Articles on Shopify SEO and Marketing — Double Your Ecommerce

Your traffic dropped and nobody can tell you why

kai@doubleyourecommerce.com (Kai Davis) — Tue, 07 Apr 2026 15:00:00 -0700

I hear some version of this story almost every week now.

Traffic was steady. Orders were coming in. Then something changed, and nobody can quite explain to you what changed.

Maybe it was a theme update
Maybe a Google algorithmic shift
Maybe an app you installed six months ago quietly broke something in the background

You’ve checked analytics, asked your developer, maybe you’ve even hired an SEO person.

And you’re still stuck.

One store owner who was facing a situation like this told me she’d “lost over $350,000” and was “paralyzed to do anything.” Another said she’d “probably spent $50,000 on SEO in the last few years and has nothing to show for it.” A third told me hiring an SEO agency was worse than “taking that cash and setting it on fire.”

These aren’t edge cases. This is what happens when traffic drops and you can’t find the cause.

Here’s what I’ve noticed after a decade of diagnosing Shopify traffic problems: the answer is almost always buried in the technical details that nobody’s looked at closely enough. A broken schema markup. An infinite scroll widget hiding your content from Google. A migration that silently dropped your redirects.

One line of code costing you thousands in lost revenue every day.

The problem isn’t that your store is broken beyond repair. The problem is nobody’s actually popped the hood to figure out why your SEO isn’t working.

That’s what the SEO Opportunity Report does.

I personally dig through your Google Analytics, Search Console data, and site architecture — cross-referencing against algorithm updates and technical changes — to find exactly what went wrong and map out how to fix it.

You get:

Root cause diagnosis and actual answers as to what happened and what to do about it
A damage assessment showing which pages lost rankings and how much revenue that cost you
A prioritized recovery roadmap: do this now to start to address the issue, do this soon, do these later
A 60-minute walkthrough call where I walk you through everything so you understand your next steps

It’s $4,000, fixed price. No hourly billing, no surprise invoices. You know what you’re paying before we start.

I’ve never come away from one of these scratching my head. Every store has a story in the data — it’s a matter of reading it.

If your Shopify store’s traffic dropped and you need answers, here’s where to start:

Schedule Your Introduction Call →

— Kai

P.S. — I do all of this work myself. No junior associates, no agency interns. When you hire me, you work with me. That matters when you’ve already been burned.

P.P.S. — Read a selection of testimonials from previous Shopify SEO clients here: doubleyourecommerce.com/testimonials/

Originally published on Double Your Ecommerce by Kai Davis.

Your Collection Pages Convert at 5x — But They're Starved for Traffic

kai@doubleyourecommerce.com (Kai Davis) — Mon, 06 Apr 2026 16:48:00 -0700

Your collection pages convert at 5x the rate of your product pages, but they’re only getting 13% of your traffic. I fix that.

Over the last few years I’ve delivered 100+ SEO Opportunity Reports to Shopify stores. The pattern I see over and over?

Collection pages converting at 4–7x the rate of product pages, but most stores barely invest in collection SEO and so the traffic those high-converting collections receive is a trickle.

Every dollar you spend on collection SEO compounds. These are one-time optimizations that keep bringing high-value traffic from both traditional and AI search.

My work on my clients’ collection SEO is the thing that consistently has them saying “best month ever!”

I have slots open for my SEO Opportunity Report ($4,000) in May and June. If you’re looking to grow your Shopify store with SEO, I’d love to help.

Tell me about your store here so I can learn more about you, your store, and your goals with SEO.

— Kai Your Shopify SEO Guy

Originally published on Double Your Ecommerce by Kai Davis.

Before Black Friday: fix this one SEO mistake

kai@doubleyourecommerce.com (Kai Davis) — Wed, 03 Sep 2025 22:02:44 +0000

Heya Friend,

September is here. Crunch time before Black Friday/Cyber Monday.

Speaking of which, I’ve worked with a lot of Shopify stores on their SEO in 2025 and — lemme tell you — there’s one thing that 95% of Shopify stores I work with get wrong that keeps them from generating traffic or making sales.

It doesn’t matter if they’re working with an agency or handling their SEO themselves. Most Shopify store owners are just leaving money on the table with their collections and collection SEO.

Collections are the best way to get your Shopify store ranking and generating traffic for niche categorical / transactional terms where you can rank and drive converting traffic.

Think terms like “Organic Cotton Tea Towels,” “New York Tote Bags,” or “Professional Microscopes for Wine Authenticators.”

But most stores — even the ones that work with great agencies — end up creating too few collections (a half dozen, if that).
If stores do lean into creating collections, oftentimes the collections are under-optimized and missing the essential elements, like an SEO optimized SEO Title, a short + concise collection name, and an on-page collection description.
Google is a dumb robot, not a mind reader! If all the content you’re giving Google on a collection page is a one-word headline and product grid, they aren’t going to be able to figure out what this page should rank for.

The fix? Optimize your existing collections and create new ones for high-value search terms.

That’s exactly what my SEO Opportunity Report tells you for your Shopify store. “Do this, not that” SEO recommendations you can implement yourself (or have your agency or developer implement for you) that will help you bring more high-quality, wallet-out shoppers to your store.

Here’s the truth: fixing your collection SEO alone can add 20-30% more organic traffic to your store. And, in my experience, traffic that comes to your store by landing on a collection page often buys more products, more often, at higher AOVs.

Ready to get more organic traffic to your Shopify store? My SEO opportunity report shows you exactly which collection pages to create and optimize.

Or, if you want me to handle the SEO implementation for you, check out my SEO PowerUp. Reply to this email and tell me about your store!

Excelsior!

Kai, your Shopify SEO guy

PS: i have an opening in September for an SEO opportunity report. if you want to optimize your SEO before Black Friday, reply today.

Originally published on Double Your Ecommerce by Kai Davis.

Market Research for Content Creation

kai@doubleyourecommerce.com (Kai Davis) — Tue, 18 Mar 2025 23:20:56 +0000

This is adapted from a Slack conversation I had with a business owner. They were curious about how to approach market research for content creation. I shared an answer focused on ‘Sales Safari,’ an approach to audience research for product creation, content creation, and marketing.

The main thing that is in the way at the moment is actually validating my hypothesis that [target audience] actually will need or care about the content I want to deliver. Ideally, I’d get to understand the type of content they like to consume, but most of it is will they want all this information or POV i’m trying to get through to them?

You’re on the right track! You want to do a sales safari (copious links follow)!

What’s a sales safari? It’s a term that Amy Hoy came up with for her approach to audience research and product creation. It works best when you have a specific niche that you’re targeting, like German Shepard owners or quilters.

A sales safari is when you go out and look at your audience and the posts they’re making: forums, social channels, tweets, posts, facebook groups, etc. Your goal is to understand what your audience is asking about, talking about, and sharing: the pains and problems they’re experiencing, the solutions they’re seeking out, the advice they’re giving, the language and terms of art they use.

A Sales Safari is a structured way of reading the tea leaves to get ‘say this, not that’ advice on what content to create. End of a sales safari has you easily creating content that makes it seem like you’re ‘reading the mind’ of your target audience.

https://egghead.io/learn/30x500/sales-safari — good overview by a third party I trust
https://shop.stackingthebricks.com/sales-safari-101 — amy’s $99 ’learn sales safari’ product (only way to learn it aside from their $2k+ course called 30x500)
https://shorts.stackingthebricks.com/updating-sales-safari-2023/ — post by Amy’s business partner on how the process changed as social evolved in ‘23
https://stackingthebricks.com/video-sales-safari-in-action/ — video from Amy showing sales safari in action
https://stackingthebricks.com/podcast/ep42-what-is-sales-safari-with-eteinne-garbugli/ — podcast interview on their podcast about sales safari
https://stackingthebricks.com — Amy’s main site on business

That is the process you should go through before you start creating the content for your audience – and it helps especially well . It’ll help validate the need, educate you on what the CXOs care about, and help you refine your understanding of the audience dramatically.

I took Amy’s 30x500 course and learned the sales safari methodology in 2012/2013. It is to this date the single best investment I’ve made in my business or professional development. Untold multiples of that in returns. Amazingly impactful approach. Strong recommendation.

Want guidance applying sales safari and market research to your store’s SEO and content? My SEO coaching can help you put this into practice.

Excelsior!

Kai

Originally published on Double Your Ecommerce by Kai Davis.

The biggest SEO opportunities most Shopify stores ignore

kai@doubleyourecommerce.com (Kai Davis) — Wed, 05 Feb 2025 23:55:22 +0000

Kai here — your Shopify SEO guy.

I was just on Marc Rodill’s 10-Minute Ecom Success podcast to talk about one of the biggest missed opportunities I see in ecommerce SEO: collection pages.

Most stores are leaving traffic and money on the table because they haven’t optimized them properly. In this episode, I break down:

Why Google loves collection pages
The simple tweaks that boost rankings & conversions
How to find untapped keyword opportunities for new collections (with this FREE tool)

Give it a listen here: 10-Minute Ecom Success with Kai Davis (https://10minuteecomsuccess.com/kai-davis/).

Excelsior!

Kai

PS: want expert help optimizing your Shopify SEO? My done-for-you SEO services have an opening in February. Let’s get your store ranking — tell me about your store here and I’ll reach out with a link for us to schedule a call.

Originally published on Double Your Ecommerce by Kai Davis.

Boost Your BFCM Sales with This Simple Pop-Up Strategy

kai@doubleyourecommerce.com (Kai Davis) — Fri, 11 Oct 2024 01:07:54 +0000

The shopping holiday is right around the corner. Let’s talk BFCM wins that you can implement yourself — or work with me to implement as part of my BFCM Content + Marketing Power-Up.

Tip: Add a polite BFCM-specific exit intent pop-up that promotes your Black Friday/Cyber Monday offer

Exit intents are those pop-ups that appear when you mouse outside of the screen and they pop-up saying, “Hey, wait, don’t go yet!”

They’re a useful piece of marketing, especially during a shopping event like Black Friday/Cyber Monday.

I, personally, find best results with what I call ‘polite’ exit intent pop-ups.

No one likes it when they land on a site and immediately get hit in the face with a pop-up. Or land, scroll for 5 seconds, and go to exit without clicking a link — only to get hit in the face with the pop-up. That’s rude.

Instead, a polite exit intent pop-up waits for qualified traffic. Not all visitors are created equal, and someone who clicks around to a few different pages or products is much more likely to convert than someone who ding-dong-ditched your homepage.

So, optimize your exit-intent pop-up to show to that higher-value traffic. Set your exit intent to only show to people who have demonstrated their intent, maybe by some combination of:

Visiting 3 or more pages
Spending > 45 seconds on your site
Visiting at least 1 product or collection page

Then, when those qualified visitors go to exit your site, have the exit intent pop-up appear, present your offer, and nudge them to take action.

You want your pop-up to focus in on the details of your offer:

This is what you get
These are the benefits to you
This is how long you have until the promotion disappears
Click this link to go to the product/collection or informational page and purchase

That way, as visitors browse your store this BFCM, the qualified, likely to buy visitors get a little extra nudge when they’re thinking about leaving your store. And that nudge can often translate into a significant increase in revenue.

“What app should I use for these sort of pop-ups?”

I’ve tested a bunch of Shopify apps and platforms (and wrote a lot of custom code that I threw away) to find a way to get high-quality exit-intent pop-ups that give fine-grained targeting controls. Most of the solutions for this sort of on-site messaging are a blunt instrument.

The one that blew me away? WisePops.

WisePops is great at on-site messaging, including exit intent pop-ups and list building pop-ups. And they’re amazing at targeting options for their pop-ups. You can dial in specific criteria for pop-ups to ensure only the most relevant visitors see that messaging. That’s why I picked WisePops as the on-site messaging solution for my BFCM Marketing + Content Power-Up.

So, as you get ready for your BFCM, I encourage you to set up an exit intent pop-up for your store. That’s an essential bit of marketing messaging that will help you reach your visitors and convert them into customers.

Next week? Look for a letter from me about the ‘$30,000 BFCM insight’ that I uncovered for Outbound Lightning.

Excelsior!

Kai

p.s., If you need help with your BFCM content and marketing, let’s chat about my BFCM Content + Marketing Power-Up. Send me an email or schedule a consultation so I can learn about your store.

Originally published on Double Your Ecommerce by Kai Davis.

Ready for BFCM? Get Your Organic Marketing Done for You!

kai@doubleyourecommerce.com (Kai Davis) — Tue, 08 Oct 2024 20:18:00 +0000

With BFCM around the corner, are you feeling the pressure to get your marketing together?

I’m offering a BFCM Organic Marketing Power-Up for Shopify stores — a bespoke, done-for-you service where I’ll personally optimize your BFCM marketing, create your BFCM organic marketing content, and have everything done and scheduled by Nov 15th.

Learn more about the service and see pricing here or watch the video overview.

What’s included:

Website content + messaging — including a BFCM gift guide to drive sales.
Website optimizations — homepage messaging, countdown timers, and exit-intent pop-ups.
Email marketing — 3 pre-BFCM emails to build anticipation and 5 promo emails during BFCM.
Social media content — 12 custom posts and 6 branded images.
SEO optimizations — updating SEO titles and meta tags to attract BFCM traffic.

Check out the full list of what’s included here.

Scheduling & Availability

There are only two slots available, and with the deadline fast approaching, we’ll need to start by the week of October 21st. Everything will be scheduled by Nov 15th.

Learn more about the service here or book a call.

Reply to this email if you’re interested or have any questions. Let’s make this BFCM your best yet!

Best,

Kai (your Shopify SEO guy)

Originally published on Double Your Ecommerce by Kai Davis.

Best Shopify SEO Apps: Do You Need One? (2026)

kai@doubleyourecommerce.com (Kai Davis) — Thu, 26 Sep 2024 15:25:31 +0000

Best Shopify SEO Apps: Do You Actually Need One?

Most Shopify SEO apps aren’t worth your money. Before you install another app, here’s what actually moves the needle for new and growing Shopify stores — and what you can skip entirely.

Ah, today I choose violence!

You see, my friend, I’m not the biggest fan of most Shopify SEO apps, especially for newer stores.

(Kai Davis: I zag where other consultants zig!)

Most Shopify SEO apps… aren’t that great. They sell you an over-inflated list of ‘all-in-one’ features, a hyped-up list of benefits, and then just spit out the same tired inactionable warnings about:

Low text to HTML ratio

Or,

Duplicate meta descriptions

Alas, these insights are rarely — if ever! — worth the time, attention, and money you’re spending on that Shopify SEO app. Or the time, attention, and money you’re spending on fixing them.

Recommended apps + tooling for new stores

If you’re a new store on Shopify, there are a few (free!) tools that I recommend. But none of them are Shopify SEO apps.

The most important things for you to install are:

Google Search Console (Free). This is Google’s tool that, among many things, will tell you the keywords that your pages are ranking for in Google. That’s valuable to have!
Google Analytics (Free). This is Google’s free analytics tool. Yes, there is a lot to complain about with Google Analytics 4. It’s still a useful tool to have on your site to understand where your traffic is coming from and what it’s doing once it lands there.

Beyond that, for a newer or smaller store, there aren’t that many Shopify SEO apps that I recommend.

That’s not to say I’m against all apps! I just believe you should be cautious about what apps you install/pay for, especially when you’re a newer store.

I’m a huge fan of Ilana Davis’s JSON-LD for SEO — recently named the best SEO app by Shopify!.

But even that app is best for larger ecommerce stores who are looking for specific help with structured data, not general SEO help.

JSON-LD for SEO isn’t what I’d recommend for every Shopify store or a smaller Shopify store, unless they’re looking at specific structured data challenges or objectives.

What to do instead of chasing the latest app

Google — and your customers! — don’t care about what apps you’re running.

They care about your content, collections, and products. They care about what you’re selling that can help them. They care about seeing content of yours that aligns with the questions you’re asking.

So, to seize that opportunity, you should:

Install Google Search Console and Google Analytics. These will help you understand what pages are ranking, the keywords they’re ranking for, and the traffic they’re generating.
Create ~5-10 collection pages on your site. Use a specific SEO title, collection name (headline), and collection description. Find inspiration by looking at the collections your more established competitors have. Identify the ones that align with your audience and products, and build similar collections for your products.
Write ~5 blog posts talking about ‘best [product type]’ (for a product that you sell.) Go into detail about the features and benefits that make your product different, and where customers call out it’s better than the alternative.
Find questions in online forums and communities (e.g., twitter, Facebook, reddit). Look at the questions people ask when considering products and stores like yours. Write blog posts answering those individual questions and post them on your site.

Those actions — more than any app will tell you to do — will have you creating relevant content for your audience that’s about your products and collections and helps your audience with their questions.

That’s the best way to think about this. Not, “What app should I use?”, but “What content should I create?”

Collections targeting relevant commercial terms and blogs answering relevant community questions will take you far.

Are you looking for help identifying which collections, blogs, and other pages to create to grow your traffic and sales? Sounds like you’d benefit from an SEO Opportunity Report. Or, if you’d rather learn to do it yourself, SEO Simplified walks you through the process step by step.

Excelsior!

Kai

Originally published on Double Your Ecommerce by Kai Davis.

Unbound Merino does collection descriptions really well!

kai@doubleyourecommerce.com (Kai Davis) — Fri, 13 Sep 2024 21:12:09 +0000

I came across Unbound Merino the other day, a Shopify store selling merino wool clothing for men and women. They’ve got an excellent approach to collection descriptions, and I want to call out what they’re doing well. (To be clear, I haven’t worked with them, and they aren’t a client. They’re just doing collection descriptions and SEO well, and I wanted to write about them.)

Check their store and collections out. The images that follow are from their Women’s Merino Socks and Men’s Merino Underwear collection pages.

These collection descriptions — and collection hero sections overall — are well done! Let’s talk about what they’re doing well — and why descriptions make an impact.

First, why are collection descriptions important for SEO?

Collection descriptions are an essential piece of on-page content that helps your customers and Google understand what a collection page is about. Just 25-75 words of on-page content in the description can make a huge difference in your rankings.

Collections are a very important type of page for SEO. Collection pages are great for ranking for transactional and categorical terms, like we see with Unbound: “Women’s Merino Wool Socks,” “Men’s Merino Underwear & Boxer Briefs.” These are great categorical terms for a collection to target.

Collection descriptions are a high-impact opportunity to get on-page content on these very important page types. I’ve written more about Collection SEO and collection descriptions for SEO on those pages. I’m a big fan of collections for SEO.

Second, what is Unbound doing well with their collection descriptions?

As soon as I saw Unbound’s collections, I knew I was going to write about them. They’re a great mini-case study in what well-designed, SEO-optimized collections with descriptions look like.

Length — Their descriptions are short and effective. ~25-50 words of content in the description body. That’s right on target. Any amount of content here is better than no content.
Relevance — These are very topically relevant descriptions. Unbound is using this space to talk about their products and what they’re made from. That’s letting them have the “merino wool [product type]” keyword in this content multiple times in a natural way.
Features — Their 4x1 ‘features’ block is a genius move. This is a way to add product benefits and additional keyword mentions to the header. The use of icon imagery + text is great. And that element overall helps balance the composition of the hero image.

Past that, they’re doing a great job with the breadcrumb and heading on the pages.

The headline is another high-impact piece of content after the SEO Title and Collection Description. They’ve gone with a targeted “Men’s Merino Underwear & Boxer Briefs.”
The breadcrumb is a great spot to get a relevant keyword in, and they’ve gone with “Men’s Underwear.” Very relevant.

I also want to call out Unbound’s aesthetic approach. Oftentimes when I speak with a merchant about adding collection descriptions to their store they’re concerned that the additional text won’t look nice in their theme. That can happen, especially if the store is running a theme out of the box without any design customizations. To implement collection descriptions well, you want to invest in updating the design of your collection pages so this content looks good to your customers.

It’s clear to me that Unbound has invested in a great design here. The hero on their collection page looks great. This space is well designed, features a relevant collection image, breadcrumb, relevant content in the headline and description, and a the 4x1 product features images + headlines. All of this content is great for SEO and well-optimized; and yet it feels natural to read and doesn’t hit the visitor over the head with over-the-top optimization.

This is a very well done approach to collection descriptions and collection pages in general. Let’s give a hand to Unbound.

Third, what could Unbound do better with their descriptions?

They’re missing out on one big opportunity when it comes to collection descriptions: internal linking! I’d love to see them include an internal link or two in each collection description. Here are three opportunities to consider:

Build internal links between collections. In the text of the collection description include a “You might also like…” recommendation + link to another collection in the store. As an example, the “Women’s Socks” collection might have an internal link over to the “Women’s Leggings” and “Women’s Tees & Tanks” collections. This helps surface collections, improve discoverability, and makes it easier for Google to see related collections.
Build internal links to blogs or pages. In the text of the description or in the text of feature icon + image, link to a relevant page that talks more about the feature. That way, if the customer has questions, they can click and learn more.
Build internal links to a recommended product. If there’s a specific product you’d like to promote — or an SEO priority product that would benefit from an internal link — use a text link in the collection description to link to it. A product recommendation in a collection description is a great internal link to build, and looks very natural to the reader. You’re saying, “Hey, make sure you look at this one. People love it.”

Each of those is a win for SEO, discoverability, and the customer experience. I think it’s worth picking one of those three opportunities for each collection page and adding one or two internal links. Always aim to keep the experience good for your customers. (I’ve written more on internal linking for collection SEO here.)

And there you have it. Unbound is doing collection descriptions the right way. If you want to learn how to write collection descriptions like these for your own store, SEO Simplified covers the process step by step.

Excelsior!

— Kai, your Shopify SEO guy

Originally published on Double Your Ecommerce by Kai Davis.

'Do Less' SEO

kai@doubleyourecommerce.com (Kai Davis) — Tue, 10 Sep 2024 20:58:52 +0000

I’m all about the ‘do less’ mindset. Life is for the living. You’ve got a business to grow, and if there are ten items on your to-do list, you should focus on the items that will make the highest impact with the least effort.

It’s the same in SEO. Rather than doing all the things, I want to find the high-impact, low-effort opportunities and focus on those. (Heck, that’s what my SEO Opportunity Report is all about.)

TL;DR: Do less SEO. Focus on what works, and you don’t need to do more.

A few days ago, some friends and I in a Slack community were talking about this recent Moz article ("The Helpful Content Update Was Not What You Think") and part of the conclusion of the piece, specifically this bit:

And a friend said this:

“TL;DR: Do everything you always did, and more besides.” I’m ready for some “do less” messaging, even if it’s a lie.

That got me thinking, and I wrote a version of these six bullets for my friend. It’s the idea of doing less than everything and focusing on the core helpful bits.

Six high-impact SEO tactics to focus on

Here’s my personal ‘do less’ advice for SEO in e-commerce. You don’t need to do everything. You won’t need to do more if you do the right things. Here are the core tactics I like focusing on:

Create content that addresses a relevant problem your customers face with your products.

Incorporate first-hand research and experience—try recommended solutions, experiment, or interview an expert and share what you learn. This separates your content from generic rewrites, where someone just rehashes the top articles.
Don’t overthink your first draft.

Knock out and publish a quick draft like an old-school blog post in ~20 minutes and a few paragraphs. Check where it’s ranking after a few weeks and rewrite to improve. “Hey, people often say you can make grain free bread for the auto-immune paleo diet these three ways. I’m testing them out and reporting back on which makes the best sandwich; here’s what i found.” Good start. You can always come back, edit it further, and optimize it later.
Use the search console to spot new content opportunities from your existing work.

If an article/page is ranking ~20-30th for a phrase it doesn’t fully cover/isn’t fully related to, that’s your cue that Google is searching for a relevant page on your site for this relevant query. Create a new page on that topic. Aim for the optimized version of the page to be as good as the average of the top ~5 articles for that topic — and mix in some of that first-hand research and experience.
Search the keyword phrase/term/query you’re thinking about writing a page for and see what types of pages Google ranks there today.

Are they transactional pages, informational articles/blogs, or something else? This can guide you on the best format and angle for your content.
Got a page stuck around ~10-15th for a relevant keyword? Build internal links aggressively.

Add text links from your homepage, new posts, and high-linked pages. Aim for ~3-5 internal links with exact match anchors to start. Give it a few weeks and come back. If it’s still stuck, optimize the title tag and build more internal links from new pages.
Promote your content and business in ways that naturally generate links.

Collaborate on blog posts with other businesses, co-brand something, guest on a podcast, or just ask a friend to naturally mention your latest link when they blog next.

That’s still six items, but it’s much less than ‘do everything you always did, and more besides.’

So next time you’re sitting down to work on your SEO, review this list and focus on one of these high-impact, lower-effort opportunities. And if you want guidance working through these tactics for your store, SEO coaching can help you prioritize and implement. Or, if you want to learn these tactics step by step on your own, check out SEO Simplified.

Excelsior!

Kai, your Shopify SEO guy

P.S. Want a clear action plan for the top 5 SEO opportunities to boost your store’s growth and revenue? Check out my SEO Opportunity Report. I’ll dive deep into your site’s SEO, content, keywords, and rankings and deliver targeted ‘do this, not that’ advice so you know exactly where to focus your efforts to grow and increase revenue. And if you’d rather have me handle the implementation, check out my SEO PowerUp.

Originally published on Double Your Ecommerce by Kai Davis.

Shopify Keyword Research Simplified - Virtual Shopify Meetup

kai@doubleyourecommerce.com (Kai Davis) — Tue, 07 Mar 2023 19:06:31 +0000

Ahoy ahoy,

My good friend Ilana Davis (no relation) invited me to her upcoming Virtual Shopify Meetup to present on a topic near and dear to my heart: Shopify Keyword Research Simplified. (Ilana and I also teamed up on SEO Simplified, a video course to help you learn and apply SEO to your Shopify store.)

This Virtual Shopify Meetup takes place on March 21st at 1:00 PM PST. You can register for the event right here: https://us02web.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_UVM4fYCkSqGf90grOCtW8w.

In this webinar, you’ll learn some of my favorite tips for finding keyword optimization opportunities in your Google Search Console data. We’ll take a deep dive into real-life examples and explore some nifty tricks and (and free tools) that will help you surface actionable insights that can help boost your Shopify store’s search engine rankings.

I hope to see you at this event (March 21st, 1:00pm PST). You can register right here: https://us02web.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_UVM4fYCkSqGf90grOCtW8w.

Excelsior!

Kai

Originally published on Double Your Ecommerce by Kai Davis.

'We saw a significant increase in traffic to our website and online sales'

kai@doubleyourecommerce.com (Kai Davis) — Tue, 17 Jan 2023 23:00:47 +0000

I had the pleasure of working with Lori and Jodi of jojo+lo Pickleball Wear ~ With Flair on a series of growth and SEO projects for their Shopify store. Altogether, we worked on:

An SEO Opportunity Report in March/April 2022
A done-for-you SEO TuneUp in June 2022
A more extensive SEO PowerUp in September/October 2022

Kind words from the client

Here’s what Lori (co-founder of jojo+lo) has to share about our experience working together.

"We saw a significant increase in traffic to our website and online sales. We were looking to expand traffic to our website and increase sales on our online store. While we were hesitant about the investment, Kai came highly recommended by a reputable marketing firm (Aeodilab), and we were impressed by his experience and testimonials.

Working with Kai, we saw a significant increase in traffic to our website and online sales. He was friendly, knowledgeable, organized, and very easy to work with. We were also pleased to see increased sales from states in which we had never had a presence.

We highly recommend Kai and his services. We worked on an SEO Opportunity Report, SEO TuneUp, and Traffic Power Up for jojo+lo. Each time, he delivered on the project goals. He was very organized, timely, and open to our ideas."

— Lori Bosch – Co-founder of jojo+lo Pickleball Wear

Impact on organic growth

Now that we’re in early 2023, we can see the effect that these projects had on jojoandlo.com’s organic growth, especially the SEO TuneUp.

Here’s a graphic from SEMRush.com showing their growth in organic traffic and keywords since our work started together.

Their organic traffic increased from nearly 0 at the start of the project to a estimated ~350/month
Their organic keywords increased from nearly 0 at the start of the project to an estimated ~437 additional keywords ranked

As a result of the SEO opportunities surfaced in the opportunity report and the done-for-you SEO optimizations with the TuneUp and PowerUp, jojo+lo is seeing more traffic, visitors, keyword rankings, and transactions.

It was a delight working with Jodi and Lori on these SEO and growth projects. And if you, reader, are looking for help growing your Shopify store and getting more organic traffic, I encourage you to get in touch.

To get in touch, fill out my get in touch form and tell me a little about your store and goals. You’ll hear back from me in 1-2 business days.

Know a fellow merchant who could use help growing their store? Send them my way.

Excelsior!

Kai

Originally published on Double Your Ecommerce by Kai Davis.

How to track your top keyword rankings with this free app

kai@doubleyourecommerce.com (Kai Davis) — Thu, 15 Dec 2022 22:41:43 +0000

To grow your SEO, one crucial part is understanding where you’re already ranking and working on growing those rankings.

Here’s a question, how are you supposed to track your rankings over time?

Sure, there are some options, but there’s no simple + free option.

Google Search Console gives you the rankings data, but it can be a cumbersome tool. It’s excellent, and you should be using Google Search Console, but it’s a bit clunky for tracking keyword + page performance over time.
SEMRush is a paid SEO/SEM tool with a keyword tracker (and a lot more) with plans starting at $99/mo. SEMRush is a valuable tool (I use it every day), but it isn’t affordable for lots of ecommerce small businesses.

For years I’ve been looking for a good + free keyword rank tracker tool that’s simple to use and not packed full of ads for the junk you don’t need.

Nothing worth recommending.

That is, until last week.

A friend in an SEO community pointed me toward Rank Tracker (https://seotesting.com/ranktracker). (Non-affiliate link, this is an honest + enthusiast recommendation.)

Rank Tracker’s value proposition is pretty sweet: Free Rank Tracker.

Track up to 500 keywords per site
Based on your Google Search Console data
Compare 7/30/90 day and yearly averages

I spend an hour trying out Rank Tracker. I set up an account, added a few sites, and reviewed the data and user experience.

Rank Tracker is the real deal:

It pulls your rankings from actual Google Search Console data
It has a good user interface and isn’t packed full of ads.
Plus, it’s free.

Rank Tracker is from SEOTesting.com, a popular and trusted SEO tool that has been around since 2016, not a fly-by-night newcomer to the market.

Digression: Why would SEOTesting release a free tool like Rank Tracker without ads? Marketing, link building, and lead generation, among other reasons.

The landing page for the app is on SEOTesting.com (https://seotesting.com/ranktracker), so linking to the tool helps their overall SEO.

And they hope some free users will stick around and upgrade to a paid account, a standard freemium lead generation play in the software as a service world.

All that to say, I’m pretty confident that Rank Tracker from SEOTesting.com isn’t going to steal all your data or bombard you with scammy stuff. This seems like an excellent free tool. And a great free option for Shopify stores.

And it’s easy to set up. It took me under five minutes to:

Register a new (free) account
Connect to Google Search Console
Select five keywords from a list of my top 500 keywords
Look at the table with recent keyword performance

I added DoubleYourEcommerce.com. Here’s what the top 10 keywords by position report looks like for the dozen keywords I selected:

These rankings are your Google Search Console data, so you can be confident that it’s pretty accurate.

That does mean that having Google Search Console set up is a requirement. But that’s okay. Every Shopify store should be using Google Search Console, and search Console is a great, free set of tools from Google to monitor the health + performance of your website. (Think of Search Console as the dashboard for your car with some diagnostic information mixed in.)

You can help grow your SEO by spending time over the winter holiday to:

Sign up for Google Search Console (search.google.com/search-console/)
Sign up for Rank Tracker by SEO Testing (https://seotesting.com/ranktracker)
Connect Rank Tracker to your Google Search Console
Select ~10-50 keywords from your top keywords

Then, when it comes time to work on your SEO in 2023, you can start by looking at your rank tracker and picking a page + keyword you want to improve. Not sure how to interpret the data or what to optimize first? My SEO coaching can help you make sense of your rankings and prioritize your efforts.

Would you like some ‘do this, not that’ advice on what to improve to rank higher in Google?

With an SEO + Growth Video Teardown, you’ll get a long-form video (about an hour) with specific + personalized + ‘do this, not that’ advice on what your store can do to rank higher.

You can use this ‘do this, not that’ advice as your Q1 SEO punch list.

And if you order your SEO + Growth Teardown by Monday, December 19th, you’ll get your deliverables in your inbox on January 3rd.

Excelsior!

Kai

Originally published on Double Your Ecommerce by Kai Davis.

How Shopify collections can grow your SEO

kai@doubleyourecommerce.com (Kai Davis) — Thu, 17 Nov 2022 22:04:56 +0000

Unfortunately, Shopify stores aren’t thinking about how they can maximize their collections on Google (i.e., what makes collections unique, a strategy for collections, how to SEO collections). That lack of strategy is hampering their growth and leaving money (and traffic) on the table.

Too many people think of collections as a scarce resource and only add a few to their store. The magic in collections is using an individual collection to bring highly relevant niche traffic to your store and displaying relevant items for that traffic, like so:

Pick a niche long-tail keyword (~3-5 words long, like ‘vegan chocolate gift boxes’)
Optimize an individual collection to target that keyword (with the SEO title, collection title, and collection description)
Point visitors toward the most relevant products in that collection for their search

The magic of collections is that you can have unlimited collections on your Shopify store, each targeting a different niche keyword. That means you could add a dozen (or a few dozen) collections to your Shopify store, have each target a niche + relevant keyword, and grow your store’s traffic.

**What’s the deal with collections on Shopify, anyway? What are they?**

The best metaphor for a collection in a Shopify store is an aisle in a physical store.

Imagine, for a moment: you’re walking into a physical store, and on the window is the store’s name: “Kai’s Vegan Chocolaterie.”

You walk in through the front door of the store. The shopkeeper (named Kai) welcomes you, hands you a chocolate sample, and then directs you to the aisles for browsing:

One aisle has vegan chocolates
Another is full of vegan brownies
Yet another is full of vegan gift boxes

Let’s think about your aisle-browsing experience:

Each aisle (or display) is full of relevant merchandise.
Like items are clustered together (you’d expect chocolate bars to be on the same display with each other)
At the start of each aisle is signage to help explain what you’ll find on this aisle and highlight any current promotions or specials.

That’s very similar to how collections work:

Collections group like-items together (i.e., this collection is ‘Organic Vegan Easter Chocolate’ collection)
Collections improve the browsing experience. Instead of paging through 73 pages of mixed-together ‘All Items,’ customers can directly head to the relevant collections that what they want.
Collections feature messaging at the top that says, “Hey, this is what you’ll find in this collection.” (i.e., Collection Description) and highlight any relevant deals, promotions, or specials.

If you were adding aisles to your physical store, you’d quickly run into limits and constraints:

The physical size of your store. Sure, you can want to add another six aisles. But if your store is already full, you will have difficulty finding the space for new aisles.
The cost of adding an aisle. Adding another aisle can be an investment. Depending on the scope, you might need planning, design, demolition, and development.
The time it takes to add an aisle. Maybe you have the space and the capital. But if your store has customers, you’ll have to decide between disrupting the customer experience or only doing the work during off hours.

However you slice it, real-world constraints and limitations arise when adding new aisles to a physical store.

The elites don’t want you to know this, but collections in your Shopify store are free.

The magic of the internet is that it lets you ignore many real-world limits and constraints.

You can add one (or a dozen) collections to Shopify without running into those real-world limitations. The cost of adding a new collection to your Shopify store is minimal.

Click a few buttons
Type a few words
Add a few products

You could launch a new collection targeting a niche keyword in just a few minutes, and that’s all it takes.

Because you’re an online store, the cost of adding an additional collection (aisle) to your store to near zero. Sure, it takes some time to add a collection and write the content, but that’s much less time, effort, attention, and cost than adding a new aisle to a physical store.

Why ’niche’ collections are SEO magic for your growth

You can (and should!) go wide and niche with your collections. Because your Shopify store isn’t constrained in terms of space, you can add collections targeting niche keywords.

As I talk about in this guide on Keyword Research and Collection SEO, the best way to use collections is to target niche + relevant keywords (like ‘Vegan Chocolate Gift Boxes’ or ‘Vegan Valentine’s Day Chocolate Boxes’).

Why are you better off targeting more niche keywords? Because more generic and higher traffic terms (like ‘chocolate’) are much more competitive and less relevant. You’ll see more success by targeting smaller, more niche keywords with less traffic.

For example, there are ~250,000 people searching for ‘chocolate’ each month. Those people are looking for a vast range of chocolate-related things, and only a few are looking for vegan chocolate boxes.

Even if Kai’s Vegan Chocolaterie could rank #1 for ‘chocolate,’ they’d see an incredibly low conversion rate from that traffic because what they’re offering isn’t relevant to most of those searchers.

In comparison, just ~390 people are searching for ‘vegan chocolate box’ each month. All those people are in the mood to buy what Kai’s Vegan Chocolaterie is selling. If our Chocolaterie could rank #1 for that more niche, long-tail term, they’d likely see an incredibly high conversion rate for that traffic.

This is where the magic of collections comes to play.

You can have the same products in two collections and have each individual collection targeting separate (but related/relevant) keywords.

For example, you could have ~five vegan chocolate box products that you retail and sell. But those same five products could be presented in different collections, each collection targeting a niche keyword like:

Vegan Chocolate Gift Box
Vegan Chocolate Heart Boxes
Vegan Valentine’s Chocolate Gift Box
Vegan Anniversary Chocolate Gift Box

That approach to collection SEO and keyword targeting lets you go wide + niche with your collections and attract more relevant traffic to your store. (Want to learn collection SEO step by step? Check out SEO Simplified.)

Wrapping Up

The best real-world metaphor for Shopify collections is aisles of merchandise in a physical store.
The best way to use collections is to have individual collections target niche (3-5 word) keywords. Those niche, long-tail keywords are less competitive and convert better.
Your Shopify store can add an unlimited number of collections. You don’t have to deal with real-world constraints, like finding space for a new aisle.
You can maximize your collection SEO by having individual collections target relevant niche keywords (i.e., Vegan Chocolate Gift Box, Vegan Valentine’s Chocolate Gift Box) and reuse products across collections.

Want an outside look at your store’s SEO?

Do you need an expert, outside look at your Shopify store’s SEO and collection SEO?

With an SEO + Growth Teardown (doubleyourecommerce.com/services/teardown/), you’ll get actionable feedback on your store’s SEO and ‘do this, not that’ advice on what to change and fix to grow. Or, if you want ongoing guidance as you optimize your collections, check out my SEO coaching.

Originally published on Double Your Ecommerce by Kai Davis.

How to build your presence with your target market and grow your traffic

kai@doubleyourecommerce.com (Kai Davis) — Thu, 09 Jun 2022 20:34:09 +0000

If you’re looking to grow your Shopify business, build your online presence, and get more traffic, it takes two ingredients.

Presence — Building awareness in the minds of a specific + niche target market.
Evergreen Content — Writing content that is continually relevant to your target market and stays “fresh” for readers over a long period of time

Building presence with a target market

You need to get specific about:

Who your target market is
The problems your target market is experiencing
How your products help your target market solve those problems

Clearly defining your target market + their problem, + how your products help will help you reach people in your audience. Then, when they read about you, they’ll feel a sense of, ‘oh, you’re the site/store for people like me!’

This is similar to the concept of positioning. You want to know who you’re for + how you help them. I’m rewatching Better Call Saul, so you get to suffer through one of my lawyer/law firm examples:

If you own a law firm, you might decide you want to reach a small + specific part of your overall total market. Instead of being a lawyer for everyone, you decide to be a lawyer for a small part of your market. You might decide, ‘I’m the lawyer for real estate developers who are looking to negotiate back taxes owed to the IRS.’ That specificity helps you define who your ideal client is, position your business for that client, and know where you’re working on building presence and awareness.

It’s the same with a Shopify business. You want to get specific about your target market. That specificity lets you know who to reach. My article from 2018 on ‘becoming a Shopify Niche Celebrity’ (/niche-celebrity/) resonates strongly with this concept of presence and gives a sense of the actions to take to build presence with your audience in a niche.

Writing evergreen content to generate traffic

You need to create the content your audience is looking for as part of their journey in finding + buying your products.

To switch examples, if you’ve already picked your target market, you might have decided that you sell CBD medication for pet owners of elderly cats with anxiety. To build traffic with content, you might write articles:

answering questions like ‘is CBD safe for cats?’
about the conditions that CBD helps cats with
sharing tips on managing pet anxiety or giving cats CBD
featuring customer reviews and case studies for your products

The challenge for Shopify businesses

The unfortunate truth is that the above two ingredients can be challenging for Shopify businesses, especially businesses selling a wide range of different products, like boutiques.

If you don’t have a specific target market, it’s hard to know who to focus on.
If you sell a wide range of products, it’s hard to get specific about the problem(s) your customers are experiencing that relate to your products.
It’s challenging to create good + relevant content for your target market if you don’t know who your target market is or the problems your target market is experiencing that drive them to seek products like yours.

The best way for a Shopify business to build presence + get traffic? Niche down to a small audience/target market.

Pick a small + defined sub-market of customers who all share an interest or affiliation in common. Then, nudge your business to serve that audience. (Avoid niching based on demographics like age or education.)

As an example, maybe you’re a boutique selling women’s clothing. You decide to nudge your business and focus on a smaller + more specific target market of potential customers. You decide to become a boutique specializing in courtroom attire for women lawyers. That small nudge lets you get very specific about your target market and how to build a presence with them. You can better understand:

The problems they’re experiencing (e.g., they want to look fashionable + professional + be comfortable)
How your products help them solve their relevant problems
What content you can create to reach your target market and help them in their journey to find + buy products like your products (e.g., seasonal guides to courtroom attire for women lawyers)

By getting very specific about who you’re trying to reach and making it a smaller part of your total potential audience, you get very clear about what to do and where to show up to build a presence with that audience. That then helps you understand what evergreen content to create to reach that audience and grow your traffic.

Need help defining your target market and building a content strategy? My SEO coaching can guide you through the process.

Originally published on Double Your Ecommerce by Kai Davis.

How to find exactly where a page ranks in Google (without counting)

kai@doubleyourecommerce.com (Kai Davis) — Wed, 13 Apr 2022 01:05:17 +0000

Recently a customer for a Shopify Growth Teardown (doubleyourecommerce.com/services/teardown/) asked about a feature in the videos.

Sometimes, when reviewing your store, I’ll pop open a Google search window and search for a keyword I see listed on a product, collection, or page. Then, I’ll see where you’re ranking in the top 100 and use that information to inform my recommendations for your site.

I do all of this without clicking through the pages of Google search results. I just search and immediately see the top 100 sites, each with a number next to them.

Here’s an example screenshot. You can see that I’m ranking #8th for ‘Growth Teardown’

Screenshot: Ranking #8 for Growth Teardown

Or #47 for ‘Done-for-You SEO’

Screenshot: Ranking #47 for Done-for-You SEO

The Growth Teardown customer asked me, ‘so how on earth do you DO that?’ and I realized there wasn’t a great guide on this topic. So here we are.

How do I do this magic? Here are the steps.

Install the SERP Counter extension. This add-on numbers your search results to quickly see what position a page is in for a search. (This plugin has sadly been discontinued. This is a Chrome option. I’ll update this with links if/when I find them.)
Set your search settings to show 100 results at a time. Click the gear in the top right of a Google search (screenshot), click ‘see all settings,’ and drag the ‘results per page’ slider to ‘100’ (gif). Now when you search, you’ll see (up to) 100 results.
Finally, when I load a search, I’ll do a quick ‘Command + F’ (find) for the first few letters of the domain I’m evaluating (like Command + F + Double…). I pop to that domain in the search results or quickly see that they aren’t ranking for that keyword.

And there you have it! When you search for a keyword you’re evaluating, you can see the top 100 results, see where each page is ranking (without counting), and find your site in the results.

Looking to get insights into your store and what you can do to grow? I recommend you investigate my Shopify Growth Teardown, and get actionable videos and a ‘do this, not that’ report for your store. Read more about the Growth Teardown right here: doubleyourecommerce.com/services/teardown/

Wondering what you should read next? I recommend:

Excelsior!

Kai

Originally published on Double Your Ecommerce by Kai Davis.

Why your Shopify product won't rank in Google (and what to do about it)

kai@doubleyourecommerce.com (Kai Davis) — Wed, 02 Feb 2022 16:24:53 +0000

Over in the Shopify forum, Joshua808 asked a great question about ranking his (newer) Shopify store and products for some keywords.

Here’s an excerpted version of his question, read the full question here (link).

My website is: www.metahuman.com

We want to be visible on the first page of google for search term “Metahuman” - can someone help me with this?

I also really want some other keyword searches related to our products - to get our products to show on google searches!!!!

For example: Search terms like “vitamin gummies” (thats just an example)

‘Vitamin Gummies’ is a great example search term and an understandable one to want to rank for as Metahuman sells CBD Gummies.

Alas, that term — vitamin gummies — is way too competitive for their store to rank for at this time.

How do I know that? Two things:

There are big competitors here. If you Google the term (link), you’ll see the top ten sites ranking there are large, established brands (Amazon, Healthline, Walmart, CVS, Target, Nature Made, Walgreens, WebMD, CleavelandClinic.org, Costco.com). These larger competitors have a ton of links, content, and SEO experience. (They’ve been growing here for years.) I describe them as having a ‘defensible position’ in Google, which just means that MetaHuman won’t easily outrank them right now.
They don’t have enough links to outrank those competitors. Looking at the number of links pointing to MetaHuman’s site, they’ve got ~4 unique sites linking to them. That’s a good start, but it is quite low. To rank for a more competitive term (like Vitamin Gummies) they’ll need (a lot) more links pointing to your site.

So what are they supposed to do?

Give up?
Ditch SEO for paid ads?
Wait until they get a ton more links?

Na. What they (and you, dear reader) want to do is focus on more niche keywords for your products/collections/store.

For example, instead of ‘Vitamin Gummies’ MetaHuman might try to rank their gummie product page for the ‘keyword Buy Organic Full Spectrum CBD Gummies.’ That longer, more specific keyword is less competitive, easier to rank for, and more resonant with the CBD product they’re selling.

Looking at the sites ranking for that search, you see a mixture of:

Larger brands (e.g., Healthline)
News sites
Smaller brands (e.g., Corn Bread Hemp)

There still is some competition here and these competitors are established, but it’s much less competitive than ‘Vitamin Gummies.’

But how are you supposed to find these more niche keywords? That’s a very good question!

Part of the process is looking at the page (be it a product, collection, or homepage) you want to rank, looking at the content, and getting very specific about what the page is representing.

The other part of the process is keyword research. For that, you can use one of my favorite freemium tools — Keywords Everywhere — to get insights on keywords + suggested related keywords right in Google. Excellent tool for keyword research, I think you’ll love it. And if you want a structured approach to keyword research and SEO for your Shopify store, check out SEO Simplified.

Hope this helped you, dear reader! If you’re still scratching your head about ‘why isn’t my site ranking for this keyword’ or ‘how do I outrank that competitor,’ drop me an email (kai@doubleyourecommerce.com) and I’ll see what I can better explain. Or, if you want hands-on guidance learning to do keyword research and SEO strategy for your store, check out my SEO coaching.

BTW, I send out a regular newsletter with Shopify marketing and growth tips like this one. Want to get the next letter in your inbox? Drop your email address in here: /newsletter/.

Excelsior!

Kai

Originally published on Double Your Ecommerce by Kai Davis.

SEO for Shopify Collections

kai@doubleyourecommerce.com (Kai Davis) — Sat, 04 Dec 2021 20:21:43 +0000

Say you’ve got a Shopify collection — and it’s got some of your best products in it. You want to make sure you’re doing all the right things (and as few of the wrong things) as possible with your high-priority collections’ SEO.

What should you take into account for Shopify Collection SEO?

Big picture, Collection Optimization is a smart task to undertake. Optimizing your top priority collections to get more traffic from Google helps you diversify the types of pages on your store that are getting traffic from Google.

Google likes to rank Collections. Adding more Collection SEO Optimization to your store will help you get more pages (and page types) ranking.

Plus, collection pages typically have a higher conversion rate, lower bounce rate, and higher value than product pages (for a range of reasons). Optimizing your Shopify Collection SEO helps you get more traffic to what will likely be high-value pages for your store.

Thinking tactically, these are the important areas to work on for Collection SEO Optimization

You want to focus your efforts on these areas for Shopify Collection SEO:

Your collection’s SEO title and Collection Name keyword targeting. If your title is targeting too broad of a keyword (e.g., dishes) instead of a specific keyword relevant to your audience (e.g., shatterproof pet dishes for dogs) you’ll struggle to rank or attract relevant traffic. You want to make your Collection Title and Collection Name keyword targeting specific and relevant. And remember to look at your competitors and the other sites ranking in Google.
Your collection description and internal links. Google uses the content on a page to understand what it’s about and rank it. Your collection page’s collection description is an excellent way to get high-quality, relevant, keyword rich content onto your collection pages. (More on this Collection Description SEO approach here.)
Links across your store pointing to this collection. Google uses your internal links — links in the page content of your store — as a vote of relevance for pages on your store. If you add internal links from your homepage, blog posts, or product page content to high-priority collections, they’ll rank higher in Google.

You also have a few other areas you can work on — and you can work on these to further polish a collection, but work done here is often outside of the most impactful things you can do for a collection’s SEO

Meta Description. This can help folks understand why they should click through from Google to your collection, but doesn’t impact the keywords you’re ranking for.
Collection Image. This absolutely helps improve the quality collection, but doesn’t have an impact on SEO. (And if you’re using large, heavy images, it can negatively impact SEO.) You should optimize here, but it’s more of a design and brand thing than an SEO thing.

Are you looking for help getting more traffic to your Shopify store?

I work with a small number of Shopify stores each quarter to help them grow their traffic and conversions. My name is Kai Davis and I’m your Shopify SEO Guy. (You can read more about me, my background, and how I can help your store grow right here.)

If you’d like my help growing your store (or optimizing your collections), I recommend you check out these resources of mine:

SEO Opportunity Report. When your store gets an SEO Opportunity Report, you receive a prioritized report of the top ~5-8 things to focus on to get more traffic from Google, as well as a prioritized ‘do this, not that’ action plan for the coming year. (Read more about the SEO Opportunity Report right here.)
SEO Simplified. Want to learn collection SEO (and more) at your own pace? My video course walks you through the process step by step.
Tell me about your store. You can tell me about your Shopify store (and a little about yourself and how I can help) right here. I work with a small number of Shopify stores each quarter to help them grow—and I’d love to work with your store next. (Tell me about your store right here.)

Originally published on Double Your Ecommerce by Kai Davis.

Better Than Average Shopify Collection Descriptions

kai@doubleyourecommerce.com (Kai Davis) — Mon, 30 Aug 2021 23:13:19 +0000

tl;dr: Adding descriptions to your store’s collection pages will help your collections rank higher in Google. Done right, collection descriptions can help your overall site SEO.

What’s a collection description?

This is:

Why is that? How do they help you rank higher? Well, how does Google does to rank anything? It’s the content in the body of your page that helps Google know what a page is all about.

So if you want Google to know more about what your individual collection pages are all about, you’ll want to make sure each has a collection description. Adding a collection description will give the body of collection more content, helping Google more easily rank it.

Plus, adding collection descriptions has the secondary benefit of improving the User Experience of your store for your visitors.

Your collection descriptions will help your visitors know what a collection is about, what to expect, and what products are included. This makes collection descriptions a great spot to naturally include keyword-rich content or links to recommended products, which is what Google is looking for.

What does a good collection description look like?

What can you do with your collection descriptions to maximize their benefit for SEO and point your customers in the right direction? Well, let’s look at a few examples from the wild and start to identify what makes a ‘good’ collection description.

Big picture, your goal is to write long(er) + useful + helpful collection descriptions for your collection pages — instead of just showing an endless grid of products scrolling down the device like a parody of that scene from The Matrix.

Examples of good collection descriptions

You want to include collection descriptions that offer context and direction for what a visitor is looking at (and helps Google know how + where + why to rank your page).

Here are four examples of Collection Descriptions from stores on Shopify. I think each of these is a good example of how to do Collection Descriptions well.

Backjoy

Backjoy includes descriptions in a selection of their collections. Their collection descriptions do an excellent job of providing context, and the link to their ‘pick the right seat’ infographic is an excellent use of this space.

Whispering Willow Soap

Whispering Willow Soap has shorter collection descriptions without any links to recommended products or posts. These collection descriptions still provide the visitor with context about the collection and include rich text and keywords for Google.

100% Pure

100% Pure used to have high-quality, rich collection descriptions at the top of their collection pages. But as of this article’s publish date, they’ve moved their collection descriptions to the bottom of the page.

After:

These are still fine, but there are some SEO considerations about having collection descriptions at the bottom of the collection (below the product grid) vs. above the product grid. But that’s a topic for another day.

Antique Jewelry Mall

Antique Jewelry Mall has great collection descriptions. These are well-written and helpful for visitors or for Google. There are some potential improvements like adding in a short list of recommended products or expanding the description to ~300 words, but this is a solid example of how to do this correctly.

(via https://www.littlestreamsoftware.com/articles/great-shopify-collection-page-ready-seo-traffic/)

What makes a collection description ‘good’?

Good collection descriptions do a few things well. (They don’t necessarily do all of these, but they do some of these). Big picture, they help improve the User Experience of your collections. How do they do that?

First, they provide an overview (without going into too much detail) of the collection and products.
Second, they include relevant SEO words, phrases, and questions that people use to search for your products.
Third, they include links to recommended products or articles/posts/pages that help visitors who landed on this collection better understand the context and what to check out next.
Fourth, they have ~100 - 300 words of content. That’s enough to be helpful + useful to visitors and Google, but short enough to not clog up the screen on mobile.

Remember, the goal isn’t to have the perfect collection description; it’s to have a better collection description. I encourage you to aspire to have a better-than-average collection description. (If you have no collection descriptions, aim to add a bit more content to your collection pages.)

Your ‘do this, not that’ action plan for better collection descriptions

Ready to get started crafting high-quality collection descriptions for your top collections in your store? Here’s what I recommend you focus on:

First, pick your ’top’ 3-5 collections

Crafting high-quality descriptions for every collection in your store at once is way too heavy of a lift. So, I recommend that you start with just your ’top’ collections. What’s that mean? Well, you’ll want to:

Pick ~3-5 of your collections that receive the most purchases or traffic.

This way, when you add a description to these collections, you’re helping improve your best-performing collections. (And after that, you can move onto the next best performing collections. Progress!)

Or, start with collections linked to from your header navigation or homepage content. Start with the first ~3-5.

If you’re having trouble picking your top collections, you can start with a selection of the collections linked to in your header navigation. (These — and collections linked to from your homepage content — are often the easiest for Google to find. As such, adding rich collection descriptions to those collections will help Google more easily find them.)

Once you’ve picked your initial ~3-5 collections, you’re ready to move forward to the next step.

Second, for each collection you picked, write a robust ~100-300 word description that explains what that particular collection is about, what the reader can expect, and answers to many common questions.

Can it be more than 300 words? Sure! But you want to aim to have just enough content in your collection description, so it isn’t overwhelming to a visitor. This is a description, after all — not an essay. (You can, however, link to a blog post or page you write that goes into greater detail on that collection description with featured recommended products.)

More so, you can always come back and add more content later. So aim to get something in place that you optimize and refine in another ~3-6 months.

Third, include 1-2 ‘internal links’ in your collection description to products in the collection of blog posts

This approach has two significant benefits for your store.

Links to recommended products in collection descriptions make it way easier for your customers (and Google) to find the products.

Instead of clicking a link in Google and being plopped down into a page with just the product grid, your visitors have context on the collection and which products in the collection they should check out first.

On top of that? These ‘internal’ links to products and posts on your site are a powerful SEO element.

These links tell Google, “Hey, you should check out this product. It’s important.” And then instead of needing to scroll or click through your collection’s product grid, Google can immediately jump to those important products (and posts).

You want to aim to include a few (1-3) internal links in a collection description. Make sure these link to relevant products or blog posts.

Fourth, consider featuring short 1-2 sentence customer testimonials (or kind words from customers) in your collection descriptions

If your customers have shared positive feedback, kind words, or testimonials! with you about your products in a collection, consider incorporating a short selection of those positive words into your collection descriptions. (~1-2 sentences is a great length.)

This ‘voice of the customer’ content is excellent to include in your collection descriptions. It helps customers overcome objections or hesitations and understand the benefits and features of your products. Plus, it’s additional, high-quality content for Google to find and read on your collection pages.

Once you’ve finished with your first batch of collection descriptions, start on a new batch without descriptions

Your goal is to get collection descriptions up for all the top priority collections on your store.

Top Priority Collections

Collections linked to in your navigation or mega menu
Collections linked to in your footer
Collections that are making a lot of sales
Collections that are especially timely or seasonal (e.g., BFCM collection, Christmas collection, Hanukkah collection)
Collections that are newly launched (tackle writing descriptions for new collections as you put those collections together)

“What am I supposed to say in my collection description? How do I know what words to use?”

When it comes to figuring out the words to use, here are four options to consider.

Interview yourself. Start recording yourself in the Voice Memos app on your iPhone or Android phone and record your answers to a few questions.
- Describe this collection. What’s in it? What type of products?
- How does this help them? What are three benefits for customers who buy products in this collection?
- What feedback do you get from customers about these products?
- What are two or three products you especially recommend in this collection? Why those products?
- What positive things do customers say about the products in these collections?
Then, take your recording and use a service like Otter.ai, Descript.com, or Rev.com to generate a transcript. Review your transcript and edit down your responses into a ~100-300 word collection description (and/or an article, if you’re particularly verbose).
Mine your customer support emails. What questions do your customers ask you about this collection? About the products in this collection? Take those questions (and answers!) and use them as notes for whatever you write here. After all, if some customers write in with those questions, it stands to reason that more customers have those questions and will find this content helpful.
Talk with your customers. Ask them questions. Write down what they say. Call up a customer who recently ordered from a collection that needs a description. Ask them a few questions about what they were looking for, what they found, and what got them off the fence and motivated them to buy.
Reuse existing content. Reusing existing content (from, e.g., emails, blogs, articles, podcast interviews, social content, Instagram, and Facebook) is a great way to tackle this content creation and approach it on easy mode. As you’re writing content for your collection descriptions, you can take a look at your previous articles, emails, and social posts to see how you’ve described those collections in the past. (If you’ve written an email featuring a collection, you can mine the content of that email. If you’ve featured a collection on Instagram, you can reuse that content.) Be excited to reuse your existing content in this way, it’s a great way to get more value out of your writing.

The Bottom Line

Remember, the goal isn’t to have the perfect collection description. The goal is to have a better than average collection description. (If you have no collection descriptions, aspire to add a bit more content to the page.)

Ideally, you’re adding ~100-300 words with a few links to recommended products or blog posts/content.
Maybe you include a short 1-2 sentence testimonial from a customer (e.g., “Their BBQ accessories are great, I’ve been a customer for 31+ years!” H. Hill.") for a bit of social proof and additional content.
But if all you can muster is ~15-30 words for some of the collection descriptions in your store? That’s fine too. Maybe you’ve ruthlessly prioritized. Or perhaps you’ve run out of steam. Either way, you’ve improved your store, and that’s what’s important.

Questions? Looking for help figuring out what to include in your collection descriptions? Or looking for some expert help in getting this task done? You should reach out to me (Kai@DoubleYourEcommerce.com) and say hello. (Or tell me about your store right here: DoubleYourEcommerce.com/get-in-touch/). And if you want to learn collection descriptions and other SEO fundamentals at your own pace, check out SEO Simplified.

Excelsior!

Kai

Originally published on Double Your Ecommerce by Kai Davis.

How's your Search UX?

kai@doubleyourecommerce.com (Kai Davis) — Fri, 02 Jul 2021 21:46:02 +0000

When’s the last time you sat down and put yourself in your visitors’ shoes? Have you ever taken a look at your store from their perspective when searching Google?

Search for a keyword a page or product in your store ranks for
Look at the search results. What do you see? Who else is there? Where do you rank?
Click the link to your store
Look at the landing page with fresh eyes
Add your product to your cart
Checkout of your store

That’s what Search UX is: the experience of searching in Google, finding your site, taking a risk, clicking your link, and browsing your site.

I recommend to my clients that at least quarterly, they sit down and look at the Search UX of their top keywords and top products. It’s essential to think through the holistic experience for your visitor.

Your brand experience starts with seeing your site in the search results, so what’s your Search UX like for your store?

What page title do you see for the keyword you’re searching for?
What does your page look like in the search results? Is the title resonant and aligned with the keyword they searched for? Or is the experience dissonant, confusing, and misspelled?
What rich results (like this) are showing for your page or product? Are you showing reviews and prices? Are your competitors?
When you click on your page, how fast does the page load? (Quick? Fast? Slow? Nope?)
When you first land on your page, do you see helpful information? Or are you smacked in the face with countless pop-ups?
Does the page provide a clear next step for you to take (e.g., read this next, browse that product, add this product to your cart) so you can feel you’ve found the information or product you’re searching for?

Search UX is about both having a good-looking, fast site and having the right content so your visitor can think, “Huzzah! I’ve found what I’m looking for!”

After all, if your store is ugly, slow, and full of the wrong information, why would Google want to show it to anyone?

One great way to get a professional opinion on your Search UX is with an SEO + Growth Teardown for your store.

You and your store will benefit from:

A recorded video screencast with a professional ‘second opinion’ about your store and what to improve to get more traffic and sell more
Advice on what to fix (along with any low-hanging fruit to tackle on your site)
Feedback on your store’s Search UX and what to do to help Google love your store

Why wait? /services/teardown/. Or, if you want to learn SEO fundamentals yourself, check out SEO Simplified.

Excelsior!

Kai

Originally published on Double Your Ecommerce by Kai Davis.

What's the future of Shopify marketing?

kai@doubleyourecommerce.com (Kai Davis) — Tue, 22 Jun 2021 23:23:38 +0000

I was on a call with an SEO Opportunity Report client when they asked me, “Kai, what do you see as the future of Ecommerce marketing?”

Content. The future of Ecommerce marketing is content. I firmly believe that the most successful small, large, and startup Ecommerce brands over the coming ~ five years will be brands that add a content-focused arm to their business.

Why?

So many reasons! But let’s check in on the top 4 reasons:

If you want traffic from Google, Google wants content from you. Google (and Search Engine Optimization) is a reliable traffic source. But if you want traffic from Google, you need to create high-quality content for them to share with searchers.
Consumers have been trained to seek out content. Thus, you need content. Be it entertainment or news content or evergreen informational content, the proliferation of smartphones and social media means that consumers will want to experience whatever content you have for them. (So, if you don’t have content, you’re missing out on opportunities.)
The best way to attract visitors is to produce the content they’re looking for. What questions are your consumers asking about the challenges your product helps with? Where are they going for answers? What type of content are they already engaging with (e.g., audio, video, text, newsletters, articles, blogs)? It would be best if you created that content.
The price of admission for every platform is content. No matter which platforms interest you (e.g., TikTok, YouTube, Twitter, Reddit, LinkedIn, Newsletters), the price of admission remains the same: interesting, engaging content. And the more platforms that you pursue? The more content you’ll need to be creating.

When you line these reasons up, you can see that the path forward is content-focused. Your product pages alone aren’t enough. If you want to reach your customers, audience, and market where they already are, you’ll need high-quality, engaging content that answers the questions they’re asking.

Thus, the future of Ecommerce is Content.

This shift is well underway. REI just launched REI Co-Op Studios to produce original content and entertainment. Over to their press release:

REI today announced the launch of Co-op Studios, the retailer’s new in-house content arm. Across films, podcasts, and editorial programs, the studio develops and produces stories that entertain, enrich and explore the power of time spent outside, while complementing the co-op’s broader climate and racial equity, diversity, and inclusion commitments.

As I see more of these shifts happen, I’ll keep you, dear reader, up to date. I expect we’ll see more established Ecommerce companies add an in-house content arm over the coming months and years. And I expect we’ll see smaller/newer Ecommerce companies and startups start seeing their content as a core pillar of their business.

What this shift means for you, your store, and your customers

Now, does this shift to content mean that you should immediately rush out and buy a full streaming setup for your office, a pair of expensive Elgato Keylights, and a green screen?

No. Not yet.

This shift means that you should start thinking about the content opportunities and initiatives you’ll want to pursue 1, 3, and 5+ years out. Start by answering these questions:

Who is your market?
What influencers or creators in your niche do people in your market follow?
What types of content do people in your market read, like, and subscribe to (e.g., podcasts, YouTube, newsletters, blogs)?

(Uncertain on the answers to any of these questions? Then you should reach out to your customers and ask them. Market research and customer research to better understand your customers is an incredibly impactful part of your SEO. If you want guidance getting started with content, my SEO coaching can help.)

That will give you a sense of where your market is spending their time and what content they’re seeking out. From there, you’ll want to ask yourself how you can start creating the content — the articles, guides, podcasts, tweets, newsletters, and or videos — that your market is looking for.

Excelsior!

Kai

Originally published on Double Your Ecommerce by Kai Davis.

Page Keyword Audit Spreadsheet

kai@doubleyourecommerce.com (Kai Davis) — Sun, 30 Aug 2020 05:51:02 +0000

This is a spreadsheet I created to use in my page keyword audits to track the different ranking factors. It’s a great resource to use for your Page Keyword Audits. You can make a copy of it here.

Originally published on Double Your Ecommerce by Kai Davis.

Outreach Tracking Spreadsheet

kai@doubleyourecommerce.com (Kai Davis) — Sun, 30 Aug 2020 05:49:27 +0000

This is a spreadsheet I created to have a (free) way to track the websites I’m reaching out to for digital public relations/link building, the status of the conversation, and the page that’s linking to me. It’s a great resource to use as you’re getting started. You can make a copy of it here.

Originally published on Double Your Ecommerce by Kai Davis.

Simple (yet powerful) SEO Tips for Your Shopify Store

kai@doubleyourecommerce.com (Kai Davis) — Sun, 30 Aug 2020 05:19:37 +0000

I was invited to present to the PDX Shopify Meetup (hosted by Ilana Davis, no relation).

Here’s the full video from the event. I think you’ll enjoy this look at SEO, Search UX, and how to make sure you’re doing what Google is looking for.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nAVDNZn9akU

Originally published on Double Your Ecommerce by Kai Davis.

Big Frickin’ Coupon Month

kai@doubleyourecommerce.com (Kai Davis) — Tue, 12 Nov 2019 17:35:41 +0000

Black Friday Cyber Monday (“Big Frickin’ Coupon Month”) is almost upon us. Here’s a quick thought:

Don’t wait until the high-discount days to send out an email to your subscribers or past customers.

Instead, start to talk to your people now.

First, send your people an email and let them know what’s coming later this month as part of BFCM. Tell them so they can check their budget and start to plan their purchases. If they don’t know what’s coming, it’ll be harder for them to take part.

Next, take your list and segment it. Here’s what I’ve segmented mine into for my store:

- New shoppers: people who haven’t made a purchase yet
- Customers: people who have made a purchase already
- VIP Customers: people who have made 2+ purchases

Then, start talking with each segment:

- New Shoppers → Send them a pre-BFCM coupon and recommend a product for them that they’ll like
- Customers → Send them a short note thanking them for being customers
- VIP Customers *(2+ purchases)* → Send them a small gift as a thank you

And mention your upcoming Big Frickin’ Coupon Month event. These don’t have to be heavy-graphic emails. Text emails – like this one – work well at sharing a message. Don’t let graphics become a barrier.

The outcomes you’re aiming for here are two-fold:

- Let people know, today, that you’re going to be having an event
- Start conversations *now*, so you aren’t showing up on Turkey Day and saying, “Hey, haven’t talked with you since last year, here’s a coupon! See ya next year!”

Questions? Tap here and send them over.

Excelsior!

Kai

Originally published on Double Your Ecommerce by Kai Davis.

Two Pounds of Personality

kai@doubleyourecommerce.com (Kai Davis) — Tue, 22 May 2018 02:57:27 +0000

Has this ever happened to you?

You run into a problem with your Shopify store so you Google for an answer.

You run into an article that gives you an answer to your question.

A few days later, you’re searching again, but this time you find a podcast interview talking about the problem you’re experiencing. Would you believe it? It’s the same person from the article!

A week later, you’re browsing Twitter and see a friend Tweeted out a video — and it’s from the same person that the Podcast Interview featured and that wrote the article.

You’ve Just Experienced “Two Pounds of Personality”

When you’re developing your “Two Pounds of Personality” for your business, you’re creating online and offline artifacts that capture your personality and let people — potential customers — find them.

When you have “Two Pounds of Personality,” you’re making it so your customers can’t help running into you and reasons to buy from your store:

- Testimonials and case studies from happy customers, published on your site or the customer's site
- Product reviews on YouTube, showing off the highlights, features, and benefits of your products
- High ranking pages in the search results so when a customer is searching, you're what they find
- Podcasts interviewing you or key members of your team, sharing examples of problems your customers overcame with your product
- Guest articles on prominent sites and in popular trade magazines that your target market reads
- Quotes from you and your team in popular articles online

“Two Pounds of Personality.”

To assemble your “2lbs of Personality,” you need to:

- Understand who, specifically, your target market is
- Develop a Unique Personal Brand that speaks to your customers
- Research your target market and know *exactly* how to reach them
- What websites do they comment on?
- What magazines and trade publications do they subscribe to?
- What Social Media do they follow?
- What Podcasts do they listen to?
- What YouTube channels do they subscribe to?

The easiest way to reach your customers is to go where they already are. So as you assemble your “Two Pounds of Marketing,” focus on going to where your customers already are.

That way, as you’re building up the proof that you are the best option in the market, you’re also marketing your business.

Originally published on Double Your Ecommerce by Kai Davis.

Shopify Niche Celebrity

kai@doubleyourecommerce.com (Kai Davis) — Tue, 22 May 2018 02:04:47 +0000

Do you want an unstoppable value proposition for your store?

Something that none of your competitors (no matter how hard they try, how long they’ve been in the industry, or how much money they spend) can compete with?

Something that attracts customers and converts customers into loyal, raving fans?

You want to become a Shopify Niche Celebrity

Why Become A “Shopify Niche Celebrity”?

When you’re a Shopify Niche Celebrity you’ve built up an amazing amount of proof (2lbs, in fact) that shows that you, your store, and your products are trusted, respected, and valued by your customers.

Let’s break down what it means to be a Shopify Niche Celebrity:

Shopify — You have an Ecommerce store and you use Shopify.
Niche — You have a specific target market picked out. You’re focusing on a small, viable subset of that target market as your niche.
Celebrity — You’re everywhere. Customers can’t help but run into you. Testimonials, case studies, product reviews, search results, podcast interviews, guest posts, and more. Your customers can’t help but stumble across your “2Lbs of Personality”.

When you’re a Shopify Niche Celebrity, your customers have this strange feeling of going from

‘Who is this company I keep hearing about?’

‘I have to order from this company I keep hearing about!’'

What Does It Take To Become A “Shopify Niche Celebrity”?

To be a Shopify Niche Celebrity, you need to be everywhere.

You want to make it so customers just can’t help but run into you and reasons to buy from you:

Testimonials and case studies from happy customers, published on your site or the customer’s site
Product reviews on YouTube, showing off the highlights, features, and benefits of your products
High ranking pages in the search results so when a customer is searching, you’re what they find
Podcasts interviewing you or key members of your team, sharing examples of problems your customers overcame with your product
Guest articles on prominent sites and in popular trade magazines that your target market reads
Quotes from you and your team in popular articles online

Uncountable proof that your products and your store are the best option for customers.

How Do You Become A “Shopify Niche Celebrity”?

You want to develop uncountable proof that your products and your store are the best option for customers.

You do this by:

Developing a Unique Personal Brand
Assembling your “2lbs of Personality”

As you assemble your “2lbs of Personality,” you naturally become a celebrity in your niche.

When you have “2lbs of Personality,” you’re everywhere your customers are looking:

Websites
Magazines and trade publications
Social Media
Podcasts
YouTube

Everywhere.

You become a Shopify Niche Celebrity by developing your Unique Personal Brand and assembling your “2lbs of Personality.”

Originally published on Double Your Ecommerce by Kai Davis.

How To Avoid The Negative Effects Of A Shopify Store Rebrand

kai@doubleyourecommerce.com (Kai Davis) — Thu, 22 Feb 2018 01:34:33 +0000

Avoid the negative effects that come from changing your store’s brand name, domain, links, or content.

A few years ago, I was called in by an established store that was experiencing a major drop in their traffic.

They had just completed a rebrand of their store a few months ago and their traffic looked like every store owner’s worst nightmare: great one day, gone the next.

Their rankings reflected the exact same thing: they went from ranking well for their product keywords and generic search terms to only showing up when they searched for their new brand name.

Years of effort. Gone overnight.

Literally the worst nightmare of every store owner I’ve spoken to.

They were searching for an SEO consultant who could help them understand what had happened to their traffic and rankings and what, specifically, they could do to get their traffic back (they were even thinking of completely undoing the rebranding and migration — but had they done that, they would have had a whole other set of challenges).

Thanks to a referral from Kurt at Ethercycle.com, we connected, and started a Search Engine Optimization Audit project together to understand what had happened — and what exactly they should do.

The Risk In Rebrands and Migrations

Switching domain names and restructuring your website links both have major effects on your ability to rank for product keywords and generic search terms.

You can think of it like a heart transplant. You’re doing major surgery on your store.

You need to plan ahead, know what to expect, and know what to do before, during, and after the migration to minimize the shock to your traffic and rankings.

Thinking ‘Bout Links

When you switch domain names, you have to consider all of the links pointing to your old domain that are no longer pointing to the new store.

Working with the Ecommerce store who had lost their traffic after a rebrand, we discovered all of their links — links they spent years earning through relationships, blogger reviews, press, and hard word — were pointing to the old site, not the new store.

They were essentially starting over from scratch in the link building department.

Site Age Is A Real Thing

When you do a rebrand and migration, your have to consider that one of the factors Google looks at when ranking sites is the age of the site. A site that has been around for 3 years will score higher on this factor than a site that has only been around for 3 months.

When you flip the switch on a migration and switch over to a new store on a new domain, your store can appear as a completely new site with new content to Google.

That all translates to it taking more time to rank. You need to take time to age your site.

The Real Cost of Redirecting Pages

As a matter of best practice during a migration, you’ll want to redirect (using a “301 Redirect”) all of your old pages (products, pages, posts, etc.) to the matching product, page, or post on the new site.

Even when you follow this best practice, some of the value from the links pointing to your site will be lost.

If Google sees the new site and starts ranking it immediately (which it won’t - it takes time for the site to be crawled and start to rank) it will take time for the redirected links to help your ranking.

Consider… Content

Now, this all assumes that the content on the new pages on the new site matches the content of the old pages on the old site.

That is, other than the URLs, every other aspect of the site is remaining exactly the same: page titles, content, images, everything.

If you’re doing a rebrand on your site, you’re most likely changing page titles, content, images, and internal links.

Everything.

All of those changes have their own effects on rankings and traffic. Depending on how you’re linking to products and pages in the navigation, footer, or page content, you may see additional changes.

A rebrand often affects the content and that carries major implications to your ability to rank.

Minimizing The Risks of a Rebrand

Changing your domain name will affect your rankings and traffic.

Redirecting links pointing to your old site to the new site will affect your ability to rank.

Changing your copy and link structure will affect your ability to rank.

A rebrand touches page titles, content, images.

Everything.

There are so many ways that it can affect your traffic and rankings.

With the client, we identified 17 major changes they needed to make to minimize the negative effects of the rebrand.

Within a month, their traffic was up to 50% of their old levels. Improvement.

Over the next 3 months, their traffic continued to climb. 4 months after working together, their daily traffic passed their previous high-traffic amount.

But if they didn’t take action? It would have been like starting over from Day 1 in terms of SEO.

How To Avoid The Negative SEO Effects of Rebranding Your Store

The best bet is to get out ahead of it: have an action plan to preemptively make changes to minimize the ‘shock’ of the rebrand.

Even with a strategic plan you will see a 1-3 month shock to your rankings and organic traffic, but with the right SEO Migration Plan in place, you can minimize the length and strength of that shock to your traffic and rankings.

If you’re working on migrating your store and/or changing your domain name, store name, or content, then it is incredibly important for you to have an SEO Plan in place.

Have an SEO question? Schedule a 1-on-1 call with me here.

Know a merchant planning a rebrand who could use SEO help? Send them my way.

Originally published on Double Your Ecommerce by Kai Davis.

What questions should you ask an SEO consultant before you hire them?

kai@doubleyourecommerce.com (Kai Davis) — Thu, 22 Feb 2018 01:34:03 +0000

Hiring a consultant can feel like a complicated (and scary!) process, especially for something like Search Engine Optimization or getting more traffic where you may not see the results for 3, 6, or 9+ months (depending on the competitive landscape).

When you’re evaluating a Search Engine Optimization consultant, these are the questions that I recommend my friends and colleagues ask any consultants they’re evaluating.

There aren’t any ‘right’ answers per-say; rather, these questions let you see their thought process and strategic direction on a project.

An initial ‘Search Engine Optimization Discovery’ project makes the most sense to get these questions answered. That way, you get the questions answered in a way that makes sense for both you and the consultant and you’re able to ’test the waters’ with a small paid project to see how you work together.

You’ll want to understand:

- What SEO issues your consultant sees site-wide on your site
- For your top performing pages for Organic traffic, what issues does the consultant see?
- What keywords are you currently ranking for? *(Just the top 2-4 by traffic)*
- What keywords are your #1 competitors ranking for? *(Just the top 2-4 by traffic)*
- What is the strategic plan for ranking higher / copying competitor keywords?
- How healthy is your backlink profile? *(how many unique sites are linking to you, are they high quality, etc.)*
- How does this compare to your competitors? *(who is linking to them!)*
- What would make sense as a link building strategy? What strategies does the consultant recommend/advocate? *(You want to avoid anyone who mentions 'Our secret method' or 'Using Private Blog Networks...' — focus on sources of links that make sense for you, your products, and your business)*
- What's the plan to get +5-10 links from unique, high-quality referring domains every month?

Looking for a Shopify SEO consultant? Learn more about my done-for-you SEO implementation for Shopify stores.

Originally published on Double Your Ecommerce by Kai Davis.

Is Shopify Bad for SEO?

kai@doubleyourecommerce.com (Kai Davis) — Thu, 22 Feb 2018 01:33:07 +0000

Maybe you just saw a competitor ‘jump’ past you on Google.

Or maybe you just opened up a Shopify store or moved to Shopify from another platform (like Etsy, eBay, Kickstarter, WooCommerce, or something else).

No matter what the cause, if you’re experiencing Searching Engine Optimization or Traffic issues with your Shopify store (pages missing from Google, low rankings, competitors passing you in the search results, low traffic, or something else), the question might naturally cross your mind:

Is Shopify ‘Worse’ For Google For SEO?

As an SEO and Shopify Expert, let me answer this question cleanly and clearly:

No.

Shopify is as good — and, often, better! — than many other ecommerce platforms out there!

When it comes to ranking in Google and your traffic, there are three major factors at play.

How the content on your site is optimized for Google
The number of links you have from other relevant sites in Google
If your products and pages are showing ‘Rich Snippets’ in Google’s search results

If you’re suffering from low traffic, there are three things that I recommend you do:

Check to make sure your store doesn’t have any site-wide or page/product specific SEO issues. The best way to do that is to go through an SEO Opportunity Report for your store to identify if there are any SEO issues affecting your ability to rank in Google.
Check to see how many links — unique sites — you have pointing to your site. Check to see the same for your competitors for your primary or most popular keywords. If they have more links than you, that means they’ll be outranking you. The solution is to earn more high quality links and the best way to figure out how to do that is with a strategy to earn links, one of the topics tackled in the SEO Opportunity Report.
Install a plugin to take your product reviews and display them in the Google search results using a plugin like JSON-LD for SEO. Which would you be more likely to click: a normal link in Google or a link that showed ‘4.8/5 stars’ right below the link? I’d be clicking the one that told me the product review right in the search results. You need JSON-LD for SEO for that.

And if you want done-for-you help with your Shopify SEO, check out my SEO PowerUp — I’ll handle the optimization for you.

And fellow Shopify Store Owner, remember: you are no longer alone!

Want to learn how to do SEO on your Shopify store yourself? SEO Simplified walks you through the process step by step.

— Kai Davis, Senior Traffic Consultant, Double Your Ecommerce

Originally published on Double Your Ecommerce by Kai Davis.

Link Building For New (or 'boring') Ecommerce Businesses

kai@doubleyourecommerce.com (Kai Davis) — Thu, 22 Feb 2018 01:32:16 +0000

Multiple times a week I have friends who own Shopify stores ask me “Kai, I have thirty minutes — what can I do to get a link right now?”

These are a number of link building strategies that I use for my clients — let me show you them.

What’s the catch?

There’s no catch, no opt-in required, nothing holding you back. You can take every single one of these and implement them today — in fact, you should.

Let’s get started.

Run a Giveaway

If you run a regular, recurring giveaway (like Death Wish Coffee), you attract links to a static page on your site that encourages new visitors to engage with your site and end up on your email list by entering.

Ego Bait

One effective strategy that I’ve seen used to get links is to host an interview with an influencer, blogger, or journalist. This can be as complex or as simple as you want.

Complex Option

Schedule a time to talk with the influencer on the phone and interview them about recent news in the industry. Then either post the raw transcript of the interview or write up a ~500 - 1,000-word article surrounding the content.

Simple Option

On the simpler side, you can put together a short questionnaire — 3-5 questions about the influencers topic area — and send it to them to fill out. Then, using their answers as the seed, write up a short ‘interview’ using their answers.

In either case, you’re left with a new, engaging, authoritative piece of content — that the influencer is motivated to promote. From a link on their site to an influx of traffic form their list to links from other sites around the net, a piece of ’ego bait’ can be an effective way to create new content and get links.

How to Implement Ego Bait Link Building

It’s always easier than I think. Here’s how to get started with it:

Prepare a List — If you’re the site owner, make a list of ~5-10 bloggers, journalists, and influencers in your industry or that you share an audience with who you want to target with outreach. If you’re a consultant, interview your client and extract a shortlist of influencers. Alternatively, you can do a short safari to identify the top-ranking sites (high domain authority, lots of backlinks, lots of traffic, etc) for short- and medium-tail phrases related to your industry.
Decide on Your Interview Style — Are you going to schedule a phone/Skype interview? Are you going to send them a questionnaire to fill out? Either way, decide on the interview style you’re going to use.
Prepare Your Outreach — Do you have an existing relationship with the influencer? If you do, send them an email and ask to schedule an interview with them. If you don’t, prepare a short email that explains what you’re doing and why it’s worth the influencer investing their time.
Conduct the Interview — Host the interview with them, recording the phone/Skype call, or collecting their answers.
Write up the Interview — Based on their answers, prepare a piece of educational, informative, high-value content that’s interesting and engaging. You want to write something that (a) presents the influencer’s information in a positive light, (b) is interesting to the influencer’s audience, (c) is interesting enough to earn links from 3rd party sources.
Publish and Promote — Publish the interview on your site and then start promoting the interview. Contact the influencer, news/informational sites in your niche, and people who have previously linked to the influencer. Tell them about the interview and ask them if they’d like to link to the interview.

Ego Bait: Podcast Edition

Hosting a podcast is easier than ever. Between the affordable price for a high-quality microphone and the ease of use with podcasting tools like Simplecast, you can have a podcast in the time it takes for Amazon to deliver your new microphone.

And podcasts are an excellent way to build high-quality, relevant backlinks to a site. Think about it, every time you or your client appear on a podcast, you get a do-follow link back to your site / your client’s site with relevant anchor text from a typically high domain authority page.

On top of that, you can expect an influx of traffic (and new email subscribers) overtime you appear on a podcast. Podcasts are a great way to build links, generate website traffic, grow your email list, and increase your authority — all form the comfort and safety of your living room.

And that’s just from guesting on a podcast! If you start hosting your own podcast, you now have an excuse to contact influencers and ask them if they’d like to appear on your podcast.

Then, when the podcast releases, you can encourage them to share the podcast with their audience (link), post the podcast on their blog (link), or share the podcast with their friends (link) in addition to promoting the podcast yourself (more links).

On top of that, if you start hosting a podcast and invite a series of medium- and high-profile guests, you’re building up a library of high-quality, informational, evergreen content. Content that you can mine and repurpose into blogposts, white papers, or downloadable incentives.

Podcasting is a golden source of content for link building.

If you’re an eCommerce store, you may run into trouble finding reasons for influencers, bloggers, and journalists to link to you. Or you might be in a ‘boring’ industry and struggle to create interesting, high-quality content. Podcasting solves both of these problems:

If you’re having trouble finding reasons for people to link to you, your podcast because a link generating asset for your website, attracting high-quality links that increase your domain authority and help your website generate more traffic.
If you’re struggling to create interesting, high-quality content, podcasting lets you identify and interview influencers in your industry and audience, creating informational and educational content. On top of that, you can repurpose the content that your influencers share as blog posts (mining out relevant quotes), downloadable assets (using the podcast as a lead magnet), or transcripts / white papers (using online services to generate a transcript).

Comprehensive Resources

If you write the “How To [complicated process in your industry]” resource, you’ll have created a high-quality, high-value linkable asset. Once this asset is in your profile it’ll be a continual source of links and traffic for your website.

But how do you know what to create? And then, how will you know if it’s’ successful?

Donations

If you run an eCommerce site, you can find local nonprofits or civic organizations that are looking for donations, contact them, and arrange for a donation in exchange for a link.

How to Propose a Donation for a Link

Once you’ve identified the nonprofit, you’ll want to contact them — email or phone — and let them know that you run a local business, that you’re interested in facilitating a donation, and that you’re interested in a link from their homepage or another page back to your website.

If they tell you that’s fine, ask them what donation they’d think was fair. Then, arrange for that donation.

Steal Your Competitors’ Top Links

Your competitors’ have already done a wonderful job generating high-quality links from relevant industry sites. It’d be a shame if you didn’t do something about that.

To steal your competitors’ top links, you’ll want to do a two-step process:

First, you’ll want to perform a Competitive Link Analysis, identifying your competitors’ links. You can use MajesticSEO or SEOMoz for this, generating and downloading a list of the unique referring domains linking to your competitors’ or a list of the specific backlinks to your competitors’ sites.

Then, you’ll want to perform a Link Intersect, matching up these links and identifying the most valuable shared links for your competitors.

This is an in-depth, complicated process. So why not use a tool that simplifies the process? LinksSpy.com handles the Competitive Link Analysis and Link Intersect for you, automating a complex, time-consuming problem, and presenting you with a list of the most valuable links that your competitors have, letting you contact the website owner and request them link to you as well.

There you are, strategies that you can start implementing today to build links to your eCommerce site.

What did I leave off? What eCommerce link building strategy are you in love with? Now it’s your turn to talk to me: send me an email at kai@doubleyourecommerce.com and let me know what link building strategy you love.

Originally published on Double Your Ecommerce by Kai Davis.

Shopify Contributing Author

kai@doubleyourecommerce.com (Kai Davis) — Thu, 22 Feb 2018 01:32:03 +0000

I was invited by Shopify to come on as a Contributing Author. You an read the articles I’ve contributed or been featured in here: https://www.shopify.com/partners/blog/search?q=Kai+Davis

Originally published on Double Your Ecommerce by Kai Davis.

E-commerce Success: 40+ Experts Share Their Knowledge

kai@doubleyourecommerce.com (Kai Davis) — Thu, 22 Feb 2018 01:31:38 +0000

I was invited by FEInternational to contribute to an Expert Roundtable on eCommerce Success.

Originally published on Double Your Ecommerce by Kai Davis.

Brutally Honest SEO Advice for Ecommerce Entrepreneurs

kai@doubleyourecommerce.com (Kai Davis) — Thu, 22 Feb 2018 01:31:27 +0000

I was interviewed on the “Unofficial Shopify Podcast” on “Brutally Honest SEO Advice for Ecommerce Entrepreneurs”

You can listen to the episode here: http://www.unofficialshopifypodcast.com/episodes/4652-brutally-honest-seo-advice-for-ecommerce-entrepreneurs

Originally published on Double Your Ecommerce by Kai Davis.

On-Page SEO Audit Checklist

kai@doubleyourecommerce.com (Kai Davis) — Thu, 22 Feb 2018 01:30:16 +0000

One question that people often ask me is “When I’m optimizing a page for SEO, what steps do I need to take? What’s essential?”

I’m writing this guide to break down the ten major ranking factors that I focus on when doing an SEO Opportunity Report for a store optimizing pages for specific keywords.

What Factors Should I Consider?

There are ten major factors that you want to consider:

The keyword you’re targeting
The average search volume for that keyword
The #1, #2, and #10 ranking sites for that keyword
The number of external links from unique sites the #1, #2, and #10 sites have
Your Page Title
Your Page URL (or URL Slug)
Your Page Headline
The Number of words on your page
The instances of your keyword on your page
The number of internal links pointing to your page

I put together This Spreadsheet that you can use to keep track of these factors for your keyword, your site, and your competitors’ sites. Just go to ‘File, Make a Copy’ to make your own copy.

Factor #1: The keyword you’re targeting

The first thing we have to consider is what keyword do we want the page to target?

A good rule of thumb is that each page on your site should target one primary keyword.

Following a 1-to-1 relationship between the keyword you’re targeting and a page on your site makes it easier as you plan out your SEO strategy.

If there are three primary keywords you’re targeting like:

Baseball Tickets
Chicago Baseball Tickets
Discount Chicago Baseball Tickets

You’d want a single page on your site targeting each keyword.

That’s a basic best practice to follow. There are situations where you can have or will want to have one-page targeting multiple keywords, but, for simplicity, let’s focus on a 1-to-1 relationship.

For the page you’re optimizing, do you have a specific keyword in mind? Is it part of some larger SEO strategy? How did you decide that this keyword was worth targeting? What keyword do you want to optimize for?

Once you have a keyword in mind, you’re ready to qualify that keyword based on search traffic and competition and then optimize for that keyword.

Factor #2: The average search volume for that keyword

The first criteria we’ll use to qualify that keyword is the average monthly search volume we can expect for this keyword.

Now, there are two components to this:

The first component is the total monthly search volume for that keyword
The second component is the position we can expect to rank for when we optimize for that keyword

Each position on the top 10 has a different click-through rate.

Position #1: 31.24% Click Through Rate
Position #2: 14.04% Click Through Rate
Position #3: 9.85% Click Through Rate
Position #4: 6.97% Click Through Rate
Position #5: 5.50% Click Through Rate
Position #6-10: 3.73% Click Through Rate
2nd Page (inclusive): 3.99% Click Through Rate

Calculating Total Search Volume

I like to use the Google Keyword Planner to search for my keyword and see what the appoximate total expected search volume is for that keyword.

Calculating Actual Monthly Search Volume

Once you figure out the total monthly search volume for your keyword, you’ll want to multiply the total search volume by the click through rate for the 1st, 2nd, and 10th positions.

This will give you a healthy range for the traffic you can expect as you optimize for the keyword.

If your keyword gets 1,000 total searches/month, that means you’ll get ~300 unique searches/month if you ranked 1st for that keyword.

Factor #3: The #1, #2, and #10 Ranking Sites

First, do a Google search for the keyword that you’re targeting. Then, write down the URLs for the 1st, 2nd, and 10th ranking sites for that keyword search.

Factor #4: The number of links the #1, #2, and #10 sites ranking for that keyword have

Then, we want to look at the number of links pointing to the #1, #2, and #10 ranking sites. We want to think about the number of unique sites linking to those pages.

It’s infinitely easier to get 1,000 links from one site than 1,000 links from 1,000 sites, so ranking algorithms place more weight on the number of unique sites linking to a page than the total number of links.

To figure out the number of unique domains linking to a competitor’s page, you’ll want to use a backlink checker like:

Of the three, I prefer Majestic. I find that their database of sites is broader than SEOMoz or AHrefs. However, any of the three will work fine for you.

Simply enter the URL of the page you want to check into the backlink checker and you’ll get back a report that tells you exactly how many unique referring domains (unique sites) are linking to that site.

For all four domains — your site and the #1, #2, and #10 ranking sites — use the backlink checker of your choice to determine the number of links pointing to that site. Record those in the spreadsheet.

Factor #5: Page Title

Your page title is like the headline of your newspaper. The headline tells the search engines and visitors what your page is about.

You’d be confused if you were reading a newspaper and came across two stories with the same title “Is this the same content? What’s going on?”

When creating a page title, Google weights the keywords contained in a page title left to right. That means that keywords that are closer to the start of the page title are more relevant than keywords towards the end of the URL.

When optimizing a page title for a specific keyword, if you’re able to include the keyword closer to the start of the page title, it’ll be slightly more effective and relevant.

For the four pages you’re auditing, you want to record the page title for each of them. One easy way to do this is to use the SEOMoz Toolbar or the bulk title tag checker.

Install the toolbar (Firefox and Chrome only). Then, when you’re on the site, activate the toolbar by clicking on it and then exploring the page information.

Bulk Title Tag Checker

Simply enter your list of URLs into the bulk title tag checker and get back the titles of the pages.

Factor #6: Page URL Slug

When looking at the Page URL, you’re interested in seeing if the page URL includes your keyword.

Point of reference: the ‘page URL’ is the full URL for the domain. The ‘Page URL Slug’ is the part of the URL that comes after the Page Domain.

Here’s an example.

We have the URL DoubleYourEcommerce.com/article/

For this URL:

The Page URL is DoubleYourEcommerce.com/article/
The Page Domain is DoubleYourEcommerce.com/
The Page URL Slug is /article/

For your URLs, we’re interested in the Page URL Slug. If the page you’re looking at is the root page (homepage) of the site, you’ll want to use the Page URL.

For each site on your list, record the Page URL Slug or Page Domain in your spreadsheet.

Factor #7 Page Headline

If the Page Title is the name of the story, the headline is the title sentence. The headline is what gets visitors reading and moves them further down the page into the content itself.

You want your headline to contain the keyword that you’re optimizing for. If you’re creating a page about Discount Chicago Baseball Tickets, then the headline should include the phrase Discount Chicago Baseball Tickets.

If your headline does not contain that relevant phrase, you’ll confuse your visitors (“I thought this page was about Discount Chicago Baseball Tickets…?”) and confuse search engines visiting your site (they’ll be getting mixed signals about what the page is about).

For each URL on your list, you want to through and record the headline (H1 tag) for that page. There are a few tools that you can use:

The SEOMoz Toolbar
The HTML Headlines Checker

Open up the SEOMoz Toolbar and check the headline displayed on the page.

For each site, repeat this process and record the Headline / H1 in your spreadsheet.

HTML Headlines Checker

Enter the URL you want to check and submit the form. On the next page, you’ll see all the headlines (H1, H2, etc.) for that page.

For each site, repeat this process and record the Headline / H1 in your spreadsheet.

Factor #8: Words On Page

The next factor you want to consider is the number of words on your page.

This is an important metric to consider when we think about both the experience for the visitor and the experience for a search engine.

The type of page that our visitor wants to find has high-quality, relevant content that answers the visitors questions or directs them to more relevant resources. It has more content, not less.

Likewise, the type of page that a search engine wants to see is content rich with a good amount of unique text, images, and links pointing out to other pages and other websites.

When you think about creating content for your website, you want to focus on creating high-quality, relevant content with a good word count.

How many words should you include?

It’s hard to say. What we can do is assess the relative number of words that you need on your page to compete.

By looking at the number of words on the page, you can see, specifically, how your competitors stack up. And from that, you can see how many words you should target writing for your page.

How To Figure Out Word Count

If you want to figure out the word count on a page, you can use the Bulk Webpage Word Count Checker tool. Enter the URL(s) you want to check and this tool will tell you the number of words on the page.

Factor #9: Instances of Keyword On Page

One level deeper than just word count is the question ‘how often is a keyword used on this page?’

There’s a limit to the number of times that you want to include your target keyword in the content. You want the content to appear natural, but ‘natural’ is a hard quality to shoot for. How many times would a keyword ‘naturally’ be included in a page?

Hard to say.

What I advise is looking at the competing pages (The #1, #2, and #10 ranking sites) for your keyword and seeing how many times they include your target keyword in the content on their page. This will give you a ballpark number to target for ‘number of times to include the keyword’ when creating or optimizing your content.

For this, I just open up the page and then use the ‘find’ command in my browser to see how many times that keyword is repeated on the page.

Factor #10: Internal Links to Page

The final factor you want to consider is the number of internal links on the site that are pointing to the page.

Internal links are a valuable resource. They’re a way for you to get a high-quality, relevant, keyword rich link pointing to a page on your site.

And the sooner that a search engine encounters this link on your site, the sooner they’ll discover the page you’re linking to. (So, as an aside, it’s valuable to link to your most important pages on your homepage or top landing pages. This will make them more easily visible to Google).

There’s a lot that can be said about auditing and optimizing internal links on your site. What I recommend is just focusing on two things:

If the page is an important marketing page, link to the page from the footer or header navigation on your site
Whenever possible, link to the page using keyword rich anchor text from other articles or pages on your site

Your Optimization Checklist

When you’re optimizing your page, these are the major elements you’ll want to optimize:

First, identify your keyword
Then, make sure you’re including your keyword in the Page Title, the URL Slug, and the Headline
After that, make sure that your page has high-quality, relevant, unique content on it, that includes your targeted keyword multiple times

Wrapping It All Up

There we are. Ten factors to consider when you’re creating a new page on your site or optimizing an existing page on your site.

When you run through this yourself, you’ll want to use the data that you uncover in this audit as you create your page.

This direct data from the search rankings of your competitors will tell you how to optimize your site to compete and out-rank your competitors for your most valuable keywords.

Want help working through this checklist for your store? With SEO coaching, I can guide you through the audit and optimization process step by step. Or learn on-page SEO at your own pace with SEO Simplified.

Originally published on Double Your Ecommerce by Kai Davis.

How do I get more traffic to my store?

kai@doubleyourecommerce.com (Kai Davis) — Thu, 22 Feb 2018 01:29:09 +0000

My friend Paul Jarvis asked this great question:

Almost all of my clients want more traffic to their website, but it ends there (as in, they have no idea what to do and social media isn’t doing anything for them). In broad strokes, what do you suggest?

Simply put, for your clients to get more traffic, they need to earn high-quality, relevant links to their sites. No matter what anyone says, that’s the secret sauce.

When I say ‘high-quality’ I mean that the links we’re earning should come from websites that have been recently updated, are well designed, and are actively publishing content.
When I say ‘relevant’, I mean the websites that we’re earning links from should be related to your industry.

Gone are the days when you could build 500 low-quality links and see your rankings climb. You want to slowly, incrementally earn high-quality, relevant links for your website to see your traffic increase.

But how do you do this? How do you know what sites to earn links from? Or what resources to create to attract those links? It’s a multi-step process:

First, you need to identify the communities of sites you want to earn links from. These communities are groups of sites that are linked by topic or audience.
Then, you need to ask yourself why would these communities want to link to you? What type of resources are they already linking to? The answer to these questions gives you direction on the type of resources that you need to create in order to earn links from these communities.
After that, you need to put together the asset that you want to use to earn links.
Finally, you need to get in touch with influential sites in these communities and start a relationship with them. Your goals should be to build a relationship with them, provide value to them and their audience, and find an opportunity to work with them to promote your content and products to their audiences, earning you a link.

In practice, there are a lot of moving parts to this. Let’s walk through an example for an eCommerce website to see what this can look like.

Let’s pretend that you, dear reader, own an eCommerce website that sells acupuncture supplies to acupuncture studios. You want to get more traffic to your website. What do you do?

Who do we earn links from?

You want to start by thinking about the communities that you want to earn links from. The specifics of the campaign should wait until later.

By thinking through the community that you want to earn links from, you’ll be able to better focus your campaign on your audience. In practice, I’ve found that thinking about the community first is the difference between saying:

“To earn links, we need to launch a podcast!”

and saying:

“We want to earn links from acupuncture studios that are using our supplies. To do this, we’ll launch a podcast about marketing for acupuncture studios. We’ll interview our customers about the marketing strategies they’re using to grow their business. Then, we’ll earn links from their websites by asking them to post about the podcast on their site.

With the second example, we have specific direction on the audience for the campaign, which makes implementation easier. This is the difference between a lot of the link building strategies you can read online and an outreach focused campaign. By defining your audience first, you have direction on who you’re targeting with the campaign before you start thinking about the ‘what’ of the campaign.

So, how do you figure out which community you should focus on? There are a few strategies you can use:

You can survey the sites and communities in your industry and begin identifying the sites you see linking to your site, your competitors’ websites, and other sites in your industry.
You can work with a colleague to brainstorm the type of communities that you want to earn links from.
You can analyze similar industries and see the communities that they’re earning links from.

There are a few tools that you can use for this analysis:

You can use Majestic SEO to look at your competitors’ websites and other sites in your industry and see who is linking to them.
You can LinksSpy to run a Competitor Link Analysis and Link Intersect Report on your competitors’ websites to identify the websites that are linking to your competitors.

For our example acupuncture supply website, we might decide that there are four communities that we want to earn links from:

Acupuncture Supply Review Websites that review different acupuncture supplies and provide recommendations based on price and quality.
Acupuncture Studios that purchase and use our products.
Conferences & Conventions that are focused on an audience of acupuncturists.
Acupuncture Schools that provide training and certification.

What are these communities linking to?

For each community that we want to earn links form, it’s important to identify what resources and sites they’re linking to, why they’re linking to these sites, and what we have of value to offer that can earn us a similar link.

For your website, you’ll want to study the communities that you’ve identified and ask yourself ‘what value can I provide?’

For our hypothetical acupuncture supply website, let’s take a look at each community we want to earn links from:

Acupuncture Supply Review Websites are linking to product pages on other supplier websites. They’re linking to these product pages from within product reviews. To earn a similar link, we can offer them samples of our product to review.
Acupuncture Studios are linking to supplier websites to communicate to their clients the quality of the supplies they use. To earn a similar link, we can offer our clients a badge or testimonial that speaks to the quality of their practice and supplies.
Conferences & Conventions are linking to supplier, vendor, and attendee websites in exchange for a gift, donation, sponsorship, or ticket purchase. To earn a similar link, we can donate supplies to these conferences and conventions.
Acupuncture Schools are linking to scholarship programs for acupuncture students. To earn a similar link, we can launch a scholarship for students enrolled in an acupuncture program and then promote this scholarship to acupuncture schools.

For each community, we can begin to identify the resources or assets that they’re linking to and what we can do to provide value and earn a similar link.

What assets do we need?

An ‘asset’ is a resource that we’re creating or making available as part of our campaign in order to build a relationship with the community and earn a link. For this project, assets could include:

Product samples that you’re making available to review sites
A podcast that you launch to interview authorities and experts
Your time and knowledge that you make available for other people to interview
A scholarship that you launch and promote

To earn links from outreach, for each community that you’re targeting, there are specific assets that you’ll want to prepare as part of each campaign. During outreach to these communities, you’ll use these assets to open a conversation, begin a relationship, and earn links to your website.

For our hypothetical Acupuncture supply website, let’s take a look at the assets we’ll want to prepare to earn links:

For Acupuncture Supply Review Websites, we’ll want to set aside samples of our products to send to them to review.
For Acupuncture Studios, we’ll want to prepare testimonials that speak to the quality of the acupuncture studios’ practice and their supplies.
For Conferences & Conventions, we’ll want to set aside samples of our products for conference to gift to attendees.
For Acupuncture Schools, we’ll want to launch a scholarship for students enrolled in an acupuncture program.

Once we’ve selected a community and asset, we’ll want to prepare that asset. Then, we’re ready to begin Digital Outreach and build relationships with the communities we’re targeting.

How do we connect with these sites?

The final step is to contact sites within these communities and start a conversation with them. I treat this outreach like a high-touch business development or sales relationship:

I research my prospect to learn their name, background, email address, and related details.
After that, I map out my first four emails to them. What do they care about? How do I make this conversation about them? What do I say if they respond positively? What do I say if they respond negatively? What do I say if they don’t respond?
Then, I prepare a personalized / customized email to send them.
Finally, I send my first email to them. I use Yesware to track if/when they open my email, manage my templates, and remind me when to follow up.

In your outreach, you don’t want to immediately ask for a link. That’s a bit too forward.

While one of your goals is to earn a link, you want to focus on building a positive, ongoing business relationship with your prospect and the site they’re associated with. In the long run, that relationship will be more valuable to you, your business, and your website, than a single link. In your communication, focus on providing value to them, not asking for something for you.

Putting It All Together

To get more traffic to your website, you need more links. To earn links for your website, you need to:

Identify the communities that you want to link to you.
Research the types of resources and assets that these communities are already linking to.
Prepare a similar resource or asset for your website.
Start a conversation with influencers in the communities you’re targeting. Build a relationship with them. Provide value. Work with them to find an opportunity to promote your content and products to their audiences.

Are you interested in increasing the traffic to your website? With the Traffic Powerup, we’ll slowly, incrementally increase the traffic to your website.

Originally published on Double Your Ecommerce by Kai Davis.

Is SEO Dead?

kai@doubleyourecommerce.com (Kai Davis) — Wed, 04 Feb 2015 17:23:48 +0000

A few months ago, I had a conversation with a client who was convinced that SEO was dead:

- They had set up a site for a new brand they were launching
- They had invested in an on-site SEO optimization package to get their on-site SEO dialed in
- And they waited for their rankings to increase
- When they *didn’t* increase, they bought a link building package from another consultant and waited

And…

Nothing.

Their rankings hadn’t moved an inch. They were buried on Page 5 for their primary keyword.

When we got on the phone, they had one question: if on-site Search Engine Optimization is dead and Link Building doesn’t work anymore, what’s an eCommerce store supposed to do to get more traffic?

The short of it is that SEO isn’t dead. Changed and evolved, sure, but not dead.

The days of SEO trickery are slowly (and thankfully!) fading away. Sure, there’s some ways of gaming the system, but it’s not like it has been in the past.

When it comes to eCommerce SEO, you can’t just do a bit of on-site optimization and then throw some links at your site and expect results. There are so many factors that are relevant: the age of your site, how entrenched your competitors are, your on-site optimization, and the quality and relevance of the sites linking to you.

If you’re thinking about launching a new online store and you want to know if you should invest in Search Engine Optimization, I can assure you: Search Engine Optimization is alive and kicking.

What’s different about SEO now as compared to Search Engine Optimization two years ago is the need to focus on strategies that help you attract high-quality links by improving your visitors’ experience.

When it comes to getting more traffic, you need links from high-quality, relevant websites. And the best way to attract high-quality, relevant links is be aiming to make yourself more relevant and helpful to searchers.

Unfortunately, the conversation often focuses on ‘link building’, when it should focus on ‘how to delight visitors’ or ‘how to build a better business.’

When you get started improving the quality and relevance of your website, you’ll attract more links. If you’re creating educational, relevant content on your site — articles, resources, how-to guides, courses, tutorials, case studies, etc — that add value to your visitors’ lives, you’ll see more links, more traffic, and more sales.

But! It can take much, much longer to see results now than it used to. Depending on how optimized your site is and how invested in SEO your competitors are, it can take months to see your site slowly, incrementally creep up in the rankings.

You can do all of the on-site optimization you want, but that alone won’t get you ranking.

Sure — the dream of adding a new product to your site and then skyrocketing to the top of Page 1 can happen, but to get there takes years of slow, incremental, ongoing work.

I can’t tell you the number of high-quality, well-optimized eCommerce stores I’ve audited that have amazing products, beautiful photos, and an excellent staff managing the business — but they have absolutely no links — and they can’t understand why they’re unable to get ranking or attract traffic.

A lot of the fear, doubt, and uncertainty around the value of SEO comes from expecting it to be an easy fix for a business. But that mindset results in people applying a minimum level of effort and not seeing any results.

SEO isn’t dead. It just takes time and work. And if you want expert help with your Shopify SEO, I can handle the implementation for you.

If you focus on building a better business by improving your visitors’ experience, you’ll naturally attract and earn more links. On top of that, building a better business is a more interesting problem to solve.

Sure, you can talk about strategies to help you earn 10 more links to your site, but isn’t it better to ask “How do we create a resource that’s valuable for our customers?”

If you want to attract more links and traffic to your website, you have to ask yourself “Why do the people I’m trying to reach care about what I’m selling?” Or “Why do I deserve to earn their attention?”

Originally published on Double Your Ecommerce by Kai Davis.

Ask Kai: What should I do to promote a great article, product, or course?

kai@doubleyourecommerce.com (Kai Davis) — Thu, 22 Jan 2015 15:45:20 +0000

My friend Philip asked this wonderful question about the best way to promote a great piece of content:

What should people who have written some piece of content (like a blog post, article, or course) that they’re really excited about do to get other people excited about it?

I love questions like this. There’s a whole lot that Digital Outreach can be used for beyond link building.

First off, why would you want to promote a great article, product, or course? There’s a few reasons:

You want to promote an upcoming product launch that the article references
You want to earn links for the content, helping you generate more search engine traffic
You want to improve your brand and image by linking it to high-quality content
You want to generate one-time or ongoing referral traffic by working with an expert, tastemaker, or authority to promote the content
You want to generate more sales by promoting a new product
You want to build ongoing relationships with experts, tastemakers, or authorities in our industry

Earning a high-quality link or getting more traffic are just a few of the reasons why you’d want to promote a piece of content. And for any outcome that you’re targeting from the above list, you’ll follow a similar process.

Define your outreach goal
Intentionally identifying authorities
Build a relationship
Make a specific ask
Reciprocate & Nurture the Relationship

Five steps that are key to any promotional, public relations, or digital outreach campaign. Let’s walk through them.

Define Your Outreach Goal

Your first step — as always — is to identify what success looks like.

Whenever I work with a client, I ask them to answer a short series of questions about their business and goals. I want to understand what they’re looking to accomplish, the most challenging aspects of the campaign, and how they want to improve their situation.

Here’s the four questions that I love asking. Before you start your next promotional or outreach campaign — or the next time you work with a client — I recommend working through these questions.

If you had to set priorities now, what three things must be accomplished?
Ideally, how would conditions improve as a result of this project?
What precise aspects are most troubling to you?
What constitutes acceptable improvement? Ideal improvement?

When you answer these questions, you narrow in on the strategic objective of the campaign. By answering these questions before you even start to think about the who or what of your campaign, you’ll be able to understand what success looks like and backwards plan from there.

Intentionally Identifying Authorities

First, a question: why target your outreach specifically toward authorities, experts, and tastemakers?

Because there’s always a smaller number of ‘best influencers’ that you want to reach than there are all people.

That means that marketing to just these people is cheaper than marketing to everyone… but the results you can get from connecting with even just one of them can be outsized for your business.

Likewise, the specific people you want to reach depend on the goal for your campaign. The people you want to reach to earn a link for your website are often different from the people you want to reach to promote an upcoming product launch. The outcome you’re looking to achieve helps you identify the communities that you want to reach.

Whenever I work on a Digital Outreach campaign for a client, I start the Authority Identification phase by ‘safariing’ the communities that you’re targeting:

I study these communities from the inside, as if I was a member.
I read the popular blogs, forums, and articles.
I study where these communities congregate, the resources that people share, and the sites that people promote.

You want to approach the communities this way so you can understand who you’re trying to reach, the language that these communities use, and what these communities value.

Then, you’ll want to draw up an initial list of people you want to build a relationship with. This doesn’t have to be an excessively large list. The impact you’ll get from building a relationship with 5 - 10 authorities, experts, or tastemakers is dramatically higher than if you attempted to ‘shotgun’ promote your content to 25, 50, or 100+ people at once.

We’ve all been on the bad-side of a promotional blast — or heard the horror stories.

In your outreach, you want to focus on building a relationship. Any other outcomes — a link, a quote, a tweet, or a promotional opportunity — are strictly secondary.

In the long-term, a positive relationship will reward you more than a single, short-term win.

One more note on this topic: when trying to promote an article, earn a link, or build a relationship, I’ve found the most success from contacting popular single-author blogs of websites related to the topic or industry.

In terms of metrics, I look for websites that are recently updated, well designed, and have between 100 and 1,000 referring domains linking to them. These are the perfect match between ’enough of a readership to make an impact’ and ‘small enough to not have gatekeepers in place.’

Build a Relationship

The first step is to study the authorities on your list.

What are their goals?
What’s their unique story?
What articles are they sharing?
What projects or products are they talking about?

Answering these questions helps you understand the best way to engage with them and focus on building a relationship.

Then, you’ll want to lightly engage with them. Follow them on Twitter. Leave a meaty (150 - 300 word) comment on a blog post. Tweet about one of their recent posts on Twitter.

This lets you lightly and slowly enter the conversation with them. You don’t want to suddenly show up asking them for something. With this slow, incremental approach, you’re cautiously building a relationship.

Engage With Their Community

Before you ask them for a favor, you want to contribute to them and their community. Interact with them. Comment on a blog post. Join their forum. Attend a webinar.

Take the time to engage with them. ‘Give’ three or four times before you reach out to them directly.

Direct Outreach

After you engage with their community, you want to transition to directly engaging with the authorities.

I like starting off with contacting them through email. Two reasons:

It’s often easier to find their email address than a phone number
Unless you’re contacting someone who’s positioning themselves as a business online or making their phone number easily available, it can be shocking to get an unexpected call from ‘The Internet’

You’ll want to have a specific reason to contact them. Ideally, you have something — not your article! — to share.

No long, rambling, open-ended, no-call-to-action emails. Be specific and direct. Don’t waste their time. Be respectful.

Persistence

You might not hear back the first time. Or you might hear back, but they tell you that now isn’t a good time.

That’s okay.

You’re going to be persistent. Here’s why. It can take up to 9 rejections to get a meeting or an agreement. What makes the difference between people who face that rejection one time and quit or 40 times and never quit is purely determined by the systems that they have in place.

Very few — only about 4% of people — keep trying after the first four rejections.

You must have the expectation that you will receive rejection. Do not take it personally. This is only part of the system, part of the process of building a relationship. To be successful, you must go through this rejection.

To achieve success in my outreach, I use a multi-week outreach strategy. This strategy guides me through politely and persistently reaching out to the authorities I want to build a relationship with.

My system builds in 8+ attempts to make contact with each authority. My goal is to reach out to the authority 8 times even if the authority declines or doesn’t respond 8 times1.

When I start a Digital Outreach campaign to promote an article, a resource, or a client or help a client earn links for their website, I map out the first 3-5 ’touches’ in the series:

The first, second, and third email that I send the authority
What I say if they say ‘No’
What I say if they say ‘I don’t think this is a good fit…’

If you continue to market to someone with great vigor, they will absolutely get to know who you are. If they tell you ‘No! No!’ and you keep connecting with them, they will go from not knowing you to knowing who you are to feeling obligated to work with you.

You must expect and plan for the people you’re contacting to say ‘No!’ several times — and anticipate that these rejections will not cause you to give up. In your mind, you must have a plan: what’s the first email you send them? What’s the second?

After all, how important could your product, your business, or your request be if you gave up after a single rejection?

Make a Specific Ask

When it’s time to make a specific ask — sharing an article, coming onto a podcast, working together on a joint venture — you want to start with a small, specific ask.

When Tim Feriss was first promoting the Four Hour Work Week, when he had connected with an authority or expert that he wanted to work with, he developed a relationship, focused on providing value to them, and then made a short, specific ask.

In Tim’s case, this is where it gets interesting. Instead of asking the expert to read his entire manuscript, he sent them a single chapter that best aligned with their interests. These factors all enhanced the strength of his ask:

It was a small, specific ask
It directly related to the expert’s area of interest
It came after developing a relationship with the expert

You want to be focused on building a relationship and then using that relationship as a basis to explore working together.

Reciprocate & Nurture the Relationship

Once you’ve made your ask and received an answer — yes or no — you want to reciprocate, continue providing value to the person you’re working with, and focus on nurturing the relationship.

You want to think about this as ‘playing the long game.’

Success isn’t in getting a one-time review, post, or link. Success is building a long-term, ongoing relationship with someone who is established in your industry.

By focusing on providing value to them and their community and reciprocating any value they give to you, you show that you aren’t just looking for a short-term win.

During an outreach campaign, I take the following steps to track and nurture the relationships I’m building:

First, I add the influencer to my contact management system. I use a combination of StreakCRM 2, Buzzstream 3, and Highrise 4.
Then, I use either Streak’s ‘Snooze’ feature or the Boomerang Gmail extension to set periodic reminders to check in and see how they’re doing. For my personal contacts, I add them to my Drip account and tag them as a ‘personal contact’ or ‘client’.
After that, If I come across an article or resource that I think they would value — or if I or my client write something that I think they’d enjoy reading — I send them a short note with the article attached.

In essence, I treat them like a friend that I want to stay in touch with.

By focusing on staying in touch and providing value to them, you’re able to nurture a long-term, ongoing relationship, that can and will continue to provide to you, your business, or your client’s business.

That way, the next time you have a great article, product, or course that you’re working on promoting, it’s easy to look at the people you’ve worked with before and drop them a quick note saying: “Hey! Hope you’re doing well, loved your latest podcast episode. I just finished writing an article on that topic and I think you’d enjoy reading it. Check it out!”

Closing Thoughts

At the most basic level, the best way to promote a great article, product, course, or piece of content is to focus on building a human relationship with a relevant authority, expert, or tastemaker.

When you have that relationship in place, it becomes much easier to achieve the outcome you’re looking for: more traffic, more leads, more sales, better image.

A relationship with an authority in your industry — like, say, Andrew Warner of Mixergy — can pay off for your business in a number of ways:

A high-quality link for your website
Promotion for your upcoming course or product
More traffic, leads, and sales for your business
Improvement in your brand and image

But it’s the relationship — a connection with an influential person in your industry — that’s the real payoff for you and your business.

When you focus on building that relationship, it’s easy to promote a great piece of content. And it’s easy to build a better business.

Did you enjoy reading this article? You should read “How do I get more traffic?” next.

The exception? If I get a firm, direct, rational ’no’. If someone defers or delays, I continue outreach to them. If someone politely explains why this isn’t a good match, I’ll thank them for their time. ↩
For managing ongoing relationships ↩
For identifying, qualifying, initiating, and tracking relationships ↩
For tracking my clients and personal contacts ↩

Originally published on Double Your Ecommerce by Kai Davis.

Case Study — 300% Growth in eCommerce Traffic for The Kewl Shop

kai@doubleyourecommerce.com (Kai Davis) — Mon, 08 Dec 2014 22:00:32 +0000

When The Kewl Shop wanted to increase their organic search traffic, they approached me to manage their Digital Outreach campaign and build high-quality, relevant, merit based links to their website.

Unlike a traditional Link Building Campaign, our Digital Outreach campaign was focused on building relationships with relevant influencers and authorities in their industry, not just ‘blasting’ low-quality, spammy links.

At the end of our work together, we saw The Kewl Shop’s organic search traffic increase by over 300%.

At the start of our engagement, we clarified the outcomes we were targeting in our work together. Specifically, we wanted to:

Implement an SEO campaign to increase the organic traffic that The Kewl Shop was receiving
Define a Digital Outreach campaign to build relationships with relevant bloggers, writers, influencers, and authorities in The Kewl Shop’s fashion industry
Build a repeatable, scalable process for organically generating high-quality, relevant links

Rather than simply ‘blasting’ a bunch of low-quality, spammy links, we wanted to use Digital Outreach to build relationships with relevant communities and then find opportunities to expose The Kewl Shop’s best content and products to those audiences, earning high-quality links for The Kewl Shop.

In our work together, we started by identifying the specific communities (“Link Ecosystems”) of sites that we wanted to earn links from and then outlining the content or assets (“Linkable Assets”) that we’d need to earn those links. We narrowed these Link Ecosystems down to:

Fashion and Style Bloggers and Writers
Educational Domains like Universities, Colleges, and High Schools

Digital Outreach Campaigns

For each Link Ecosystem, I managed the Digital Outreach campaign to build relationships on The Kewl Shop’s behalf and expose an audience to The Kewl Shop’s products and content.

I outlined and implemented three separate Digital Outreach campaigns for The Kewl Shop:

An ‘Influencer Outreach’ campaign to connect us with relevant style bloggers and writers and expose our best products to their audiences.
An ‘Authority Interview’ campaign to connect us with relevant style bloggers and earn links from their website
A ‘Scholarship Link Building’ campaign, to earn high-quality, relevant links from educational domains.

For each campaign, I managed the Digital Outreach process to connect The Kewl Shop with relevant sites, build relationships with the influencers and authorities managing those sites, and expose the influencer’s audience to The Kewl Shop’s best products and content.

Product Review & Authority Interview Campaigns

To earn links from Fashion and Style Bloggers, I defined and implemented a Product Review Campaign and Authority Interview Campaign that would allow us to build ongoing relationships with influential fashion and style bloggers, work with them to expose their audience to The Kewl Shop’s Bandage Dresses and Leggings, and earn relevant links back to The Kewl Shop’s website.

Through this Digital Outreach, we were able to build relationships with relevant Fashion and Style Bloggers and find opportunities to earn links and expose their audience to our best products and content through product style posts, giveaway campaigns, and blogger interviews.

Scholarship Link Building Campaign

To earn links from Educational Sites, I outlined and implemented a Scholarship Link Building Campaign, promoting The Kewl Shop’s Fashion Design Scholarships to relevant schools and student organizations.

Through this Digital Outreach, we were able to build relationships with decision makers within targeted Fashion Design programs and earn educational links to The Kewl Shop’s website.

Campaign Results

At the end of our 3-month engagement, The Kewl Shop saw a dramatic 300% increase in Organic Search Traffic, putting The Kewl Shop in a position to hire a full-time internal employee to manage these campaigns.

Collaborating with Charles and The Kewl Shop on this Traffic Powerup campaign was a pleasure. We started with an SEO Opportunity Report and then moved into a custom Traffic PowerUp.

Do You Want To Grow Your Website’s Traffic?

The SEO Opportunity Report is a service designed to help you earn your website high-quality traffic.

If you’re ready to grow your eCommerce website’s traffic, you should get in touch.

Know a merchant who could use results like these? Send them my way.

Originally published on Double Your Ecommerce by Kai Davis.

Authority Interviews

kai@doubleyourecommerce.com (Kai Davis) — Wed, 29 Oct 2014 03:00:44 +0000

When it comes to generating more traffic for your website, the best options help your website accomplish a number of different outcomes:

They establish your authority as an expert in your industry with your audience
They create linkable assets for your business, assets that help your website continue to generate links with little effort on your part
They attract traffic through social media, referrals, and organic search
They build relationships with other brands and businesses in your industry

One of my favorite tactics to use to increase traffic to a website? Interviews!

It’s easy to get started with interviews as a link building and traffic generation strategy. There’s three types of interviews that you can create and share:

Text Interviews are the easiest to get started with. You send the interviewee a list of questions, collect their answers, and build an interview around their answers.
Audio Interviews are slightly more difficult to get started with, but are an easy way to produce longer-form, high-quality content. To do them well, I’d recommend using a headset, Skype, and something to record the call.
Video Interviews are very impressive, but take additional equipment (lights, microphone, etc) to do well.

For this article, let’s just riff on Text Interviews for a bit. They’ve easy to get started with, you can systematize most of the pieces, and when you’re ready to graduate up to the next level, the same best practices apply.

For something simple that you can get started with today, text interviews take the cake.

Let’s talk about the outcomes this tactic can produce for you:

Establish Your Authority — Who interviews experts, authorities, and business owners? Other experts! By interviewing authorities, you establish your own authority.
Build Linkable Assets — Interviews are a great type of high-quality informational, educational, and entertaining evergreen content. The type of content that your audience loves to read, share, and link to.
Increase Traffic — By interviewing an authority, you attract traffic from that authority’s audience.
Build Relationships — Interviewing a business (or business owner) is a great way to give first in your relationship, establishing and building a relationship.

All valuable outcomes for any individual or business. But out of all of those outcomes, I see the opportunity to build relationships with influencers, authorities, and businesses in your industry as the most valuable outcome.

Those relationships, over the long-term, will pay out in better image, more traffic, more sales, and more revenue for your business.

How can you get started with interviews as a link building and traffic generating tactic today?

First, make a spreadsheet with a list of 10-12 relevant, similar companies, influencers, and authorities in your industry. Include a mix of some big and some small. Make sure to get their basic contact information like email address, name, and phone number.

Then, send a cold email to them, introducing yourself, and asking if they would like to be interviewed in an article on your website.

After that, if they’re interested in working together, send them over a short questionnaire, with the questions you’d like them to answer.1

Next, write up their answers into the article. Send the article over to them for feedback.

Finally, publish the interview on your site. Email the person you interviewed, let them know that the interview is live, and ask if they could share the interview on social media and, if possible, link back to your site from their site.2

And, like that, you’ve built a relationship with an influencer or business in your industry, attracted traffic to your site (from their audience), and built a high-quality link to your website (from their website).

Best of all? This tactic scales very well — and as you scale it, you can expand it in a number of different directions:

Once you’ve interviewed 6-8 people, you can put the interviews together in one collection, creating another linkable asset for your website.
You can outreach to other influencers and websites in your industry, tell them about the interview, and ask them to share the interview with their audience.
You can create transcripts of the interviews and publish them on your site.
You can extract relevant topics, quotes, and questions from the interviews and transcripts and turn them into even more articles and resources.

There’s a number of different ways you can take this one tactic — interviewing experts, authorities, and businesses — and repurpose the content into a number of different shapes, create more linkable assets for your website, attract more traffic, and generate more high-value, high-quality content.

Because in the end, that’s your goal, right? To create something that’s so interesting, so engaging, and so excellent that your audience automatically wants to read it, share it, and link to it.

And if it isn’t, it really should be.

1 I like writing out 3-5 questions in the email for them to answer, it’s more personal than sending them to a form. But if you’re pressed for time, you can use a Google Form to list out the questions for them to answer. Bonus? The form is reusable from interview to interview.

2 Also? Ask them if they know of anyone else that they recommend that you interview. Hat tip to my friend Kurt Elsther for that tip.

How to use Authority Interviews to build relationships, links, and authority in your industry: http://t.co/jxVIffDwC0 — Kai Davis (@kaisdavis) October 29, 2014

Originally published on Double Your Ecommerce by Kai Davis.

Unofficial Shopify Podcast: eCommerce SEO

kai@doubleyourecommerce.com (Kai Davis) — Fri, 26 Sep 2014 04:15:30 +0000

My friends Kurt and Paul had me on the Unofficial Shopify Podcast to talk about Shopify eCommerce SEO. The episode, alas, was accidentally deleted from the podcast feed, but a backup copy is hosted here, and the transcript is included below.

(Transcript) Unofficial Shopify Podcast: eCommerce SEO

Recorded: This is the Unofficial Shopify Podcast with Kurt Elster and Paul Reda, your resource for growing your Shopify business sponsored by Ethercycle.

Kurt: Welcome to the second episode of the Unofficial Shopify Podcast. I am your host, Kurt Elster. With me is my cohost and partner-in-crime, Paul Reda.

Paul: Hello.

Kurt: Joining us today is our guest and friend, Kai Davis. Kai, you’re out in Portland. How’s it going there?

Kai: Hey, folks. It’s a nice and rainy overcast Portland day so it feels like home.

Kurt: Fantastic. Kai, you’re my go-to SEO guy. Why don’t you tell people a little bit about yourself?

Kai: Sure. I am a marketing consultant specializing in search engine optimization and helping my clients get found online through digital outreach promotion and link building. I figure my clients have wonderful content, wonderful websites. My role is to help people find out about those sites. Go out there on my clients’ behalf, tell influencers, authorities, bloggers, and journalists about my client, their resources, their linkable assets, and promote that connection.

Kurt: It sounds like you’ve differentiated yourself. You’re like, “I should wait more than just an SEO guy.”

Kai: Totally. Totally. So many people practicing SEO out there but saying I need an SEO is like going to an architect and saying, I really need a hammer. You want a new house. You want a beautiful entry way. I am focused on the results for my clients which usually are traffic, sales, better image, not necessarily just, “Hey, we’re going to do some SEO on your site.” We’re going to do best practices that help you get found online.

Kurt: Okay. Actually, tell us a little bit about those best practices.

Kai: Sure. It really splits into two different camps. You have on-site SEO and off-site SEO. With the on-site side of things, it’s like saying, “We want to get everything tuned out that we can, make it easy for people to find us.” The analogy I like using is saying, “If you’re going to have people over to your house, you’re going to tie some balloons to your mailbox so they know exactly where you are.” I think that’s what on-site SEO really is. What can we do to make it so when people come by, they’re able to find your site. It covers the normal stuff, title pegs, headers, headlines, on-page content, what keywords are we targeting? Just making sure everything is as perfect as it can be. When it comes to off-site stuff, again, that end goal is we want to get traffic to your site. We want to get interesting people finding your site and saying, “Hey, this is what I want.” To do that, the best signal to send to Google is and always has been links. What I do is that outreach on behalf of my clients saying, “Hey, we want to get some links to your site from relevant sites, from influencer sites, from sites that have high quality content, and everybody benefits from that.

Paul: That mention of high quality content is really what is important and sticks out to me because at least, my impression is dealing with the SEO consultants of the world. Is that SEO has almost become like a catch-out term for snake oil salesmen who are just trying to get people to be … I can get you to be number one in Google. I can do black magic that will secretly increase your Google rankings so you give me a ton of money. I feel like those people are taking advantage of a customer who actually needs legitimate help. Is that something that you think is a problem in dealing with your industry that the clients don’t understand that there’s much more to this than just paying some guy to buy a bunch of backlinks off of Fiverr?

Kai: Absolutely. It comes down to an education problem and a reputation management problem on behalf of the SEO folks. I’ve had so many clients and potential clients say to me, “You know what I hate? Two things in the world. Only two things. Lawyers and SEO specialists. I don’t understand what they do. It’s confusing. They try to explain it to me and do a terrible job, and I just throw money to a black box, and I don’t know what’s going to come out of it.” That’s what I want to move away. There’s so many people out there who are eager to sell a $300 or a $500 solution. We’ll get you traffic. We’ll get you a number one position on Google, but again, for that hammer analogy, it’s like they’re selling you a really fancy hammer when you want a better house.

Kurt: Let’s talk about the bad SEO people. What are those guys doing? Let’s dispel it right now.

Kai: Usually when somebody goes out and says, “Hey, I want to get to number one on Google. I am going to pay somebody $300, $400, $500 a month,” they’re going out there and they’re doing, the SEO company is doing on that client’s behalf directory submissions, building a spam backlinks through blog commenting or buying up existing sites that have links pointing to them, building out the content, and then putting links in that content to the client’s site.

As with anything, there’s some ways you could use these black hat tactics effectively and some ways you could do it very ineffectively, and most of the time, if your client he says, “Hey, I just want to spend $300 or $400 a month on Google and get to number one,” you’re going to be working with an SEO company who is really good at cashing your tanks, building some spam backlinks, get you a little bump in your traffic or rankings of the first couple of months.

Then, you’ll see your traffic just plummet when Google catches on and says, “All that’s pointing to your site is 5000 low quality irrelevant links, why should we be ranking you high? What’s relevant about your content that you deserve these links and what’s relevant about these links that you deserve this rankings?”

Paul: Yes. Really, if you cheap out on it, in the long run, you’re only hurting yourself because Google is going to catch on to your shady game and they’re going to punish you for it.

Kai: What’s that comment? I never knew how expensive it would be to work with a professional until I work with an amateur. If you cut corners, if you work with somebody who says, “It’s going to be cheap, we’ll get you what you want,” if it seems too good to be true, we’re going to get you 1000 hits a day in 24 hours, it’s probably too good to be true.

Kurt: The way to avoid those snake oils, the bad SEO marketers is number one, look at price and look at unrealistic promises or results?

Kai: Absolutely. I’d add to that. Talk to them about what clients they’ve worked with before and what results they see, and talk to them about the system they use. A few months ago, I had a call from an entrepreneur who is starting up an SEO company, and I said, “Hey, just walk me through. How do you get these links toy our clients? What system are you using?” It’s a really innovative patentable process that our VP of technology has developed that assures people’s first place rankings.” “Yeah, but what do you do?” “Unfortunately, I can’t tell you that.”

Whatever any client ask me, “Hey, Kai. How are you going to get us links?” I will break out for them in detail what I do. Let’s identify the influences in your industry. Let’s identify those bloggers. Let’s figure out who is linking to your competitors and what their most valuable links are. Let’s copy your competitors’ most valuable links through link building and direct outreach, and let’s find those people who are having conversations about your brand or your industry online, and insert ourselves into that conversation through outreach, picking up the phone or hopping into email and saying, “Hey, we’d love to have you link to us. You have this great resource about X, Y, Z. We have X, Y, Z. Would you be willing to include a link to help your audience?” That’s what I do. That’s what good SEOs do.

Paul: What you’re saying is you do actual hard legwork to deliver real actual results. That is craziness. How could you charge people to do actual work instead of just cunning them out of their money like most of these guys?

Kai: I know, right? I built my practice from the beginning to say, “I want to work with a very small number of clients but deliver the best results possible for them. That’s a different attack than a lot of SEO companies or a lot of consultants. They say, “Hey, we want to work with 50 or 100 different clients.” To do that, you might end up having to staff up or cut corners. I say, “I want to run an independent practice. I want to work with six exceptional clients at a time, and deliver to them the best results possible.”

Paul: Yeah, these other guys are selling mass-produced nerve tonic. You’re a natural doctor.

Kai: Exactly. Exactly.

Kurt: Let me back up. We do a lot of web developments. Naturally, for us, we just follow Google’s best practices, or usability best practices, accessibility best practices when developing. Does that mean we’re following good on-site SEO?

Kai: For 95% of the cases, it means that you are. Time and time again, Google has reinforced a viewpoint that the way to do good SEO is to do what’s in the user’s or the visitor’s best interest. If you’re following Google’s guidelines, if you’re making sure your website is designed to be accessible, designed to be usable, designed to load quickly and efficiently, you’re crossing 95% of the Ts and dotting the Is.

Kurt: What’s probably the biggest mistake you see for on-site SEO?

Kai: For on-site SEO, for people who are using an off-the-shelf theme like let’s say they have a Shopify site and just picks something off the shelf, they aren’t looking at the theme to make sure that everything is dialed in. I had a client recently and I did an SEO audit for them, just digging through their sites, seeing what they needed to change to make their site better able to generate traffic. Whoever had built their theme had included three instances of the title tag on every page. That’s a weird thing to have.

If you think about it, the title tag is like the story name in the newspaper and if you pick up a copy of the New York Times and the front page story has three separate titles for it, you’re going to say, “This is confusing. What I am reading?” Same thing for Google. They’re going to look at that page and say, “There’s three separate titles here. What is this page really about?”

If you are using something off the shelf, making sure that it’s dialed in, talking to an SEO consultant or talking to the web developer and saying, “Hey, walk me through how you optimize this thing for SEO.” It’s really easy to slap optimize for search engines label on anything but, what did they actually do to achieve that?

Kurt: Okay, yeah. Just asking people. Seem straightforward. It sounds like a lot of the stuff you do, SEOs like the direct byproduct of it, especially with off-site optimization. Give me a couple of tips, methods, tactics to do off-site SEO.

Kai: In the end, you’re really just looking to get a number of domains linking to you and domains websites that are relevant to your industry that have related content that are talking about the same thing. The biggest, easiest when I see for a lot of clients who are starting a new online store and say, “Hey, I want to do off-site SEO. What do I do?” It’s just to make a list of everyone you know who has a website or blog.

Maybe it’s ten or 15 friends. Maybe it’s more than that. Just writing them individual outreach emails saying, “Hey, I am launching a new thing. I would love it if you could include a link in a post just talking about it.” If he had a post about the handbags I am selling, please link to me. Those links will add up. It will start getting traffic to you. It will help move you towards getting your first sale but just finding those people who have relevant sites to you and saying, “Could you include a link to me?”

Not anything super keyword-heavy. You don’t want, for this handbag side, have it be like, “Buy handbags online.” Just be like, “Hey, my friend, Dave, has a handbag site. You should go check it out. He sells wonderful quality products. Getting that link is the most value possible.”

Kurt: When you put it like that suddenly, now it seems so easy and obvious. The thing that stuns me is most people won’t take that advice and won’t do it because they’d have to go ask someone for something. People are so resistant to doing that.

Kai: I had that exact same scenario come up. I had a mentoring call for a friend that he said, “Kai, what can I do in the next 30 minutes to get a link to my site?” I said, “You got to email people.” He’s like, “I don’t want to talk to people. I just want to get a link to my site.”

Kurt: I got to talk to somebody.

Paul: I just want to have it for free. Couldn’t it just happen?

Kai: Yeah. That’s hope marketing where you sit around and hope that happens.

Kurt: I think it’s perpetuated by this slimier side of SEO that says, “Hey, there’s a magic wand that I have that you don’t, and if you pay me, I’ll waive that magic wand.” “Where can I buy a magic wand?” There’s no magic wand.

Paul: My SEO will cure all of your illness with your business.

Kurt: I think you’re saying the benefit, the results of good SEO, good marketing is dollars. It’s money in the client’s pocket. I see a lot of people where they’ll guarantee rankings and that to sounds like the worst thing you could possibly do.

Kai: It’s terrible on both sides. It’s terrible for the person guaranteeing the rankings because as you find out when you play online, Google search results change dramatically depending on if you’re locked in to Google or not, depending on what city. I had a call from a friend not even two hours ago where I Googled a key phrase that she was trying to rank for an online dating coach, and she Googled it, and we compared the top five results. Three of the five were different. She’s in Seattle. I am in Portland, Oregon. We have a couple of 100 miles between us.

It’s impossible to guarantee a search ranking because it could change from instance-to-instance. Plus, for the client, you’re saying, “Hey, they’re going to guarantee me that I’ll be number one for this term.” Is that a term that even generates traffic? I can get you ranking number one for web development studio with podcast in Chicago, run by a friend of Kai Davis. If nobody is searching for it, does it even matter that you rank number one?

Kurt: Yeah. How important is it to have those rankings?

Kai: I look at rankings as a nice-to-have thing but month-to-month where I am putting together a report for a client, I am focused on how much organic traffic are we receiving overall? It’s hard because 20% of Google search every day are unique. Nobody searched for it before which could mean that 20% of people who are coming to your website every day are searching for a new phrase.

If it’s hard to rank for every phrase under the sun, is there a lot of value in being number one for a specific key phrase? There is because you know it is generating traffic for you but I’d encourage anybody listening to this who says, “What metrics should I be looking at for best SEO to know it is working?” Look at your organic traffic on your site. Just the traffic from search engines and Google Analytics and see month-to-month, is it staying consistent? Is it rising? If it’s going up, you know your SEO is working. If it’s going down, you know, “‘Hey, maybe there’s some holes we need to plug.”

Kurt: Yeah, that’s really great that you’re focused on ROI like that but we’ve also made that the core of our business here is searching for the actual thing that the client needs, not the way to get there. We want to increase the end result as much as possible and it’s just how you’re saying where you want to look if the traffic is increasing and not if the ranking is increasing.

Paul: In the end, it’s really the traffic that’s more important. Who really gives a shit where the ranking is as long as the traffic is good?

Kai: Bingo. Bingo. If you’re getting enough traffic by ranking fourth, and fifth, and sixth for a big basket of terms that your business is profitable and sustainable, you win. Now, it’s just about incrementally improving it over time.

Kurt: People really shouldn’t obsess over phrases and rankings.

Kai: I really don’t think they should. I think, again, it’s good to look at and good to say, “Hey, strategically, we want to rank highly for web development in Chicago or SEO Portland, Oregon,” but if you’re focused entirely on that one term, you’ve one-it is, you’re missing all the other opportunity out there because you’re too focused on just one thing. It said …

Paul: I’m sorry. Yeah, it’s like a business that’s focused entirely on revenue and cares nothing for profit. All the revenue in the world is great but if you’re not actually making any money, who cares?

Kai: Right. Right. Absolutely. It’s the same thing with traffic. Traffic is only an indicator in and of itself. I can get you a ton of traffic but if that traffic doesn’t convert, if you have a conversion rate of, say, 0.1%, it’s just not going to work out for you. It really needs to be a holistic effort. We’re getting you traffic but shouldn’t you be focusing on increasing your conversion rate? Shouldn’t you be trying to raise your price from a $10 average value per customer to a $20, $30, or $300 price?

A lot of the time I work with a client and when I come in to their business, I’ll say, “Let’s just take these three baseline indicators.” How much traffic are you getting from search engines? What’s your conversion rate? What’s your average lifetime value for a customer? If one of those looks really out of whack, I’ll say, “Hey, you know what? Maybe SEO isn’t the right thing for you to invest in right now. You’ll get a bigger return on investment by tuning up your checkout process and taking your conversion rate from 0.1% to 1% or 2% or 3%. That will pay off so much more than doubling your traffic.”

Paul: All right. Let me get technical with you. In developing Shopify feedings, we always include, and correct me if I am using the right term, not metatags. Those tags you define inside a product page where you can tell Google like, “This is the title. This specific span is the title. This span is the price. This is the image.” Are you familiar?

Kai: Yeah.

Paul: I’ve been doing that but I don’t think, does Google do anything with that? Is there really any advantage to doing that?

Kai: There is and if I am thinking of the same thing, within a product, you’d say, “Hey, Google. This is the product title. This is, say, the product rating or review, or number of stars.” Those are valuable since they’ll show up for sites that Google indexes and trusts in the search results next to that product name. Remember back, we had Google Author Photos through Authorship a year ago and they discontinued it a couple of months ago. Things like that, I call them value adds in the search results do increase the click through rate. It’s an easy way for a customer who searches, say, handbags. They see two different handbag sites in the search results. One is just the product title, a normal Google search result. The other shows the price, shows the number of reviews, show the quantity available. Those make it easier for the customer to say, “This site is better put together, more trustworthy, has the product in stock. I’ll click this.” Elements like that can increase your click through rate in the search results.

Paul: Trust is very important in having all of that metadata in there quickly at the customer’s fingertips. It psychologically increases the likelihood that they will trust that that site that that site is not some sort of fly-by-night.

Kai: It looks professional.

Paul: Yeah, it’s professional and people want to more likely to give their money to someone who is professional.

Kai: Yeah, absolutely. It’s all about trust signals in the end. During the checkout process, are you communicating trust to your customer, on the project page in the search results? Good SEO is about outreach and about they can share your site is both accessible and is trustworthy that somebody look at this and say, “This is the type of site I want to get my credit card to.”

Kurt: Tell us about, what are some trust signals? Tell us about that.

Kai: The main trust signals I advocate my clients to include really fall outside of SEO as a whole but a best practice for a website, get your phone number on there. Get your phone number in the header. Have an 800 number. Include testimonials on product pages and in the checkout process. Remove extra fields in the checkout process. It dovetails a little outside of strict SEO as a whole but if there’s elements I could advise the client to include to make their website look like actual other real humans that use it and love the experience, let’s get those on there just so more humans that come along will say, “Hey, a guy named Bob once brought a product and really liked it. I am willing to give my money to you now.”

Kurt: That’s a good tip. For a Shopify store, what’s your number one SEO tip?

Kai: For a Shopify store, my number one SEO tip really is contact. When you think about it, when we’re getting these links to your site, what are people linking to? You have the product pages on your site. You have a marketing page like the homepage or an about page, and then you have what I call linkable assets which is really content creation. What can you develop that people say, “Hey, that’s really exciting and I want to link to it.”

We could do on-site SEO until the cows come home but unless we’re getting other relevant sites in your industry to link to you, we won’t really see any benefit from it. The biggest tip is saying, “What’s our content creation process? Who are we marketing to? Who is your audience? What are the problems your audience experiences relating your industry and how can we help solve them for that audience member with educational informational content, and then the link building. The SEO becomes, “Hey, let’s go tell people about this really great content we have,” and get links to it.

Kurt: People, an e-commerce story should be writing articles creating blog entries?

Kai: I really think so. I think it’s sort of mixed because I work with a number of SEO consultants whose number one tip is like “You need to be blogging more,” but what are you talking about? Who are you saying it to and what problems are you solving? I am sure we’ve all read across stories and websites that half at the bottom works like, “Hey, great. We released a new product,” and nobody really cares, but I think e-commerce stories should be talking to their audience or researching their audience, seeing what questions their audience has about their industry and that product line and then, writing content that explains what to do.

Kurt: I think that’s interesting because you can turn that like you could start with increasing customer engagement. We want to know what to blog about so you could set it up. In your email, your order confirmation email to your customers who bought. Those are really your ideal audience, people who are already buying. Include a link to a survey and reward them with a coupon on their next order, and survey them and ask them, what’s interesting about this? Why did you buy this? What problems are you facing? Then, the replies to those survey results are going to be people essentially writing you your blog articles.

Kai: Bingo. Bingo, or even just every customer feedback email you get which is like, “Oh man, I couldn’t use this thing because X, Y, Z.” Hey, great. Here’s a blog post that explains how to solve X, Y, Z problem and everybody in the industry, everybody who is buying a handbag, or website, what have you can now link to that and say, “Great. This is the definitive guide to solving problem X, Y, Z.” That’s going to get links. That’s going to traffic. That’s going to build trust.

Paul: Kai. It sounds like there’s a blood pressure machine going on in the background or something. I don’t know what it is over there by you.

Kai: They’re tearing up the carpet in my hallway.

Kurt: Yeah. This has been incredibly helpful, Kai. Where could people find you?

Kai: My website right now is KaiDavis.com, K-A-I-D-A-V-I-S dot come, and I’ve got a newsletter on there where I send out SEO and marketing tips. If you want to sign up, please do and I promise it will be worth it.

Kurt: Wonderful. I know I’ve signed up for your newsletter. I’ve gotten value out of it, but yeah, people should go to your website and sign up for that newsletter.

Kai: Excellent. It’s been a pleasure being on and I hope that your audience enjoys us. If they run in to any questions or have any SEO ideas that they want to throw at me, my email address is on my website. Please open invitation. Send me an email, folks. Send me a question and I promise I’ll get back to you.

Kurt: Wonderful. Very generous. Thank you, Kai.

Paul: Thank you very much, Kai.

Originally published on Double Your Ecommerce by Kai Davis.