Shopify SEO Checklist You Need To Rank Your Site

When it comes to driving motivated traffic to your Shopify store, no other digital marketing strategy is as affordable or impactful as SEO.

For e-commerce retailers, taking the time to ensure your web pages are properly optimized can help increase your organic traffic, meaning more potential customers browsing your products.

Unlike Google Ads or social media advertising, SEO strategies can drive site traffic to your Shopify website long after your ad budget runs out.

For this reason, leveraging SEO is one of the best digital investments a Shopify site owner can make.

What Is Shopify SEO?

Shopify SEO is the process of optimizing a Shopify website to perform better in search engine results.

Although SEO can be applied to any website, Shopify SEO is focused on helping e-commerce retailers who utilize the Shopify CMS to earn more keyword rankings and organic traffic.

Common SEO Challenges For E-Commerce Websites

In general, e-commerce websites are more likely to face certain challenges that can negatively impact search engine performance.

• Thin Content: Google loves in-depth, long-form content. Because product pages tend toward thin content, it can be difficult to boost their rankings in search.
• Duplicate Content: With multiple product pages that are so similar or auto-generated, many e-commerce websites face duplicate content issues.
• Poor Site Architecture: Google likes to see an optimized site structure that users can easily navigate. With so many pages on their website, e-commerce retailers can easily suffer from poor site architecture signals.
• Not Utilizing Schema: Products schema helps Google crawlers understand your products and promote them accordingly. Not utilizing schema is a huge mistake for Shopify retailers.

To make sure that your website doesn’t suffer from these common setbacks faced by e-commerce sites, the Shopify SEO checklist below is a great place to start.

Automated SEO Features In Shopify

The Shopify platform does have some SEO features built-in that ease some of the SEO workload on-site owners.

These features include:

• Auto-generated “rel-canonical” tags: this feature helps avoid duplicate content penalties!
• Auto-generated robots.txt and sitemap.xml files.
• Automatic SSL certificates: Google prefers to rank secure pages with HTTPS protocols.
• Auto-generated page titles that include the store’s name.

However, SEO is a vast and multidisciplinary field.

Counting on the Shopify platform alone to do the work of SEO for you is not going to produce the best results.

19 Must-Do Tasks On Your Shopify SEO Checklist

Remember that SEO is not a one-and-done process and will require work both when you initially set up your store and throughout the lifetime of your website.

The checklist below is organized by the type of optimization, but it can be easily completed “in order.”

Some of these steps are a one-time optimization, but the majority will need to be repeated whenever you add new products or pages to your online store.

General SEO

1. Invest In A Custom Domain

It’s generally better to invest in a custom domain and drop the “myshopify” from your URLs.

Why? Because the URL path is visible to users at the top of the SERP result. Custom domains look more professional and more enticing to users, and higher CTRs lead to better SEO performance.

You can buy custom domains from Shopify or any third-party domain provider.

Then, add your custom domain in the Settings > Domains menu of your Shopify account.

2. Choose A Fast And Responsive Theme

With last year’s page experience update, fast page speed and load times are non-negotiable if you want to rank well in Google.

Although flashier themes might be tempting, it is better to choose a theme that is optimized for speed and performance.

Your theme also needs to perform well on mobile devices, as Google will index the mobile versions of your web pages.

You can get a sense of how fast your current Shopify store is in comparison to others in your dashboard or via your PageSpeed Insights report. If your scores are low, it’s likely impacting your ability to rank in top positions.

LET’S TALK ABOUT YOUR PROJECT

Source, SEJ

This six-step process will help you engage your organic search traffic on social media and expand your reach by using Facebook lookalike audiences.

When trying to grow a business online, organic search traffic can seem like one of the slowest games of all time – it can feel like it takes forever for search engines to bring another person to your website.

And most businesses are waiting on Google to hopefully bring another five people today or another 10 people tomorrow.

The problem arises when you have to wait for people to ask a question in the search engine and hope your content is good enough to rank in the top 10 search results on Google for that particular question.

It’s also pretty common that most businesses do not have the time to wait or the budget to grow their website to millions of visitors quickly.

But what if there were a way to fix that problem?

What if there were a better and faster way to engage your organic search traffic and your social media content all at the same time?

Luckily, there is a simple six-step process to engage your organic search traffic on social media and drastically expand your organic search reach by using Facebook lookalike audiences.

• Step 1: Perform keyword research.
• Step 2: Create a piece of content (for this example it will be a blog).
• Step 3: Get some organic traffic to that piece of content.
• Step 4: Set-up your social media pixel and pixel the people who read the article of content.
• Step 5: Create a Facebook lookalike audience.
• Step 6: Serve social media ads to that audience.

Now, to break this down even more.

Step 1: Perform Keyword Research

When starting with keyword research, you probably have a few keywords that you would like to rank for – apparent things like your products, services, or other topics your website addresses.

These seed topics are a great place to start for your keyword research, but that doesn’t mean you should stop there.

Why?

What you want to rank for, and what your audience is typing into the search engines, are often two completely different things.

That is one of the most pivotal reasons to perform keyword research in the first place.

If people aren’t searching for it, then why waste time creating it in the first place?

The smartest way to avoid this is to find the exact words and phrases that your ideal customers are currently searching for on Google and other major search engines.

It may sound not easy, but there are a handful of excellent keyword research tools that can help.

For example, we used Ahrefs to research the phrase, ‘“how to get 10k followers on instagram.”

You can see how many people are searching for this key phrase and any other relatable parent topics that people are also searching for.

When creating content for the search engines, it’s essential to create content that answers one question at a time.

For example, you could take these short-term and long-term keywords and create a blog post on each one of them only when it makes sense for your business.

People are searching for your question, but they are also searching for “how to get swipe up on instagram without 10k followers” and “how to get 10k followers on instagram in one day.”

If it doesn’t make sense to write a topic on each of those questions and the keywords are too relatable, then maybe it makes more sense to use this set of keywords as an H1 or H2 heading instead, which also plays a significant factor in search engine rankings.

Step 2: Create a Piece of Content

Now that you understand the importance of finding the right keywords to use in your content marketing strategy, it is time to create a blog post.

When writing a blog, it is essential to remember that the goal is to get new readers to your blog consistently, eventually leading to a sale.

It’s also to get readers and engagement on the blog, so signals are sent to social media and the search engines to help you get that first-page ranking on Google.

This is where keyword research comes into play.

When performing keyword research correctly, it takes no time to get top rankings in Google because you know what people are searching for and how frequently they are searching for it.

Once your blog post is published to your website, it is time to wait for some people to read and engage with it.

Step 3: Get Organic Traffic

The only thing you have to do in this step is to wait for some organic traffic, the goal is around 1,000 people.

Over time when the piece of content you created starts to get search results, you can then set up a pixel (this is the next step) and begin running social media ads to hack the process.

However, let me start by saying this may not be as simple as it sounds – this is the step where most businesses get stuck and don’t know how to grow reasonably.

Most companies understand how a simple marketing funnel works, but what they don’t understand is how to continuously get newly qualified people throughout every piece of the marketing funnel.

Even so, most businesses don’t understand how to successfully intertwine multiple platforms and use their social media to grow their organic search traffic or vice versa.

People have created all of these great pieces of content, but they don’t understand how to use that to take them to the next level.

And when you are using multiple platforms, that’s where this marketing strategy comes into play.

You have to understand how to track every person who touches your content, from the first touch to the last.

Studies have shown that it usually takes a person seven interactions with a business before making a purchase.

To know how many times a person interacts with your content, it is critical to have a pixel placed on your website for accurate data tracking, leading to the next step.

Step 4: Set Up Social Media Pixel

Once you have published your blog post and have a small amount of traffic engaging with your content, it is time to set up your social media pixel on your website.

If you are unfamiliar with a pixel, here is the definition.

A pixel is a few lines of code that you copy into the header section of your website.

It works by placing and triggering cookies to track users as they interact with your website and your Facebook ads.

The pixel serves two primary purposes:

• To remarket to someone who has visited one of your pages.
• To know which pages they have visited and to track and see if someone has completed the desired action, whatever that may be.

What the pixel does, in essence, is allow Facebook to track their audience on our platform, we are essentially giving Facebook access to our tracking.

If you are unsure how to create a Facebook pixel and add the Facebook Pixel to your website, follow this two-part process:

Part 1: Create a Facebook Pixel

• Go to Events Manager.
• Click Connect Data Sources and select Web.
• Select Facebook Pixel and click Connect.
• Add your Pixel Name.
• Enter your website URL to check for easy setup options.
• Click Continue.

Part 2: Add the Facebook Pixel to Your Website

Once you’ve created your pixel, you’re ready to put the Facebook pixel code on your website.

There are a few different options on how you can set this part up:

• You can manually add pixel code to a website.
• Use a partner integration.
• Use email instructions.

Once the tracking is in place and you fully understand your target audience’s patterns, you can begin to implement the R3MAT strategy, showing the right message to the right person at the right time with the right expectations.

Once you have your social media pixel set up, it’s time to move into the next step.

Step 5: Create a Lookalike Audience

Did you know that Facebook can predict if you are pregnant before you even know you’re pregnant?

And did you know that studies are proving Facebook can predict if people are cheating on their partner before they ever realize it?

That seems pretty scary, right?

But, here is where that becomes super powerful.

Facebook has an option where you can create a lookalike audience based on its tracking abilities to reach new people who are most likely to be interested in your business because they’re similar to your best existing customers.

You can create a group of people who have similar likes, interests, and demographics to people who are already interacting with your website.

Here is how to create a Facebook Lookalike Audience:

• Go to your Audiences.
• Click the Create Audience dropdown and choose Lookalike Audience.
• Choose your source notes:
  • A source can be a customer audience not created with your pixel data, mobile app data or fans of your page.
  • Consider using 1,000 to 50,000 of your best customers based on lifetime value, transaction value, total order size, or engagement.
• Choose the country/countries where you’d like to find a similar set of people.
• Choose your desired audience size with the slider.
• Click Create Audience.

Creating this audience gives any business the ability to create a small subset of people you can talk to any way you choose.

You can now show this audience relevant ads, move them through the sales funnel, build your relationship with them, build your reach and frequency.

All of this is possible because Facebook is watching so many little data points all of the time.

Facebook is continuously collecting information about the things you buy and the websites you visit.

Plus thousands of other bits of personal information gathered from public records and your social media activity.

Step 6: Serve Audience the Social Media Ads

The final step is to show relevant ads to your new lookalike audience that you just created.

To keep this process going, make sure you are consistently showing your lookalike audience(s) new relevant content that meets them at each point in the buyers’ journey.

When you complete this six-step process, you are officially taking your organic search and lighting it on fire.

LET’S TALK ABOUT YOUR PROJECT

Source: text and images, Gari Handerson, https://www.searchenginejournal.com/engage-organic-search-traffic-on-social-media/376524/?utm_source=email&utm_medium=daily-newsletter&utm_campaign=daily-newsletter&mc_cid=cb31d7e2e1&mc_eid=919e43ffe5#close

When you’re setting up or optimizing an ecommerce site, you’ve got tons of things to keep track of, like a business plan, pricing,
photography, design, marketing.

After all the set-up, it’s easy to ignore the products you’re selling, which are the real star of the show.

I’ve seen countless websites fail their products in one common way: by not writing powerful, unique product descriptions.

People genuinely struggle to write copy that isn’t boring or generic. But you don’t have to be J.K. Rowling to write good copy.

If you just focus on writing unique product descriptions, you’ll put your e-commerce site well ahead of the competition.

Here are 20 reasons why you need unique product descriptions on your website.

1. Higher Search Engine Rankings

If your content duplicates, steals, or borrows heavily from other sources (like copy and pasting text from a supplier), you will hurt your rankings.

Your site may rank higher, or the supplier’s site may rank higher, or any number of similar sites that have duplicated the copy might rank higher.

If you’re not generating unique product descriptions, you’re taking a gamble.

There isn’t an official penalty from Google for duplicate content. But it muddies up the waters and impacts your search engine rankings.

That’s significant enough to make it worth your time to generate your own original product descriptions.

2. Increased Organic Traffic

The first point, higher rankings on search, can generally lead to more organic traffic.

But unique product descriptions have a broader effect on your organic traffic.

Consider this example:

Say you’re an online coffee seller.

You can either have generic copy that talks a little about the flavor and roast.

But if your product descriptions are unique and optimized around the specific aspects of your coffee – food pairings, regions it’s grown, tips for brewing – then you will capture people whose search intent focuses on those things.

You cast a much wider net.

Making original, high-quality content that adds value to visitors is a consistent way to increase organic traffic.

3. Increased CTR on SERP

Your product descriptions don’t just sell the products on your website.

They can sell your website itself to potential visitors.

When you write unique product descriptions, your website stands out on the search results page.

The SERP is one place where clever, concise copy can bring a massive return on your effort.

Google only displays up to 50 to 60 characters for your title and up to 160 characters for your snippet.

That’s shorter than a tweet.

While you should use the relevant keywords, don’t just “stuff” them in.

Make sure your titles and descriptions are unique and frontload the most pertinent or attractive aspects of your products.

Services like free shipping are also worth including if there’s room.

4. Reduce Costs of PPC Ads

When you write unique product descriptions, you can also write better, more unique pay-per-click ads.

Conversely, if you’re using unoriginal or stock product copy, your PPC ad copy will be limited.

The critical factor here is your ads’ quality score.

By improving the relevance of the bid-upon keyword to its ad group, the landing page experience, and the relevance of the ad text, you can reduce your PPC ad spend considerably.

Unique product descriptions affect all three of those factors.

They influence what keywords you bid on and their relevance to their page.

They also affect the landing page experience.

5. Better Landing Pages for Ads

Speaking of landing page quality, unique product descriptions can make better landing pages for ads.

This improvement isn’t the same as the landing page experience that Google outlines, which includes things like fast load times and mobile optimization.

A better landing page for an ad also means copy and design meant to capture this traffic that you’ve paid for.

Your product descriptions can include persuasive copy that is geared toward visitors coming from paid search.

If you’ve done the work to capture searchers’ intent with the ad, you want to meet their expectations once they’re on your site.

6. Support Your Keyword Strategy

Your keyword strategy is the foundation of your general SEO strategy.

It helps you capture traffic through search intent and plan your paid search ad strategy.

Researching and implementing a keyword strategy is a cornerstone practice.

Yet, if you try to match up a keyword strategy with content that’s not written to accommodate it, your whole SEO plan will be built on an unstable foundation.

You need to ensure the content on your site matches up well with your keyword strategy.

7. Eliminate Duplicate Content

Duplicate content is an essential watch-out for on-site SEO.

It affects many of the points listed so far, like search rankings, PPC ad cost, and landing page quality.

As such, it’s an excellent metric to optimize against in and of itself.

You should optimize your site to have unique content as a rule, but when time and money are tight, it can be seductive to use stock product descriptions.

Resist this urge.

8. Reduced Bounce Rate

Bounce rate is one of the best measurements for how well your product descriptions meet a potential buyer’s expectations.

Bad copy or content that doesn’t match up well with the title and description on a SERP are common reasons why a website has a high bounce rate, too.

Unique product descriptions can reduce your site’s bounce rate, cutting down on the dreaded “pogo-sticking” phenomenon.

9. Improve Return Visitors Rate

Every business loves repeat customers.

This truism is even more true for online retailers.

Return visitors are 70% more likely to add a product to their cart and complete purchases 75% more often.

Leveraging unique product descriptions improves return visits.

In fact, only 8% visit a brand’s website for the first time with an intention to buy.

By writing unique, attention-grabbing copy, your site will make an impression.

It makes it easy for visitors to simply search for your company name or something they remember from the product description to find their way back.

10. More Conversions On-Site

It’s not too much of a generalization to say that stock product descriptions aren’t great.

And even if they are well-written, they’re not optimized for your site layout or purchaser funnel.

Writing unique product descriptions takes your e-commerce site to the next level.

You can speak more effectively to your conversion strategies and integrate your site with the rest of your marketing.

11. Scannable, Skimmable Text

Your product descriptions should almost always be short and to the point.

Users don’t read.

They skim.

If your product descriptions aren’t written with this in mind, you won’t capture nearly as many conversions as you should.

12. Stand Out From the Competition

If your competitors all drove white Toyota Camrys and you drove a red Tesla Model S, which do you think passersby would notice?

The truth is, many products are very similar to each other.

Or they are to most consumers, at least.

If you don’t have some attention-grabbing sizzle, it will be hard to get your products into buyers’ hands and show them why yours are better.

13. Become the Authority

Authority is a widely misunderstood topic, but its effect is certainly felt in search rankings.

The only way to gain website authority is by getting linked to by high-quality or reputable sites.

The most effective way to build an attractive link profile is by having strong content or high relevance to the sites in your industry that matter.

Now ask yourself if generic product descriptions fall into that rubric?

14. Address Your Buyer Personas

Buyer personas are an important and often neglected part of the marketer’s bible.

While they’re not strictly SEO-related, they represent a part of the operation where SEO and marketing should be closely aligned.

If you want to connect with your essential buyer personas, tailoring your product descriptions is a must.

15. Create Trust With Your Visitors

When you visit a site that looks like it could have been made in an hour on WordPress or Squarespace that uses stock imagery and copy, most people will have their defenses up.

Even if they don’t explicitly realize there’s something that’s making them feel distrustful.

People are experts in recognizing stock photos and content.

If you’ve done the hard work of getting visitors to your site, it’s still easy to lose them if they immediately lose trust in it and bounce off.

16. Go Beyond Describing to Selling

A product description should describe the products, right?

Sure, if your site’s sole purpose is to describe products, then that’s fine.

But if your ultimate goal is sales, then your product descriptions need to sell.

Copy that sells can be broken down into a formula, but either way, it doesn’t come from stock product descriptions.

When you write unique product descriptions, you can leverage some creativity to sell.

17. Surprise & Delight Visitors

Writing truly unique product descriptions allows you to have a little bit of fun.

The capacity for fun varies from industry to industry.

If you’re selling medical equipment, you’ll keep the quirkiness to a minimum.

But if you’re offering consumer goods or products, you can let your personality shine.

Whether your brand is more like Yeti or Everlane, there’s a lot of capacity for your product descriptions to show a little personality and connect with your visitors.

18. Keep Content Fresh

Fresher content can perform better in certain verticals/niches/markets.

If your product descriptions never need to be updated, then you don’t need to update them all the time. (It won’t hurt to update them periodically, though.)

But if your products are seasonal or regularly updated, then you should make sure you keep them up to date with new and unique product descriptions.

19. Reduce Customer Service Load

What if you could get all the benefits of better SEO, higher conversion rates, lower ad cost, and have a positive knock-on effect for your customer service team’s load?

Unique product descriptions can answer customers’ questions before they have them.

When your customers have fewer questions you, can proactively reduce the load on your customer service team.

20. Prevent Exchanges & Returns

Dissatisfied customers are only slightly worse than disinterested ones.

High churn and a high volume of product returns is the death of many a retailer. Exchanges and returns eat up your margin and ding your brand image.

Writing detailed and unique product descriptions is a good way to reduce the number of returns you deal with.

Being clear and upfront about what your products are, rather than relying upon supplied copy or stock descriptions, is the best way to paint an accurate picture for your customers.

TELL US ABOUT YOUR WEBSITE

Source, Kevin Rowe, https://www.searchenginejournal.com/ecommerce-site-unique-product-descriptions/364458/?utm_source=email&utm_medium=daily-newsletter&utm_campaign=daily-newsletter#close

Make no mistake, humans are pack animals. We have a desire to fit in with the rest of the crowd, and that affects our lives in a variety of ways, including our purchasing behavior.

Ask yourself, have you ever purchased a product after a recommendation from somebody else?

If, like us, you have, you’ve been influenced by social proof, and you’ve seen first-hand why it’s an excellent marketing tool.

Real people recommending products with real feedback is so persuasive because it’s genuine – and that’s not always the case nowadays.

So, let’s dive in and explain why you need social proof for your business, and how you can start generating social proof for your store today.

Principles of social proof

Essentially, social proof is looking to others to figure out the right way to act.

Here’s a real life example: if you’re in a new city and looking for somewhere to eat, you are more likely to walk into a busy restaurant with happy people, rather than a quiet place with no signals that the place serves good food.

More specifically though, there are 4 principles behind social proof that can affect the way we act. .

• Uncertainty: We defer to how other people are reacting to a situation when we are uncertain about it.

• Similarity: When you experience something unfamiliar with a large group of people, you are more inclined to follow the reaction of those who you consider similar to you.

• Expertise: Those with more knowledge about a situation can lead the reaction of the rest. Students are more likely to look to their teachers for signals of how to react in uncertain circumstances.

• Number: Where a group of people experience something uncertain together, the actions of the majority will be seen as correct and valid.

With all of these principles in mind, how exactly do you put them into place to help you grow your store?

Leverage positive reviews

According to Business.com, 77% of all online customers read reviews before they make a purchase. It’s clear then, that if you want to leverage social proof you need reviews.

Reviews let customers know that you’ve made sales in the past and that you’re a legitimate business. Two things that go a long way with convincing customers to make a purchase from your store.

They’ll help potential customers to understand the quality of your products, your shipping times, the likeness to your product photos, and much more.

But it’s not just reviews that you need – it’s positive ones that’ll really make a difference.

Thankfully, there are various tools which you can use to leverage customer reviews, and build the social proof for your ecommerce store.

If you’re running your ecommerce store on Shopify, try out the Yotpo Reviews app. It’s a free product review tool which you can integrate directly into your store that enables your customers to easily leave reviews.

To increase the product review count for your store, you can send emails to your customers once they’ve received their order and ask them to leave a review.

If they’re totally satisfied with their product it’s likely that they’ll leave a review. You can also incentivize reviews from your customers by creating an exclusive discount code.

Use testimonials on your website 

Similar to product reviews, testimonials go a long way in generating social proof for your brand.

In fact, research from Shopify found that 90% of users who read online testimonials said that positive reviews influence their buying decisions.

So, once you’ve secured some positive reviews on your website, promote them to your homepage.

Let everybody know how happy your customers are after shopping at your store, and they’ll be much more likely to shop at your store themselves.

Create a blog to build social proof

Content marketing, and blogging in particular, is a great tool that businesses use to provide potential customers with insightful content that’s related to their products.

For example, if you’re running a cooking utensils store, you can create blog content for your audience that includes recipes, cooking tips, or product reviews, which will help to build the authority of your brand.

The end goal of creating a blog for your ecommerce business is to draw high volumes of qualified traffic (i.e. people who are likely to purchase your products) to your store.

When you’re providing value to people with your content, they’ll be much more likely to believe that your products will provide them with a similar level of value.

Having a positive brand image like this will help you to secure repeat customers, increase traffic to your store, and ultimately increase your brand’s social proof.

Optimizing your blog for social proof

Creating a blog for your brand is great, but there are various ways you can optimize it to ensure that you gain the maximum social proof from your content marketing efforts.

One example of this is adding social share buttons and counters to your blog. This will help you to encourage your blog audience to share your content, but it’ll also inform readers that numerous other people have enjoyed the content, and shared it. Social proof inception.

There are plenty of apps on Shopify’s App Store that’ll allow you to add social media sharing buttons to your website. It’s a little change that can really go a long way in building social proof for your brand.

Also, try adding a mailing list button to your blog. You can create weekly newsletters which will help you to retain your users, and provide them with even more content related to your niche. Don’t be afraid to send discount codes to your mailing list too – it’s just another way to generate sales for your brand.

Use brand ambassadors

A brand ambassador is somebody with a large following (think Instagram influencers) who can humanize both your products and brand for prospective customers.

They can spread the word about your products on social media and their own websites to build trust between your brand and their following.

Brand awareness, and the social proof that accompanies it, has helped many businesses move the needle, so try partnering with relevant influencers and see how they can help your brand grow.

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Source: Oberlo

I see many designers focusing on site visitors and asking questions on how to make greater visitors to their websites?

But is it essential?

Just suppose of traffic as an invite to a birthday party.

You prepare a big one, and you want human beings to come.
So you will start contacting everyone, asking them to come.

People who recognise you will come.

People who don’t care approximately you’ll no longer come.

But you don’t care, right?

So why have to you care that a few strangers visit your website?

They will now not buy due to the fact they don’t recognise you.

What matters is what you do, so human beings could understand you and purchase from you.

The real focus isn’t on site visitors.

It’s what’s your aim to make feel to people to buy from you.

Instead, assume of:

1/ How can I higher serve my clients?

2/ How my existing customers can participate within the technique and attract greater human beings to my brand?

3/ How can I involve more manufacturers and influencers to emerge as pals with my brand?

4/ How I can inspire more human beings towards what I do and attract extra interest to my products?

5/ How can I acquire knowledge about my existing customers and discover greater human beings similar to them, so I may be positive there’re extra chances that they will buy?

So the primary concept is this:

We do not want traffic. We want more people much like those who buy from us.

The nice way to grow is to develop for your closest niche already shopping for from you.

So visibility, site visitors, all these items is a wrong belief and end result of a false concept that your important goal have to be traffic and that visitors will power sales.

The most common revel in from this approach is a lot of visitors and less sales.

If you do matters differently, you may attract extra customers and less traffic.

So think about it and let me realize your thoughts.

If you’re a business owner, a marketer, or even just a Facebook user, you’ve seen how prevalent Facebook ads are.

It’s the largest social media platform in the world (by a long way) and it’s a fantastic place that businesses can use to capture potential
customers with ads.

But, with some products, you’ll never find success with Facebook ads. And that’s because Facebook doesn’t allow you to even
launch ads containing these products.

So, if you’re already running a business, or you’re thinking of launching one in the future, this list is essential reading.
Check out these 10 types of products that you can’t advertise on Facebook.

Adult Products

Facebook ads cannot promote the use of adult products, include any form or nudity, or contain depictions of people in explicit situations.
Those ads simply will not even be launched by Facebook.

Not all are banned, you can promote certain adult products – specifically if they’re focussed on family planning or contraception.
Of course, you’ll need to make sure that you target those ads to Facebook users who are aged 18 or older, for legal reasons.

Unregulated Supplements

The supplements industry is booming right now, and it’s market size is expected to continue growing to $278 billion USD by 2024,
so it’s understandable if you want to get in on the action.

It’s generally best to avoid selling these products unless you’ve manufactured them yourself, as you won’t be able
to advertise them on Facebook.

That is, unless you have all the necessary paperwork which shows they’ve been certified as safe for consumption
(in the country that you’re selling to.)

Third-Party Infringements

Any Facebook ads which appear to be infringing on or violates the rights of any third party will be automatically disapproved or taken down.

Third-party infringements can get you into a lot of legal trouble, so it isn’t worth selling anything that you assume is copyrighted or
trademarked unless you have the proper trade agreement from the corresponding party.

If you are selling another brand’s products through your own Facebook ads make sure that you tag said brand in your post –
this is a common practice and is endorsed in Facebook’s policies.

Surveillance Equipment

Surveillance equipment is strictly prohibited from being promoted on Facebook’s advertising platform. This includes spy cams,
mobile phone trackers, or other hidden surveillance equipment.

We know that many entrepreneurs are interested in selling these types of products, and that’s totally fine, just be aware that you won’t
be able to promote them with Facebook adverts if you do.

Counterfeit Products

Similar to the third-party infringements that we mentioned earlier, counterfeit products are a strict no-go when it comes to Facebook advertising.

Counterfeit products are highly illegal, so our best advice is to avoid anything to do with them.

Health Products: Before and After

The online health industry is thriving and, for the most part, brands find great success with Facebook advertising campaigns.

But, Facebook points out that adverts must not contain “before-and-after images, or images that contain unexpected or unlikely results”.

Essentially, your ads must not assert or imply anything that could lead to a Facebook user having negative feelings about their body image.

Controversial Products

No surprise, but controversial products are strictly prohibited from Facebook’s advertising platform.

This means that any products or ads that are related to sensitive subjects, imagery, or controversial symbolism will be automatically
rejected from Facebook’s ad platform.

Weapons

All Facebook ads which contain weapons, ammunition, or explosives will be disapproved during the ad review process.

This is because these products are affected by various laws and regulations across the globe, and would be difficult to manage for Facebook,
so they fall under their “prohibited content” category.

This also includes products like toy guns as well too, so it’s best not to risk it.

Tobacco Products

Tobacco products, including cigarettes, cigars, e-cigarettes, and other tobacco paraphernalia are banned from Facebook’s ad platform.

While you can’t promote tobacco products for monetary gain, you can use Facebook ads to promote resources that help people get
over a smoking addiction.

Drugs and Drug-Related Products

Ensure that you do not promote the sale or use of illegal, prescription or recreational drugs in your ads, otherwise you’ll be breaching Facebook’s community guidelines.

Similar to the tobacco products which we mentioned above, Facebook perceives that these products can be harmful to a users health,
that is the reason why they’ve been added to their list of prohibited content.

This means that you won’t be able to use images of smoking-related accessories, recreational or medical marijuana, or other images
which could imply the use of a recreational drug in your ads.

LET’S TALK ABOUT YOUR PROJECT

Source: Caitlyn from Oberlo

Let’s leave tired SEO phrases in the dust and adopt a vocabulary that matches the present state of online marketing and
works better with our audiences.

Did you know the concept of search engine optimization is more than 20 years old?

Twenty. Years. Old.

It’s as old as late ‘90s relics like the Spice Girls, Tamagotchi, “Buffy the Vampire Slayer”, the final season of “Seinfeld”, and “Titanic”.

Most of that stuff seems pretty dated now.

So why does SEO live on?

It’s not just SEO, either.

There are countless overused SEO phrases out there that just seem to keep on living, even though the search landscape has never remained static.

Today, we’re going to go into the top five overused SEO phrases to consider using a little less, and five hot phrases that are critical to
online marketing success in 2018, 2019 and beyond.

Ready?

5 Overused SEO Phrases

These are the top overused phrases that we should consider using a little less, or at least understanding more before we toss them into too many conversations, articles, etc.

• SEO
• Link building
• White hat SEO
• Black hat SEO
• SEO hacks

1. SEO

According to Loren Baker for SEJ, the SEO process was originally referred to with terms like “search engine placement,” “search engine positioning,” and “search engine registration.”

None of those phrases have stuck, but SEO certainly did.

The thing is SEO doesn’t really describe what search engine marketers and content marketers do.

Are we optimizing search engines? No.

Are we even optimizing for search engines? No.

We’re optimizing content and webpages for the user experience (or we should be).

So why are we still so dependent on the term “SEO”? Because it’s well-worn and familiar?

I don’t know if we’ll ever get a replacement that’s as ubiquitous, but it needed to happen yesterday.

2. Link Building

The term “link building” is used everywhere in the SEO world.

In general, it seems pretty harmless.

That’s all swell and dandy, but there’s a dark side to link building.

As Brittany Muller of Moz said on an episode of Whiteboard Friday:

Full disclosure — search optimization for a small business is about 90% similar to that of a big business. In this article,
we will focus on the remaining 10%, the things that a small business has to do differently because of the lack of either the resources
or the brand power.

1. Do your own SEO

In the scenario that THE budget is one of your constraints, then perhaps you should hold off on paying for search optimization services and instead try
optimizing your website on your own. It will save you money, sure, but it will also give you a better understanding of your SEO needs,
which will come in handy if you decide to hire an SEO agency later on. Having at least some knowledge of SEO,
you will be in a better position to negotiate the rates and to monitor the work being done on your website.

Just to give you a rough estimate of how much you are looking to save by attempting your own SEO, here are the typical rates that
search optimization goes for:

Up to $300/month — to attempt search optimization on your own;
Up to $1,000/month — for an agency to manage a low competition site;
Up to $5,000/month — for an agency to manage a high competition site.

Since most SEO techniques are relatively easy to pick up, I would say always start out by attempting search optimization on your own
and then switch to an agency once/if you reach the limit of what can be done without professional help.

2. Learn SEO basics

Search optimization techniques come in various degrees of difficulty, but the majority of them require no special skills and
can be picked up by virtually anyone. The best place to start learning about SEO practices is right at the source,
from the SEO Starter Guide by Google. It’s packed full of detailed, actionable advice, and most of it is much more reliable than what
you would get from articles by SEO gurus pushing their services.

The guide by Google may seem overwhelming, so I would suggest treating it as a checklist and optimizing one thing per day, per evening,
per weekend, or whatever is your allocated SEO session. Whenever you encounter something with a way too steep learning curve,
mark it down to be delegated to an SEO agency later on.

In case you need any further assistance or if you’ve hit a dead-end trying to figure something out, you’ll be pleased to know that SEO has one
of the most responsive professional communities on the web. For any SEO-related questions feel free to address the r/SEO community on Reddit,
the dwellers of the BlackHatWorld forum, or our own website

3. Utilize SEO tools

When you start reading about SEO, some practices may sound intimidating, requiring complex technical implementation.
The good news is that most of those practices can actually be implemented with no technical proficiency whatsoever. There are plenty of tools,
free or paid, designed to simplify various aspects of SEO, allowing them to be implemented with a few clicks of a button.

Some aspects of SEO may not even require any of your attention. Like, everyone knows that getting an SSL certificate is among the first
website optimization tasks. If you were to procure and install your own SSL certificate it would be a full day job. But you don’t have to do that
anymore — SSL certificates come free with most hosting plans, all you have to do is choose the right hosting provider.

Similarly, mobile optimization used to be no task for a novice webmaster. Today, all you have to do is choose a responsive WordPress
theme for your website and you are good to go. Or, let’s say you want to add alt text to all of your images. There is no need to visit each
page and edit its HTML code — just go to your WordPress media library, click through your images, and fill out the alt text field —
no technical knowledge required.

Of course, other tasks, like website audit, keyword research, content creation, and link building are not as easily automated,
but there are still tools that can help you do the heavy lifting:

Google tools

Google provides plenty of free and easy-to-use SEO tools. For keyword research and keyword tracking,
Google offers Keyword Planner, Google Trends, and Search Console, while various aspects of page optimization can be tested and optimized using the Mobile-Friendly Test, PageSpeed Insights, Structured Data Markup Helper and Structured Data Testing Tool.

Other tools

There are plenty of other SEO tools on the market, each with their strengths and weaknesses, and most with a hefty price tag.
If you really want to use any of those other tools but are short on funds, my suggestion would be to exploit the trial periods.
If the trial period is one week, then set a week apart, do as much SEO as the tool allows, and then cancel your subscription.
Make sure to download all of your researched keywords and audit reports to use them beyond your trial period.

4. Choose easier keywords

It is not advisable for smaller businesses to go for highly competitive keywords. Those keywords are long captured by bigger,
better-established brands, and it will take an inordinate amount of effort to rank for them. And by the time you do, you might
well be out of business.

Instead, go for less popular keywords that have been overlooked by your competitors. These keywords will not deliver a whole lot of traffic,
but they will allow you to gain a foothold in the rankings. And once you build your website’s strength with these easy keywords,
you can attempt ranking for something more competitive.

To find these initial keywords, run keyword research, and look for low difficulty keywords with at least some search volume.
Here is an example of how that would go if you were to use Rank Tracker:

1. Come up with a seed keyword — the most basic descriptor of your business. For example, if you are selling bikes, then your seed keyword is something like ‘bike store‘.
2. Open Rank Tracker, go to ‘Keyword Research‘ and enter your seed keyword into any, or all, of the nine keyword research methods available on the menu. Rank Tracker will use your seed keyword to discover other keywords relevant to your business.
3. Go to ‘Keyword Sandbox‘, where all of the discovered keywords are stored automatically.
4. In the Sandbox, there are likely to be thousands of keywords of various lengths, search volumes, and levels of difficulty, so you’ll have to narrow the list down by applying filters. I would suggest removing keywords that are shorter than three words, have fewer than 250 searches per month, and have a difficulty score above 40. This will trim your list down to a few hundred keywords.
5. Go through the resulting list and manually remove those keywords that seem irrelevant — some of them may have sneaked past the algorithm.
6. Select the remaining keywords and move them to the rank tracking dashboard. Once you start creating pages for these keywords,
   you will be able to use the dashboard to check if any of these pages start ranking.

Below are the top ten keywords I was able to find using ‘bike store‘ as a seed keyword. The full list contains about a hundred of long-tail keywords,
all with respectable search volumes and relatively low difficulty. That’s a solid start to your content strategy, considering the whole process took
about five minutes:

5. Play to your strengths

At the beginning of your business, you must have counted on some advantage to give you the edge over your competitors.
It could have been a better service or a better range of products, but whatever it was, it has to be reflected in your search optimization strategy.

Going back to the bike store example, let’s say your competitive advantage is that you are the first store in your area, say Seattle,
to carry Bianchi bikes. Then, before optimizing for generic keywords like ‘bike store seattle‘ or ‘road bikes seattle‘, you have to optimize for your competitive advantage keywords, like ‘bianchi bikes seattle‘ or ‘italian bikes seattle‘.

6. Match content to buyer journey

Let’s continue with the bike store example. Say, you are an experienced biker, you live in Seattle, you launch your own store, create a website,
add a blog section, and intend to establish your biking authority by writing about cool stuff, like the history of biking, best trails in the area,
biking events, and featured customer stories.

The problem is, reading about cool stuff is not a part of the buyer journey. Cool stuff is certainly entertaining, it helps you build
a community and retain existing customers, but it does not help you to sell bikes, which is your primary concern right now.
Unfortunately, as a small business, you can’t afford to write about cool stuff until you’ve created enough content to drive a constant stream of sales.

So, when developing your initial content plan, make sure that each piece of content you schedule is a part of the buyer journey.
Generally speaking, your content should be designed to satisfy one of those three searcher intents:

Informational intent

At the very beginning of the buyer journey, your potential customers want to learn about product types and product properties.
They use long-form queries, like ‘how to choose a bike’, ‘what makes a good bike’, ‘types of bikes’, or ‘how to size a bike’.
This intent is best met with detailed guides.

Investigation intent

Once your potential customers figure out the general varieties that your product comes in, they would want to investigate the variety they
are interested in the most. At this stage, searchers use queries like ‘best fixie bikes’, ‘top city bikes under $500’, or ‘bianchi pista review’.
This intent is best satisfied with reviews and listicles.

Transactional intent

Finally, as searchers are nearing the purchase, they will use queries like ‘bianchi pista price’, ‘colnago c60 seattle’, or ‘trek bikes on sale’.
This intent is best met with category and product pages from within your catalog.

7. Optimize for local search

The term ‘small business SEO‘ is often used interchangeably with the term ‘local SEO‘. The idea is that the smaller the business is,
the more it is tied to a certain area. If this is the case with your business, then you should definitely optimize your online presence for local search.

Google My Business

You could do just one thing for your local SEO, it would have to be claiming your Google My Business (GMB) listing.
GMB is Google’s own business directory and its prime source of information about your company. Filling this listing gets you into Google maps,
pushes you into local search results, and makes you a candidate for the local pack in search results — it takes care of about 90% of your local SEO.
All you have to do is visit the GMB page, claim or create your listing, and then follow Google’s suggestions on filling out the rest of the details:

Authority. Everybody in SEO and marketing wants it, but how do you earn it? Learn how you can build real, lasting authority in this post.

“Authority” is a buzzword in SEO and content marketing. Everybody wants it, but not everyone knows how to get it and keep it.

In particular, Google prizes authority and is more likely to rank content that oozes with it.

Brand authority is that holy grail you achieve after months of hard work and consistency in building your online reputation.

There is no overnight “nobody to authority” story.

Instead, you need to have patience and keep up a well-formed strategy to earn your title as a cemented expert in your industry.

Ready to learn how?

1. Create a Content Strategy

Content marketing is a solid way to build your online authority, but only if you have a plan under your belt at the outset.

If you go about content willy-nilly, expect willy-nilly, inconsistent results.

Meanwhile, a strategy does a few things to keep that from happening:

• It keeps you accountable and consistent.
• It lays out what you need to create the best, most authority-building content possible (including helping hands, tools, keywords,
  topics, and budget).
• It looks ahead to your content future, helping you schedule posts and promote content around strategic dates, seasons, and events.
• It helps you create the kind of content that will appeal most to your audience, and ensures you promote it where that audience will see it.

See how much a strategy matters?

Without a plan to build your authority, you’ll be lost.

Before you decide to lean on content marketing to make a name for yourself, spend the time and effort on strategizing, first.

Map out your road to authority, and follow it intently.

2. Share What You Know (Help Others with No Hidden Agenda)

Sharing your expert knowledge is essential to building an authoritative reputation.

However, the way you share your expertise makes all the difference.

Specifically, aim to share what you know without an agenda or ulterior motive. (Yes, the overarching goal is to build brand authority,
but your immediate intent should be to help people!)

How do you do that?

Give your readers value.

Offer information that will improve their lives in some fashion.

Help them solve problems they actually deal with.

For example, Brightly is a division of Penguin Random House whose mission is “helping parents grow lifelong readers.”
One of their blogs details useful, practical tips to help kids stay interested in reading, like listening to storytelling podcasts in the car,
creating a reading ritual, and letting them choose their own books.

There is no ploy to sell anything in this blog, no CTAs, no nothing. It’s purely informational with an aim to help parents with kids who struggle to stay interested in reading.

As a result, it’s a trust-builder.

3. Participate in Your Industry Community

This tip is straightforward: Find and follow your industry peers.

Post regularly on social networks where your audience lives, and make a point to interact and connect with others.

When you participate in the community surrounding your industry, you not only get your name associated with a friendly presence –
but also help others stay abreast of your latest content pieces overflowing with helpful (read: authority-building) advice and knowledge.

Sharing your content, engaging in discussions, and actively participating in your online community are key parts of your overall content strategy.
You can’t build online authority without them.

Example: On Twitter, Ann Handley regularly posts relevant updates in the industry along with content, personal opinions, and funny links.
Her tweets tend to spark comments and discussions aplenty.

4. Target Informational Keywords in Long-Form Content

Long-form, in-depth content gives you a greater opportunity to display your expertise than a short, pithy blog post or a Twitter update.

Long-form content is where your authority can spread its wings and show the world what it can do.

While you’re at it, target informational, long-tail keywords in your longer content pieces.

Take care to make that content as great as humanly possible.

Your knowledge and hard work will more than likely earn a top spot in Google rankings, which is an immediate signifier of authority to searchers.

For example, this blog post from Cookie + Kate on how to make cold brew coffee is nearly 1,500 words, chock-full of useful information,
and ranks #1 organically for that “how-to” keyword.

5. Deeply Focus on a Few Specific Topics

You may think you need to showcase a wide range of knowledge on multiple topics for your authority-building strategy,
but, in fact, that’s not the case.

Instead, it’s easier to narrowly and deeply focus on one or two main topic areas.

Publish content within this scope to build “pillar pages,” or a type of blog archive covering all aspects of one single topic through multiple
blog posts on topic facets – all of which link to each other and to the pillar page. (Elise Dopson via Content Marketing Institute calls this
the topic cluster model, a term which originated from HubSpot.)

This technique is great for building authority in a specific niche as well as improving your Google ranking potential.

According to HubSpot’s guide on the topic by Mimi An:

“This linking action signals to search engines that the pillar page is an authority on the topic, and over time, the page may rank higher and higher for the topic it covers.”

And when your pillar content ranks under your brand name, your authority grows, too.

Remember: Authority-Building is a Long-Term Game

Nobody builds a great reputation overnight.

Instead, your consistent actions – what you do and say – proves to people you’re an authority over time.

Online, that means:

• Building your brand through consistent, strategic content and SEO.
• Maintaining a social presence.
• Being friendly and open, and making genuine connections with your peers and audience.
• Working hard to prove your knowledge and provide value to your audience everywhere.

When you’re ready to show up consistently, you’re ready to start building authority.

LET’S TALK ABOUT YOUR PROJECT

Source: Julia Mccoy, https://www.searchenginejournal.com/build-authority-strategic-content-seo/323139/?utm_source=email&utm_medium=daily-newsletter&utm_campaign=daily-newsletter#close

More Resources:

• The Three Pillars of SEO: Authority, Relevance, and Trust
• 5 Things You Can Do Right Now to Improve Your Google E-A-T Rating
• Content & SEO: Why & How to Build Trust, Authority & Reputation