SEO

Content is a huge factor in both SEO and website conversions, but how do you incorporate it into your categories without pushing the products down, spamming the page for the search engines or taking away from the user experience?

Below you’ll find a few layouts which may work for you and if they don’t, they work as a starting point to find a format or style that can.  Some of them are “spammy” but what you may be able to get approved (they’ll be marked as spammy) or that may apply in specific situations.  Others are ways many companies haven’t thought of.  If you have another layout you like, feel free to mention it or share an image of it in the comments section below.

[Read more…] about How to Add Content To Category Pages for SEO & UX

With more people online (mobile, tablet & computer), companies are finally paying more attention to their websites.  That also means branding, PR, C level executives and others who are not familiar with the digital landscape are making the decisions that are smart for traditional business, but have unforseen consequences with online and websites.

Below you’ll find a few recent examples about companies that made or are making these same types of mistakes and how they could avoid, fix and prevent them.  If they don’t and you want to compete, you’ll also find how to jump in and take some of the traffic they would have had.

As a heads up, all of the external links in this post are ads (affiliate links) and if any aren’t I will change them out for these ads (affiliate links) if I find out they have a program.    

[Read more…] about Business Decisions That Can Tank Your SEO – You Were Warned!

A few years ago I met someone who already had an SEO firm, but also got hit with a few “penalties” and was opened to having someone else help.  After talking, we discovered that the project was not a penalty recovery but first a site strengthen because there were some drops, and then a focus on new rankings.  Although there was a large penalty years before, the team (not agency) had already recovered their site from that.

Below is a step-by-step walk through of how we diagnosed the penalties/devaluation, the plan we created to strengthen the site and then how we executed and also got some new rankings.  The success section is the end results if you want to skip to that directly.

1. Evaluate which penalty hit the site
2. Look at other revenue sources and how they can be optimized
3. Now its time to begin the actual recovery
4. Begin outlining a plan that helps to strengthen the site
5. Success

[Read more…] about SEO Case Study – Growth in a Competitive Niche

Whether it’s a client or a new hire, explaining SEO to someone who has never done it before can be tricky.  That’s why we created this easy-to-understand infographic to help you walk anyone from a small business owner to a corporate CEO through SEO.

If you like the infographic or think it can help others, feel free to share it on your favorite social network or use the embed box below it to share on your blog.

[Read more…] about How to Explain SEO to a Newbie

Marketplaces like Amazon can drive a ton of incremental sales, introduce your brand to new customers and help you hit profitable fast.  They can be a stable source of sales if one of your channels gets wiped out and they can provide you with easier shipping options if you can’t negotiate good deals based on volume.  The issue with them is that they also have the ability to rank for your product and brand names in the search engines, sometimes above your own website.  That’s why I wrote this guide.

Note: Every site and case is unique and there is never a one size fits all solution, but this is a basic strategy that you can use as a starting point before or after you’ve launched your brand in different marketplaces.  It can also help you to get started on figuring out why the marketplace is beating you in Google so that you can work on taking your rankings back.

Note 2: I’m using Amazon as a marketplace here because they are the biggest player and because I recommend listing with them the most.  

How to help stop Amazon and other marketplaces from outranking you in Google:

1. Research the marketplaces page links
2. Compare their schema
3. Checkout the onpage content
4. Provide better content
5. Look for the Q&A from their customers
6. Go after their affiliates
7. Evaluate and repeat

Please note the links in this post are affiliate links and I will earn a commission if you shop through them.

[Read more…] about 7 Steps to Beat Marketplaces From Outranking Your Store

Are you getting different results when you search “site:www.yourdomain.com” and “site:yourdomain.com”? Maybe you have 100K pages indexed, but only 18K that should be in Google or your www version has 50K and the non www has 200K.  Here is how to find, trouble shoot and fix these SEO issues with “site:” searches and a couple of tools to make life easy.

• Which Issue Are You Having
  • Different amounts of pages
  • More pages indexed than there should be
  • Devalued content/site visibility
• Finding the issues:
  • Use your keyword tracking tools
  • Google analytics
  • Search your CMS
• Solve the problems:
  • Add www and non www to search console
  • Set up redirects to your preferred version (extra bonus tips in this section)
  • Canonical links
  • Robots.txt
  • xrobots
  • No index queries
  • Figuring out which pages should rank for what keywords

These site: issues can result in numerous things from devaluing your site to thin content, duplicate content and an overall reduction in search engine visibility.  That’s why it’s important to fix them.  Although there is not a one way fixes all solution, here are some starting points.  The post is broken out by the three most common issues I see.  After I go into determining the cause of the issues and ways to help resolve them.

[Read more…] about How to Fix Site: Search SEO Issues