If
your business has seen the same upturn as many online businesses in 2020, you’ll
be about ready to expand. There’s more to it than just renting a larger
warehouse and hiring more staff. There are many more things to consider,
including what should be number one on that list and how you finance that
expansion.
Although
your business may be enjoying unprecedented success, that is certainly not the
case for other sectors within retail. Many
high street businesses are struggling or failing, and this is very much the picture that
conventional lenders see. This has made them very risk-averse, and it means
that you should seek a specialist eCommerce loan for your business.
Once
funding has been secured, the question arises of where best to spend it. Of
course, there are the larger premises and more staff to think bout, but there
are five other areas you might also want to consider as priorities.
#1 Image and graphic design
They
say a picture paints a thousand words, and nowhere is that more true than in
online retail. When a customer can’t get their hands on a product to check it
out, the image is all they have to go on, so they need to be of the best quality … and there needs to be plenty of them.
This
will probably go beyond whatever resources you at the moment, so it may pay you
to get some professional shots done of your stock. After all, your competition
probably will.
#2 Website design
Although
you probably do a lot of your business through Amazon or eBay, a fair amount
will still come in through your website. Now is the time to invest in the
design and to improve the UI and UX of your site. The bar for this is often set
by Amazon, so your site needs to be as easy to use if you want customers to
come back.
#3 SEO
Getting
natural traffic for your site is the holy grail in online retail. In a world
dominated by two big players, getting people to your site without paying every
single time can make a massive difference to your bottom line. Engaging a
company to move you up the rankings is definitely part of a long game but has
been proven to bear fruit over time.
#4 Hosting
With
the upturn in business and the planned increase in traffic from SEO, the last
thing you want is for the website to crash because it can’t cope. Many small
online retailers have exactly the same type of hosting package as your everyday
blogger. If eCommerce sales volumes increase any more, these packages will not
be fit for their purpose.
So, you should look to upgrade your package or ask your hosting company for a
bespoke solution.
#5 Advertising
Short term solution but one with, if done
correctly, near-instant results. It should bring a sudden influx of traffic
that should bring in sales and test out the effectiveness of other changes that
have been made.
In
conclusion, it’s not about the thing you can see immediately that you need to
consider when expanding a business but look at every piece that makes up your
business and see what can be improved with any new funding.
We are all aware of the importance of presence in the search engine for a
brand and the results. A successful online business is never possible without a
good position on the search engine results page.
For example, if your site ranks on the 5th page of Google, then you wouldn’t
get the traffic because the majority of users stay on the first page to get
their query answered.
But what is required is the marketing plan and the techniques that would
elevate your position upwards.
Various factors such as digital marketing, SEO, content marketing influence
the digital presence, and all of these factors are directly related to the
quality of a higher ranking.
Before you proceed with the knowledge of SEO techniques in your digital
marketing, you should know that the search engine or any other publisher is
always looking for high-quality user experience.
To do this, the quality of the content must be high, while the layout of
your website should be friendly.
Here are some of the techniques that might work for you:
1. The quality of the content
Not only in SEO but also digital marketing, there
is a demand for high-quality content that positively influences the audience.
If you want your audience to stay longer on your
website, then quality is the fact that could help.
A normal user usually stays on a website for less
than a minute, and during that stay, your content should be such that the user
stays on your website for longer.
Professional authors usually write the content
that is compelling for the user to stay and read the full article.
Most SEO factors depend on the content, while
this is also an SEO factor for your site.
The content is the fact that the visitor is
transformed into a permanent customer, which increases your traffic, turnover,
and leads.
2. Optimize your content with the paraphrasing
tool
If you are thinking about the quality of the
content, the paraphrasing tool can help you.
It is available online, which replaces the usual words
with the synonyms most suitable for the standard form that’s why it is also
known as phrase tool.
Rewrite the content for uniqueness
Not only the optimization, but also the content
you post must be unique, and in this sense, the rewrite can also help you.
For example, if you write the content by copying
articles published on the Internet, the rewrite would make it unique.
This tool will rephrase sentences
without changing the actual meaning of the content.
3. Keyword research
Keyword research is the foundation of SEO for
your site because this is the word your site might appear for. Keywords are
mandatory to attract a particular audience.
Choosing a keyword, however, is difficult as you
need to have certain criteria, thanks to the technology that supports keyword searches through online
tools.
For example, the Ahrefs can help you get the
statistics of a particular keyword, and you can also get keyword suggestions
from these tools.
Ahrefs can tell you the search volume of multiple
keywords along with the CPC and the difficulty level.
Keep in mind that the CPC and volume should be
high, while the difficulty level should be low to allow for easy ranking.
4. On-Page SEO
To strengthen your position in the search engine
and improve your user experience, on-page SEO is very mandatory.
On-page SEO has the factors that are applied
directly to your site while it holds the majority of SEO optimization.
On-Page SEO has factors like URL structure, Meta title, meta description, image optimization, speed optimization, image alt text, and many more.
All these factors help the search engine to
better recognize your website and rank it higher.
If the crawlers find your website according to
the recommendation of the search engine, then it would index your web pages and
rank it higher.
5. Off-Page SEO
Off-page SEO is a process that takes place
outside your site, but for your site. For example, backlinks are one of the
main components of off-page SEO and its place on the other site that refers to
your site.
The off-page SEO is also mandatory because it
creates a reference for your site by connecting to other websites.
More reference for your site from others would
give the search engine a positive impact to rank your site higher.
Off-page SEO also has some other factors such as guest posts, back-linking, social media marketing, search engine marketing, and other features.
You can get backlinks through blog comments, form
submissions, directories, infographics, and backlink generator.
6. Image ALT text
We all know the importance of images in digital
marketing and this is not only beneficial for digital
marketing, but also the SEO of your website.
Images are considered as a ranking factor in the
search engine for a website, especially when you add the image alt-text.
Image-Alt-Text is the text that explains the
purpose of the image to the search engine. Google images also use the
image-Alt-Text to display the images via certain queries.
7. Easy navigation
Digital marketing needs decisive facts quickly,
as when the user visits the Facebook ad, then you should have the post that
explains your entire brand quickly.
Not only for social media, but the site also
needs navigation that is easy and convenient for your users.
The search engine recommends easy navigation
because they want your site to display enough content for users.
This allows you to navigate your user to another
helpful article to better understand him.
Remember, the reason internal and outgoing links
are important for your website is that they generate better navigation.
8. Analysis
The analysis is essential to make your SEO
campaigns successful. As you invest your time, effort, and time in SEO
campaigns, you need to monitor your campaign to make it efficient.
For example, by analyzing, you can easily see
which of your campaigns are successful, while which modifications are needed to
run successfully.
There are various tools for analyzing your site,
including the Ahrefs, SEMrush, Moz, UberSuggest.
These tools work to monitor campaigns such as
keywords, backlinks, traffic, top sites, countries, and content marketing.
However, you can also know your competitors and
their strategies through these tools, which would help you easily defeat your
competitors.
You can use their keywords and make an effort to
rate them.
Today search engines are training Algos to be more ‘sapio-pathic’ for traffic retention. Allowing empathetic websites for more organic click-through action. Interactive fit-bits call for User experience designs (UXDs) that match the tone for the served contents. Designs that speak through aesthetics, and layouts that foretell the wants and needs.
If you are getting high traffic but no business, then it’s high time to rethink your website design.
Don’t worry, there is no need to redesign from scratch. Rather UX/UID makeovers allow more accessibility to your website contents. An interactive Graphical User Interface (GUI) that lingers and ensues longer interactive sessions. Of course, a great way to tap the mobile net surfers and users. Because bigger fonts, a background shader, or a ‘read aloud’ option is fun to fetish.
Know how UX/UI web designs are tapping the ranking factors for future SEO specialists. Here I am leaving 3 pro-tips to steam your interest over UX/UI designs.
Before that, know few traded false-beliefs about UI/UX design fidelity which needs to busting
White space is never a waste space
Simple designs equal to fewer elements
UX is only for usability
All web users are readers
Need for 100% design originality
The Ultimate 3-click rule for web navigation
Now feel smarter. Smash the UX/UI bluffs who try to pitch such fossil ideas.
Moving on….. UX/UI –
Improves SEO
User Experience (UX) ensures a ‘longer’ click-through.
A User-friendly design will make your users obsess over your website. For all ‘content is king’ influencers out there, trust the design aesthetics. Rich web designs with easy navigation, less page-load time, and optimized to fit any screens are a must to stage your content.
Kill the negative space on your website! UXDs understand that visual organization of web layouts will generate more leads. Serving not only the purpose of more content visibility but also increases the conversion rate for the users.
A successful landing page conversion strategy will debunk the contenders in the market. And when your web designs resonate with your visitors, you are all set for the long run. Be it event call-outs, awareness campaigns, or delivering opinions, you will always have enough virtual attendees for participation.
It is very likely that a researcher who landed at your website, hungry for answers and yet not contented. You might think that you lost a lead, this is where one can go wrong. Redirect the lead towards other curated contents. With which you can transform slug moments into a head-turning event.
Ask your visitor what they are looking for. Plant a few relatable blue links or consider a UX Design suite for your website.
Whereas using Interactive templates, you can churn-up endless possibilities. Small survey boxes to get the user’s views, a panel window with many FAQs, or even tips to improve searches online.
You might be thinking that aligning such concepts within a single-window view is an impossible feat. Instead, ask a professional UX designer to chalk-out an engagement plan for your organic web visitors. The clutter-free designs will promise an immersive user interface that adjusts the eyeballs screening the contents.
Acts-Out Emotions
Who doesn’t like to click on jolly features? Or play with elements that animate when touched? Narrating one of my personal experiences where the pet-care website had a ‘waking dog’ cursor when you land on their web page. A minute detail has touched this pet-lovers heart and that’s how UI designs imprint on visitors.
In developing quality user facets, User Experience designers rely on evidence decked by behavioral sciences. Take Nielsen Norman for example, how his design team works on evidence-based UX designs by collecting proof of events on user testing and behavior.
Ending with a happy note for the crawlers who are reading the article, look out for SEO – UX/UI collabs. The integrated application is revolutionizing the concept of what the web designs were yesterday and are now.
Link building is one of the most vital aspects of online marketing. Link building techniques can be quite diverse. They may be effective in generating more traffic from another domain, or to help you rank higher in search engines. Furthermore, by using online tools like a serp keyword checker, you can target which kinds of keywords to target for your anchor texts.
The first step is to identify the person, website or site that you want to get linked from. This can be done by doing a search using your preferred search engine. There are also several bookmarking websites which offer a listing of sites that have links that could be good for your business.
Another option is to use Internet social networking sites such as Twitter and Facebook and perform your own research into the well-known people and sites that are being linked. You can also ask people you know who they have used or have already used to get a feel of how reliable the links are that you choose to use. Once you have identified a site that fits your requirements then all you need to do is search on the respective social media sites and make contact with the owner of the site.
As mentioned earlier, there are various bookmarking websites that offer a list of sites that are used by other websites. As a result, it is possible to get links from quite a few different sites using the methods outlined above. These bookmarking sites are very useful because they ensure that the links that you use are relevant (as they are categorised) and they have been verified by users via user rankings.
Link building can be very time consuming, and it can require some effort and discipline to generate the desired results. You should always focus on using high quality links to increase your website’s exposure. This means that you must not solicit for cheap links because they may not be recognised by the search engines. Instead, you should focus on using the most prominent and respected links available.
While directory submission sites are the best known, there are other link building techniques that do not involve the use of any single site. These include blogging, forum posting, forum submission, forum submission with comments and blog commenting. However, the real success of any link building campaign is to have quality links – quality over quantity!
For established websites with ample traffic and fantastic search engine rankings, the major challenge is updating site design to meet the latest algorithm without losing visitors. Google is now on a mission to rid the internet of poor content and design. Therefore, it’s essential your website displays content from the finest writers and incorporates SEO savvy designers if you want to avoid a Google penalty.
Regardless of niche, your website design should be stunning and visually appealing to online users. Google tweaks its’ algorithm on an almost daily basis, so it’s hard to keep up with SEO best practices when designing a website. Sadly, these mistakes will cost you traffic, site authority, page ranking, conversion and revenue.
Which web design mistake is affecting your site performance and ranking?
Poor technical SEO
The first step to conversion is attracting traffic to your website. Next, your site performance should be excellent if you want visitors to enjoy a positive user experience. This involves testing your site for mobile-friendliness, ease of navigation, page load speed and removal of all broken links. Your SEO will suffer if your site isn’t optimised for these features.
404 pages and missing H1 tags
Imagine taking the time to build a sumptuous website even the best designers would be impressed with. There’s a beautiful background, user-friendly font and colour scheme. Meanwhile, the browsing is simple and it all looks great , except that it’s not showing up on search engines.
Somehow, you’ve forgotten about H1 tags, a vital element for SEO. Google bots use the H1 tag to understand a webpage. Include this tag on your homepage and across your website if you want higher rankings. In addition to the H1 tag, add a target keyword for better clarity.
Using too much flash or frames on your site
Flash is attractive on a website, but not SEO friendly. Creating a homepage based on flash is a huge SEO blunder, as search engines index them poorly. When people see flash content, they can read the text within, but the only thing search engines see is a headline and nothing more.
Results from a recent poll show that 78% of respondents don’t like flash either, so why do you need to flood your site with flash ads? Chrome no longer auto-plays flash ads after finding it had a negative impact on users’ browsing experience.
Failing to optimise on-page elements and including important text in images
The most easily understood content for search engines is text. Videos, infographics and podcasts might gain more engagement, but when search engine spiders crawl your site, they’re looking for specific keywords in key locations.
Google’s official webmaster advises site owners to use text instead of images when displaying essential content, names or links. Google crawlers can’t identify text-in-images. This factor accounts for about 15% of Google’s Ranking algorithm. Where images are absolutely necessary, use ALT to add few words of descriptive text.
Infinite scroll
When incorrectly implemented, infinite scroll can hurt SEO performance. Content keeps loading as the user scrolls to the end of the page. Set up your pagination correctly or search engines can’t crawl your web pages.
For example, you have 200 pages on your blog, which is enabled for infinite scrolling. By default, if you only display 20 recent posts, that’s all search engines bots will see. They crawl links, so there’s no way to see past the top 20 articles. Thankfully, Google’s Webmaster Blog offers a few insights for making infinite scroll pages more search-friendly.
Intrusive and irrelevant pop-up ads
Pop-ups aren’t indexed by search engines, nor should they be part of your web design. In fact, Chrome blocks them from appearing. Most online users also find pop-ups annoying. If one appears on the screen while you’re browsing, you’ll probably close it before reading the content. However, digital marketers say they’re great tools for increasing subscriber base and email lists.
It’s possible to display popups, increase sales and followers without hurting your SEO. Dan Zarrella and Entrepreneur.com are two successful examples. The key is to ensure the popup is relevant and unobstructed. Offer your visitor a mouth-watering offer that makes them forget the intrusion. Don’t be pushy, but always provide value to the user when displaying pop-ups. Examples include a product discount or free ebook.
Thin content
Your product and service pages are the most essential on your site. You’ll drive more business sales if you rank higher for keywords from your services and product pages. A few mistakes web owners make include:
No product or service page on their website: when you fail to include these pages, you lose the unique opportunity for organic ranking, related to your target keywords.
One-page listing for multiple products: as a thumb of SEO rule, only have one keyword on each page. This helps search engines properly understand the page and how to rank it. Your website becomes confusing when you pack several services or products on the same page, which causes you to lose ranking points.
Small text on your product/service pages: When you’ve chosen product/services pages to include on your site, create content or copies to accompany them. Descriptive content that highlights the benefits of buying the product from you helps the pages to rank higher and increases the chances of visitors shopping from your online store.
Other SEO factors that cause Google to penalise you include:
Keyword domains: domain names aren’t risky on their own, but using keywords in your domain name might be dangerous. If you repeatedly link to the anchor text, Google sees it as a manipulation. To prevent this, ensure you have quality content on your site when using exact match domains. There are sites like Domain Names NZ offering services that won’t cost you SEO points.
Neglecting Hreflang: This is a tool designed to notify Google when you intentionally publish duplicate content for different languages.
Renting links
Overpopulating your web page with every design element you can find
Redesigning you site without updating SEO
Failing to upgrade to HTTPS
Conclusion
Your web development, design and SEO experts should work together to create an outstanding experience for the user, because that’s all Google really wants. When upgrading your site or performing a major redesign, don’t focus on deadlines, but think about how to maintain your engagement levels, traffic and site rankings.
SEOs and web savvy site owners are no strangers to referral spam, but recently a new type called language spam has sprouted up like a weed.
For many websites, the language section of Google Analytics is being spammed with the following message: “Secret.ɢoogle.com You are invited! Enter only with this ticket URL. Copy it. Vote for Trump!”.
Here’s an example of what it looks like: Read More
This is not a sponsor post, but I do use Webflow and I highly recommend it. With that said, this article applies to all websites and is a solid process for great SEO for your website or customers website. I use this same process on all my client sites as well as my full time gig.
This important for those SEO businesses and webmasters. I have started disavowing links for my sites in hopes our rankings improve. Google has really screwed folks around with their new search engine requirements so hopefully this article and tool will help those who are having similar SEO issues. I sure wish we had more search engine competition out there, I consider google being an SEO terrorist these days. I guess if you have a lot of money you can buy your way into better rankings, but small shops like mine sure do take a hit when doing organic SEO. We have done everything that google says to do and now they change their ways of doing things and now we have to start all over. So much money wasted on following google requirements so we can keep our SEO ranks.
