Shopify SEO: How to Optimize Your Store for Success by @SEOBrock

Want your Shopify store to rank in Position 1 on Google? No matter the platform, the same SEO principles apply if you want your e-commerce store to be found in search results.

With some simple tweaks and optimizations to your Shopify store, you can improve your visibility, rank on the first page for your targeted keywords, and make the sale.

While you may not outrank Amazon on day one, this Shopify SEO guide will walk you through everything you need to position your store for success.

Launching Your Shopify Store

Your store theme should match your brand style and make sense for your inventory. But also think about the impact on speed and usability, as these factors will greatly affect SEO.

Before you buy or install a theme, verify that it won’t hurt your speed and performance.

1. Run the theme URL through a tool like GTMetrix or Web Page Test. While the numbers will be different on your store, it will give you an idea of the resource demand of the core theme you’re building on.
2. Run the theme URL through PageSpeed Insights. Since Google’s analysis of your page is ultimately what matters when you want to rank, verify that Google evaluates the code positively.

When it comes to speed, the Turbo Shopify theme from Out of the Sandbox is my favorite right now. This theme is optimized for speed without sacrificing form or functionality.

Installing this theme on a client site cut loading time by 75 percent. We routinely see clients keep load times under five seconds when they launch to a lean and clean theme.

A smart theme selection will set you on the right path in terms of branding, user experience, and SEO.

Technical SEO

Without a strong foundation, SEO is just wainscoting on a pile of rubble. But when you build, reinforce, and maintain a strong foundation, SEO tweaks will add that decorative flourish to set you apart from the competition.

Always optimize your site for customers, first and foremost.

On-page SEO

The same SEO elements that apply to a regular site apply to Shopify (here’s a great SEO checklist):

• Upload a robots.txt file so bots can crawl your site.
• Ensure you have an XML sitemap to guide Google through the architecture of your site.
• Install Google Analytics.
• Validate HTML and CSS.
• Purchase an SSL certificate and upgrade to HTTPS.
• Correct any crawl errors and redirect issues.
• Include target keywords for a given page in the title and H1.
• Optimize meta descriptions, as this can affects click-through-rate (CTR).
• Optimize headings (H1s, H2s, etc.) in a natural way.
• Optimize images (file name, alt text, and image size).

Optimize all future pages as you add them, including collections and product pages.

You’ll also need to re-optimize your content periodically to better target the keywords that convert the most.

SEO is an ongoing process. Tweaks will always be needed because search algorithms are constantly changing – and so are your customers’ wants, needs, and behaviors.

Run your site through an auditor like WooRank. Check back in every few months to make sure your corrections have taken hold and identify any new issues.

On-page Optimizations in Shopify

Shopify makes it easy to set your basic on-page details directly in the backend.

Navigate to Sales Channels > Online Store > Preferences. On this page, you can update your homepage title and meta description. This is also where you can link your Google Analytics account.

Individual product title and meta descriptions can be set directly on the page:

Need to set up redirects? This can be done via Sales Channels > Online Store > Navigation. Click the “URL Redirects” button in the top right. Here, you can manage redirects and add new ones.

Shopify automatically generates an XML sitemap of your store. You can find it by going to http://ift.tt/NXUDQh.

While Shopify isn’t quite as SEO-friendly as sites on WordPress with a plugin like Yoast, you can optimize almost everything directly through the dashboard.

Apps

Shopify has a pretty awesome collection of free or low-cost app integrations to take your store to the next level.

Our clients have had great success capturing abandoned carts and re-engaging past customers with Conversio (formerly Receiptful). Bold Apps can help with sales and upsells, not to mention Sweet Tooth Loyalty Program and MailChimp integration for your email marketing efforts.

The Shopify Reviews App or Yotpo are amazing as they add review schema right onto the product to help click-through rate in the SERPs.

Apps can help with everything from driving newsletter sign-ups to running sales. However, apps can slow down stores and cause some conflicts, so choose wisely.

Speed

Speed should always come before cool features. Why? Forty percent of users will abandon a page if it takes longer than 3 seconds to load. In fact, a single second delay in page loading can drop conversions by 7 percent.

For an e-commerce store, that could cost thousands in lost sales each year. Mobile users are impatient. A slow store is bad business.

Optimizing your Shopify store for speed is almost exactly the same as any other website. Small improvements like the ones listed below should help improve load times:

• Minify code (CSS & JavaScript)
• Compress images
• Minimize redirects
• Enable browser caching
• Use a content delivery network (CDN)

You can see a full list of recommendations and see how your store measures up when you run your domain through a tool like GTMetrix.

Speed matters for user experience, but it’s also a Google ranking factor. The faster your site can be without stripping elements that provide an optimal user experience, the better.

User Experience

Ask yourself these questions to evaluate whether your Shopify store offers an excellent user experience:

• Does the homepage explain what your store is all about? Is it easy to understand?
• Is the site structured well?
• Is the page layout clear, consistent, and visually appealing?
• Are the graphics welcoming and consistent?
• Do your product images show high-quality graphics of what you are selling?
• Is there good use of white space? Is the content too dense?
• Are navigation buttons and tabs consistent and intuitive?
• Is the relationship between the page and navigation clear?
• Is there a clear “path” for users to follow from first landing on the site to buying a product?
• Is the content unique, well-written, and accurate?
• Are there ads, interstitials, pop-ups, or any other obtrusive elements on the page? If so, are they displayed in a professional manner?
• Are there calls-to-action (CTAs) on the page, and are they clear and intuitive?

If you can say an emphatic “yes” to all of these questions, you’re on the right track to delight your users and Google.

If you’re hesitant about any of the above elements, go back to the drawing board. You can draw in visitors through paid ads, organic traffic, or social, but the page has to serve their needs. Otherwise, metrics will confirm your site just isn’t cutting it and everything will suffer — including search rankings.

User testing can help you get a more accurate sense of how customers interact with your store and shine a spotlight on problem areas.

Optimizing Your Store for Conversions

Conversion optimization is all about getting visitors to engage with your content, like you, trust you, and ultimately buy your product.

Each of these actions at one level or another is associated with a site-level metric that influences your site’s Google rank. After all, users who take an action on your site contribute a lower bounce rate, longer time on site, higher pages/session, and more.

Without worrying about a single technical detail, shifting your mindset to associate conversion optimization with rankings benefits will pay tremendous dividends.

If Google sees that users click to your store and buy something, that can positively influence your rankings.

Google wants to show the most relevant and useful results to users. Make your site exactly what your customers want and need.

Content

A beautiful website without quality content is like a top-line Viking range with no ingredients to cook — a total waste.

All the little optimizations and tweaks I detailed earlier mean nothing if they’re not building on a rich, deep, and insightful foundation of high-quality content.

Homepage

Your Shopify homepage represents who you are, what you do, what you offer, and your unique value proposition.

Harris Farm Markets is one site that does a great job with their homepage layout and content:

It’s hyper-visual and rich in content. From the first look at the page to the final scroll, you get a total sense of who they are, what they do, and what makes them different from a supermarket.

Muse is another great example:

Must makes it clear what the product is and how it can help from that first hero image to the research partners that provide credibility.

Product Pages

Ensure your product pages are fully optimized. Pasting the same generic sentence on each page won’t cut it.

• Write a unique, captivating product description.
• To avoid duplicate content, add variants to each product. This way, you won’t have to come up with new content for red and blue versions of the same shirt.
• To better serve your customers, have shipping, return, and sizing information available on the page.
• Ensure your images are optimized with a descriptive file name and relevant alt text.
• Consider enabling reviews on the page. Not only does it provide more value/info for customers, but it’s free content!
• Don’t use manufacturer descriptions! Write your own.

Duplicate Product Pages

If duplicate products are unavoidable, apply the rel=canonical tag to the product you want to take priority. If this is an ongoing issue like if your store is duplicating products across collection pages, you can install an app like the NoFollow and NoIndex Manager to take control over what gets followed and indexed.

Deleting Products

When a model becomes obsolete or you move on to a different stock, do you just delete the product? This can cause big SEO issues.

Ensure you set up 404 redirects for all deleted products. Link to the most similar live product if you can, or the most relevant collections page. If nothing applies, redirect to the homepage.

The Perfect Product Page

Here’s an example of an exceptional product page:

It has:

• Tons of content broken up into different chunks for readability and flow.
• Variants all on the same page to avoid duplicate content issues.
• Visual, informative content about features and specs, and even includes videos of the product in use.
• A review app, giving 800 words of additional content.

Tabbed content allows you to add depth to the page without cluttering it. Here’s a great example:

Collections

Shopify automatically creates collections pages. You don’t have to make the pages visible on your site, but they represent a huge ranking opportunity for category keywords if you choose to use them.

If your collections pages are just product lists, you’re missing an opportunity.

We’ve been doing content projects for a lot of our e-commerce clients to grow their collections pages, and we’ve seen great results.

For instance, instead of just a generic “jeans” or “men’s jeans” page, make a “skater jeans” or “baggy jeans” landing page building on a collection. These hyper-targeted keywords convert really well.

Blog

A blogging strategy is really important, especially for e-commerce. Maintaining a blog will:

• Provide value to users.
• Help you target long-tail keywords.
• Improve your organic search visibility.
• Give you more content to promote on social.

Use tools like Google Trends and BuzzSumo to identify keyword opportunities and stay ahead of the curve on evergreen and trendy topics.

Write long-tail content that has your product as the answer to a commonly asked question. Browse social media, Quora, Reddit, and niche forums to find these questions.

Remember, a blog can be so much more than pure text:

• Post videos.
• Do a Q&A.
• Post how-tos.
• Create an infographic.
• Post gift guides, style guides, and lookbooks.

Integrate buy buttons and strong calls-to-action (CTAs) to make blogs an important part of your sales funnel.

Off-page Optimizations

All of your on-page optimizations are just one part of the puzzle. Your store’s off-page presence is just as important, if not more.

In other words, you need to market your Shopify store. Get the word out there.

• Put effort into a comprehensive, strategic social media presence.
• Do outreach and online PR.
• Build a robust backlink profile from trustworthy, authoritative domains.

All of these efforts will help build brand awareness and affinity, which will ultimately increase search demand.

Conclusion

From choosing an SEO-friendly theme to core optimizations (on-page, speed, UX, CRO, content, and off-page), the recommendations in this guide should help steer your Shopify store to improved and sustained rankings success.

Plan and deploy your SEO strategy using Shopify’s built-in features; monitor your results through keyword tracking software and Google Analytics, and adjust and experiment until you strike gold.

Just remember: SEO alone isn’t enough for Shopify success. Search engines want to satisfy users, so always optimizing for your customers will delight two birds with one stone.

Image Credits

Featured Image: Shutterstock
All Screenshots by Brock Murray. Taken May 2017.

SearchCap: Search trademark issues & search pictures

Below is what happened in search today, as reported on Search Engine Land and from other places across the web. The post SearchCap: Search trademark issues & search pictures appeared first on Search Engine Land.

Please visit Search Engine Land for the full article.

Initial Interest Confusion rears its ugly head once more in trademark infringement case

Two years ago, Multi Time Machine brought a lawsuit against Amazon for trademark infringement, alleging that web pages on Amazon.com for “MTM special ops watches” keyword searches could be too confusing to consumers, since the MTM watches are not sold on the site. Now, a similar complaint was brought by Bodum versus Williams-Sonoma for French press coffeemakers. These cases illustrate significant risks for e-commerce sites.

Multi Time Machine’s complaint was based on a few different search results pages at Amazon that involved keywords associated with Multi Time Machine’s trademarks. When one searched for “mtm special ops watches” (and similar keyword searches that could be related to their marks), Amazon displayed what are essentially related search results. As mentioned before, MTM watches are not sold on Amazon — but the site associated those keyword searches with other watches that might be considered similar.

Initial Interest Confusion

Multi Time Machine claimed that this caused “Initial Interest Confusion” (IIC), which is a controversial theory of trademark law. IIC is a legal premise with a hazy definition that allows a court to find infringement has occurred when there is an initial confusion on the part of a consumer about the provenance of a product before it is ultimately bought — even if that confusion no longer exists at the point of sale. Wikipedia provides the following hypothetical example:

West Coast Video’s competitor, Blockbuster Video, puts a billboard on a stretch of highway advertising a West Coast Video at an upcoming exit. In reality, there is no West Coast Video at this exit; it is a Blockbuster Video instead. The consumer, expecting to find a West Coast Video store, sees the Blockbuster Video and decides to patronize the suitable replacement. Even though the confusion has been dispelled, Blockbuster is still misappropriating the acquired goodwill of West Coast Video’s trademark.

So, you can see that IIC is intended to address a potentially unfair attempt to profit from a competitor’s mark.

Critics of IIC believe that it may be too hazy a concept, and that the definition is too imprecise. From my layman’s understanding, the idea of a bait-and-switch scenario would seem to have some element of uncontroversial and unfair fraud attached to it, and perhaps the degree to which consumers will comprehend the mistake in brand identification by the time of making the purchase could be the deciding factor as to whether it’s legally actionable or not.

Attorneys have expressed that there may be insufficient case law precedent to make it clear how solid the IIC concept really is. There is uncertainty about how it may be interpreted, and that leaves open the door to lawsuits based upon an uncomfortably loose concept. Some of the more persuasive critics argue that the concept should be abandoned in favor of the more specific tests established for whether or not infringement has occurred, period.

A district judge initially dismissed the MTM/Amazon suit in a summary judgment, finding that Multi Time Machine failed to show that the search results actually confused consumers. Upon appeal, the Ninth Circuit court ruled that the search results could be confusing to consumers, and the suit could go forward. Then, a few months later, the appellate court reversed its decision, finding that since Amazon had clear labeling of the search results, “… no reasonably prudent consumer accustomed to shopping online would likely be confused as to the source of the products.”

Confused about Initial Interest Confusion yet?

The back-and-forth reversals garnered a lot of attention in legal circles. In the ultimate ruling, the court noted that the alleged confusion was caused not by the design of a competitor’s mark, but by the design of a web page that displayed MTM’s mark and offered the competing product for sale. The case could be decided simply by evaluating whether the web page was likely to cause a “reasonably prudent consumer” to be confused about the origin of the goods.

The court focused upon the labeling and appearance of the product listings and the surrounding context on the screen displaying the results page, and they cited that they made their determination based on two questions:

1. Who is the relevant, reasonable consumer?
2. What would he or she reasonably believe based on what he or she saw on the screen?

Bodum vs. Williams-Sonoma

Fast-forward to last year through this spring, and a similar case was brought against Williams-Sonoma by Bodum, a seller of French press coffeemakers.

The Bodum vs. Williams-Sonoma case varies somewhat from the MTM/Amazon one. Bodum French press coffeemakers were carried by Williams-Sonoma in the past, but the company eventually dropped Bodum as a vendor. Subsequently, Williams-Sonoma began selling their own French press coffeemakers.

For anyone who has worked in corporate America, one can imagine the sequence: after selling a brand-name product for a period of time, a retailer begins to consider that they could source the manufacture of the product themselves, cutting out their vendor in order to increase the profits. This dynamic happens all the time and, in of itself, would not necessarily be legally actionable.

However, Bodum claimed that Williams-Sonoma went on to purposefully create an infringing situation by continuing to use the Bodum name on their website, while displaying non-Bodum products. I was able to obtain a screen-grab of a “Bodum” results page from the Williams-Sonoma.com website prior to them suspending the page:

The case was settled in April, but I think the situation involved still raises a lot of questions.

Assuming the claims had been found to have merit, this case could have been an example to demonstrate Initial Interest Confusion. The difference between the MTM/Amazon case and the Bodum/Williams-Sonoma case is perhaps that one would imagine that frequent customers of Williams-Sonoma, already familiar with the Bodum products, could easily have been very confused about the origination of the more

recent Williams-Sonoma French press products that replaced the Bodum ones that were previously carried.

Further, when those consumers searched in Google or searched on the Williams-Sonoma website for “Bodum,” they were arguably wanting the specific brand’s products that they were familiar with, and if the online website serves up products that are quite similar to the Bodum ones they were previously selling, the customers could arguably be thinking that they are indeed purchasing actual Bodum brand products at the point of sale.

I would conjecture that an additional argument could have been that the Bodum and Williams-Sonoma brands might have been so closely associated with one another in the minds of Williams-Sonoma customers, and the products displayed were similar enough, that a consumer might have reasonably thought that he or she was being presented with Bodum products when shown the search results page that was in contention.

I did just one comparison, using a Bodum French press coffeemaker page from the Williams-Sonoma website I found in the Internet Archive’s Wayback Machine from when they still carried Bodum products (left), and you can see the non-Bodum French press currently found on their website (right) for comparison. The products and their styling in the catalog photos are strikingly similar:

Making a case: Factors for consideration

In the MTM/Amazon case, the court essentially found that there was not Initial Interest Confusion because of a few factors:

• The Amazon search results page states that it is showing “related” results.
• The pages of the products listed on that page do not represent that they were Multi Time Machine watches.
• Consumers should reasonably recognize that the products presented were too inexpensive to be Multi Time Machine watches.

From my layman’s perspective, Williams-Sonoma may not have the same mitigating factors that Amazon had. The williams-sonoma.com site customers had come to expect to see Bodum products on the site. Likewise, consumers searching in Google for “bodum french press” were presented with a Google search results page where the Williams-Sonoma “related search results” page for “bodum” was listed prominently in the number-one position. The products presented closely resemble the Bodum brand products, so those familiar with Bodum items would not be likely to recognize that they are different from the bona fide branded ones. The prices are quite similar.

How the Bodum French Press page on the Williams-Sonoma.com website appeared on Google search results

Damages and corrective advertising

As I presented recently in a session at the SMX West conference, “What You Don’t Know In Trademark Law Can Hurt You,” the fact that the Williams-Sonoma website had optimized a page for Bodum brand keywords could have sharply increased their damages exposure in this infringement case if the court had found merit in Bodum’s claims. Each of the impressions that happened in Google when people searched for “Bodum french press” and related phrases could have eventually been determined to be an instance of infringement when the searcher saw the Bodum name associated with the Williams-Sonoma website materials. (These organic listings impressions are called “misimpressions” within the context of trademark infringement.)

Consumers do not even have to have bought the products on Williams-Sonoma for infringement to have occurred, so the search results impressions and on-site impressions numbers could easily add up to increase the theoretical damages.

Bodum had specifically cited “corrective advertising” in their complaint as a potential avenue for damages. Historically, trademark infringement cases may have incurred relatively low damages price tags when courts found in favor of plaintiffs, but more recent cases have seen monetary damage awards skyrocketing, due in part to corrective advertising as a means of reparation. The theory is straightforward: if infringement has occurred, then one might attempt to repair the confusion in the mind of consumers by performing equivalent brand exposure advertising campaigns in the same (or closely similar) medium where the infringement originally occurred.

So, when infringement occurs in search engines, such as via page listings optimized for a branded keyword, then one may factor in that equivalent-or-greater numbers of impressions need to be obtained to counter the original confusion. Thus, when one begins adding up the misimpressions that occurred on search engine results pages as well as on a website’s page itself, the numbers can add up really fast. Then, imagine multiplying those numbers by the dollar amounts necessary to obtain the same numbers of impressions at today’s market value, add on penalties, and the damages awards can become very significant.

No doubt, when Williams-Sonoma carried the Bodum products, having the “bodum” keyword results page on the website, optimized for search engines, made great sense. I don’t know if the keyword merely remained cached in the e-commerce website’s system after Bodum was dropped as a vendor, but I think it likely that it could have been retained accidentally, resulting in the keyword results page continuing to rank prominently in Google search results after they no longer carried Bodum products.

Concerningly, I’d also theorize that Williams-Sonoma’s PPC ad campaigns could have also caused a risk of increased damages exposure in this case, if they are found to be infringing due to the “Bodum” search results page. I discovered that Williams-Sonoma had had ads continuing to run for “Bodum” searches in Google, even after the lawsuit was initiated, although they apparently halted displaying their “related searches” page for organic search as the court case started heating up.

While it is not generally considered infringing to run ads online that are targeted to one’s competitors’ brand names, if they were determined to have infringed, the ad targeting might also be considered yet more evidence of an overall effort to unfairly divert sales from Bodum and might also have been considered to be part of a confusing sequence whereby consumers could be fooled into thinking the Williams-Sonoma French presses were actually Bodum’s.

I would theorize that if a company is found to be infringing, even the normally acceptable use of a competitor’s trademark could be considered in the context of the illegal mark use when determining intentionality of infringement, as well as in assessing total misimpressions.

I would theorize that such advertising could constitute yet another form of initial interest confusion, or an exacerbation of it, since a consumer might search for “Bodum,” see the Williams-Sonoma ads, click through to the website where they might also encounter the “Bodum” branded search results pages.

So, the impressions and click-throughs for Williams-Sonoma’s PPC ads targeted to Bodum keywords could have also theoretically driven up a potential damages award even higher in the case.

(Williams-Sonoma’s PPC ads targeting “Bodum” branded keywords were not mentioned in the complaint, so I doubt Bodum may have even been aware of that.)

Case settlement and results

Bodum and Williams-Sonoma agreed to settle the trademark infringement case in April, with prejudice against Williams-Sonoma.

One may reasonably speculate that the settlement terms were favorable to Bodum. I see now that when one searches for “Bodum” on williams-sonoma.com, the results page contains strong, clear language:

We do not sell Bodum branded products.

Entering more general keywords may yield results.

The page now also has text reading, “You May Also Like,” which appears above the related product search results. The page’s meta description is now blank. So, Bodum likely got what they were after.

(As an aside, Bodum probably should have hired a search engine optimization professional to help craft the settlement instructions or to check them afterwards, because there continues to be a “Bodum Thermal French Press” results page and other Bodum-branded pages on the site, and these pages are still appearing in Google search results — with no notice that Bodum-branded products are no longer carried on those pages. Or, if the settlement agreement did cover these other instances, Williams-Sonoma should have hired a competent SEO pro to help audit that the terms of the agreement were satisfied in order to ensure such pages were eliminated from search engine results.)

Interestingly, Bodum did not mention “initial interest confusion” in their lawsuit. Perhaps they intended to play their cards whichever way might be signaled by the court as the avenue most likely to succeed. But, this suit was definitely one that involved IIC in a manner parallel to the MTM/Amazon one.

It is also interesting that Williams-Sonoma decided that the risks of contesting the suit were maybe far too great to allow it to move forward, and they opted to settle. On one hand, Amazon prevailed in resisting this in the MTM case. Perhaps the court’s somewhat wishy-washy, back-and-forth decisions in MTM/Amazon made it hard to estimate the likely outcome. Or perhaps when counsel for Williams-Sonoma evaluated their case, they feared that the criteria that had cleared Amazon would not go as far in their favor. I think it’s reasonable to imagine that their customers would have been confused about the Bodum search results page.

But if Williams-Sonoma had contested the case and prevailed, they likely would ultimately have profited more. The “Bodum” keyword has considerable amounts of traffic, and having that high-ranking Bodum French press page continuing to appear in search results almost certainly translates into profitable sales.

Final thoughts

In a great many lawsuits involving companies, the most reasonable course of action is to settle, reducing chances of undesirable outcomes for both sides.

In this case, though, we might have wished that the suit had not settled, so that there could have been more clarification of the law around initial interest confusion.

In the wake of these cases, my advice to retailers is to be extremely vigilant and timely in removing optimized pages and keywords tags from their databases when products or vendors are discontinued. You do not want to have a situation where a reasonable claim may be made that you are attempting to improperly profit from a competitor’s mark.

The other takeaway is this: label your product search results very carefully to make it clear when you do not carry a branded product — and when presenting alternative products.

Following these practices could save your company from having to defend against costly and time-consuming litigation.

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Some opinions expressed in this article may be those of a guest author and not necessarily Search Engine Land. Staff authors are listed here.

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How to Vet An SEO Agency (and Prevent Failure) by @AdamHeitzman

Finding the right SEO provider is important. It also can be a lot of hard work. This is why vetting SEO agencies is so important.

You want to make sure your SEO agency is:

• Easy to work with.
• Going to deliver real value to your business.
• Consistent.
• Knowledgeable about the industry.
• Within your budget.

The stakes are high. In most cases, SEO can make or break your business.

Choose the right SEO agency and your business could start generating more traffic and revenue than it’s ever seen.

Choose the wrong SEO agency and it could lead you to failure. We’re talking wasted money, penalties, and countless lost opportunities (e.g., rankings, traffic, and revenues).

Although there are many honest and reputable agencies to choose from, there are still a few scam artists and dishonest agencies looking to exploit unknowing businesses.

The SEO Agency Horror Show

As the head of an SEO agency, I’ve seen the success stories. It’s always great to see clients grow and succeed because it helps us take pride in our work and showcase what SEO can do for businesses.

But I’ve also heard some horror stories.

One frustrating aspect of being an agency is hearing stories from businesses that come to us wary and frustrated from bad experiences they’ve had with unreliable SEO agencies.

In speaking with such clients, there seems to be a common crescendo that leads them to their unfortunate breaking point, and it goes like this:

A business decides SEO is the next step in their growth plan, so they seek out and speak with an agency about services.

The agency sells them potential results of successful SEO and makes guarantees about what they can achieve for the business.

The business thinks it sounds great and takes the agency at their word. Ultimately, the business signs a contract with the SEO agency and gets locked in for an extended period of time.

Fast forward a year or two later, and some businesses find themselves drained of money with little to show for it, or in some cases, with penalties that have made their online performance worse.

An Insider’s Guide to Vetting SEO Agencies

While it’s no fault of the client, what I often take away from hearing these SEO horror stories is that there were ways in which it could have been prevented.

Businesses can protect themselves from and prevent sticky situations like this by asking the right questions on the front end.

That’s easier said than done when you’re new to SEO and unsure of what you need to be asking an agency,

But this guide will help with that.

3 Tips for Vetting SEO Agencies

The advice and questions that follow are what businesses absolutely must consider and ask while vetting SEO agencies from an actual SEO agency’s behind-the-scenes perspective.

Tip 1: Develop a List of Criteria

Having some criteria beforehand will make you think critically about your expectations, protect you from going in blindly, and keep you in charge of what you want.

Think about things like:

• Budget.
• Desired contract duration.
• Whether you want a local service provider or if you’re OK with a remote agency.
• Reporting frequency.
• Any other potential deal breakers.

Tip 2: Talk to 3 Different SEO Agencies

It’s smart to talk to at least three SEO providers before you make a decision.

Aside from this being a generally good idea for the sake of knowing all your options, it also helps give you some leverage for possible negotiations regarding prices, services, and contract stipulations.

Tip 3: Make a List of Interview Questions

Asking the right questions before signing a contract can prevent the majority of SEO horror stories.

Have the questions ready to ask each agency you speak with, so later you can compare answers and have plenty of information to help guide your decision.

32 Questions to Ask an SEO Agency

Any honest and well-established agency will happily answer your questions and address the concerns or reservations you have about SEO.

Pay attention to how receptive they are to providing answers.

Most importantly, don’t sign a contract with an SEO agency without asking these questions first:

• Can you guarantee that my site will have a top ranking position?
  • Start with this question, because it’s a quick way to weed out shady SEO agencies. Legitimate SEOs will never guarantee a client a top ranking position because they know there are no guarantees with SEO.
• How do you handle penalized sites?
• Does your agency ever deviate from Google’s best practices?
• Has your agency ever bought links?
• How do you build links and what kind of links do you build?
• How many links can I expect to have built per month or over the duration of my contract?
• How much on-page, off-page, and technical work can I expect to be done and what specific practices do you do for each?
• Which tools do you use to achieve results and carry out SEO services?
• Do you edit and/or optimize existing content on my site?
• Is any of the work or content outsourced? If so, who does it?
• How does your team handle content strategy and development?
• What specific content pieces will be done for my site?
• How do you plan to optimize that content?
• Do you have any examples of work you’ve done for a similar business?
  • Successful SEOs are quick to provide case studies or examples of other businesses they’ve helped, so if you hear “that’s classified” or “we don’t share the results of other clients” in response, be wary.
• On average, when do your clients start to see results?
• How many active client accounts do you have?
• How many people on your team are working on them?
  • If an agency has 500 active client accounts and only 30 people on their team, chances are they’re either stretched thin at the expense of quality or outsourcing some of the work.
• Do you work with businesses that would be considered competitors to mine?
  • This isn’t always a bad thing, but if a direct competitor hires the same SEO company and has a bigger budget, you could be in trouble.
• How often do you run site audits?
• What specific metrics do you track and report on?
• How do you handle reporting and tracking of my account?
• How often can I expect to receive reports and updates, and how will you communicate them to me?
  • Ideal answers to these questions will include information on conversions, rankings, traffic, campaign and outreach updates, etc. Most agencies provide clients with access to reporting software so they can view a dashboard with trackable metrics.
• How many people will have access to our website?
• What steps do you take to ensure the security of our website?
• Will you be making changes to the structure, web design, or coding of our website? If so, is that handled in-house or outsourced?
• Who would be my point of contact, and how can I contact them if I have questions or concerns?
• Can I meet the people who work on my account?
• What will you need from my end?
• How much time per month is needed from our end?
• Can you itemize the pricing package by specific services and hours spent working on each?
• What separates you from other SEO agencies?
• Overall, what results can I expect for my website?

Conclusion

A lack of preparation makes you susceptible to being taken advantage of dishonest and shady SEOs. Do your research and prepare beforehand so you can easily identify the right SEO agency when you find them, and from there they’ll help you determine the best strategies to address the needs of your business.

Search in Pics: Google drum set, a deep blue room & Google sneakers

In this week’s Search In Pictures, here are the latest images culled from the web, showing what people eat at the search engine companies, how they play, who they meet, where they speak, what toys they have and more. Google deep blue meeting room: Source: Twitter Google elephant march...

Please visit Search Engine Land for the full article.

Everything You Need to Know About Facebook Ad Relevance Score by @@SusanEDub

Terms like “Relevance Score” and “Quality Score” can seem vague and mysterious to people who just want to put some money in the PPC slot machine and have sales come out. Facebook introduced its Ad Relevance Score in 2015, but many advertisers still struggle to understand it, or how to fix it if it’s struggling.

If you’re one of those advertisers, read on. This is everything you need to know about Facebook Ad Relevance Score.

What Is the Facebook Ad Relevance Score?

With the explosion of Facebook Ads and the News Feeds getting ever more crowded, it made sense for the social network to create an ad quality metric. This also added a layer of complexity. Advertisers had another “thing” to figure out if ads were under-serving or costs got really high.

Your Facebook Ad Relevance Score is a rating of 1-10 after it has at least 500 impressions (yes, that’s pretty quick). The score is calculated daily based on, as Facebook says, “positive and negative feedback we expect from people seeing it, based on how the ad is performing.”

Facebook goes on to define “positive” as things like shares, likes, or other actions that help you achieve your objective. Meaning that yes, the criteria for your Relevance Score can change a bit depending on whether you’re running a campaign with an objective of video views vs. one for link clicks.

“Negative” feedback is anything like when people hide your ads. Though Facebook doesn’t explicitly say so, it’s also safe to assume that anything not meeting your objective (i.e., people not clicking, etc.) also contributes to negative feedback.

This isn’t surprising. After all, Facebook is a social network. Facebook rewards you for generating more interaction and interest — it’s their value proposition and they have to protect it (in the same way AdWords protects the quality of search results by having a Quality Score).

Does Relevance Score Really Have an Impact?

I was skeptical of Facebook’s Ad Relevance Score when it came out. A lot of AdWords advertisers didn’t consistently see more favorable CPCs as we improved Quality Score, and the word itself became another dreaded metric that can distract from overall account goals.

However, it’s pretty easy to see with Facebook that when you’re able to improve your ad relevance you also reduce your costs

I decided to specifically test this in an account that was doing well socially already.

To understand this method, it’s important to understand one nuance first.

Ad IDs & Sharing Them

When you create an ad on Facebook, it automatically generates an Ad ID.

Copying and pasting that ad into another Ad Set creates a new ID. Even thought it’s the same ad, Facebook will treat them as being different and it won’t retain the Ad ID.

Social interaction on an ad is tied to the ID level. What that ultimately means is each ad unit will keep the social interaction to just that ID — it doesn’t share it with the otherwise identical ads because the ID is different. Each ID also has its own Relevance Score:

You can get around this by creating an ad and then pasting its ID into the option for “Use Existing Post” when you create a new ad. This will share that ID, and all the social proof it accumulates will display on that ad for every ad set that it’s used within:

 

Important: As with any ad, if you update the copy, link, or anything like that, it will reset all of that social proof. This carries even more weight once you share an ID because it will affect multiple ad sets with the stroke of a key.

Pushing That Relevance Score

I decided to test what happened with a focus on Relevance Score. This meant we wanted to try and house all the social proof on one ad ID in order to maximize impact. Otherwise, we’d have a bunch of disparate ads with each having their own social proof.

I took a well-performing ad that had duplicate versions with different IDs running in different ad sets. The average Relevance Score of them all was around 8. The social proof on them all was similar and their Relevance Scores were the same, so we just picked one at random.

I took that ID and pasted it into the other ad sets. This would ensure that moving forward, any new social proof and any change in Relevance Score would be concentrated in this one unit. It would amass the social proof faster because it wasn’t being distributed among disparate Ad IDs.

The shared post ID started to run, and then I did one more thing: I added a Page Post Engagement campaign (now just called “Engagement” objective type), and for the creative I used the same Ad ID. (I threw a couple hundred bucks towards it only because the population size warranted it, but the same methodology can be used with just a few bucks a day.)

This means that while that ID was running in the ad sets focused on converting to sales, it was also running in the PPE campaign, accruing social results simultaneously. Within a few days, the Relevance Score for the shared ID was hitting a 10.

Test Results

I pulled the CTR, CPC, and CPA data for the ads when they ran in different groups (called Non-PPE version) vs. when I previously ran the single ID with the extra dough put towards accruing some social proof (called the PPE version). Other than as outlined above, nothing else changed, including the targeting.

It appears the additional social proof gave us a leg up here.

Again, the additional social proof seemed to help here. (I didn’t analyze it at the time, but it would have been interesting to see if the offset in CPC saved enough money that it paid for the social proof.)

Finally, the ultimate number that matters:

Wow. That’s a huge difference, and definitely statistically significant with the audience size we had.

I’ve run this test in a few other accounts, and the results were similar. Sometimes the result wasn’t as marked, but it was still usually there.

Clickable, Shareable, Likable

What I liked best about running this test was that it helped take the hypothesis of Relevance Score, and proved it. It’s easy to say “create great content,” but it’s another thing when you see how it directly impacts the bottom line of what you’re selling. It’s worth the extra effort to test that video, or do something more creative than just throwing a stock image up there and hoping for the best.

Like every ad creative on Facebook, eventually it ran its course and it was time to swap out.

The beauty of this method, however, is it allows you to launch a new creative and secure a higher relevancy score faster. It helps alleviate the peaks and valleys that can be associated with launching new creatives, and get relevancy score working in your favor, faster!

Image Credits

In-post images: Screenshots by author. Taken May 2017.

Exploit These 3 Powerful Motivators for Better PPC Ad Copy by @clarkboyd

Here’s a typical search engine results page:

Wow. There’s a lot more going on here than meets the eye. Do you see it?

Every ad here is vying for a click. So how will people decide which ad to click on – and ultimately make a purchase decision?

The best PPC ad here is the one that ultimately motivates a searcher to click.

We rely on data to guide us toward that all important click. After all, we have so much data at our disposal today.

But pure, hard data isn’t the answer in isolation. Actually, it’s the interplay between the rational and the emotional where we can have the most impact.

Why?

Humans Aren’t Rational Creatures!

People make snap judgments all the time and with good reason. To apply our full critical faculties to every decision would be exhausting and inefficient.

Moreover, rationality itself is a nuanced concept. We are rational to different extents and in different ways at various times of each day.

The level of rationality applied to decisions will depend on the product. For example, the behavioral factors behind choosing a pension will differ from those that drive our choice of Mexican restaurant for dinner tonight.

So if we agree humans aren’t rational, then how can you ensure as many of them as possible click on your PPC ads?

With some motivation.

Here are three powerful motivators you can exploit for better PPC ad copy that converts.

Motivator 1. Incentives

Incentives are behind pretty much everything we do. They are the reason we go to work, tchoose certain brands over others, and eat at particular restaurants.

These concepts typically come in two forms:

• Extrinsic incentives: These relate to factors outside of the self. For example, I go to work because I need the paycheck to pay rent and I enjoy the status my title affords me.
• Intrinsic incentives: These come from within and can often be more powerful motivators. For example, I go to work because I feel like I am contributing to society and I enjoy what I do.

Advertising has always played to these incentives.

In other words: What’s in it for me? How will I feel, look, or live better if I buy your product?

How to Use Incentives in PPC Ad Copy

Incentives should play a significant part in any PPC campaign. You’re fighting for attention in a crowded space. The quicker your offer can demonstrate incentives, the better.

The line between extrinsic and intrinsic incentives is often blurred, as we can see in the ad copy for [charity donation]:

All worthy causes. All deserving of support. All competing for our attention.

The intrinsic incentives are clear: “Children Need Help”, “End Childhood Cancer”, “Support Cancer Research”, to cite just three examples. We would all like to contribute to these causes.

However, there’s an awareness that perhaps donations are not always purely selfless acts. There are extrinsic incentives behind donations, too. Note the mention of “100% Tax-Deductible” in there.

These examples of ad copy demonstrate a sophisticated understanding of just how muddled our incentives can become.

At other times, the distinction is clear.

For an overtly commercial search like [mens jeans], we can see which tactics are employed. These ads play to extrinsic incentives, with nods to our desire to be seen as fashionable (“The Seasons Best Looks”) but also to find value within our financial range (“At Affordable Prices”).

There are, however, numerous attempts to appeal to intrinsic incentives. Of note are phrases like “Made Ethically”, “Personal Freedom”, and “Stop Paying Retail Markup”.

Consumers want more from a product than just the latest styles. They want to feel ethically responsible, they want a sense of buying into something greater than just the material, and they also don’t want to feel like they are being ripped off.

Key takeaway: We should always be asking what is most likely to motivate our audience. We should also understand that this will differ by product set, by time of day, and by demographic.

Motivator 2: Herding

People are conditioned to learn from the experience of others. Deep down, there’s an assumption that the wisdom of crowds will guide you toward a quick, safe decision.

Parallels of this form of decision-making are found everywhere in nature.

Penguins in the Antarctic face a daily dilemma, as they are in the middle of the food chain. Should they dive into the water in the hope of finding krill, but simultaneously invoke the risk of being eaten by a seal? There’s no way to be certain.

One penguin takes the plunge and the others make assumptions based on the outcome. Should their flightless friend emerge unscathed with a beak full of beautiful krill, the others will follow suit. If not, well, they hold back the hunger pangs a little longer until the coast clears.

This is a slightly more important decision than choosing which PPC ad to click on, but the underlying principle is the same. People are suspicious of brands they’ve never heard of and that have no customer reviews. People also want someone else to take the plunge and report back to base.

Although most people still trust media outlets, in this cynical age many people are more likely to trust their fellow consumers.

How to Use Herding in Ad Copy

Remember that people want all the necessary information to make a decision at their disposal, as effortlessly as possible.

Reviews matter. Use them in your ads if they are available.

Make full use of ad extensions to include your company’s USPs and reassure the consumer that you’re a reputable provider. This provides a sense of security in the knowledge that many other consumers have used and enjoyed your services.

We can see this in action if we look at the results for [red sox tickets]:

There are not only reviews but also quotes from sources like the Washington Post. Ad extensions are used to include consumer ratings on service and website quality, too.

People are sometimes concerned about buying event tickets online, but these ads show that they are in safe hands. Others have entered the waters and returned unscathed.

Motivator 3: Availability Bias

People reach for the information that is most readily available when making most decisions.

We all have a repository of past experiences and knowledge that we use to cut through the noise and reach snappy conclusions. This is known as the availability bias. It is considered a bias because it tends to lead us to irrational choices based purely on the first relevant piece of information we think of.

The availability bias is related to psychological phenomena known as primacy and recency. These concepts state that we tend to recall the information we heard first and last, but rarely the information in between.

The applications of such a theory for search are self-evident.

How to Use Availability Bias in Ad Copy

Make decisions as easy as possible for customers. You can do this by demonstrating how close your store is to their location or how simple your shipping process is.

Also consider how you communicate with existing consumers. If they have shopped with you before, they are more likely to do it again. This should be a central consideration as you try to attract repeat customers.

Looking to primacy and recency, you can test your ad positions to see if it makes the most sense to rank first in PPC and first in SEO. We may perform more cost-effectively in the fourth position for PPC and first for SEO, for example.

We could also go against the grain. Availability sometimes leads consumers into decisions that are against their best interests. This is particularly true of more cumbersome decisions, like switching cell phone carriers.

We can see this in action for the query [sprint]:

The second ad is focused on convincing consumers to make the switch. They may be overpaying for service with another carrier out of habit, so Sprint makes overt reference to the savings it provides and also the ‘Waived Activation Fee’. Mentioning a limited time offer also plays into the scarcity effect – or FOMO (fear of missing out) in modern parlance – to add a sense of urgency to proceedings.

We can learn from this that while cognitive biases can be used to guide users on an unconscious path, we can also awaken them from the slumber of irrationality if we have a better deal to offer.

Bringing It All Together

Now, let’s go back to the earlier example of search results for [flower delivery brooklyn] and apply what we’ve learned.

Now it’s clear to see all the motivators at play.

Sometimes we simply know these things intuitively and include them within ad copy. However, familiarizing yourself with these concepts can add more rigor to your testing.

Adding some powerful motivation can significantly improve your ad copy and PPC campaign performance.

Image Credits

Featured image: Pixabay

In-post image 1: Unsplash

In-post image 2: Unsplash

Screenshots taken by Clark Boyd, May 2017.