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Answers Sidebar Content

<figure><img src="https://www-cdn.bigcommerce.com/assets/mobile-seo-optimization.jpeg" data-image="ohax487nc7sd"></figure>
<p><br></p>
<p>Technical SEO refers to website and server optimizations that&nbsp;help search engine spiders crawl and index your site more effectively (to&nbsp;help improve organic rankings).</p>
<h2>Technical SEO Checklist</h2>
<p>Search engines give preferential treatment in search results to websites that display certain technical characteristics — &nbsp;for example a secure connection, a responsive design or a fast loading time — and <a href="https://www.techwyse.com/blog/search-engine-optimization/benefits-of-technical-seo/" target="_blank">technical SEO</a> is the work you need to do to ensure your website does so.</p>
<p>Below you’ll find a checklist of important steps you can take to ensure your <a href="https://www.techwyse.com/blog/search-engine-optimization/benefits-of-technical-seo/" target="_blank">technical SEO</a> is up to scratch. By following these guidelines, you can help to ensure that the security and structure of your site meets the expectation of search engine algorithms, and is rewarded in search results accordingly.</p>
<h3>1. Use SSL.</h3>
<p>Secure Sockets Layer – SSL – is a security technology which creates an encrypted link between a web server and a browser. You can spot a site using SSL fairly easily: the website URL starts with ‘https://’ rather than ‘http://.’</p>
<p>In 2014 Google announced that they wanted to see ‘HTTPS everywhere’, and that secure HTTPS websites were going to be given preference over non-secure ones in search results. =</p>
<p>So it makes sense, where possible, to ensure your site is secure – this can be done by <a href="https://support.bigcommerce.com/articles/Public/BigCommerce-SSL-Options">installing an SSL certificate on your website</a>, though <a href="https://hostingfacts.com/website-builders/" target="_blank">most top website builders</a> now include SSL&nbsp;by default.&nbsp;</p>
<h3>2. Ensure your site is mobile-friendly.</h3>
<p>A ‘responsive’ website design adjusts itself automatically so that it can be navigated and read easily on any device.</p>
<p>Google is clear about the fact that <a href="https://webmasters.googleblog.com/2016/03/continuing-to-make-web-more-mobile.html">having a responsive site is considered a very significant ranking signal by its algorithms</a>. And, with the introduction of <a href="https://webmasters.googleblog.com/2018/03/rolling-out-mobile-first-indexing.html">Google’s ‘mobile first’ approach to indexing content</a>, a responsive website is now more important than ever.</p>
<p>So it makes sense to ensure that your website is fully responsive and will display in the best format possible for mobile, tablet or desktop users.</p>
<h3>3. Speed your site up.</h3>
<p>Search engines prefer sites that load quickly: page speed is considered an important ranking signal.</p>
<p>There are several ways you can speed up your site:</p>
<ul>
<li>Use&nbsp;<a href="https://www.hostscore.net/choose/best-hosting-for-online-stores/" target="_blank">fast hosting</a>.</li>
<li>Use a fast DNS (‘domain name system’) provider</li>
<li>Minimise ‘HTTP requests’ - keep the use of scripts and plugins to a minimum</li>
<li>Use one CSS stylesheet (the code which is used to tell a website browser how to display your website) instead of multiple CSS stylesheets or inline CSS</li>
<li>Ensure your image files are as small as possible (without being too pixelated)</li>
<li>Compress your web pages (this can be done using a tool called <a href="https://www.gnu.org/software/gzip/">GZIP</a>)</li>
<li>Minify your site’s code - rid of any unnecessary spaces, line breaks or indentation in your HTML, CSS and Javascript (see Google’s <a href="https://developers.google.com/speed/docs/insights/MinifyResources">Minify Resources page</a> for help with this).</li>
</ul>
<h3>4. Fix duplicate content issues.</h3>
<p>Duplicate content can either be confusing for users (and indeed search engine algorithms); it can also be used to try to manipulate search rankings or win more traffic.</p>
<p>As a result, search engines aren’t keen on it, and Google and Bing advise webmasters to fix any duplicate content issues they find.</p>
<p>You can fix duplicate content issues by:</p>
<ul>
<li>Preventing your CMS publishing multiple versions of a page or post (for example, by disabling Session IDs where they are not vital to the functionality of your website and getting rid of printer-friendly versions of your content).</li>
<li>Using the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canonical_link_element">canonical link element</a> to let search engines know where the ‘main’ version of your content resides.</li>
</ul>
<h3>5. Create an XML sitemap.</h3>
<p>An <a href="https://support.bigcommerce.com/articles/Public/Sitemaps">XML sitemap</a> is a file that helps search engines to understand your website whilst crawling it – you can think of it as being like a ‘search roadmap’ of sorts, telling search engines exactly where each page is.</p>
<p>It also contains useful information about each page on your site, including</p>
<ul>
<li>when a page was last modified;</li>
<li>what priority it has on your site;</li>
<li>how frequently it is updated.</li>
</ul>
<p>In Bigcommerce, your XML site is created automatically; if you are using another platform you may need to use a <a href="https://code.google.com/archive/p/sitemap-generators/wikis/SitemapGenerators.wiki">sitemap generator</a> to build one.</p>
<h3>6. Consider enabling AMP.</h3>
<p>AMP is a Google-backed project which aims to speed up the delivery of content on mobile devices through the use of special code known as AMP HTML.</p>
<p>AMP versions of your web pages load extremely quickly on mobile devices. They do this by stripping your content and code down to the bare bones, leaving text, images and video intact but disabling scripts, comments and forms.</p>
<p>Because they load so fast, AMP versions of pages are far more likely to be read and shared by your users, increasing dwell time and the number of backlinks pointing to your content – all good things from an SEO point of view. On top of that, Google sometimes highlights AMP pages in prominent carousels in search results – giving you an important search bump.</p>
<h3>7. Add structured data markup to your website.</h3>
<p><a href="https://moz.com/blog/structured-data-for-seo-1">Structured data markup</a> is code which you add to your website to help search engines better understand the content on it. This data can help search engines index your site more effectively and provide more relevant results.</p>
<figure><img src="https://www-cdn.bigcommerce.com/assets/structured-data-markup.png" alt="Structured Data" title="Structured Data" data-image="ur477gks9cuk"></figure>
<p><br></p>
<p>Additionally, structured data enhances search results through the addition of ‘rich snippets’ - for example, you can use structured data to add star ratings to reviews; prices to products; or reviewer information(example below).</p>
<p>Because they are more visually appealing and highlight immediately useful information to searchers, these enhanced results can improve your click-through rate (CTR), and generate additional traffic to your site. Because sites with results featuring higher CTRs are generally considered to receive preferential treatment in search engines, it is worth making the effort to add structured data to your site.</p>
<h3>8. Register your site with Google Search Console and Bing Webmaster Tools.</h3>
<p><a href="https://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/home">Google Search Console</a> and <a href="https://www.bing.com/toolbox/webmaster">Bing Webmaster Tools</a> are free tools from Google and Microsoft respectively that allow you to submit your website to their search engines for indexing.</p>
<p>When you are ready to launch your website, you should submit its XML sitemap (see above) to both Google Search Console and Webmaster Tools so that they can crawl your new site and start to display results from it in search results.</p>
<p>These services also allow you to keep an eye on the general performance of your site from a search engine prospective - other things you can do with the tools include:</p>
<ul>
<li>testing your site’s mobile usability</li>
<li>accessing search analytics</li>
<li>viewing backlinks to your site</li>
<li>disavowing spammy links</li>
</ul>
<p>and much more besides.</p>
<h2>Technical SEO Resources</h2>
<p>You may find the below resources helpful for learning more about technical SEO:</p>
<ul>
<li><a href="https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/7451184?hl=en">Google’s SEO Starter Guide</a></li>
<li><a href="https://www.stylefactoryproductions.com/blog/six-simple-ways-to-make-your-site-more-visible-in-google-search-results">Simple ways to increase the visibility of your website</a></li>
<li><a href="https://moz.com/blog/category/technical-seo">Moz’s articles on technical SEO</a></li><li><a href="/articles/ecommerce/ecommerce-seo/" target="_blank">Ecommerce SEO&nbsp;Guide</a></li><li><a href="https://www.stylefactoryproductions.com/blog/bigcommerce-seo" target="_blank">BigCommerce SEO (2018)</a></li>
</ul>

Search Marketing for SEO and SEM

Mobile seo optimization

What is Technical SEO?

<p><strong>Definition</strong>: A PPC bid (or <em>keyword bid</em>) commonly used in Google Adwords, is a bid placed in a pay-per-click auction to help secure ad placement at the top of search results. Online businesses bid on specific keywords or keyword groups in an attempt to secure ad space for important terms relative to their business. </p>
<h4>Bids play a major role in PPC ad placement</h4>
<p>Bids for placement on the Internet are especially popular with search engines and marketers. Here is some background on the bidding process:</p>
<ul>  <li>The prominence of the      link determines how much the advertising business is willing to pay.</li>  <li>The bidding process can      become a bit controversial at times as it favors online businesses that      are willing to place high bids.</li>  <li>Online businesses that      desire to market a specific product, service or website that is highly      relevant to specific search terms sometimes find that placing high bids is      not a prudent use of their marketing budget.</li> </ul>
<h4>Bid modifiers</h4>
<p>Bid modifiers represent a certain percentage of the amount of the bid in terms of location, electronic device and scheduling. Consider the following example:</p>
<ul>  <li><strong>Company      A</strong>'s maximum bid for a keyword is $2, yet the ads will      only be displayed on computers.</li>  <li><strong>If      company B </strong>only wants to pay a maximum of $1 for its      advertisements to appear on web-enabled mobile devices, it can do so by      establishing its bid modifier at -50%.</li> </ul>
<p>This feature makes for efficient use of an online business's limited marketing dollars. Such bid modifiers are available through Bing Ads and Google AdWords. These modifiers can be applied to specific geographic areas that a particular business would like to target. They can even be applied to specific times or electronic devices that the business has pinpointed as "optimal" for its target audience.</p>
<h4>Real-time Bidding</h4>
<p>Often referred to with the acronym of “RTB,” real-time bidding is a means of buying and selling marketing space. This space is auctioned off on a “per impression” basis. The auction takes place in an automatic fashion, similar to the electronic trades made to buy and sell investments on financial markets. If the bid wins, the buyer's advertisement is placed on the publisher's website.</p>
<p>This style of bidding empowers advertisers to easily streamline ads across numerous networks. The most significant difference between real-time bidding and traditional static auctions is that real-time bidding is conducted on a per-impression basis. Alternatively, static auctions contain groups that can include thousands of impressions.</p>

Effective PPC bidding can catapult visibility for your online business.

What are PPC bids?

<p><strong>Definition: </strong>Impressions are when an advertisement or any other form of digital media renders on a user's screen. Impressions are not action-based and are merely defined by a user potentially seeing the advertisement, <a href="/ecommerce-answers/impressions-digital-marketing/" target="_blank">making CPM campaigns</a> ideal for businesses intent on <a href="https://www.bigcommerce.com/blog/ecommerce-branding/" target="_blank">spreading brand awareness</a>.</p>
<h4>Impressions In Digital Marketing</h4>
<p>Digital marketing has made impression tracking significantly more quantitative than offline advertising. For example, a billboard owner has no concrete way of estimating the number of impressions his platform grants advertisers. Impression-based online campaigns, on the other hand, can measure impressions concretely, and are generally sold in terms of <a href="http://www.bigcommerce.com/ecommerce-answers/what-is-cpm-advertising-what-retailers-need-to-know/">cost-per-thousand (CPM) impressions</a>.</p>
<p><a href="/articles/ecommerce/ecommerce-metrics/" target="_blank">Impression tracking is a common metric</a> for measuring the performance of most types of online marketing campaigns, including:</p>
<ul>  <li>Pay-per-click      impressions, measured against actual clicks</li>  <li>Number of times a meme      appears on social media</li>  <li>On-site views of internal      calls-to-action</li>  <li>Access of graphic      materials through third-party sites, such as <a href="https://www.bigcommerce.com/blog/pin-it-to-win-it-how-retailers-can-use-pinterest-to-increase-social-media-reach-and-engagement/" target="_blank">Pinterest</a> or Google Image      Search</li> </ul>
<p>Impressions generally come in two forms: <em>served</em> and <em>viewable</em>.</p>
<h4>Served Impressions</h4>
<p>The current standard for tracking online impressions is based on served content: whenever a marketing-related file is accessed and transmitted that activity counts as an impression. This is extremely easy to track as it relies on pure server data to count the impressions.</p>
<p>Counting impressions based on served content still has the 'billboard' problem, in that it's difficult to tell how much impact the content had without deeper data analysis. Also, in some cases files can be accessed without being viewable by the consumer.</p>
<p>As a result, ecommerce businesses purchasing impression-based advertising such as display ads have urged the adoption of more accurate systems for measuring impressions. The new viewable impressions standard seeks to address this need.</p>
<h4>Viewable Impressions</h4>
<p>The viewable impressions method uses data gathered from a user's device to refine the impression count by excluding cases where, in all likelihood, the content was <em>not </em>seen.</p>
<p>Viewable impression tracking can identify user behaviors which prevent ad viewing, including:</p>
<ul>  <li>Ad-blocking software</li>  <li>Screen resolutions too      small for the ad to appear onscreen.</li>  <li>Users scrolling      down before the requested ad has loaded. </li>  <li>Broken plug-ins      preventing content display.</li>  <li>Mobile incompatibilities      such as desktop-only websites.</li>  <li>Minimized browser      windows.</li>  <li>User movement between      different applications.</li>  <li>Pages loaded in      background tabs then never accessed.</li>  <li>Non-user interference,      like malware cloaking ads </li> </ul>
<p>The benefits of viewable impression tracking are twofold. First, a company receives more accurate information on the number of actual impressions made. Secondly, the data collected is highly actionable and suggests improvements which can ensure greater rates of content delivery.</p>

Impressions make up an important component of digital marketing.

Understanding Impressions in digital marketing

<p><strong>Definition: </strong>Cost-Per-Vew, or <strong>CPV</strong>, is a method of charging for video advertisements based on the number of views or interactions an ad receives. CPV advertising opportunities provide a platform for ecommerce merchants to connect with <a href="https://www.bigcommerce.com/blog/how-to-reach-the-right-audience-with-digital-marketing/" target="_blank">their relevant audience</a>, making them a worthwhile consideration for brands looking to expand awareness.
</p>
<h4>How CPV differs from other forms of online advertising</h4>
<p><span style="font-weight: 400; background-color: initial;"></span><span style="font-size: 1rem; font-weight: 400; line-height: 1.75; color: rgb(121, 130, 137); background-color: initial;">The distinguishing feature that separates CPV from other bid-based advertising systems such as Cost-Per-Impression (CPM) is that it requires deliberate attention from the viewer receiving the video ad. In Google's AdWords system, the CPV cost is not charged unless the viewer either watches the ad for at least 30 seconds or directly interacts with it, such as clicking an embedded link. This makes CPV-based video advertising more affordable for marketers, as they are not charged for viewers who quickly click away from an ad out of disinterest.</span><br></p>
<p>The CPV method is generally associated with Google and their TrueView process for distributing YouTube-based advertisements, but other outlets <a href="/articles/omnichannel-retail/facebook-advertising-guide/" target="_blank">such as Facebook</a> have begun experimenting with similar plans.
</p>
<h4>Bidding For CPV Ads </h4>
<p>Bids for CPV advertisements work in the same way as other <a href="https://www.bigcommerce.com/blog/ppc-strategies/" target="_blank">pay-per-click (PPC) style marketing plans</a>. A marketer creates "bids" within the advertising system for certain keywords being entered by searchers, which are often restricted further according to metrics such as the searcher's physical location. If more than one marketer has put in bids for that particular keyword\metric combination, the highest bid dictates which ad is displayed for the searcher.
</p>
<p>Popular keywords and densely populated markets virtually always require higher bids, as there is more competition among marketers for those keywords. As such, prices for CPV ads can vary wildly based on a large number of factors on the searcher's end. Costs anywhere from around 3 cents to 30 cents per view are common, but that is only a broad estimate.
</p>
<h4>Types Of CPV Ads</h4>
<p>Within the Google TrueView system, there are two different ways of including ads in YouTube: In-Stream and In-Display.
</p>
<p><strong>In-Stream </strong>video advertisements are those which appear before or after other videos on YouTube, equivalent to commercial breaks on television. Viewers are forced to watch the first 5 seconds of the ad, then given the option to skip if they wish.
</p>
<p><strong>In-Display </strong>ads are videos which appear directly in YouTube or other Google search results and are presented as clickable choices alongside other videos.
</p>
<p>Marketers are free to experiment with different format types with relative freedom, given the 30-second rule. They can try videos which are short, long, funny, serious, in-stream or in-display and still only pay for those which are engaging to the viewer. This gives marketers ample opportunity to try different approaches and find the most cost-effective options.
</p>

CPV enables merchants to reach their audience via online videos.

What are Cost-Per-View (CPV) ads?

<p>On-page SEO includes all measures that can be taken directly within the website in order to improve its position in the search rankings. For a site&nbsp;to have <em>effective</em> on-page optimization, there needs to be a combination of several factors with <a href="https://www.searchmetrics.com/glossary/on-page-optimization/#:~:text=Onpage%20optimization%20(AKA%20on%2Dpage,meta%20description%20and%20title%20tags." target="_blank" style="font-size: 1rem; letter-spacing: 0px; background-color: initial;">analysis and regular monitoring.</a>&nbsp;</p>
<h2>Four Important Components of On-Page Optimization</h2>
<p>Along with the several factors that go into successful on-page optimization, there are a few main elements that need to be considered. Visitors see and analyze everything that is on the <a href="https://www.singlegrain.com/res/seo-101/main-components-seo/" target="_blank">visual webpage,</a> making optimization a priority.&nbsp;</p>
<h3>1. Interesting, informative content.&nbsp;</h3>
<p>High quality content that is engaging and informative <a href="https://www.socialmediatoday.com/news/the-importance-of-great-content-in-seo-infographic/544439/#:~:text=Content%20Allows%20You%20to%20Incorporate,can%20strategically%20use%20your%20keywords.&text=Quality%20Content%20Provides%20a%20Great,posts%20and%20using%20good%20keywords." target="_blank">motivates visitors</a>&nbsp;to stay on your website. The more engagements that your website receives, the better your search result rankings will be in the long run.
</p>
<ul><li>Headings and structure: A header is meant to grab the reader’s attention and keep it so that they are left wanting more. Once they want more, it is crucial that the structure of the content flows nicely and is easy to read. This will ensure that your webpage gains as much traction as possible.
</li><li>Semantic keywords: Semantic keyword search allows you to write content that is optimized for topics rather than individual keywords. This gives more breathing room to write about content that is made for a larger audience. By using semantic keywords, there is a higher possibility of your content showing up in searches around a broader topic.
</li><li>Competitor research: Doing some research on your competitors and what their keywords might be, the content they usually post, and the way they organize their content can give some insight into how you might want to structure your own content. You may also be able to figure out what keywords you should be using so that your content differentiates from the competition.
</li><li>Do not keyword stuff: Keyword stuffing involves cramming as many relatable keywords and tags into your content so that it appears in as many search results as possible. As tempting as this may be for showcasing your content, it can actually cause you more harm than good. It can flag your content as low-quality or spam and give you a bad ranking or cause your webpage to be pushed to the last of the search results. Instead of keyword stuffing, it would be more beneficial to focus on one or two keywords per piece of content. This ensures that your content is showing up on the necessary pages to be ranked correctly.&nbsp;</li></ul>
<h3>2. Internal links.&nbsp;</h3>
<p>If information is not able to be linked, it is highly unlikely that <a href="https://moz.com/learn/seo/on-page-factors" target="_blank">search engines</a> will rank it. The more internal links you provide, the more clicks you will get on your site. A search engine will be able to process and rank your website more efficiently with a good amount of links pointing towards various points on your website. By inserting those links internally, you are not only gathering more traffic to your site, but also boosting your ranking in a quick and efficient way.</p>
<h3>3. Title tag and meta descriptions.&nbsp;</h3>
<p>A title tag is an HTML element that acts as the title of the webpage and is displayed on search engine results pages (SERPs). Title tags are important for your website because they are the first impression that people have of your site and they are included in the search results of multiple places including web browsers and social networks. As for meta descriptions, they provide a brief summary of the webpage. Much like the title tag, they appear in search results and are the the first thing visitors see from your site. Both of these things should stand out from the crowd while also being quick and to the point to avoid making visitors feel overwhelmed.</p>
<h3>4. Alt tag.&nbsp;</h3>
<p>Alt tags provide text for images so that they are able to pass through search engines. Images are an important aspect of how visitors inspect and analyze websites, so by adding alt text and <a href="https://www.bigcommerce.com/ecommerce-answers/what-is-an-alt-tag-and-how-does-it-impact-seo/">properly formatting it,</a> the webpage can garner more visitors as well as rank on search engines.&nbsp;
</p>
<h2>Conclusion&nbsp;</h2>
<p>On-page optimization is used to center attention around the actual content on the website and rank higher on search engines. By adding in these simple components and taking them into consideration, your ranking will soar high in no time.
</p>

Four tips on how to optimize ecommerce website content for SEO success.

What is on-page optimization for ecommerce SEO?

<p><strong>Definition:</strong> Negative Keywords are an advertising filter tool that enables advertisers to ensure ads are not displayed to users who use particular words or phrases. Negative keywords help ecommerce merchants reach users with higher intent, resulting in higher marketing ROI.
</p>
<h4>Negative keywords make campaigns more efficient</h4>
<p>The primary goal of contextual advertising is presenting useful, relevant ads to people when they're searching for a given term. This is usually done by understanding the intent of the search and finding relevant ads &mdash; for example, someone who searches the phrase "buy computers online" is likely looking for an online store to purchase a computer.
</p>
<p>However, some keywords convey a lack of intent that is likely to produce negative ROI. Negative Keywords offer a way to exclude advertisements from being shown for certain searches. This is particularly useful for campaigns that offer either <strong>broad matching</strong> or <strong>phrase matching</strong>. Here are two examples of how it can work in practice:
</p>
<h4><em>Example 1: It's not free</em></h4>
<p>Leather Couches, LLC, is an online store that focuses on upscale leather couches, constructed by hand and customized for each order. However, they're aware that their market is one where people are often looking for free or low-cost pieces of furniture (especially young people moving out on their own for the first time, who want to spend as little money as possible).
</p>
<p>These "non-buyers" are a <em>sizable</em> part of the group of people looking for couches, and if the company's advertisements went to every search with the phrase "leather couch," they'd be showing a lot of ads to people who searched "free leather couch" and "used leather couch."
</p>
<p>Negative Keywords allow this ecommerce store to exclude themselves from searches with either of those terms, helping them focus on searchers who are looking for <em>new</em> couches.
</p>
<h4><em>Example 2: Different products</em></h4>
<p>Online Computer Sellers offers a variety of desktops, laptops, and tablets for purchase. Unfortunately, their advertisements are often crossing over so that people who are searching for one type of machine are being shown ads for another type &mdash; and very few people will make that kind of change.
</p>
<p>For this company, Negative Keywords can help them ensure that the right type of ad is shown to each searcher (desktop computer ads to those searching for desktops, laptop ads to those searching for laptops, etc.). The better an ad matches what a customer is actually looking for, the more likely they are to click on it.
</p>
<p><strong><em><u>Learn more about configuring AdWords tracking for a BigCommerce store: <a href="https://support.bigcommerce.com/articles/Learning/Can-I-Optimize-My-Store-by-Myself/">Adding Google AdWords Conversion Tracking</a><a href="https://support.bigcommerce.com/articles/Learning/Can-I-Optimize-My-Store-by-Myself/"></a></u></em></strong><br>
</p>

Improve ad spend efficiency my configuring negative keywords.

What are negative keywords?

<p><strong>Definition: </strong>The Google Merchant Center is a single online dashboard where online businesses manage their appearance across all Google ecommerce products and make changes to their online listings as needed.<br></p>
<p>The primary goal of the <a href="https://feedonomics.com/blog/tag/google-merchant-center/">Google Merchant Center</a> is to allow businesses to upload and maintain product information, including pictures and pricing, to be displayed in relevant Google Shopping searches. The Google Merchant Center also integrates into other Google services, such as Google My Business, to allow robust oversight and control of <a href="https://www.bigcommerce.com/blog/google-pla-product-listing-ads/" target="_blank">Google-based marketing</a> and ecommerce.
</p>
<h4>Manage all Google interactions </h4>
<p>Once a business has successfully navigated the setup process, the Google Merchant Center &mdash; along with tied-in services &mdash; brings several benefits.
</p>
<ul>
	<li><strong>Accurate <a href="https://www.bigcommerce.com/blog/google-shopping-campaign-tips/">Google Shopping listings</a>: </strong>Buyers searching Google for      products will see the business's offerings in a catalog-like format,      increasing visibility.</li>
	<li><strong>Google      AdWords integration: </strong>Every product in the Google      Merchant Center can be tied to <a href="/blog/google-shopping-ads/" target="_blank">specific AdWords ads</a> quickly and easily.      Remarketing techniques can also be deployed to remind visitors of      previously-viewed products.</li>
	<li><strong>Google      Analytics support: </strong>Analytics users can add a      Custom Segment specifically for Google Merchant Center hits, which keeps      its stats separate from other hits.</li>
	<li><strong>Online      product reviews: </strong><a href="https://www.bigcommerce.com/blog/10-ways-to-increase-brand-loyalty-and-product-reviews/" target="_blank">Public reviews of products</a> are      integrated into their listing, with their star ratings visible as part of      the listings. 4.5- and 5-star products receive preferential placement.</li>
	<li><strong>Direct      website funnels: </strong>Buyers clicking the public      listings can be taken directly to its store page on an ecommerce site.</li>
	<li><strong>Google      Local Search integration: </strong>Listings can include      geographical tagging which direct buyers to nearby local stores.</li>
</ul>
<h4>What you need to register with Google Merchant Center</h4>
<p>Because of its integration into so many other Google ventures, setting up the Google Merchant Center is a multi-step process:
</p>
<p><strong>1. Have at least one existing Google account, </strong>although Merchant Center can also be configured for multiple logins.
</p>
<p><strong>2. A verified website and business within Google My Business</strong>, which itself requires adhering to several Google guidelines such as providing a valid physical address, contact number, technical support, and <a href="https://www.bigcommerce.com/ecommerce-answers/ecommerce-checkout-pages">a secure checkout process</a>.
</p>
<p><strong>3. Full product data</strong>, including pricing, availability, and shipping information in a format Google can accept, such as TXT or XML files derived from Excel spreadsheets. In some cases, it is also possible to import product data from an existing ecommerce platform.
</p>
<p><strong>4.  Integration offered by ecommerce platform</strong> to sync all data required by GMC.
</p>
<p><strong><em><u>Learn how to sync your Bigcommerce store with Google Merchant Center: </u></em></strong><u><a href="https://support.bigcommerce.com/s/article/Google-Shopping">Selling on Google Shopping</a></u><br>
</p>

Manage all-things Google from GMC to optimize your ad spend and brand image.

What is Google Merchant Center?

<p><strong>Definition: </strong>Link exchanges are quid-pro-quo arrangements between websites to cross-link to each others' materials with the purpose of mutually increasing search engine rankings. Link exchanges can be cause for penalty and are discouraged for ecommerce merchants hoping to boost their SEO traffic. </p>
<p>In most cases, link exchanges are forbidden under Google's webmaster guidelines, which <a href="https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/66356?hl=en">specifically forbid</a> non-organic linking methods. Link exchanges <a href="https://www.bigcommerce.com/ecommerce-answers/what-link-building/">were common practice</a> before Google cracked down on links with the Penguin algorithm. </p>
<h4>Link exchanges aren't necessarily bad &mdash; depending on intent</h4>
<p>Google's webmaster guidelines specify that <em>excessive </em>use of link exchanges is forbidden, and are largely concerned with large commercial operations which would exchange links between dozens or hundreds of websites at once, even if they had very little to do with each other.</p>
<p>While the rules are not precisely defined, organic and collaborative link exchanging is acceptable <em>when it genuinely offers something to users</em>. For example, if two stores write expert blogs and guest post with each other, it is providing something for each audience. Likewise, websites in complementary fields of business often form partnerships to cross-promote products, which may involve an exchange of links. </p>
<p><strong>In general, ecommerce retailers should never link to &mdash; or ask for links from &mdash; another website for the pure benefit of SEO.</strong></p>
<h4>How to improve organic link building without relying on exchanges</h4>
<p>Google's focus is on quality of content, and that is still the best way to inspire links to a website. Materials on a website which are legitimately interesting, entertaining, and informative are most likely to garner links.</p>
<p>Further, link exchanges do not have to be 1:1. When an online retailer posts a blog post or writes an article that can serve the greater community, link outreach can significantly grow its audience. Then, if later on those other businesses post interesting materials, the original company is free to link to them in turn. The crucial point is that it should <em>not </em>be a quid-pro-quo arrangement where cross-linking is expected or demanded.</p>
<p>By focusing on precise keyword research, creating great content, and promoting it to the right audience, you can increase margins without resorting to tactics such as link exchanges. </p>
<p><strong><em>Bigcommerce stores are built with best-in-class SEO.</em></strong><br></p>

Learn why link exchanges can ultimately do more harm than good.

What are link exchanges? What ecommerce merchants need to know

<p style="margin-top:3%;">To have a successful brand, you need to get your <a href="https://www.bigcommerce.com/blog/bigcommerce-vs-shopify-vs-shopify-plus/" style="font-size: 1rem; letter-spacing: 0px; background-color: initial;">eCommerce site</a> as high up the search engine ranks as possible. Sometimes, though, you don’t really know how well your site is actually doing. And even when you think you are doing all the right things, it still isn’t as high up in search results as you had hoped.&nbsp;<br></p>
<p>In this case you can check out your domain authority (DA) to see how your website is really perceived. Domain Authority is a search engine ranking score that gives a measure of how successful a site is when it comes to search engine results. It was created by software development company Moz, and gives an overview of likely search engine performance.&nbsp;
</p>
<p>It gives sites a score ranked between 1 and 100, with the higher end of the scale representing a better outcome. Finding out your score helps you with <a href="https://technologyadvice.com/blog/marketing/podcast-building-your-brand-on-social-media/">building your brand</a> and creating a website that you know clients and customers will want to engage with. It will also help you see the areas that may need a little more improvement.&nbsp;
</p>
<p>DA is a popular replacement for Google’s PageRank.
</p>
<h4>How Domain Authority is Calculated</h4>
<p>There are 40 factors that Moz looks for to calculate the DA score. These include things like root domains or inbound links. The latter is especially important in calculating the score, as a site with a high amount of inbound links from authoritative and relevant domains will score higher.&nbsp;
</p>
<p>Say, for example, you run a <a href="https://www.ringcentral.co.uk/blog/ultimate-guide-to-broadband-for-your-home-office/">broadband</a> firm. It won’t be enough just to talk about your products, you will need to have inbound links to blog posts, product pages, and more to help you score higher. Sites with no inbound links at all tend to have an authority score of around one.&nbsp;
</p>
<h4>The issues with Domain Authority&nbsp;</h4>
<p>One issue with the Moz scoring system is that when you score a high rating, it is harder to improve on than if you score low. So, for example, if you scored 70, you would have to make a lot more effort to improve on your score than if you scored 30. Meaning, even if you devise a new, <a href="https://www.bigcommerce.com/blog/holiday-email-marketing/#email-can-help-you-have-holiday-success">successful marketing</a> campaign to boost traffic or get rid of any bad links, the impact on your DA score will still be less.&nbsp;
</p>
<p>To add to this, there is also a possibility of your domain authority decreasing through no fault of your own. This happens when a globally popular site, such as Twitter, gets a high number of backlinks or otherwise improves. This automatically pushes your site down the search ranks in comparison and lowers your score.&nbsp;
</p>
<p>What this essentially means is that you will always be compared to the highest Domain Authority sites. These are sites like Amazon or Wikipedia with which you can do little to compete. So, when it comes to getting a ‘high’ score, the best thing to do is to try and get a score that is bigger than your most direct competition.&nbsp;
</p>
<p>Because of those limitations, you shouldn’t use your DA score as your only indicator of how successful your site is. It should be used as a comparative measurement, rather than an absolute one.&nbsp;
</p>
<p>One thing to keep in mind is that a new business’s DA score will always be one. So, if you are a tech start-up and are desperately trying to rank for the keywords “<a href="https://www.ringcentral.com/how-to-fax-from-computer.html">send fax from computer</a>” you have some work ahead to reach the kind of DA that may help you onto page one.&nbsp;
</p>
<h4>How to Get the Best Score Possible</h4>
<p>Because of the complexities behind DA scores, there isn’t really a definitive level that defines a good or bad score. However, if you want to get ahead of the competition, then you should aim to get a higher score than their domains.&nbsp;
</p>
<p>There are three principle ways to do this.</p>
<h5>1. Auditing your link profile.</h5>
<p>A link profile is a list of all the backlinks to your website. To make your score higher, Google prefers it if the links are from high authority sites. So, it doesn’t matter if your links are about fashion or asking “<a href="https://www.ringcentral.com/fax/">what is a fax number</a>?” they should be from more trusted sites. Using an SEO tool will help you figure out which links are healthy and which ones should be changed.&nbsp;</p>
<h5>2. Create engaging content.</h5>
<p>Engagement metrics, such as bounce rate or organic traffic, can make a big difference to your score. Therefore, to boost your rating, you need to create quality content to attract people to your site and keep them there.&nbsp;</p>
<h5>3. Earn high-quality backlinks.</h5>
<p>Doing this is an essential part of increasing your DA score. You can use something called ‘the skyscraper method’ to do this effectively. It is a content marketing method that involves assessing the content of your competitors and ensuring yours is better. That way, it’s more likely to earn more valuable backlinks.&nbsp;&nbsp;
</p>
<h4>Conclusion</h4>
<p>You can’t achieve a high Domain Authority score overnight. But with research, trial and error, and effort, in due course, it will improve. And when it does, you will have a crucial edge over your competition.</p>

Domain Authority is an effective tool for monitoring a domain's SEO standing.

What is Domain Authority?

<p><strong>Definition: </strong>Pay-Per-Click (PPC) management is the process of overseeing and managing a company's PPC ad spend. This often  strategies and ad buys while minimizing the overall expenditure. This may be done by the e-merchant or vendor themselves, or a dedicated specialist company may be hired to manage PPC buys on their behalf.</p>
<p>PPC management is generally seen as an evolving art where perfect optimization is not possible, but is still the objective.</p>
<h4>What does a PPC agency or specialist typically do? </h4>
<p>Effective PPC management revolves around several interconnected subjects:</p>
<ul>  <li><strong>Keyword      analysis: </strong>Discovering and targeting specific keywords and search      queries being entered by likely leads for a company.</li>  <li><strong>Channel      strategy: </strong>Google AdWords, Bing Ads, affiliate networks, and paid      social media placements are some of the channels to consider for PPC      marketing. </li>  <li><strong>Monitoring:      </strong>Monitoring search term reports closely to learn which      keywords/queries are most often used, to focus their buys on the most      common searches.</li>  <li>Keeping an eye on overall      ROI and using that as a guideline to dictate the amount paid and scope of      ad buys.</li>  <li><strong>Competitive      analysis: </strong>Keeping an eye on tactics and strategies utilized by      competitors is key &mdash; and time consuming. For example, deciding whether to      compete directly by bidding on the same queries, or instead targeting      queries a competitor is overlooking (competitive gap). </li>  <li><strong>Negative      match: </strong>Optimizing ad spend by filtering out users who match a      category that makes them unlikely to convert. A high-end fashion retailer,      for example, might limit their ads to users in the top 10% of earnings. A      physical business, like a restaurant, would limit ads to those within      close geographic proximity.</li>  <li><strong>A/B      Testing: </strong><a href="https://www.bigcommerce.com/ecommerce-answers/what-is-a-b-testing-how-online-businesses-increase-revenue-split-testing/">Constantly      split testing </a>is one of the most effective methods for optimizing PPC      ROI. Text, graphics, and other display variables can be used      interchangeably to find the most effective method. </li> </ul>
<h4>Who Should Hire PPC Management Company?</h4>
<p>While some companies may balk at the added expense of hiring experts to manage their PPC campaigns, in many cases it can pay for itself by increasing efficiencies. </p>
<p>Good candidates for hiring a PPC Management company include:</p>
<ul>  <li>Anyone new to online      advertising.</li>  <li>Companies lacking an      in-house advertising team.</li>  <li>Small firms without      sufficient manpower to effectively oversee PPC.</li>  <li>Organizations unable to      afford the sometimes-expensive database and software systems needed for      optimal PPC management.</li> </ul>
<p>Dedicated PPC management firms have significant expertise in the area, as well as industry contacts and established connections to existing advertising platforms. They can enable disadvantaged online businesses to compete at near-parity with larger operations.</p>
<p><br> <em><strong>Find a trustworthy PPC firm that fits your needs &mdash; and budget &mdash;from the Bigcommerce Partner Marketplace: <a href="/directory/search?f0=Expertise&f0v0=Marketing+Services+Agency">Ecommerce Marketing Services</a></strong></em></p>

Online merchants looking to grow their paid search presence may want to enlist professional help.

What is PPC management?

<p><strong>Definition: </strong>The Search Terms Query Report (SQR), is a reporting function in both the Google DoubleClick and Google AdWords online advertising systems. It produces a full list of every query entered by a user which then resulted in an advertiser's ad being displayed and/or clicked on.</p>
<p>The SQR helps online advertisers understand the effectiveness of individual campaigns, while providing actionable insights into user search behaviors.</p>
<h4>Accessing the Search Terms Report</h4>
<p>The search terms report is easy to access within the main AdWords dashboard by navigating to Campaigns &gt; Keywords &gt; Search Terms.</p>
<p>The report is updated once every 24 hours and displays results relevant to the past 30 days. It includes a full list of keywords which resulted in clicks on an ad, as well as keywords which resulted in a large number of impressions - even if they did not inspire clicks. Further details on keywords which don't meet these criteria are summed up in a separate section called "other search terms."</p>
<p>This report can be downloaded in standard database formats. Because the report only covers the last 30 days, it's recommended that an online advertiser download them regularly to integrate into their own databases for longitudinal tracking.</p>
<h4>Three ways to use the Search Terms Report</h4>
<p>The SQR provides several actionable insights into both user behaviors as well as the performance of specific ad campaigns.</p>
<p><strong>Correlation between keyword searches and ad displays</strong><strong>: </strong>An advertiser can quickly determine which keywords are generating the most impressions and clicks. Likewise, they can also discover which keywords <em>aren't </em>being entered and thus may not be worth bidding on within AdWords\DoubleClick.</p>
<p><strong>Uncover new keywords:</strong> Due to the natural-language search processing Google utilizes, ads may be displaying for users even though the user did not enter the exact keyword(s) an advertiser is bidding on. Learning these alternative search terms opens up new possibilities for ad bids.</p>
<p><strong>Create N</strong><em><strong>egative keyword lists: </strong></em>Screen out keywords that convey a lack of intent for your products and trim ad spend in the process. For example, a fruit farm selling organic apples might add "computer" and "PC" to its negative keyword list, to screen out those searching for Apple computers. </p>

Get the most out of ad spend with the Search Terms Report

What is the Search Terms Report? How to find ecommerce insights

<p style="margin-top:3%;"><strong>Definition: </strong>Cost-Per-Phone Call (CPP or "Pay-Per-Call"), is a digital <a href="https://www.bigcommerce.com/ecommerce-answers/what-are-cpl-cost-per-lead-campaigns/">cost-per-lead advertising model</a> similar to PPC. Introduced by <a href="https://www.bigcommerce.com/ecommerce-answers/what-google-adwords/">Google AdWords</a> in 2012, CPP offers a more robust and trackable alternative to traditional phone-in lines which works side-by-side with a business's digital marketing initiatives. </p>
<p>CPP can be especially effective for online retailers who lack brick-and-mortar locations but seek greater direct contact with their customer base &mdash; particularly those who prefer traditional channels over online communication.</p>
<h4>How Cost-Per-Phone Call Advertising Works</h4>
<p>The setup process for CPP advertising is very similar to that of Pay-Per-Click (PPC) systems. The business creates an online advertisement to be displayed anywhere a PPC ad might be, then defines a number of keywords which the advertisement is tied to. They also include details such as demographics or geographic information which dictate to whom the ad is shown. CPP numbers could also be paired with PPC ads.</p>
<p>This ad also includes a custom phone number which is tracked by the ad space provider, such as Google AdWords. This number is then redirected to a phone or call center of the advertiser's choosing. As with PPC, the advertiser is charged for each phone call to the number. Generally calls under 1 minute are excluded to screen out wrong numbers and prank calls.</p>
<p>In the case of advertisements or apps for mobile devices, the phone number can be tied to a "click here to call" button which activates the device's cell phone services without the user having to dial manually. </p>
<h4>The Costs And Benefits Of CPP Advertising</h4>
<p>While specific rates will vary greatly depending on the keywords, product, and target market, CPP is generally more expensive than Pay-Per-Click. However, it offers several benefits to offset this higher price:</p>
<ul>  <li>People calling a phone      number are showing greater commitment and interest in a product than      simple web-browsing.</li>  <li>Per-call conversion rates are      significantly higher than those of PPC ads, around <a href="http://www.soleo.com/media/uploads/whitepapers/pay_per_calls_role_in_improving_marketing_roi_soleo.pdf">10-15%</a>      as of 2014.</li>  <li>Call tracking data is      more robust, accurate, and actionable.</li>  <li>Call summaries provide a      better look at customer attitudes and intentions.</li> </ul>
<p>Additionally, CPP can be used with almost any outreach effort, even offline campaigns. Because pricing for CPP is solely based on the number of calls, the tracked telephone number can be included in other marketing materials such as emails, direct mail, printed ads, blogs, videos, or social media posts. </p>
<p>When tracked over time, this can yield insights into the effectiveness of each form of outreach, offline or online, as well as the customers attracted to them.</p>

CPP offers a potential revenue stream that taps into a different audience.

What is Cost-Per-Phone-Call (CPP) Advertising?

<p><strong>Definition: </strong>Manager Accounts, known previously as My Client Center (MCC), is the Google AdWords reporting dashboard that collects and centralizes an individual or organization's AdWords campaigns. Manager Accounts allows for robust oversight, control, and editing of all aspects of AdWords campaigns.<br></p>
<h4>How is Manager Accounts different from other Google Adwords' reporting tools?</h4>
<p> Manager Accounts aims to fulfill the same need of Google AdWords Editor, but on a larger scale. Manager Accounts contains a more robust feature set intended primarily for larger marketing organizations that need a higher-level view than the one accessed in <em>Editor</em>. <span></span></p>
<h4>What can marketers do in Manager Accounts?</h4>
<p>AdWords Manager Accounts is a full-featured software system which allows total control over a nearly-unlimited number of AdWords accounts. These do not even necessarily have to be restricted to a single brand or Google account, making it an effective tool for online businesses managing multiple brands at once.</p>
<p>Manager Accounts allows:</p>
<ul>  <li>Single-login access to a      large number of AdWords accounts.</li>  <li>A simplified dashboard      for accessing all linked accounts.</li>  <li>Full creation and editing      access to linked accounts.</li>  <li>The creation of new      AdWords accounts from within Manager Accounts.</li>  <li>Performance monitoring      for either individual or multiple accounts.</li>  <li>Robust reporting with any      number of accounts' data.</li>  <li>Manageable user access      with multiple levels of permissions.</li>  <li>Sharing of data via other      Google productivity services.</li>  <li>Centralized billing for associated accounts, with detailed budget breakdowns.</li>  <li>Programmable automatic      alerts for problems or successes.</li> </ul>
<p>One important distinction: <strong>a Manager Account is not an AdWords account</strong>, but rather an "umbrella" super-account created for managing existing AdWords accounts.</p>
<h4>What type of organizations use Manager Accounts?</h4>
<p>While Manager Accounts is free for any AdWords user to access, it is primarily intended for people who directly manage a large number of AdWords services. Its target audience includes large advertisers, PPC agencies, and automated bid managers.</p>
<p>A small-to-mid-size retailer does not generally require the advanced functionality and segmentation offered by MCC. The traditional AdWords online interface, or the AdWords Editor offline software. </p>

Large advertisers or agencies managing multiple stores may use Manager Accounts.

What is Google's Manager Accounts tool?

<p><strong>Definition:</strong> The Disavow tool is part of Google Search Console (formerly Webmaster Tools) that allows websites to discount the value of an inbound link, helping to prevent against link-based penalties. Google's <a href="http://www.bigcommerce.com/ecommerce-answers/what-is-paid-link-building-and-why-your-business-should-steer-clear" style="font-size: 1rem; letter-spacing: 0px; background-color: initial;">war on link spam</a> puts some online businesses at risk of organic search penalty, making the disavow tool an important asset for websites at risk of being penalized.<br></p>
<h4>Why do online businesses disavow links? </h4>
<p>The main reason to disavow links is to protect the site from "bad" links that are harming the its reputation (and thus its rank on the Search Engine Results Page). Bad links can be created for many reasons - competitors can use them to try and move higher in the rankings, users might accidentally create them by talking about the store on an unsavory site, or Google's algorithms might change in a way that causes a formerly useful link to become a problem.</p>
<p>Whatever their cause, bad links hurt companies - and the disavow tool is one way to stop the harm from continuing.</p>
<h4>How To Properly Disavow Links</h4>
<p>1. Start by <strong>compiling a list of backlinks</strong>. There are many ways to do this, but you can start with tools like:</p>
<ul>  <li><a href="https://moz.com/researchtools/ose/">Open Site Explorer</a></li>  <li><a href="https://majestic.com/">Backlink History</a></li>  <li><a href="https://ahrefs.com/">Ahrefs</a></li> </ul>
<p>Businesses should use at least two of these tools to ensure as much coverage as possible.</p>
<p>2. Once the full list of unique backlinks has been generated, it's time to <strong>identify bad backlinks</strong>. Unfortunately, there's no easy way to do this - while many online tools can <em>estimate</em> the value of a link, they also tend to return false positives just because another site is new or little-known.</p>
<p>3. The most effective way of judging backlinks is manually visiting each one and evaluating whether or not the link is sensible and genuinely useful. If it seems like it is, Google probably isn't penalizing it, so there's no reason to disavow it. On the other hand, if the site it's on seems suspicious, that's a good reason to try and remove it.</p>
<p>4. Once you've decided to try and remove a link, <strong>contact whoever owns the site and ask for that link to be removed</strong>. You should reach out to them at least three times, and clearly document each of these attempts. This is usually enough to get the link removed.</p>
<p>5. If the site's owner fails to respond, or refuses to remove the link, you can <strong>ask Google to disavow it</strong> - and include the documentation showing that you asked the other site to remove it and they did not comply. Google almost always honors disavow requests that include such documentation.</p>

Stay in Google's good grace's by using the disavow tool before it's too late.

What is Google's disavow tool?

<p style="margin-top:3%;"><strong>Definition</strong>: An alt tag, also known as "alt attribute" and "alt description," is an HTML attribute applied to image tags to provide a text alternative for search engines. Applying images to alt tags such as product photos can positively impact an <a href="https://www.bigcommerce.com/articles/ecommerce/">ecommerce</a> store's <a href="/articles/ecommerce/ecommerce-seo/" target="_blank">search engine rankings</a>.
</p>
<h4>What purpose do alt tags serve?</h4>
<p>Search engines and other robots cannot interpret images, but images can play a crucial part in how people interpret a particular web page. Alt tags solve for this by providing text which is read by the search engines. When Googlebot or other search engine crawlers inspect a page, images with properly formatted alt text contribute to how the page is indexed and where it ranks.
</p>
<p>Alt tags are also useful for users viewing a webpage on screen readers or browsers that can't <a href="https://pixteller.com/" target="_blank">process images</a>.</p>
<h4>Where is an alt tag located?</h4>
<p>Alt text is contained within the image tag: <em>&lt;img src="myimage.png" <strong>alt="nike_air_zoom"</strong> /&gt;. </em></p>
<h4>Best practices</h4>
<ul>
	<li><a href="/blog/optimize-images-for-web/">Product images should be optimized for site speed</a> and use the same keyword as the product page itself.</li>
	<li>The text should be kept short to maximize its impact. Shorter alt texts are also more likely to be indexed by Google and the other major online search engines in a more efficient manner. Also, do not forget to mention the topic within the alt text.</li>
	<li>Refrain from keyword stuffing, as Google and other popular search engines disfavor such antics. </li>
<li>Don't prioritize alt tags over <a href="https://www.bigcommerce.com/blog/ecommerce-seo-checklist/" target="_blank">SEO deliverables</a> such as titles, inter-linking, and meta descriptions. Alt tags should only be prioritized for image-heavy pages that are very light on text.</li></ul>

Alt tags are a minor but potentially impactful SEO signal that can easily be optimized.

What is an alt tag, and how does it impact SEO?

<p style="margin-top:3%;"><strong>Definition:</strong> A canonical URL, sometimes referred to as a "canonical tag," is an HTML attribute that tells search engines where to assign the search value, or "link juice," for pages with duplicate or very similar content. Online stores often use canonical tags for product pages, which is crucial for retaining full search value. </p>
<h4>Why Google created canonical tags</h4>
<p>In its efforts to eliminate low quality content from search engine results, Google algorithms such as Panda penalized websites for having "duplicate content." Any page that(s) with the majority of content appearing on another webpage (same domain or any other) is considered duplicate. However, there are legitimate reasons to have live pages with similar content. On top of intentional actions, web servers frequently create duplicate versions of a page. The canonical tag solves for this, notifying search engines of the "canon" page to receive search engine value for a group of similar content. </p>
<h4>How does a canonical tag appear in HTML</h4>
<p>Located in the &lt;head&gt; section of a webpage, canonical tags appear as follows: </p>
<p><a href="https://www.bigcommerce.com/">https://www.bigcommerce.com/</a>"&gt;</p>
<p>For example, there are two URLs for different variations of a product: </p>
<p><a href="http://www.examplestore.com/product-1-red/">www.examplestore.com/product-1-red/</a><br> <a href="http://www.examplestore.com/product-1-blue/">www.examplestore.com/product-1-blue/</a></p>
<p>Each page can use the canonical tag to avoid duplicate content: </p>
<h4>What's the difference between a canonical tag and 301 redirect? </h4>
<p>Both 301s and canonical URLs can be used to solve for duplicate content issues. While a 301 ensures a user can no longer land on a page &mdash; they are redirected to an assigned URL &mdash; canonical URLs are accessible. </p>
<p><strong>301: </strong>Old promotions, out-of-date content, and deprecated URLs can all be redirected to their closest equivalents. This ensures that any users &mdash; or search engines &mdash; trying to navigate won't get a 404 response code. </p>
<p><strong>Canonical: </strong>Pages with multiple versions, such as product pages with unique URLs for every variation of item, should use the canonical URL. When search engines find each page, the canonical tag tells it to attribute full value to one version. Use the canonical tag when you want a page to remain accessible. </p>
<h4>Use canonical tags in these scenarios</h4>
<ul><li><strong>Product variations:</strong> Sizes, colors, and add-on items may all have distinctive URLs.</li><li><strong>Pagination: </strong>Index pages such as product categories often have lists that stretch to multiple pages.</li><li><strong>Same product, multiple locations: </strong>One item may be listed in multiple categories or areas of an online store. </li><li><strong>Similar content: </strong>Several products may have informational pages with slight variations</li></ul>

Avoid Google penalties by correctly implementing a canonical URL.

What is a canonical URL? What online retailers need to know about the canonical tag

<p><strong>Definition: </strong>Google Authorship was a Google program (now formally discontinued) that enabled authors to identify themselves with rich HTML snippets embedded that were visible in enhanced search results.
</p>
<p>Google Authorship was active for roughly three years, beginning in 2011 and officially discontinued in June 2014. Some, but not all, of its functionality was continued and expanded upon through Google's embrace of the Structured Data Markup initiative.
</p>
<h4>How Google Authorship worked</h4>
<p>When Google Authorship was introduced, it was intended as a way to address the problem of gauging authority in search results. That is, how can web searchers know which sources are legitimate and trustworthy? Popular and frequently-linked authors could utilize the Google Authorship tags to make their articles more prominent on Google Search, theoretically helping to push the best authors towards prominence.
</p>
<p>Google Authorship was based on two HTML tags:
</p>
<p>Rel="author" <br>Rel="me"</p>
<p>An integration with Google Plus social system encouraged authors with active accounts to significantly customize their displayed profiles, pictures, and byline that appeared when the author tag was applied. Authorship was discontinued due to low adoption and limited impact on user behavior, according to Google. </p>
<h4>The Embrace Of Structured Data Markup</h4>
<p>Though officially discontinued, some elements of Google Authorship are still seen on SERPs. Structured Data Markup applies the Authorship concept of enhanced search results to many categories beyond
</p>
<p>Google, along with other search engines, helped launch the <a href="http://www.schema.org">Schema.org</a> standard for HTML annotation. These allow web designers to specify information about their content, like distinguishing between pages about games, movies, or other forms of content, as well as many other annotations such as dates or physical locations. For example, online stores can apply product, sales, or location markup to relevant pages.
</p>
<p>Structured Data Markup allows for far more variety in rich HTML tagging than Google Authorship did, and is now the standard way of adding such information to Google Search results.
</p>
<p><strong><em><u>Learn more about how structured data, included in Bigcommerce themes, can help increase click-through-rates: <a href="https://support.bigcommerce.com/articles/Public/How-can-I-use-microdata-to-improve-my-search-results">https://support.bigcommerce.com/articles/Public/Ho...</a></u></em></strong><br>
</p>

Google Authorship was an early form of structured data and is not completely dead.

What was Google Authorship? How the defunct program still impacts search results

<p><strong>Definition:</strong> Syndicated content is content that is published on multiple sites beyond the source, which broadens its reach and visibility. Online businesses will syndicate their content with the goal of increasing brand awareness and driving traffic from a relevant audience.
</p>
<h4>Syndicated content can offer a quick boost to brand visibility</h4>
<p>Blogging is a proven long-term strategy that helps a business establish authority in their domain. But when individual posts don't go viral, it can take a long time for the content to generate measurable returns. Syndicated content solves for that by reaching a broader audience and increasing brand mentions by leveraging websites with established authority.
</p>
<p>The key to successfully syndicating content is to <strong>only publish where it reaches a relevant audience</strong>. To achieve demonstrable ROI from syndicated content, the message needs to be heard by prospects.
</p>
<h4>How does syndicated content impact SEO? </h4>
<p>The affect of syndicated content on SEO varies in different situations:
</p>
<p>If the<strong> content is first published on the company website</strong>, it is usually identified as the source and therefore receives "credit" from search engines. <br>
</p>
<p><strong></strong>If the<strong> content is not published on the company website, </strong>search engines will attribute it to syndicators and not the author's site itself. <br>
</p>
<p>If publishers <strong>link </strong><strong>to the company website with a followed link</strong>, it will pass PageRank to the company's domain, positively affecting its SEO. However, this comes with the risk of penalty.
</p>
<p>If the publishers <strong>link to the company website with a <em>nofollow</em> link</strong>, it will not affect the company's SEO value. <br>
</p>
<h4>The Two-Tier Content Strategy</h4>
<p>Syndicating content across the web immediately brings up an important question: if people can read your content on other sites, do they have <em>any</em> reason to visit your own website? That can be determined by the content itself. </p>
<p><strong>1. Identify yourself - </strong>readers should know who's publishing the content, but without endless plugs. A quick reference or link to another contne</p>
<p><strong>2. Reference other posts on your website - </strong>link to blog posts and other marketing assets that can get readers into the funnel. This can also leverage the syndicated content to gain new blog subscribers. </p>
<p><strong>3. </strong><strong>Syndicate unique content - </strong>When you go to the trouble of syndicating content, make it count! Put your best foot forward with a truly engaging piece that offers a point of view that hasn't been endlessly repeated within the blogosphere. <br></p>
<p><br></p>

Syndicated content offers many benefits for visibility - but is it worth it?

What is syndicated content for online retailers?

<p><strong>Definition</strong>: Search engine marketing, or “SEM,” consists of cumulative efforts to promote a website in paid and organic search listings. SEM is a primary driver of business growth and customer acquisition for many ecommerce stores.
</p>
<h4>What exactly does SEM encompass - paid, organic, or both?</h4>
<p>The term "SEM" is used in varying applications. In some organizations, SEM refers exclusively to PPC (<a href="https://www.bigcommerce.com/blog/ppc-strategies/" target="_blank">pay-per-click</a>) paid search marketing (or even more specifically, <a href="/blog/google-shopping-ads/" target="_blank">Google AdWords</a>). Other marketers use SEM as an umbrella term that describes all marketing efforts that influence performance in search engine listings, including organic results. A related term, "search marketing," can also be used to describe both paid and organic search.
</p>
<p><strong>While there's no <em>right</em> or <em>wrong </em>definition, Bigcommerce uses SEM  to describe both paid and organic search marketing</strong>. As ecommerce becomes increasingly channel-agnostic with more customer touch points, unifying marketing efforts is preferable to siloed campaigns.
</p>
<h4>SEO and PPC: How they're different</h4>
<p>Paid search advertising, or PPC ads, are results that appear above and beside natural organic ratings. </p>
<figure><img src="https://www-cdn.bigcommerce.com/assets/answers/PPC_SEO_search_results.png" width="556" height="480" data-image="2zja8ud6z5dn"></figure>
<p><br></p>
<p><a href="/articles/ecommerce/ecommerce-seo/" target="_blank">Organic search listings</a> (SEO) are determined by proprietary search engine algorithms, while paid results are bid on and paid for on a per-click basis. SEM is not used in reference to <a href="https://www.bigcommerce.com/ecommerce-answers/what-advertising-network/">display advertising</a>, though PPC and display share many best practices. Strong SEM performance can consist of high placement on one — or both — of PPC and SEO.</p>
<p>Online businesses working on improving their SEO can positively impact rankings with on-page optimizations and <a href="/ecommerce-answers/what-link-building/">off-page efforts</a>. Paid search results can be more directly affected, but are still subject to algorithmic ranking factors such as quality score. Higher organic search rankings often enable ecommerce stores to lower their advertising spend, effectively balancing out their SEM visibility. Though hiring an in-house or freelance SEO specialist can seem expensive, the ROI can be significantly greater than continuously paying for PPC ads. </p>
<h4>The top paid SEM platforms</h4>
<p>The most popular vehicle for paid online searches is Google AdWords, due to its <a href="http://searchengineland.com/googles-search-market-share-67-percent-pc-83-percent-mobile-203937">leading market share</a> in the search space. The second-most widely used paid search system is Bing Ads, used on Bing and Yahoo search engines.
</p>
<p>Learn more about how to use <a href="https://www.bigcommerce.com/blog/ecommerce-seo-checklist/" target="_blank">Search Engine Marketing</a> -- and optimization -- to scale a growing online business:</p>

SEM has varying definition — find out what it means and why it's vital for ecommerce growth.

What is SEM (Search Engine Marketing)?

<p><strong>Definition: </strong>Quality Score is an algorithmic variable in Google AdWords and other PPC ad platforms that impacts the rank and cost per click (CPC) of online advertisements. Ecommerce stores carefully monitor Quality Score to ensure their advertisements receive more clicks, higher placement, and ultimately generate more revenue. </p>
<h4>Why Google uses Quality Score</h4>
<p>Quality Score helps search engines provide the most relevant ads to users, in turn generating more revenue for their advertising platforms. <span class="contentcommentpluginspanclass" style="font-size: 1rem; font-weight: 400; line-height: 1.75; background-color: initial;">Google explained in 2008</span> that the Quality Score is most commonly utilized to pinpoint specific ads to place above search results. The company also revealed that an elite <a href="https://www.sevenatoms.com/blog/how-to-improve-quality-score-adwords" target="_blank">Quality Score</a> can spur an ad to leapfrog other ads that have comparatively lower Quality Scores.</p>
<h4><span class="contentcommentpluginspanclass">How is Quality Score calculated?</span></h4>
<p>To determine Quality Score, advertising platforms such as Google and Bing use an algorithm to assess and rank competing advertisements for a given bid (or query). Search engines are continually refining their Quality Score formulas to try and deliver the best results, making it imperative for digital marketers to stay abreast of developing trends. </p>
<p><strong>Variables that influence quality score include:</strong></p>
<ul>  <li><strong>Click-through rate (CTR): </strong>If an advertiser consistently sees low click through, their quality score can drop and make it difficult to appear in the first spot on PPC ads.</li>  <li><strong>Landing page content quality:</strong> Google uses similar means to evaluate paid landing pages that it does for organic search. </li>  <li><strong>Landing page load times: </strong>Slow pages are bad for users, and search engines are motivated to present faster-loading pages so their audience .</li>  <li><strong>Ad copy relevance: </strong>Copy isn't just for the benefit of advertisers: search engines want to make sure that irrelevant ads aren't displayed. </li>  <li><strong>Geographic      considerations: </strong>Queries with geographic parameters impact an advertisement's relevance</li> </ul>
<p>Paying attention and optimizing for these factors can boost ad performance and help you attain higher quality scores. </p>
<h4>Monitor Quality Score regularly</h4>
<p>Take a look at your account's Quality Score on the keyword level. High Quality Scores indicate relevance, which should correspond to higher conversion rates. Each keyword may have other variables that impact performance; examine performance to draw conclusions about what works for your business, and what can be improved.</p>

Quality score impacts the cost and placement of PPC ads for ecommerce.

What is Quality Score? How to optimize commerce PPC ads for conversion

<p><strong>Definition</strong>: Meta tags are a form of metadata that describes the content of a web page to search engines within its source code. Important meta tags for ecommerce websites include the meta title and meta description, which are both visible on Search Engine Results Pages (SERPs) and impact organic rankings.
</p>
<h4>Meta Tags Location</h4>
<p>The primary difference between the tags used in blog posts and meta tags is location. Meta tags always exist strictly within HTML tags, commonly toward the head of the page.
</p>
<h4>Meta Tags as They Appear in Source Code</h4>
<p>An example of a meta tag as it appears in source code is the following: &lt;meta name="keywords" content="france, francais, french, la poisson, european union"&gt;
</p>
<h4>Important meta tags for online businesses</h4>
<p>To find out if any given webpage is making use of meta tags, right click the page. Select “View Page Source.” The head portion of the page shows if any meta tags are being used.
</p>
<p>There are four main types:
</p>
<ul>
	<li><strong>The      title tag</strong> represents the information people see at the top of      the browser and in search engine results pages. <strong>Best practices for title tags include: </strong>
	<ul>
		<li>Target       keyword included, preferably towards the first half of a title</li>
		<li>Ends       in brand name</li>
		<li>Keywords       separated by colon ":", dash "&mdash;" or pipe       "|"</li>
		<li>The       title's length should not exceed 60-70 characters. Google's algorithm       cuts off titles based on pixel size, which make it impossible to pinpoint       an exact character limit due to the varying size of letters. </li>
	</ul></li>
	<li><strong>Meta      description</strong> attribute is a short description of a page that      appears under the title in SERPs. Though it doesn't impact rankings, meta descriptions <a href="/ecommerce-answers/what-is-ctr-defining-click-through-rate-for-online-businesses/">can impact click through rate.</a> <strong>Effective meta descriptions:</strong><ul>
		<li>Naturally       incorporates the target keyword and encourages users to click through. </li><li>Are not time-intensive on behalf of a merchant, since <strong>Google is not guaranteed to use a meta description in SERPs</strong>. The search engine sometimes algorithmically uses on-page text in place of a prewritten description. Write well-written descriptions that are relevant to the target queries to maximize the chance of Google using them in SERPs. </li>
	</ul></li>
	<li><strong>Meta      robots</strong> attributes communicate courses of action for search      engine crawlers (also known as "spiders"). The two primary      values to know are:
	<ul>
		<li><strong>"noindex"</strong> -       Tells search engines not to index a page so it does not appear in organic       search results. This is often done for pages that are in progress,       contain duplicate content, </li>
		<li><strong>"nofollow"       - </strong>These pages are indexed but do not page value,       (colloquially referred to as "link juice") to the linked page.       The <em>nofollow</em> attribute is       used for affiliate campaigns, extensive internal linking, and any other       type of paid link. </li>
	</ul></li>
</ul>
<p><strong>Anyone can create effective meta tags</strong></p>
<p>Meta tags are often overseen by an SEO expert, but can be completed by anyone with a firm grasp of a website's best practices. Once a "template" is established &mdash; how the brand name is displayed and how to determine primary keywords &mdash; they can be completed by anyone working with an online business. Content Management Systems (CMS) and ecommerce platforms make it particularly simple to change meta tags, with input fields to set and standardize meta tags across an online store.</p>
<p><em><strong>Learn more about optimizing meta tags and how to modify them in a Bigcommerce store from our Support experts: </strong></em><a href="https://support.bigcommerce.com/articles/Public/Using-Page-Titles-and-Meta-Descriptions?"><strong>Using Page Titles and Meta Descriptions</strong></a>
</p>

Meta tags have a significant impact on organic search rankings and click through rates

What are meta tags — and how to optimize them

<p><strong>Definition:</strong> Long tail keywords are specific search terms that imply increased intent and focus over shorter head terms. Generally considered to be three or more words, long tail KWs are the primary focus of most online stores seeking visibility in a niche or focused vertical.</p>
<h4>Head and long tail: What's the difference?</h4>
<p>Head terms are broad and short, often revealing little about topic and intent.</p>
<p><strong>Head: </strong>"shoes" or "nike shoes"<br> <strong>Long Tail: </strong>"buy Nike Air Jordan IV size 4", "Nike Air Jordan size 9" or "best shoes for plantar fasc</p>
<p>The long tail variety specifies what the user is looking for and what their intention is. Even if buy-oriented verbs aren't included in a term, the specific query itself indicates more intent than a head query such as "shoes."&nbsp;</p>
<p>There are also even be more specific long tail keywords. Take the sports medicine&nbsp;field for example. A new website <a href="https://www.sportydoctor.com" target="_blank">Sporty Doctor</a> has a great article on&nbsp;<a href="https://sportydoctor.com/best-shoes-for-plantar-fasciitis/" target="_blank">the best shoes for plantar fasciitis</a>. That's a solid long tail keyword.&nbsp;</p>
<h4>Building a long-tail keyword strategy </h4>
<p>To maximize search engine visibility, conduct thorough keyword research to compile a list of all long-tail keywords relevant to a business' products and vertical market. Less-competitive terms afford more opportunity for high ranking. Take both <a href="https://www.bigcommerce.com/ecommerce-answers/what-is-sem-search-engine-marketing/">organic and paid search</a> into account &mdash; some terms may be pricey to bid on, while the domains that rank high in organic search aren't particularly strong or well-established. </p>
<p>Marketing-savvy businesses conduct paid and organic keyword research inform their product catalog, enabling them to predict CPA and build inventory on items that present an immediate opportunity for positive ROI. </p>
<h4>Long tail keywords and PPC</h4>
<p>Some long-tail keywords have little paid competition, while others are surprisingly expensive. Every vertical market and type of product is unique. Use Google AdWords' <a href="https://adwords.google.com/KeywordPlanner">Keyword Planner</a> is a quick and effective way to gauge the competitive landscape and evaluate which keywords a business should consider bidding on. Entering head terms into Google and making note of Google Suggest results is a general indicator of which long tail keywords receive consistent search volume. You can also use <a href="https://www.spyfu.com" target="_blank">keyword tools to spy on competitors</a> and see what strategies they're using.&nbsp;</p>

Long tail keywords are the bread and butter for online retailers - find out why.

What are long tail keywords, and how to target them in organic and paid search

<p><img src="https://www-cdn.bigcommerce.com/assets/answers/PageRank.jpg" style="float: left; margin: 0px 10px 10px 0px;">PageRank is an algorithm designed by Google to help assess the authority of a Web page and website overall (1). One of several quality metrics Google uses to determine the authority of a website, PageRank assigns a score between 0 and 10 to a website to determine its relative value to users.
</p>
<p>Google wants to give users the most relevant and quality information available, so it may place pages with bigger PageRank scores higher up in the search engine results pages. Even though PageRank is only one of several signals that determine how well a page performs in search results, you need to understand how Google assigns this score and the role it plays in your optimization efforts.
</p>
<h4>The importance of link juice</h4>
<p><strong></strong>When another website embeds a link that points to your Web page, Google sees this as endorsement of the content on your page. The search engine analyzes websites pointing to your page and assesses the quality of each based on their domain authority. It then uses this information to decide the significance of your individual Web pages and your website overall.
</p>
<p>When a website links to your page, or you link your internal pages together, the linking page gives PageRank value to the page it is linking to. This transfer of PageRank value is commonly referred to as link juice.
</p>
<p>The quantity of link juice that passes from one page to another depends on the PageRank of the page where the link originates and the number of links on the page transferring PageRank (1). Even though every website has a PR score between 0 and 10, the value that a Web page gets from links that come from authoritative websites frequently surpass 10.
</p>
<h5>How link juice is transferred</h5>
<p><strong></strong>Every Web page has a finite amount of link juice it can offer to other pages. That limit is determined by the total PageRank value the linking page has itself. If Page A has a PageRank of 15, it cannot transfer more than 15 total link juice points to other sources. If Page A links to only one other page, Page B, then Page B will get all 15 of those link juice points. If Page A links to three pages, B, C and D, then those pages will get a link juice value of 5 each. Every passing link has a decay factor, so a little more link juice is lost with every transfer, but the easiest way to understand PageRank is by dividing the total points a page has by the number of links on the page. This will give you a rough idea of how much link juice is given to each corresponding page.
</p>
<h5>How to turn off the link juice </h5>
<p><strong></strong>If you have a page with high a PageRank and you need to link to several pages that are less important for ranking, you may wish to prevent link juice from passing to them. One example of this is when your product page links to the terms and conditions page, or even the shopping cart. These pages are important for the user experience, but you certainly don't need your shopping cart to rank in search engine results pages. You have the option of putting commands into your on-page code that tells search engine crawlers to ignore the link on the page. This is called a rel=nofollow tag.
</p>
<p>If you have a page that links to three others, and you put rel=nofollow on one of those links, that link will not be followed by search engine spiders and consequently will not pass along link juice. It's important to note, though, that many SEO practitioners claim that preventing the transfer of link juice to a page does not conserve it. On the contrary, many SEO professionals advise against preventing PageRank from passing naturally through the pages on your site.
</p>
<h4>Passing PageRank through your interior pages</h4>
<p><strong></strong>PageRank transfer can tell search engines what your pages are about and how important they are. For instance, if you have a page that houses a customer acquisition tool and you write a blog entry that talks about how to find new customers, you could link to your tool from descriptive or anchor text in your blog post. Often called siloing, this internal linking strategy helps search engines understand the main content of your website and which pages are most important.
</p>
<h5>Not all links are created equal</h5>
<p><strong></strong>It's important to understand that linking strategies should be approached with caution. Google's ability to evaluate the quality and source of links has gotten vastly more sophisticated over the years, and links from spam-ridden websites can actually hurt your SEO efforts rather than help them. Many websites are now suffering ranking declines and other penalties because of low-quality links pointing at their pages.
</p>
<p>When it comes to getting links pointing at your website, your job is to focus on quality, not quantity. Quality websites with good domain authority are great link prospects, including highly trusted sites like government and university institutions. The best way to get PageRank passed on to your important pages is to develop relationships with owners and administrators of these high-quality sites. Help them share their content with appropriate audiences, and show them how your content will also help their fans and followers.
</p>
<p>Understanding how PageRank works is the first step toward success with SEO. The second step is to find valuable sites that can help you achieve your goals and prove you are worthy of being a part of their own linking strategy.
</p>
<p>1. "<a href="http://www.bruceclay.com/blog/what-is-pagerank/" target="_blank">What is Google PageRank and How Is It Earned and Transferred?</a>"
</p>

Page Rank

PageRank is an algorithm designed by Google to help assess the authority of a Web page and website overall.

Understanding how PageRank works

<p style="margin-top:3%;"><strong>Definition: </strong>Click fraud is when an individual, computer program or generated script exploits online advertisers by repeatedly clicking on a PPC (pay-per-click) advertisement to generate fraudulent charges. Click fraud drives up advertising costs, lowers conversion rates and skews user data for online businesses.</p>
<h4>Who perpetuates click fraud? </h4>
<p><strong>Competitors: </strong>In some instances, click fraud is performed by a firm's competitors. A competitor can click on a company's online ads in an attempt to drive up the amount that the firm pays for the search term. If click fraud is performed effectively enough, it can actually push a competing business out of the market. </p>
<p><strong>Publishers: </strong>The practice of click fraud is sometimes utilized by ad publishers in an attempt to “game” paid search advertising. This is common on affiliate networks where marketers sometimes have little visibility into the advertising data. </p>
<p><strong>Customers: </strong>Though not actually click fraud, customers sometimes engage in behavior that <em>appears</em> similar. This occurs when one user regularly clicks on paid search advertisements to visit a particular website, rather than navigating directly or from a search engine. While not click fraud as traditionally defined, such behavior may nevertheless be characterized by search engines as potentially fraudulent, with any payment for the suspicious clicks subject to invalidation.</p>
<h4>Spotting click fraud</h4>
<p><strong>Click fraud occurs on search engine and affiliate PPC advertisements.</strong> You may be a victim of click fraud if you identify any of the following: </p>
<ul><li>Repeated clicks from similar ISPs without conversions</li><li>Spikes in search costs that exceed expectations</li><li>Anomalies in performance data that can't be explained</li></ul>
<h4>How to reduce &mdash; or prevent &mdash; click fraud</h4>
<ul><li><strong>Lean on specialized services</strong> that automatically identify signs of click fraud, <a href="http://blog.bigcommerce.com/sift-science-fraud-detection/">such as Sift Science</a>. </li><li>Select <strong>industry-specific keywords</strong> and apply negative match</li><li>Regularly monitor <strong>user behavior</strong></li><li><strong>Establish and adhere to a budget</strong></li></ul>

Learn how to identify and prevent click fraud, which costs advertisers millions of dollars every year.

What is click fraud? How to Identify and Prevent Fraudulent Clicks

<p style="margin-top:3%;"><strong>Definition</strong>: Click-through rate, or CTR, is a digital marketing metric that measures the ratio of total impressions to clicks in search and display advertising, email marketing, and other online mediums. CTR can indicate the effectiveness of ad copy, meta data (titles & descriptions), and email subject lines. </p>
<h4>How to calculate CTR</h4>
<p>To determine CTR, divide total impressions by total clicks. For example, if an advertisement for Nike Air Zoom shoes gets 10 clicks and 2,000 impressions, the CTR is 0.5 percent.</p>
<p> 2000<br> _____  = 0.5%</p>
<p>  10</p>
<h4>Interpreting CTR across marketing channels</h4>
<p>Though it varies in application by medium, a high click-through-rate indicates relevant content with engaging copy. CTR is usually dependent on some type of "teaser" text. Marketers constantly work to optimize ad copy and other teaser texts so that they entice readers to click through and learn more. Effective copy that increases click-through-rate can significantly <a href="/articles/ecommerce/conversion-rate-optimization/">impact a business' bottom line</a> by driving more qualified traffic. </p>
<p>Like <a href="/articles/ecommerce/ecommerce-metrics/" target="_blank">most digital marketing metrics</a>, CTR is not a sole indicator of success. If the destination page or forthcoming email does not match the text surrounding the link, users are less likely to follow through with the desired action (such as making a purchase or signing up for a newsletter). </p>
<h4><strong>Paid Media</strong></h4>
<p><a href="http://www.bigcommerce.com/ecommerce-answers/what-google-adwords/">In Google AdWords</a> and BingAds, every advertisement and keyword has a unique & trackable CTR. Click-through rate is an important determinant of quality score, which impacts ad position and cost-per-click. Search engines strive to deliver the best results for their users, and quality score measures whether users find ads to be useful and relevant to their query. </p>
<p>For paid search marketers, CTR is one of the best ways to gauge which keywords and advertisements are most appealing to consumers. Insights can be drawn from high-performing ads: for example, an online clothing store with a high-performing ad that mentions fabric type could try that tactic in other campaigns. </p>
<h4><strong>Email Marketing</strong></h4>
<p><a href="https://www.bigcommerce.com/blog/email-marketing-engagement-tips/" target="_blank">Ecommerce email campaigns</a> usually include tracked links to the store's website. CTR helps email marketers evaluate the effectiveness of an&nbsp;<a href="https://blog.sellfy.com/best-email-opening-lines/" target="_blank">email copy</a>. While open rate describes how users respond to a subject line, click-through-rate only relates to readers who have already opened the email. A high-performing email successfully encourages readers to click an embedded link to the website. </p>
<h4><strong>SEO</strong></h4>
<p>Organic click-through-rate is influenced in large part by ranking. A 2014 study found that <a href="http://marketingland.com/new-click-rate-study-google-organic-results-102149">over 30% of natural search clicks</a> went to the highest-ranking result, with strong drop-off after every result. However, that doesn't mean that search marketers cannot influence organic CTR. A page's title, description and URL with relevant keywords and enticing copy can entice users to click and learn more. </p>

CTR is a common metric for evaluating the performance of paid campaigns.

What is CTR? Defining Click Through Rate for online businesses

<p><strong>Definition</strong>: Return On Advertising Spend, (ROAS), is a marketing metric that measures the efficacy of a <a href="https://www.bigcommerce.com/blog/how-to-reach-the-right-audience-with-digital-marketing/" target="_blank">digital advertising</a> campaign. ROAS helps online businesses <a href="https://www.bigcommerce.com/blog/ecommerce-business-scaling-steps/" target="_blank">evaluate which methods are working</a> and how they can improve future advertising efforts.</p>
<h4>Calculating ROAS</h4>
<p>                   Gross Revenue from Ad campaign<br>ROAS =        _______________________<br> <br>                           Cost of Ad Campaign</p>
<p><span class="contentcommentpluginspanclass"><strong><del></del></strong></span></p>
<p>For example, a company&nbsp;spends $2,000 on an online advertising campaign in a single month. In this month, the campaign results in revenue of $10,000. Therefore, the ROAS is a ratio of 5 to 1 (or 500 percent) as $10,000 divided by $2,000 = $5. </p>
<p>      Revenue:  $10,000<br> ___________________  ROAS =  $5 OR 5:1 <br><br>          Cost: $2000<br></p>
<p>For every dollar that the company spends on its advertising campaign, it generates $5 worth of revenue.</p>
<h4>Why Return On Ad Spend matters</h4>
<p>ROAS is essential for quantitatively evaluating the performance of ad campaigns and how they contribute to an online store's bottom line. Combined <a href="https://www.bigcommerce.com/blog/customer-lifetime-value-loyalty/">with customer lifetime value</a>, insights from ROAS across all campaigns inform future budgets, strategy, and overall marketing direction. By keeping careful tabs on ROAS, <a href="https://www.bigcommerce.com/articles/ecommerce/">ecommerce</a> companies can make informed decisions on where to invest their ad dollars and how they can become more efficient. <del></del></p>
<h4>Don't forget these considerations when calculating ROAS</h4>
<p>Advertising incurs more cost than just the listing fees. To calculate what it truly costs to run an advertising campaign, don't forget these <span class="contentcommentpluginspanclass">factors: </span></p>
<ul><li><strong>Partner/Vendor costs: </strong>There are commonly fees and commissions associated with partners and vendors that assist on the campaign or channel level. An accurate accounting of in-house advertising personnel expenses such as salary and other related costs must be tabulated. If these factors are not accurately quantified, ROAS will not explain the efficacy of individual marketing efforts and its utility as a metric will decline.</li><li><span></span><strong>Affiliate Commission: </strong>The percent commission paid to affiliates, as well as network transaction fees. </li><li><strong>Clicks and Impressions: </strong><a href="/articles/ecommerce/ecommerce-metrics/">Metrics</a> such as average cost per click, the total number of clicks, the average <a href="https://www.omniconvert.com/what-is/cost-per-thousand-impressions-cpm/" target="_blank">cost per thousand impressions</a>, and the number of impressions actually purchased.</li></ul>
<h4>What ROAS is considered good? </h4>
<p>An acceptable ROAS is influenced by profit margins, operating expenses, and the overall health of the business. While there's no "right" answer, a common ROAS benchmark is a 4:1 ratio &mdash; $4 revenue to $1 in ad spend.  Cash-strapped start-ups may require higher margins, while online stores committed to growth can afford higher advertising costs.</p>
<p>Some businesses require an ROAS of 10:1 in order to stay profitable, and others <a href="/blog/conversion-rate-optimization/" target="_blank">can grow substantially</a> at just 3:1. A business can only gauge its ROAS goal when it has a defined budget and firm handle on its profit margins. A large margin means that the business can survive a low ROAS; smaller margins are an indication the business must maintain low advertising costs. An ecommerce store in this situation must achieve a relatively high ROAS to reach profitability.</p>

ROAS tells an online business the effectiveness of paid campaigns.

What is ROAS? Calculating Return On Ad Spend

<p><strong>Definition: </strong>Paid link building is when a website pays a third party domain for a followed backlink that points back to their domain. While link building is a core tenet of SEO, paying for links is strictly forbidden by search engines and can result in harsh penalties.
</p>
<h4>How paid link building became a practice</h4>
<p>Links have been an important signal in search engine ranking algorithms since Google rose to popularity in the late '90s. The impact of backlinks on a website's search engine performance led to abuses, one of which included paying for links. Because Google's algorithm uses links as a natural signal, it strictly forbade this practice and <a href="/ecommerce-answers/what-google-penalty/">developed complementary algorithms</a> with the explicit purpose of identifying websites who utilized unnatural linking practices. The most well-known of these algorithms was nicknamed "Penguin," released in 2012. <span></span>
</p>
<p>Today, Google continues to seek out unnatural links and applies higher rankings to websites based on relevance, quality content and mobile-friendliness. Matt Cutts, who previously led Google's link spam team, has discussed how the search giant <a href="http://searchenginewatch.com/sew/news/2332787/matt-cutts-shares-4-ways-google-evaluates-paid-links" target="_blank">typically has no problem identifying a paid link</a> - even when site developers think they're done a sufficient job of hiding the evidence.</p>
<h4>Paid Links vs. Online Advertisements<br>
</h4>
<p>Despite the natural overlap, Google does not consider online advertising to be the same as paid link building. Affiliate networks and other advertisers are strongly advised to apply a "nofollow" tag to outbound links in ad campaigns.  The primary difference is the latter is used solely for manipulating search results while the goal of the former is to increase sales and business awareness. To indicate the difference, site developers should designate advertisement-based links with a nofollow tag.
</p>
<h4>How to get quality links &mdash; without paying for them</h4>
<p>Paid link building is not only potentially harmful &mdash; it's an inefficient practice. Attracting free links isn't easy by any stretch, but with the right focus and strategy, an online business can earn links that have a significant impact on the bottom line.</p>
<p><strong>1. Forge relationships</strong><br>As previously noted, not all backlinks are discounted by Google - links that are given out freely by reputable sites being one of those exceptions. For this reason, marketers should strive to build relationships with authoritative industry sources who might consider linking to them - either on blog posts or on static partner pages.
</p>
<p><strong>2. Create a variety of exceptional content - and do it often</strong><br>Content marketing is inherently tied to SEO because of Google's . Extraordinary content attracts visitors, gathers shares and backlinks, and boosts SEO - and so the cycle continues.
</p>
<p>To take advantage of such benefits, many marketers aim to curate attention-grabbing yet relevant content. As opposed to stuffing content with keywords, these creators focus on honing a voice for their brand and offering up information, contests, video promotions and multimedia that followers will want to share.
</p>
<p>In addition to what's included within the content, marketers should carefully consider the frequency with which they roll out new posts. Search engines love fresh content and tend to reward companies that establish themselves as an industry leader &mdash; and that means a perfect marriage of quantity <em>and</em> quality.
</p>
<p><strong>3. Return the favor</strong><br>Though it's important to consider the benefits backlinks could offer to one's organization, it's also worthwhile to consider how they might benefit another company. Consequently, marketers might choose to feature <a href="https://www.adamenfroy.com/guest-blogging" target="_blank">guest blog posts</a> or highlight industry sources on their own sites. Doing so not also paves the way for fruitful relationships - it could also lead to external shares that drives traffic back to their site.
</p>
<p><strong>4. Think now</strong><br>In order for companies to boost their SEO presence, marketers need to be tuned into which attributes search engines value most. For today's online and ecommerce businesses, that means spending more time developing mobile and social media-based experiences.</p>

Links are the foundation of SEO, but paying for them can do serious harm to a business.

What is paid link building — and why your business should steer clear

<p><img src="https://www-cdn.bigcommerce.com/assets/answers/How-do-search-engines-work.jpg" style="float: left; margin: 0px 10px 10px 0px;">While you should always create website content geared to your customers rather than search engines, it is important to understand how a search engine works. Once you know this, you can move on to the next step, which is incorporating the elements that the search engine is looking for.
</p>
<h4>How do search engines work?</h4>
<p><strong></strong>Most search engines build an index based on crawling, which is the process through which engines like Google, Yahoo and others find new pages to index. Mechanisms known as bots or spiders crawl the Web looking for new pages (1). The bots typically start with a list of website URLs determined from previous crawls. When they detects new links on these pages, through tags like HREF and SRC, they add these to the list of sites to index. Then, search engines use their algorithms to provide you with a ranked list from their index of what pages you should be most interested in based on the search terms you used.
</p>
<p>Then, the engine will return a list of Web results ranked using its specific algorithm. On Google, other elements like personalized and universal results may also change your page ranking. In personalized results, the search engine utilizes additional information it knows about the user to return results that are directly catered to their interests. Universal search results combine video, images and Google news to create a bigger picture result, which can mean greater competition from other websites for the same keywords.
</p>
<p>Here are the top elements to edit when designing your store for <a href="/essentials/features/drive-traffic/" target="_blank">SEO</a>:
</p>
<p><strong>Architecture </strong>- Make websites that search engines can crawl easily. This includes several elements, like how the content is organized and categorized and how individual websites link to one another. An XML sitemap can allow you to give a list of URLs to search engines for crawling and indexing. (2)
</p>
<p><strong>Content</strong> - Great content is one the most important elements for SEO because it tells search engines that your website is relevant. This goes beyond just keywords to writing engaging content your customers will be interested in on a frequent basis.
</p>
<p><strong>Links</strong> - When a lot of people link to a certain site, that alerts search engines that this particular website is an authority, which makes its rank increase. This includes links from social media sources. When your site links to other reputable platforms, search engines are more likely to rate your content as quality also.
</p>
<p><strong>Keywords</strong>- The keywords you use are one of the primary methods search engines use to rank you. Using carefully selected keywords can help the right customers find you. If you run a jewelry store but never mention the word "jewelry," "necklace," or "bracelet," Google's algorithm may not consider you an expert on the topic.
</p>
<p><strong>Title descriptions</strong> - While it may not show up on the website, search engines do pay attention to the title tag in your site's html code, the words between &lt; title &gt; &lt; /title &gt;, because it likely describes what the website is about, like the title of a book or a newspaper headline.
</p>
<p><strong>Page content</strong> - Don't bury important information inside Flash and media elements like video. Search engines can't see images and video or crawl through content in Flash and Java plugins.
</p>
<p><strong>Internal links</strong> - Including internal links helps search engines crawl your website more effectively, but also boosts what many SEO professionals refer to as "link juice." In other words, it has the same benefit of any link to your site: It demonstrates the value of your content.
</p>
<p>1) <a href="http://www.google.com/insidesearch/howsearchworks/thestory/index.html" target="_blank">Google - How Search Works</a>
</p>
<p>2) <a href="http://blog.bigcommerce.com/download-our-80s-ecommerce-seo-ebook/#.U_4NgPldWlI" target="_blank">Big Commerce</a>
</p>

How do search engines work

While you should always create website content geared to your customers rather than search engines, it is important to understand how a search engine works.

How does a search engine work?

<figure><img src="https://www-cdn.bigcommerce.com/assets/answers/metadata-important.jpg" data-image="llxvh45plop8"></figure>
<p><strong></strong></p>
<p>	<strong>Definition: </strong>Metadata describes unseen HTML elements that</p>
<p>directly communicate and clarify website information for search engines, playing a critical role in </p>
<p>	<a href="/articles/ecommerce/ecommerce-seo/" target="_blank">effective Search Engine Optimization for retailers</a>. This</p>
<p>series of micro-communications includes page titles, description tags and other</p>
<p>protocols, and they may describe purposes, characteristics and general content.</p>
<p>Metadata is a structured way to communicate information about a data set, which is used in a variety of settings with special relevance for ecommerce businesses.<br>
</p>
<h4>Metadata for SEO and social media</h4>
<p>Metadata allows XML-based applications to categorize and contextualize pieces of data — for marketers, this data is usually a web pages. A search engine's job is to crawl a web page and <a href="https://www.bigcommerce.com/blog/ecommerce-seo-checklist/" target="_blank">interpret its relevancy to a given search query</a>. While keywords matching within body content and backlinks to the page play a large role in determining ranking, metadata says more about the purpose of a page. Search engines can crawl a website and <em>guess</em> its general purpose based on these elements; metadata enables webmasters to tell search engines <a href="https://www.bigcommerce.com/blog/branding-title-tags-meta-data/" target="_blank">what a page's title is</a>, which says a lot about what search queries it may be relevant for.
</p>
<p>Metadata is used in similar fashion by social media platforms such as Facebook. Open Graph (OG) protocol marks up web pages with information that is then displayed when a web page is shared on Facebook.
</p>
<h4>Common metadata elements</h4>
<p>Meta tags include basic keywords, description tags that summarize content, and robots that index pages or pass on link authority.
</p>
<ul>
	<li><strong>Title tags</strong> are an important search engine ranking factor and should include <a href="https://www.bigcommerce.com/blog/ecommerce-keyword-fundamentals/" target="_blank">most relevant keywords</a>, product(s) and article name.</li>
	<li><strong>Image tags</strong> identify URLs,      while alternative attributes provide related text, measurements and some      SEO signals.</li>
	<li><strong>Canonical tags</strong> are used to consolidate similar pages and attribute the value to only one, reducing the likelihood of duplicate content penalty and providing a straightforward user experience. </li>
	<li><strong><a href="https://developers.google.com/structured-data/" target="_blank">Structured      data</a> </strong>denote aspects of content that can help promote them within      search results like Google answers and maps.</li>
</ul>
<h4>Metadata is the key to <em>big data</em> working smoothly </h4>
<p>Metadata provide a powerful tool for tailoring and targeting e-commerce; in a <a href="http://www.socialmediatoday.com/white-papers/social-customer-engagement-index-2014" target="_blank"><em>Social Media Today</em></a> study, 32 percent of respondents reported extremely positive results from using social to pursue client care objectives. Yet, the large amounts of data that such tools may deliver can make it difficult to assess customer engagement. However, <a href="https://www.bigcommerce.com/blog/ecommerce-big-data/">organizing and identifying trends within those large-volume data sets</a> supports more effective customer service and marketing outreach. With the addition of Google-specific metadata like authorship and publisher tags, as well as plug-ins provided by CMS like WordPress, these data analytics can deliver positive effects for a company’s bottom line.
</p>

Metadata important

For the film buffs out there, this concept may sound familiar: Data about data.

What is metadata and why is it important?

<p style="margin-top:3%;"><img src="https://www-cdn.bigcommerce.com/assets/answers/Google-Adwords.jpg" style="float: left; margin: 0px 10px 10px 0px;">If you're new to the ecommerce business, you'll quickly realize that search engines are your best friend. They can significantly increase your online brand awareness and ultimately are responsible for driving traffic to both your home and product pages.
</p>
<p>Search engines, when leveraged properly, can prove to be a big boost for new ecommerce platforms, which highlights the importance for a business owner to understand and implement an Adwords account right away. Whether your are going solo or looking for <a href="https://websitepromoter.co.uk/adwords-management-company/" target="_blank">Google ads management</a>, you need to set yourself up for success.&nbsp;Keeping that in mind, listed below are a few tips on how to set up an Adwords account:
</p>
<ul>
	<li><strong>Go to Google:</strong> First things first, you must go to Google or any other major search engine that offers a similar service to set up your account. The Adwords page can be found <a href="https://accounts.google.com/ServiceLogin?service=adwords&hl=en-US&ltmpl=signup&passive=false&ifr=false&alwf=true&continue=https://adwords.google.com/um/SignupToken&app=Signup&sacu=1">here</a>. Once you've gone through the step-by-step process and created a custom account for your business, you can then begin to create a more personalized campaign for your platform.</li>
	<li><strong>Customize your campaign: </strong>Adwords is a great tool to have, but it's most effective when you tailor it to the exact needs of your business. Similar to that of a <span class="redactor-unlink"></span><a href="/essentials/features/drive-traffic/">SEO</a> or SEM campaign, it makes most sense for you to design an Adwords program to suit your company. This can include anything from selecting an appropriate title to choosing where you'd like your ads to be geographically located. For instance, if you've identified certain counties, states or regions where you're confident of high-grossing sales, then by all means, flood the Web with your name and brand.</li>
	<li><strong>Put a cap on your budget:</strong> The beauty of Google Adwords is that it can yield significant click-through rates if your exposure is high. Buyers beware, though, because if you don't set a daily or weekly budget for your campaign, Google or other search engines could keep sending ads to Internet users, thus creating a higher price point for your efforts. While you may want to reel in as many prospects as possible, your budget and ability to scale will ultimately determine the volume of clientele you want to interact with from the onset.</li>
	<li><strong>Don't be a spectator:</strong> Adwords is predicated on the pay-per-click theory, which fundamentally seems great. And while PPC is a valuable asset to have in an outreach effort, it's important to note that a lack of optimization can leave dollars on the table. The purpose of PPC is not to sit back and watch it do its work; rather, decision-makers must keep a close eye on which keywords are grossing the best results. Once the top few words and phrases are identified, you can focus more time, energy and financial resources to ensure that success continues.</li>
	<li><strong>Get predictive:</strong> If you're unsure about how much to allocate for an Adwords campaign, utilize one of Google's best tools: the traffic estimator. This function helps users determine an ideal budget for their program and the number of impressions - each time the advertisement is displayed on Google - or clicks you're looking for. In addition to budget estimation, this tool also can help determine where your ad falls on Google's search results after a campaign has launched.</li>
</ul>

Google Adwords

If you're new to the ecommerce business, you'll quickly realize that search engines are your best friend.

How to set up an Adwords account

<p><img src="https://www-cdn.bigcommerce.com/assets/answers/title-tag-is-one-the-most-important.jpg" style="float: left; margin: 0px 10px 10px 0px;">The title tag is one of the central elements of <a href="http://info.bigcommerce.com/ecommerce-seo-guide" target="_blank">search engine optimization</a> strategy, and one that is the most commonly used, easily modified and optimized. If you're new to HTML, it can be somewhat confusing. But if there's any HTML tag you absolutely have to know, it's the title tag. Basically, the title tag names your website and tells search engines what it is.
</p>
<p>It's represented in code like this:
</p>
<p>&lt; title &gt; your title here &lt; / title &gt;
</p>
<p>It's one of the first things search engines analyze when determining how to rank your page.
</p>
<h4>Where does the title tag show up?</h4>
<p><strong></strong>Each page on a website contains a title tag. As you've probably noticed, the title you put in the tag doesn't show up within the text of the website itself. The title tag is what appears in the headline of snippets on search engine results pages, or SERPS. In addition, whatever you put in the title tag will end up on the top of your browser or whatever tab you have it open in. The title is also what will show up when someone chooses to share your website on Facebook or another social platform. All told, this makes the title tag one of the vital parts of <a href="/essentials/features/drive-traffic/">SEO</a>.
</p>
<h4>Why is it important?</h4>
<p><strong></strong>Just like any other page element, you can write your title tags with SEO in mind and optimize them for search engines. There are several elements to this. Because both humans and algorithms will be using it, you have to craft your title tag to be easily legible for both. This makes writing a title tag both an art and a science. Since the title tag is what shows up in SERPs, it's important that it accurately reflects what the page is about to encourage people to click on it. It also needs have keywords that tell search engines what the page is about.
</p>
<p>The title is the first chance you get as an ecommerce merchant to grab the attention of potential customers and stand apart from the competition. A poorly written title tag can reduce click throughs, which is an element that search engines use in their rankings.
</p>
<h4>What should go in the title tag?</h4>
<p><strong></strong>To make the most of a title tag, it should be between 50 and 60 characters. Anything longer could get cut off in the SERPs. A title tag should be written with keywords pertaining to each specific page (1). In general, it's better not to use too many different keywords for one page (2). Users should experiment with putting it at the beginning and end to determine which has the biggest impact to overall organic traffic and click through rates.
</p>
<p>1) <a href="https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/35624?hl=en" target="_blank">Google</a>
</p>
<p>2) <a href="http://blog.insideview.com/2010/08/19/what-is-a-title-tag/" target="_blank">Inside View</a>
</p>

Title tag is one the most important

The title tag is one of the most important parts of search engine optimization strategy, or SEO.

What is a title tag and why is it important?

<p><img src="https://www-cdn.bigcommerce.com/assets/answers/Optimize-product-images.jpg" style="float: left; margin: 0px 10px 10px 0px;">Images can generate a lot of Web traffic from image-based search engines like Google. <a href="/blog/optimize-images-for-web/">Optimizing your product images and photos</a>&nbsp;for search engines is another way to gain interested customers for your ecommerce store. However, the spiders that crawl Web pages can't see pictures the way humans can. To optimize these images to gain traction on search engines, merchants can use a number of strategies.
</p>
<p>Here are some of the easiest ways to optimize product images for search engine visibility:
</p>
<p><strong>Image file names </strong>- When naming image files, use words that describe the image accurately and clearly. Rather than Image01, use red-running-shoes. The name of the image file with help search engines determine what the picture is of. You should include a keyword that you are trying to rank for when writing the image file name. However, avoid making long file names and keyword stuffing because this could have a negative impact on ranking. Use dashes to separate words rather than underscores, which will combine words rather than separating them. Don't use words like "the," "a," another others that don't contribute keyword value.
</p>
<p><strong>Alt text</strong> - Alt text is provided as an alternative when websites can't render the image for some reason. The alt text also describes the image to search engines so they can understand them. Include at least one keyword in the alt text, but once again, be careful not to overload it with keywords. Only use words relevant to the content of the image, otherwise search engines may penalize you.
</p>
<p><strong>Image sizes</strong> - Significant page load times can decrease your ranking from search engine algorithms, and image files sizes play a key role in increasing speed. In addition, long page load times can mean lost sales. Amazon calculated that increasing its loading times by just one second could mean losing $1.6 billion in sales annually (1).
</p>
<p>Keep file sizes as small as possible. Because good pictures are integral to making online sales, you can provide an option to view a larger pop-up or viewing on a separate page. Don't place a large image file on your website and use the HTML code to shrink it - this will increase load times. Keep file sizes under 70KB.
</p>
<p><strong>Image file types</strong> - Using the right file types can help keep file sizes lower. JPEG is the most frequently used file type for ecommerce stores because it allows higher quality with a smaller file size.
</p>
<p><strong>Provide an image sitemap</strong> - As is the case with a regular sitemap, an image sitemap gives the search engine additional information to use when crawling a website. An image sitemap can lead search engines to pictures that might be difficult to find, such as images a site reaches with JavaScript code (2). Images can be added to an existing sitemap, or a separate one may be made just for them.
</p>
<p>Overall, the user experience should be considered before SEO, but utilizing some of these strategies can help your produce images achieve a higher ranking on search engines, leading to more sales.
</p>

Optimize product images

Images can generate a lot of Web traffic from image-based search engines like Google.

How to optimize product images for SEO

<p>For most companies, climbing up the ranks of Google tends to involve using some sort of SEO. This entails marketers adding in predicted “keywords” into company blogs and content to make it rise higher up the search engine results pages (SERPs). It’s a wonderful way to help <a href="https://www.bigcommerce.com/blog/ecommerce-payment-processing/">small and medium businesses</a>, that don’t have the advertising budgets of the big boys, get their name out there.&nbsp;<br></p>
<p>But semantic search means content must be more relevant and higher quality.&nbsp;</p>
<h2>What is Semantic Search?</h2>
<p>Semantic search can completely revolutionize the way SEO is undertaken. That’s because semantic search is about how search engines contextualize meanings. As well as how they consider the intent of the phrases typed into the search bar. It’s about understanding how search engines will comprehend and translate phrases to bring up the most relevant results.&nbsp;
</p>
<p>Search engines are much more complex than they used to be, and now use highly intelligent algorithms to find the best result. For example, say someone searched for “<a href="https://litextension.com/blog/joomla-vs-wordpress-2021/" target="_blank">Joomla vs WordPress</a>”. Before, the search would probably have brought up the actual websites as the first two results. Now it brings up companies or posts discussing the actual differences between the two, and expert user opinions on how each one works.&nbsp;
</p>
<p>It’s always&nbsp; about finding the most relevant results for the searcher.&nbsp;
</p>
<h2>Why is it Important?&nbsp;</h2>
<p>In the modern age, everything is done quickly. And there is a whole world of information out there. So, when a person searches something, there is an expectation to bring back results that provide instant information.&nbsp;
</p>
<p>People may search for something specific like “<a href="https://www.glip.com/use-case/collaboration-tools-for-customer-support-teams" target="_blank">online collaboration tools for customer support</a>”. But they may also type in something vague like “customer support tools”. Accounting for semantic search in SEO makes sure that your pages are displayed, either way.&nbsp;
</p>
<p>Also, think about how people use search engines today. They might ask a voice assistant a general question about a TV program they like. Or they may do a quick Google search for the best <a href="https://www.ringcentral.co.uk/gb/en/blog/definitions/what-is-hybrid-cloud/" target="_blank">hybrid cloud</a> from their phones.&nbsp;
</p>
<p>So, if a company wants to be the best firm out there, they need to adapt to this new way customers use the internet. Which means understanding how the ins and outs of semantic search can benefit your SEO.
</p>
<p>It’s also important to think, too, that people don’t often use the same language as the results they hope for. For example, a user may type in “<a href="https://blog.brightpearl.com/4-user-focused-tools-to-improve-your-ecommerce-analytics" target="_blank">ecommerce analytics</a>”. To a human, this could mean anything from knowing how many people have visited a retail site to sales figures.&nbsp;
</p>
<p>However, thanks to algorithms, search engines will bring more precise results about what it means and how to set up analytics platforms. So modern SEO needs to be reflecting this.&nbsp;
</p>
<h2>What Affects Semantic Search?&nbsp;</h2>
<p>Semantic search is about the meaning behind the search, rather than matching the keywords together. So, two main elements affect semantic search. These are meaning and intent.&nbsp;</p>
<h3>1. Meaning.&nbsp;</h3>
<p>The whole essence of semantics in general is understanding the meanings behind a word or phrase. In the context of SEO, that’s rather than merely what people are literally searching. By undertaking SEO that accounts for the true meaning behind search terms, companies can produce much richer and more relevant content. This is content that also reflects on the context of the search. This helps create a <a href="https://www.bigcommerce.com/blog/mib-jeff-richards/">successful online brand</a> that understands its customer's needs and wants.&nbsp;</p>
<h3>2. Intent.&nbsp;</h3>
<p>This is more about why the person is conducting the search they are. It could be that they want to learn something, to buy something, or to get quick information. Again, by understanding what a person’s intent is, search engines can provide much better results. And, just as pertinently, content creators can produce material that better answers the intent.&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;
</p>
<h2>How to Optimize SEO for Semantic Search&nbsp;</h2>
<p>If you want to create content that’s optimized for semantic search, there are several points to consider.&nbsp;</p>
<h3>1. Themes.&nbsp;&nbsp;</h3>
<p>The whole point of semantic search is that it steps away from simply using keywords. Instead, it focuses on using themes and topics to try to get into the mind of the user. So, if you want your firm to be the top result, consider the themes that go along with keywords.&nbsp;
</p>
<p>For example, say a user searches “<a href="https://www.glip.com/comparison/glip-vs-flock" target="_blank">other free apps like Slack and Flock</a>”. The content you create should talk about the importance of team communications. As well as mentioning alternative apps, too.&nbsp;</p>
<h3>2. Intent.&nbsp;</h3>
<p>When considering user intent, really put thought into why a user might be searching for that point. Then, create content that answers their intent. That way, not only will more people click on your pages, but they’ll also stay longer, and be more likely to convert.&nbsp;</p>
<h3>3. Related keywords.&nbsp;</h3>
<p>Again, put yourself in the mind of the user and think about what they may also be trying to search for. This means adding in related keywords to the current keywords you have. For example, let's say your target keyword is “beautiful flowers”. You should also create content that uses keywords such as “beautiful houseplants” or “meaningful gifts”.&nbsp;
</p>
<h2>Conclusion</h2>
<p>Understanding semantic search as you implement your marketing strategy makes sure that you are keeping up with modern SEO trends. More importantly, it also ensures that you are providing relevant content that keeps site visitors happy. With semantic search playing such a big role in the future of SEO, now is the perfect time to get to grips with how it works.</p>

Semantic search

What is Semantic Search?

<p><a href="http://bigcommerce.com/" target="_blank"><img src="https://www-cdn.bigcommerce.com/assets/answers/Rich-snippets.jpg" style="float: left; margin: 0px 10px 10px 0px;">Ecommerce store</a> owners can use additional markup language to make rich snippets in search engines. A typical snippet in a search engine will show the title of the page and a metadescription. By entering some additional code, business owners can include more information. These rich snippets provide additional information in search engine results that make it easier for consumers to find what they are looking for and often increase click-thrus as a result.
</p>
<p>Using metadata, ecommerce store owners can tell search engines how to display their data. This enhanced display gives Internet users a better idea of what the rest of the content on the page will look like and what it means. Using code, store owners can emphasize certain page elements and tell the search engine how to display them more effectively.
</p>
<p>The rich snippets can only be created for certain types of content, including products, video, authors, businesses and organizations. For example, a product rich snippet may include the price of the item, as well as any ratings customers have given in the online store. A rich snippet for a video will show an image of the video. A rich snippet for a recipe might include the length of time it takes to prepare it.
</p>
<h4>Markup formats</h4>
<p><strong></strong>There are three different approaches to rich snippets: RDFa, Microdata and Microformats (1). Google recommends using Microdata. Schema markup is the most common way to incorporate rich snippets using Microdata. Schema.org is a collaboration between Bing and Yahoo! to set up language that can be used across these different search engines. The Schema Creator allows store owners to create code quickly and easily and insert it into their website. Users can then test their snippet using Google's tool.
</p>
<h5>Why are they beneficial?</h5>
<p><strong></strong>Rich snippets give customers information they need more quickly, and they often increase click-thrus because they provide immediately relevant content that is more visible in search results. Click-thrus also increase because the additional information is eye-catching. Many companies have seen click-thru rates rise 20 to 30 percent after introducing rich snippets (2). Rich snippets also reduce bounce rates because visitors have a better idea of the page's content. They are less likely to click away quickly because they can't find the information they're looking for.
</p>
<p>Both click-thrus and bounce rates contribute to <a href="/essentials/features/drive-traffic/" target="_blank">search engine optimization</a>, so using rich snippets can increase your ranking over time.
</p>
<p>1. <a href="https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/99170?hl=en" target="_blank">About rich snippets and structured data</a>
</p>
<p>2. <a href="http://moz.com/blog/a-visual-guide-to-rich-snippets" target="_blank">A Visual Guide to Rich Snippets</a>
</p>

Rich snippets

Ecommerce store owners can use additional markup language to make rich snippets in search engines.

What are rich snippets?

<figure><img src="https://www-cdn.bigcommerce.com/assets/answers/link-building.jpg" data-image="2jy8k59rd4a7"></figure>
<p>Link building is a <a href="http://info.bigcommerce.com/ecommerce-seo-guide" target="_blank">search engine optimization</a>&nbsp;technique that increases your search engine ranking. Links are one of the primary ways that search engine algorithms determine the relevance of a page. Having a good number of links to a website indicates that the content is there is valuable. External and internal linking both provide more visibility for your website. In addition, linking helps Google and other search engines crawl your site.</p>
<h4>What matters when it comes to link building?</h4>
<p><strong></strong>The factors that determine how beneficial a specific link is to your ranking include:
</p>
<ul>
	<li><strong>Global popularity:</strong> Popular sites receive more external links. Wikipedia ends up at the top of search pages for many subjects because so many websites link to it.</li>
	<li><strong>Local popularity:</strong> Local popularity refers to inbound links that come from similar sites. For instance, if you have a shoe store, and a popular shoe blog links to it, search engines will pay more attention than if the link came from an unrelated website. </li>
	<li><strong>Anchor text: </strong>When someone links to your shoe store using "shoe store" as the anchor text, this sends a signal to search engines that your website is a good resource for shoes. But if the anchor text that brings visitors to a page uses the same keywords too frequently, search engines may start to suspect spammy tactics.</li>
	<li><strong>Link context:</strong> Links are more valuable when the context is directly related to the topic your website. The transition from the current page to the one being linked should be relatively seamless.</li>
	<li><strong>Where the link comes from:</strong> Links from authoritative websites carry more weight than links from less-reputable sites. For instance, a link that comes from Google's official blog will be more authoritative than one that comes from a personal blog on WordPress. Search engines have methods to sort through spam and irrelevant content, and Google has a ranking system that grades individual Web pages based on their reputability.</li>
</ul>
<h4>How does link building work?</h4>
<p><strong></strong>There are essentially two ways to develop links to your website: internal and external. External links are harder to obtain because they come from other websites. Starting with internal linking is easy because it's completely up to you. All it takes is a little time and careful planning to increase your use of internal links and boost&nbsp;<a href="/essentials/features/drive-traffic/">SEO</a> for your business.
</p>
<p>Deep linking refers to the process of linking to pages other than just your homepage or contact page. Every page on your website should be reachable from at least one text link (1). Increase your internal links by linking to relevant blog posts and product pages, rather than just directing visitors to your homepage.
</p>
<p>Maintaining a blog helps increase internal links by providing more opportunities for you to link back to specific products or other internal pages. Don't forget to link from social media platforms as well.
</p>
<p>To <a href="https://www.earnedmedia.com.au/seo/link-building/" target="_blank">gain external links</a>, the best strategy is to create excellent site content. You can also reach out to bloggers and other influencers to ask if you can guest blog on their sites. Never resort to black hat SEO tricks, like paying for links (2). These backfire because the links come from spammy websites.
</p>
<p>1. <a href="https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/35769?hl=en" target="_blank">Google Webmaster Guidelines</a>
<br>2. <a href="https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/66356?hl=en&ref_topic=6001971" target="_blank">Google Quality Guidelines: Link schemes</a>
</p>

Link building

Link building is a search engine optimization technique that increases your search engine ranking.

What is link building and how does it work?

<p><img src="https://www-cdn.bigcommerce.com/assets/answers/Increase-traffic-to-your-store.jpg" style="float: left; margin: 0px 10px 10px 0px;">Increasing traffic to your website increases the number of customers who find your products and helps you make more sales. Here are the methods most commonly used to attract traffic to an online store:
</p>
<h4>SEO</h4>
<p><strong></strong><a href="/essentials/features/drive-traffic/">Search engine optimization</a> is one of the most cost-effective ways to gain traffic to your website. By optimizing each page in your store, you can increase your search engine ranking and find customers who are more likely to buy your products.
</p>
<p><a href="https://www.mprstudio.com/wordpress-seo/">SEO</a> involves researching keywords or phrases. Today, SEO focuses much more on context, and you are unlikely to be successful by just the same keyword or phrase all over your site. Instead, you need to create quality, engaging, unique content that tells a story. More people are using long-tail key phrases in searches. For example, people no longer just type in "shoes" if they are looking to buy shoes online. Instead, they type in something more specific, like "sale on black heels with a red bottom sole." This means your keyword/phrase strategy needs to be well planned, well researched, and implemented carefully as to avoid any "black hat SEO" techniques like keyword stuffing or other other strategies that could be considered unethical. Remember,&nbsp;<a href="https://websitepromoter.co.uk/affordable-seo-services/" target="_blank">SEO is affordable</a> if you put the right strategy in place.&nbsp;Write for intent, not keywords related to your products and use them in URLs, page titles, meta descriptions and throughout the page content. Each page should be optimized for its own set of keywords. You can do keyword research using a tool like Google's Adwords and the Moz keyword difficulty tool. You can also Google search the keyword/phrase and look at their recommendations in the "did you mean?" section. Another option is to use relevant keywords in image file names and alt tags. Consider going after <a href="https://www.bigcommerce.com/ecommerce-answers/how-research-keywords/" target="_blank">long-tail keywords</a>, which are often less competitive and more specific to your unique products.
</p>
<p>Another element to SEO is building links to your website. When websites gain more links, this signals to search engines that the information and content on these sites is trustworthy and credible, which increases your ranking over time. Utilize internal linking on your pages to begin building your rank.
</p>
<h4>Content marketing </h4>
<p><strong></strong>Content marketing is part of the larger SEO picture. Another way to drive traffic to your website is to focus on creating unique and high-quality content. While SEM and SEO can help you gain new visitors, producing useful content can help keep visitors engaged over the long term. These articles and pieces of/content also get displayed within Google search results, so ultimately, they drive a lot of new visits and encourage repeat visits.
</p>
<ul>
	<li><strong>Blogging</strong> - Blogging can keep customers coming back. Using this content to build links to your store by hyperlinking to relevant product pages can also increase your search engine ranking. Blogging can generate 97 percent more inbound links (1). </li>
	<li><strong>Social media</strong> - For business owners, social media platforms like Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest and YouTube are effective ways to keep customers engaged. <a href="/essentials/features/drive-traffic/marketing/" target="_blank">Social media</a> is also a distribution channel for blog content. Whenever you post to your blog, share it on social media to increase traffic to your website. In addition, more visually-oriented formats like Instagram and Pinterest can showcase your products and increase click-thrus to your site.</li>
	<li><strong>Email</strong> - Email is another way to keep customers engaged. <a href="https://www.emailaudience.com/guide-email-marketing-bloggers/" target="_blank">You can send out emails</a> that showcase blog content or reengage with customers who abandoned shopping carts "in an attempt to" drive them back to your website.</li>
</ul>
<h4>Pay-per-click</h4>
<p><strong></strong>Similarly to SEO, PPC relies on targeting keywords. With this method, known as pay-per-click advertising, businesses can use keywords to target potential customers and post paid links in Google for these keywords. Each time they receive a click, your business will pay a certain amount to the search engine. The cost will vary depending on how competitive the keyword is. In addition to <a href="http://static.googleusercontent.com/media/www.google.com/en/us/adwords/pdf/step_by_step.pdf" target="_blank">Google</a>, Bing and Yahoo also have PPC platforms. You can also purchase ad placements on other websites.
</p>
<h4>Reach out to a wider network</h4>
<p><strong></strong>Asking for external assistance to get your store's name out there is another way to increase traffic. Look for bloggers or companies with audiences that have already been established and use these influencers to grow your own audience.
</p>
<ul>
	<li><strong>Find influencers</strong> - There are many platforms that gauge influence on social channels. <a href="https://klout.com/#/overview" target="_blank">Klout</a>is one of the most well-known resources and it includes blogs in its ranking algorithms. Search for keywords related to your business to <a href="https://prowly.com/en/media-discovery" target="_blank">find influencers</a> in that area. Blog search engines like <a href="http://technorati.com/" target="_blank">Technorati</a> can lead you to bloggers with a lot of followers.</li>
	<li><strong>Guest blogging</strong> - Once you've identified influencers, ask them if you can do a guest blog post for them. This is free content for them and free exposure for you. You may also want to ask if they will write a guest blog for you so they can gain more readers. </li>
	<li><strong>Answer a HARO query</strong> - <a href="http://www.helpareporter.com/" target="_blank">Help a Reporter Out</a> is a resource for journalists who need an expert opinion on various topics. If you can find one related to your business, you could get free press. </li>
	<li><strong>Share your URL everywhere</strong> - Put your website on business cards, email signatures and anywhere else you can think of.</li>
</ul>
<p>1). <a href="http://www.hubspot.com/marketing-statistics?__hstc=41658941.44b092d8fdcd1193ce7742367687a1eb.1437671875635.1445270360508.1445350739341.67&__hssc=41658941.124.1445350739341&__hsfp=342554793" target="_blank">"All the Marketing Statistics You Need" </a>
</p>

Increase traffic to your store

Increasing traffic to your website increases the number of customers who find your products and helps you make more sales.

How to leverage SEO, content marketing and pay-per-click advertising to grow your online store

<p style="margin-top:3%;"><img src="https://www-cdn.bigcommerce.com/assets/answers/Steer-clear-of-Google-penalties.jpg" style="float: left; margin: 0px 10px 10px 0px;">If your website traffic suddenly drops and you see a corresponding decline in rankings, there is a good possibility that you are on the receiving end of a Google penalty. Google reported in 2014 that over 400,000 manual actions are taken against websites every month by their web spam team (1), and that's really only a fraction of the total number. Many other websites are penalized when Google rolls out new algorithmic updates to Penguin or Panda.
</p>
<p>A sudden, unexplained drop in rankings can be disastrous for retailers, as it can prevent visitors from finding and purchasing your products, but you can recover from a Google penalty. The first thing you need to do is find out what the cause is.
</p>
<h4>Manual actions versus algorithm penalties</h4>
<p><strong></strong>Google typically penalizes websites in one of two ways. The spam team could identify a problem with your website and issue a manual action, or you could suffer an automated drop in rankings due to an update to Google's search algorithm. In both cases you will need to find the root cause of the decline (2).
</p>
<h5>Manual penalties</h5>
<p><strong></strong>The first thing you should do is log in to Google Webmaster Tools and find out if you have any notifications from Google. If you have been issued a manual penalty, you will find a "notice of unnatural links detected" or similar message that explains that Google has discovered low-quality inbound links pointing to your site. Examples of unnatural or low-quality links may include ones that have been purchased to pass PageRank or look like part of a link scheme. Regardless of what they have found, your job is to fix the problem and submit your website for reconsideration for Google's search results.
</p>
<p>If you find no messages in Google Webmaster Tools, the problem will require a closer examination of changes Google has recently made and how it impacted your site.
</p>
<h5>Algorithmic changes</h5>
<p><strong></strong>To uncover the type of penalty you are facing, you will need to track down the time period when your rankings declined and match it with a date that Google rolled out a new update to its search functionality.
</p>
<p>There are two primary Google algorithm penalties are related to Panda and Penguin. Panda is focused on content quality. It keeps websites with duplicate or very thin content from ranking high in search results. Penguin is concerned with backlinks, aiming to identify websites that are trying to manipulate rankings by using low-quality inbound links to make the site look more authoritative than it really is. Most updates to Penguin and Panda are relatively minor, but regardless of how big the change is, every website is vulnerable to the rules Google lays down in the interests of providing a better user experience.
</p>
<p>A quick search on sites such as Search Engine Land (3) and Search Engine Journal (4) will often turn up news of a recent algorithm update. Moz keeps a running record of updates organized by year, including articles that highlight the changes (5). You should also follow Matt Cutts, head of Google Webspam, and Google Webmasters on social media. If there has been a recent change at Google that is affecting websites like yours, there is a good chance someone in the SEO trade is writing about it.
</p>
<h4>Penguin problems</h4>
<p><strong></strong>The root cause of most penalties is backlinks, also known as inbound links. These remain an important factor that influences rankings, and as SEO has become increasingly competitive, some marketers try to acquire links through unnatural means that incur penalties.
</p>
<p>Examples of low-quality websites to avoid:
</p>
<p>Google has penalized or banned – If you have inbound links from websites that Google is taking action against for violating guidelines, you should get rid of them.
</p>
<p>Websites that have duplicate content – If a website has segments of content within a domain or across domains that have content that is duplicate or very similar, Google will probably determine the website is low-quality.
</p>
<p>Websites that have nothing to do with your industry – Many websites inevitably get links from sources that have little or nothing to do with your focus. If the link looks completely random, with no context at all, it may look unfavorable to Google.
</p>
<p>Comment spam and forum links – These links will almost certainly get your website penalized. People who drop links in blog comment sections and forum profiles are not only annoying; they are actively violating Google's guidelines and will likely pay the price.
</p>
<p><em>" Inbound links from directory and social bookmarking sites are low-quality."</em>
</p>
<p>Websites with very little content – In earlier years, backlinks from online directories were great because they were relatively easy to get and they gave your SEO a boost. Not anymore. Inbound links from directory and social bookmarking sites are low-quality and if you have them, you should use a nofollow tag to make sure they do not hurt your site quality.
</p>
<p>Global website links – If you have links coming from sidebars, footers and widgets, it looks suspect. You should avoid these.
</p>
<p>Advertising links – Any link that comes from sponsored content should not pass PageRank. If you have ads linking to your content, make sure to use a nofollow tag to make sure your rankings will not be affected.
</p>
<p>Tactics designed to trick search engines – Websites that hide links or text in its scripts, or use redirects, doorway pages and auto-generated content should all be avoided.
</p>
<p>Google penalties can be costly. The best way to keep your website ranking well is to know and follow Google's Webmaster guidelines (6). Focus on making sure your content and backlink profile is high-quality and you will continue to enjoy a healthy relationship with users and search engines alike.
</p>
<p>1. <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MoW60fuHn64&feature=youtu.be" target="_blank">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MoW60fuHn64&feature=youtu.be</a><br>2. <a href="https://blog.kissmetrics.com/recover-from-any-google-penalty/" target="_blank">https://blog.kissmetrics.com/recover-from-any-google-penalty/</a><br>3. <a href="http://searchengineland.com/" target="_blank">http://searchengineland.com/</a><br>4. <a href="http://www.searchenginejournal.com/" target="_blank">http://www.searchenginejournal.com/</a><br>5. <a href="https://moz.com/google-algorithm-change" target="_blank">https://moz.com/google-algorithm-change</a>
</p>

Steer clear of Google penalties

If your website traffic suddenly drops and you see a corresponding decline in rankings, there is a good possibility that you are on the receiving end of a Google penalty.

What is a Google penalty?

<p><img src="https://www-cdn.bigcommerce.com/assets/answers/Googles-search-algorithm.jpg" style="float: left; margin: 0px 10px 10px 0px;">If you're just starting out your own e-commerce business, chances are you're wearing more than one hat. In addition to inventory and product management, balancing the bills and establishing a recurring customer base, you're likely working to understand search engine optimization, marketing and the like. For a new-business owner, this may be uncharted waters, so it's important to know how to adequately design your site to not only meet the needs of Google, but also how to understand their continual updates going forward.
</p>
<p>The flagship search engine company is constantly updating their search algorithms to keep pace with fluid consumer demands, and their latest update is no exception to that sentiment. Industry website Search Engine Land dubbed the <a href="http://searchengineland.com/pigeon-search-engine-lands-name-new-google-local-search-update-197932">unnamed update "Pigeon"</a> since the update was largely based on local search rankings and Pigeons are often flying back to the area they are most familiar with: home.
</p>
<h4>Local rankings take precedence</h4>
<p><strong></strong>The new algorithm was aimed at providing more useful, relevant and accurate search results to local queries. Local businesses may have seen an increase or decrease in web traffic and new customer leads as a result. The U.S. English search queries were updated by the algorithm change as well. Local searches were made to better mimic organic search rankings as queries had deeper ties into Google's Web search capabilities, such as the Knowledge Graph, synonyms and more. The map and distance measurement tools that Google uses were also updated, so local searches were fine-tuned to be more accurate than ever before.
</p>
<h4>Other recent updates</h4>
<p><strong></strong>In addition to improving local searches, Google also has taken a firm stance on user security. The Silicon Valley-based Internet giant recently updated its algorithm to factor in the security of certain websites. In fact, encrypted websites are now given a lightweight boost in their search engine query results.
</p>
<p>What's more, people using Google search, Gmail and Google Drive will have the luxury of added security since Google added HTTPS/SSL encryption as a standard protocol for most of its services. Since individuals are using the cloud more nowadays, Google decided to bolster its security vault for SaaS-based functions so that sensitive user data wouldn't be vulnerable to potential third-party breaches online. This update specifically can modestly help your website with respect to search engine rankings, and adding an extra layer of security certainly cannot hurt the operational aspects of the business.
</p>
<p>Not only is Google adding security to their cloud-based functions - and rewarding the companies that do the same - they've also removed authorship within search queries. This will mainly affect your website if you're producing high volumes of published content. It won't necessarily impact your search engine rankings in a negative manner, especially if your content is updated on a regular basis. Rather, users won't be able to see who the specific author of certain content is. Google Webmaster Trends Analyst John Mueller recently said in a release that removing authorship typically <a href="https://plus.google.com/u/0/+JohnMueller/posts/HZf3KDP1Dm8">doesn't affect or reduce traffic</a> to a website, so as long as your content is fresh and legitimate, your content strategy shouldn't be impacted.
</p>

Googles search algorithm

If you're just starting out your own e-commerce business, chances are you're wearing more than one hat.

The Google Pigeon Algorithm Update: What you need to know

<p style="margin-top:3%;"><img src="https://www-cdn.bigcommerce.com/assets/answers/how-use-google-webmaster-tools.jpg" style="float: left; margin: 0px 10px 10px 0px;">Google Webmaster Tools (GWT), <a href="http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/2015/05/announcing-google-search-console-new.html">now known as Search Console</a>, is an essential resource for any business that wants to optimize for search engines. GWT provides insight into what Google sees and offers a variety of data including which pages have been indexed, inbound links you have earned, and which keywords are driving traffic.</p>
<p>Before using GWT, you will need to verify with Google that you own the domain to the website. Google provides several different ways to do this, and once the verification process is complete, you should start to see data in your account within 24-48 hours.</p>
<h4>Dashboard</h4>
<p>The dashboard gives you an instant glimpse to the some of the most important information about your site. Each section contains different information that can help you.</p>
<ul><li><strong>Website messages</strong> - This is the area where Google communicates with the webmaster. Not all messages are bad, but they often focus on issues that need attention. They might tell you that your website is infected with malware, or that your content management system (CMS) needs updating to protect your website from known security glitches.</li><li><strong>Settings </strong>- When you click on the gear icon, GWT offers several customization options. Webmaster Tool Preferences lets you schedule alerts to be delivered to your inbox, and Site Settings allows you communicate with Google about your marketing intentions. For instance, you can set a geographic target area you want to reach.</li><li><strong>Change of address</strong> - This is where you would notify Google that your website is migrating to a new domain. Take this step only after you have launched the new site and redirected the old pages to the new with 301 tags.</li><li><strong>Users & site owners</strong> - As the administrator of the site, you have the option to add users to the account and specify their authority within it. Owners have permission to access everything on the site and make all possible modifications. Users with "full" permission can accomplish the same tasks as the owner except adding new users, linking a Google Analytics account and informing Google about a change of address. Users with "restricted" access can view data, but they are forbidden from many actions, including submitting site maps and URLs. </li></ul>
<h4>Search queries</h4>
<p>The search queries section gives you insight into your website traffic and keywords. While Google Analytics offers surface-level data about traffic metrics and sources, GWT goes deeper by showing you the actual traffic potential of your website by outlining the number of impressions and rankings your website has gained. Maybe it is getting lots of impressions (defined as appearances in search results) for the keyword "bicycle accessories," but you aren't getting many clicks because it doesn't rank highly enough. This feature shows you areas where you can refocus your SEO efforts and grow.</p>
<p>Search queries has five different factors for you to consider:</p>
<ul><li><strong>Query </strong>- This tells you which keywords your website is ranking for. Query is a quick measurement that tells you if your SEO efforts for specific keywords are paying off. It's important to note the distinction between rankings and traffic. Your website may be showing up in search results, but it may not be getting traffic yet. The queries section will show you where the potential for growth lies.</li><li><strong>Impressions</strong> - You can see how many people are viewing different sections of your website in search results, regardless of whether or not they click on your link.</li><li><strong>Clicks </strong>- This tells you how many people have seen your content in search results and acted on it.</li><li><strong>CTR </strong>- Click-thru rate is a metric that gives you a ratio of clicks versus impressions. If your CTR is low, it might be time to revisit your on-page SEO and write better descriptions in your page titles and metadescriptions.</li><li>Average position - You can see how your website ranks for each keyword.</li></ul>
<h4>Viewing data 'with change'</h4>
<p>The search queries section offers a "with change" feature that allows you to see how your site metrics have changed over time.  If you have recently made any big adjustments to your SEO strategy, viewing data "with change" can indicate whether your stats are moving in a positive direction.</p>
<h4>Which pages are ranking for individual keywords</h4>
<p>The search query section also allows you to click on keywords your website is ranking for, enabling you to see which pages are ranking for those terms. This will not only confirm progress for SEO rankings, it can also inform your content marketing strategy. When you know which pages are getting the most traffic, you make good assumptions about what consumers are looking for and what will convert them into customers.</p>
<h4>Top pages</h4>
<p>By looking at "Top Pages," you can uncover the pages of your site that are getting the most impressions and clicks. This can be very useful for staying inside the mindset of the consumer. Sometimes they show interest in expected areas, offering you clues that you might be focusing on optimizing the wrong pages.</p>
<p>When trying to optimize product categories and pages for your website, GWT can guide your efforts by helping you better understand your SEO standings and the interests of your customers. You can improve campaign performance, find new opportunities in the marketplace and experiment with new strategies to drive conversions. </p>

Ecommerce How Tos

How use google webmaster tools

Google Webmaster Tools (GWT), now known as Search Console, is an essential resource for any business that wants to optimize for search engines.

How to use Google Webmaster Tools

<p dir="ltr">White labeling is when one company buys its product from another company and rebrands it as their own. The company which sells the final product to the consumer is usually not involved in the manufacturing process.</p>
<p dir="ltr">White labeled products are often used in the electronics industry but can also be found in other industries. For example, some coffee bean companies also offer white-label coffee, which means they provide the coffee beans to another company, which then brands and sells them.</p>
<h2 dir="ltr">Why Choose a White Label Solution?</h2>
<p dir="ltr">As a business that chooses to white label products, there are several reasons why this could be the best solution for you.</p>
<h3 dir="ltr">Cost-effective.</h3>
<p dir="ltr">One of the main reasons to white label products is that it’s a cost-effective way to start a business. When you white label a product, you don’t have to worry about the upfront costs of developing, manufacturing and <a href="/blog/ecommerce-product-marketing/" target="_blank">marketing a product</a>, which can be a significant advantage, especially for small businesses.</p>
<p dir="ltr">According to Catherine Schwartz, Finance Editor of<a href="https://www.crediful.com/"> Crediful</a>, "The biggest cost advantage of white labeling is that you don’t have to spend money on product development or marketing. Instead, you’re essentially piggybacking on the success of another company’s product, which means you can get your business up and running more quickly and with less overhead."</p>
<h3 dir="ltr">Faster to market.</h3>
<p dir="ltr">Another reason for white label products is that it can be much faster to get a white label product to market than developing your product from scratch. Again, this is because you’re not starting from scratch – the manufacturing process is already in place, and you’re just rebranding an existing product. So, if you’re looking to get a product to market quickly, white labeling can be a great option.</p>
<p dir="ltr">Michael Nemeroff, CEO & Co-Founder of<a href="https://www.rushordertees.com/"> Rush Order Tees</a>, states, "The biggest advantage of white labeling is the time to market. When starting from scratch, it can take months – sometimes even years – to develop a product, find a manufacturer and get it to market. You can shortcut that process with white labeling and have a product on the market much sooner."</p>
<h3 dir="ltr">Less risky.</h3>
<p dir="ltr">Starting your own business always comes with some risk, but if you white label products, you can mitigate some of that risk. Risk is mitigated because you’re not investing as much money into<a href="https://enventyspartners.com/blog/product-distribution-get-distributors-sell-product/"> developing a new product</a>.</p>
<p dir="ltr">So, if the product doesn’t succeed in the market, you’ve not lost as much money as you would have if you’d developed the product from scratch. Choose a white label product from a reputable company to mitigate your risk even more.</p>
<h3 dir="ltr">Greater flexibility.</h3>
<p dir="ltr">White label products also offer greater flexibility than developing your own product. For example, if you white label a product, you can still choose the packaging, branding and marketing.</p>
<p dir="ltr">This means you can tailor the product to your <a href="/blog/target-market-analysis/" target="_blank">target market</a> and create a unique product for your brand. In addition, while you have less control over the manufacturing process, you still have a lot of control over how the product is presented to your customers.</p>
<h3 dir="ltr">Lower minimum order quantities.</h3>
<p dir="ltr">Another advantage of white label products is that the minimum order quantities are usually lower than if you were to manufacture the product yourself. This is because the white label manufacturer already has the product in production and doesn’t have to set up a new production line for your small order.</p>
<p dir="ltr">So, if you’re just starting and don’t need many products, white label products can be a great option. For example, let's say you want to start selling your own line of cosmetics. You could white label lipstick from an existing manufacturer. You would then have your own branded lipstick without worrying about the minimum order quantity or setting up a production line.</p>
<h3 dir="ltr">Better quality control.</h3>
<p dir="ltr">Finally, when you white label products, you can be assured of better quality control than if you were to manufacture the product yourself. This is because the white label manufacturer will likely have a better quality control process than you would if you were starting from scratch.</p>
<p dir="ltr">In addition, the white label manufacturer will usually have a team of quality control experts who can ensure that the product meets your standards since the company is likely doing white labels for multiple companies.</p>
<h2 dir="ltr">The Final Word</h2>
<p dir="ltr">If you’re looking for a cost-effective, fast, and flexible way to get a product to market, white label products could be the right solution for you. You can choose the product you want to white label, control the branding and marketing, and be assured of reasonable quality control. So, if you’re considering starting your own business, look into white label products.</p>
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White labeling is when one company buys its product from another company and rebrands it as their own. The company which sells the final product to the ...

What is White Labeling? (Updated 2022)

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What is White Labeling?

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