors like whether you want to include subcategories to your menu can affect the ease of use for your website. A challenging menu will lead to increased bounce rates, but having too many subcategories can be confusing to users. Be sure to test your own menus and make sure they serve as an efficient gateway for visitors to understand you and your product line.

Branding: What is more important to you, your brand or your products? The idea of your brand is important, and how you feature it on your site will send a message to users. You definitely want your pages to prominently feature your brand logo so visitors will see and remember it.

If your brand is the focal point of your business, you will want that logo front and center. This works well for businesses that are selling a “lifestyle” that goes with their products. For markets like footwear, sometimes having a popular brand of shoes is more important than having shoes in general to consumers. These businesses will want to display that brand first and the products second.

If you want your products to speak for your brand, placing your logo off to the side or in a corner might be a better choice. This placement will give visitors an idea of who you are, while still maintaining your site design’s focal point to display your products. For businesses that want customers to display their product’s utility, or do not have powerful brand recognition, this product fronted design will focus visitors’ interest on what you have to offer.

 

Keep your business up to date with Genius eCommerce. Our experts compile news and tips on every facet of eCommerce so you can always find new ways to improve your site and your business.

June 19, 2019

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Ecommerce, ecommerce platforms, How-To, Latest eCommerce, Website Platforms
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eCommerce Migration and Your SEO Campaign

Sometimes you need to migrate your eCommerce business to a new platform. If you need your website to feature functionality your current eCommerce platform doesn’t offer or you’re overpaying for features your business doesn’t need, it might be time to consider a migration

One important consideration to make when you migrate your business is how it will impact the efficacy of your SEO campaign. SEO campaigns can last for months to years and often involve an extensive network of links. Moving your platform means all of that work and link equity might be placed in jeopardy.

Protect your Links

If your migration is going to affect your URL structure, you will need to implement 301 redirects to your old links. Without doing this, your SEO backlinks from offsite content will no longer direct to your website and Google will no longer associate your business with them. This can quickly drop your Google search rankings.

For internal links, be sure to physically actually change them rather than using more redirects. Too many redirects will slow your website down and negatively impact the user experience.

A new platform will also mean new SEO options. Making sure your SEO data is compatible with your new platform is crucial. If you know that search engines will analyze your new pages differently, you will have to adjust your strategy to match.

Use a Sandbox

Sandboxes exist for a reason. Before you implement your migration, test the new website and make sure all your links work properly. Generate a migration checklist and ensure all your concerns have been addressed before you pull the trigger. By testing your links before you move, you can make sure that your migration doesn’t affect the SEO equity you have spent months building.

A sandbox is also the perfect place to test your new website’s functionality. Making sure your website maintains all its features will ensure that the work you’ve put into your SEO pays off in high visit durations instead of bounces.

Check and Double Check Everything

If you want to avoid significant content errors, it’s important to index your website. A thorough analysis will help find any broken links or duplicate content before you migrate your data. Migrating is the perfect time to take care of these problems so they don’t follow you to the new site. Too many broken links can negatively impact user experience and Google’s opinion of your site.

You will also want to check your analytics before you implement your migration. Knowing factors such as average traffic rates and keyword rankings will be crucial once you migrate. Comparing your pre and post-migration analytics will be the basis for determining any adjustments your SEO strategy might need.

You will likely notice at least some drop off during migration. This is completely normal and is no reason to panic. You are migrating for a reason that will help your business, and your traffic will increase as long as you continue to execute an effective SEO campaign.

At Genius eCommerce, our goal is to keep vendors up to date on the latest in eCommerce. Check our blog to find more information about SEO strategies and tips to help your business succeed.

June 11, 2019

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Ecommerce, ecommerce platforms, eCommerce SEO, Latest eCommerce, Website Platforms