Helpful Insights For Online Retailers From SEO Services Consultant

Hey Online Retailers!

SEO Services Consultant published a great report called “The State of Retailing Online 2019″ a few months back. It’s an annual survey of 62 web retailers to analyze their past performance and growth plans for the future. Thought I would share a few of the more interesting points with my readers who often ask me how their metrics compare with other retailers, and for ideas on how to grow their e-commerce business.

•  Average revenue growth in 2012 over the previous year–across all devices–was 28%, still very strong.

Know About: What Were The Top SEO Trends For Google in 2019

•  Average online retail conversion rates in 2012 were 3.0%, with more than half of the respondents reporting that this rate increased from the previous year. More good news.

• Wonder how much you should spend on IT? Retailers report spending an average of 5% of their revenue on IT for their e-commerce business and increase from 2011

• Wonder how much you should spend on Internet Marketing? The report’s respondents spent 10% of their total expenses on the web marketing

• Repeat shoppers remain critical to an e-commerce business: they represent 27% of all buyers but drive 41% of all revenue

• Approximately 10% of all sales are returned. Thought it would be a lot lower than that! OK, now let’s talk mobile! A favorite topic of mine due to my work with mShopper. Here are some of the more interesting mobile stats from the report:

• Mobile is still where the most exciting action is. Growth in online retail (2012 v. 2011) happening via smartphones was 129%, and for tablets, it was 178%

• 43% of retailers surveyed reported that investment in mobile is a top 3 priority in 2013, second only to the response of ‘site optimization’ (which retailers are doing all the time)

What the report failed to provide is a breakdown of key metrics among mobile shoppers. For example, I know from my work with mShopper that average smartphone conversion rates on a non-mobile-optimized site average just 0.3% to 0.4%. Deplorable. The e-com metrics above are great, but retailers need to see how these numbers differ greatly from mobile metrics among retailers who have not optimized their sites for mobile yet.

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The Best Way to Stop WordPress Hackers

Not long before Thanksgiving, a client had their site hacked. While I am far from an Internet security expert, I do understand that WordPress sites have numerous exploits, especially in the plug-ins and always take extra security measures such as installing Wordfence, adding a second layer of protection to the WP-admin and using strong passwords. 99% of the time if you've done those three things your site should be relatively secure or so I thought!

I managed to remove the malware several times, but it kept on getting re-infected. I could not understand why. Finally, I became aggravated enough and ignored the red screen you see above and went into the WP admin and upgraded to Wordfense Premium. Ironically, this was where I screwed myself. Even with the additional security added it still kept getting re-infected.

The problem was not anything I neglected; her site was on a shared host. You might not know what a shared host is. If you are using any of the most common hosts such as GoDaddy, hostgator, etc…you are on a shared host! Though most shared hosting companies will not admit it, you can be a victim of your neighbors mistakes.

I finally became aggravated enough to hire a Website Development Company to come in and fix the problem. I thought my troubles were over, But they had just begun.

Here is where it all goes sideways…

A couple of days after, my computer started behaving erratically. I was thinking to myself I have a Mac and Mac's don't get viruses, but I installed antivirus software just to be safe. As Apple continues to gain a larger share of the market these scumbags that right malicious code will be writing more of it to target Apple users. The day before Thanksgiving my computer started crashing completely. Then, the infection spread to my laptop and iPad that I had connected to my network. I thought I could resolve the issue with Time Machine, but the infected files followed me into previous backups. Now my entire office was down. I had to run out and buy a new hard disk to back up my boot drive. After spending all of Thanksgiving day performing numerous disk in registry changes, I was able to get all my machines back running. There was no way I was going to the Mac store on Black Friday in Los Angeles!

I thought the nightmare was over, until a personal website I was building got hacked an hour after I had registered the domain. Obviously, somebody had access to my email. I then had to go through the onerous task of changing every password to every online account. I thought I had stopped the bleeding but then…

Saturday, I started to get alerts from my bank and credit card companies that someone was using my card to to run $500 purchases out of Walmart in Florida. I had to cancel all of my cards in the middle of a holiday weekend and now didn't have access to any cash.

If you've read this far, you might be thinking the same thing my client was. How would I stop this again?

I wondered the same thing myself. Was my only choice to use expensive dedicated hosts? Then, on December 12, 2015, WP Site Guardian was released. I found out about it, by watching a video the developers of the software made of a live hack on a WordPress Site by simply inserting some code into the comments field.

The problem is not in WordPress itself; they constantly update to close exploits as hackers find them. If you have a WordPress site, I highly recommend that you update every time.

The problem is in the plug-ins and themes because WordPress is open source anyone can write an  extension. WP Guardian would not have helped at the time because it was not available. When it was, I gave it a test run on one of my sites I believed to be safe and was shocked by the number of vulnerabilities it found. The fact is, anyone can write a WP plug-in and complete amateurs write many. On the opposite end of the spectrum, the more popular your plug-in is, the more people are trying to hack it.

I am recommending this product so highly because had it been available at the time, it would've saved me thousands of dollars, gave me back a holiday weekend, and I still wouldn't be scrambling to change all my credit card info!

In summation, WP site guardian will soon become a necessity in any Webmasters Toolkit that is serious about the security of a website they control. I use it on this site, every other side I own and I install it on my client sites. Sure, it costs a couple of bucks for a license but now I sleep good at night, and you can not put a price on that!

If you want to hire a honest and reputed Seo Services Agency or a Top Digital Marketing Company In USA click one of them.

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17 Ways to Improve SEO Google Rankings in 2019

1.       The Concept Of LSI Keywords

·         LSI Keywords In Content

We need to understand what LSI keywords are. Simply put, LSI keywords, short for ‘Latent Semantic Indexing’ keywords are words that are related to the primary keyword. LSI keywords are not only mere synonyms of the targeted keywords but they are words that draw meaning from the keywords itself and add quality to the entire content. And as a matter of fact, LSI keywords also help search engine crawlers to comprehend the topic better.

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·         LSI Keywords In The Title And The Meta Description

This is pretty obvious as well as effective. Just like the primary keyword(s), using LSI keywords in the Meta Description and the Title of the write-up will increase the visibility of the content by helping Google to distinguish it from other mediocre content.

2.       Quality Of Affiliated Links

Quality of affiliated links does not make a difference in the SEO rankings ‘directly’. However, in case such links are in excess, Google checks the quality of other elements on the webpage and eventually passes its judgment which ultimately affects the SEO rankings of the page.

3.       Errors in HTML

Error(s) in the HTML coding of a webpage or website indicates that the site or page is of low quality. This is considered as a big downside by Google and affects the EO rankings.

Sloppy coding and HTML errors are signs of poor quality the site and many SEO experts have the opinion that it’s a major sign of weakness.

4.       Significance Of Domain Authority

Assuming all the other elements are constant, a webpage on an authoritative domain will get a higher ranking and preference as compared to domains with little to nil authority.

5.       Page Rank Algorithm

Before moving forward with this point, you need to understand what Google’s ‘PageRank’ is. PageRank is essentially Google’s algorithm that determines the rank of various websites based on several elements. It was named after Larry Page, one of the company’s co-founders. Earlier, webpages with higher PR used to rank higher in the search results. However, this is not true now as Google has stopped updating its PageRank algorithm.

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6.       Use shorter URLs

URL length should ideally be short and crisp. The reason being that shorter URLs are easier to remember and recall as compared to longer URLs. This directly affects the SEO rankings.

7.       URL Path

It is a known fat that the pages closer to the homepage get an additional boost in the SEO rankings.

8.       Human Editing

Not long ago, it was discovered that a system made by Google allowed human editors to influence the SERP, that is, Search Engine Result Pages. However, it has not been confirmed yet.

9.       Significance Of Page Category

When it comes down to the SEO rankings, the page category matters a lot. Pages that are closely related to the search query or are in the same category as the searched query will obviously get a higher page ranking than the webpages that are deemed irrelevant by the search engine.

1     Significance Of WordPress Tags

As per experts, WordPress tags have shown to boost page rankings in search results. It simply makes different pieces of write-ups and posts related to each other.

11.   Customizing The URL

·         Use Keywords In The URL

Try and put keywords in the page URL. This boosts SEO rankings by making the content more relevant and more visible in the Google search engine.

·         Google Reads URL Strings

Google’s algorithm reads the categories mentioned in the URL string. This sends Google signals about the webpage’s theme and thus making the website more trustworthy.

12.   Significance Of Source Links

The quality of any content can be judged by its source links and even by its sitting references that are at the very end of the write-up. The quality guidelines stated by Google clearly mention that reviewers have to keep a tab on the sources when checking specific pages. This, however, has not been confirmed by Google as a parameter for SEO rankings. Anyway, the quality aspect can be used for boosting the rankings of the desired webpage because in the end content quality is what matters.

13.   Significance Of A Sitemap

The site map of a website holds importance when it comes to boosting the ranking of certain pages. The priority of the pages in the sitemap.xml file makes the difference. The pages are given more priority get a boost in rankings.

14.   The Concept Of Page Age

Page age means nothing when it comes to SEO rankings. A new page will get better rankings obviously but relatively older pages with regular updates and quality content will get better SEO rankings in search engines.

15.   Make Layouts User-Friendly

As many of you may already know by now, Google promotes user-friendly elements on a webpage. This enables visitors to be hooked on the page for longer durations. Thus, eventually improving the ranking of the page on search engines. It is, therefore, suggested to always try and make the website layout user-friendly.

16.   Create Helpful Content

For those who underestimate the power of the Google algorithm, it is time to reevaluate your views. Google can easily differentiate quality content and ‘helpful content’. Thus creating content that has a high utility rating is really important.

17.   MicroFormats

Microformats are essentially standardized markups that use regular HTML and XHTML tags for other purposes like conveying surplus metadata. The webpages that support such formats are automatically ranked higher than webpages that do not. Webpages with microformat support also have a greater click-through rate (CTR) on the SERP.

Author:

Congton Technologies Pvt Ltd

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Know About Outbound and Internal Linking

1.       Working With Outbound Links

·         Outbound Links

Outbound links from authority sites have been shown to boost SEO ranking using google seo techniques. This happens because doing so makes Google catch trust signals from the links hence improving ranks.

·         Importance Of Link Theme

Moz, a famous internet marketing and analytics services company states that the theme of the outbound links created is as important as the content itself. Search engines like Google tend to refer to the links as a signal of relevance. For example, if you have a website for selling houses and you are making links to a technology page, it will send the wrong signals to Google and thus hinder your SEO rankings.

·         Quantity Of Links Created

The number of outbound links created is also important as the excessive link created can have a negative impact on the SEO ranking of a webpage.

·         Outbound Links In Excess

An excess of outbound links can lead to trouble and eventually lead to lower rankings in the Google search results. This happens because of the excess of links causes distraction from the primary topic.

2.       Mastering Internal Linking

·         Quantity of Internal Links In the Webpage

The amount of internal linking directly relates to the amount of the relevance of the webpage. This is a certified fact and thus helps improve SEO rankings.

·         Quality of Internal Links In The Webpage

Similar to outbound links, internal links to authoritative webpages have a much stronger and prominent effect as compared to links to pages that have little nill PR. 

·         Broken Internal Links

Broken internal links should be avoided at all times. You see, links are important so as to create greater relevance and add quality to the content. Search engines send crawlers that identify the webpage based on its relevance. However, despite using the right keywords, if the internal links created are broken or not functional, the webpage is deemed irrelevant. This obviously affects the rankings in a negative way. The website eventually gets deemed as a “neglected and abandoned website”.

Author By:
QIANA Williams Working at Congton Technologies Pvt Ltd as a content writer from last 3 years. Congton one of the best SEO company in USA offers quality SEO, PPC, Web Design and development, software development, mobile application development, and other digital marketing Services.