#but the guide & faq as well as the google doc should cover the details | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

shandian-go · 3 years ago

Text

IMPORTANT - 2022 Changes

Happy New Year's eve and wishing everyone well all the best for the coming year!

End of semi-hiatus

Things have settled down a bit IRL and I've had a chance to think about what to do with this GO. Your survey responses have helped so much with this decision and in order to keep things going, I've restructured the processes and will have some (much-needed) help managing things going forward :)

Changes and improvements

Here’s the TL;DR of the key changes, but I’d still highly recommend reading the full version (see end for link). I've tried to make improvements to address the common complaints and I truly hope some of you will find it easier ;u;

Group order types

All types of group orders are now open to everyone and there’s no restrictions for the different types!

The types of GO's have been narrowed down to 4 (Pre-orders, Ongoing Orders, Special Orders and In Stock)

Special Orders and In Stock orders are limited quantity and first come first served. They'll only be announced on the Special Notification Twitter account when they're posted (but anyone can still order them)

Order process

New standalone site to place orders: https://www.shandian.ca

New site features: My Account, Favorites, search function, cart won’t clear with back button

All orders submitted from July 2021 onwards can be found in your My Account

Requests for group orders

Requests are also open to everyone now, but GO's still depend on my availability

Request form is simpler too (just need a link with a photo to help me identify the item)

New ‘Coming Soon’ page for all the upcoming GO’s I have planned

You can submit the request form for items that are in the 'Pending' section or items that aren't listed on 'Coming Soon'

Price changes and discounts

Item prices (first payment) will increase by 3%-4% to cover fees and maintenance costs and time/labour; going forward basis only (i.e. no impact on previous orders)

New helpers assisting me with admin and packing so that I don’t burn out again; some of the increase will go towards their time/labour too

Frequent joiners who order a lot will receive a discount coupon to offset a bit of the price increases :)

Main website updates

Guide & FAQ has been updated with visuals and more answers

Status Guide now has a ‘Personal Order Tracker’ spreadsheet to help you track your own order statuses

New ‘How To’ section to keep all the guides and info in one place

Other concerns (see document for details)

FULL VERSION: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1vpw7VClcam12Gl6hIoF527dbT4Lrq2CDkg69eojcxSo

#shandian go #announcements #i think most of the changes should be pretty intuitive as you navigate the new sites #but the guide & faq as well as the google doc should cover the details

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samuelpboswell · 6 years ago

Text

Volusion SEO Best Practices: 5 Traffic Boosting Tips That Work

Volusion is a relative ‘newcomer’ for ecommerce websites & shopping cart software.

They might not be as notable as Shopify, but they pack Shopify-level features at competitive pricing.

Plus, their SEO options are no joke and can help your store bring in more traffic and sales.

As an ecommerce brand, you need organic traffic for your business to thrive.

Sure, you can get away with paid traffic for a while, but as you scale, that simply becomes a losing, uphill battle where you have to spend thousands upon thousands a week to see bottom-line impact.

Here is why Volusion is a great platform for ecommerce SEO and five different ways you can bring in more traffic from your store by using it.

What is Volusion? Why Should You Use It?

Volusion is an ecommerce hosting platform with over 180,000 online stores being hosted using their technology.

With a focus on the small business, they represent amazing startups like Notch, Tiny House Coffee and Capital Teas.

Get Your Free Volusion SEO Cheatsheet

Enter your email and instantly get a Volusion SEO Cheatsheet to ensure that your store is following SEO best practices.

If you are human, leave this field blank. Get Cheatsheet

If you aren’t familiar with building websites or coding and want a DIY-approach, Volusion has solid themes that rival Squarespace in beauty and BigCommerce in functionality:

Like most other ecommerce platforms out there, Volusion has you covered on integrations. Want to connect your email marketing, PayPal, Shippo, Stripe, or anything else? With Volusion, you can.

With inventory management, payment collection options, and unlimited product listing, you can host a store that sells a few products or a few hundred products.

So, what’s the pricing?

Volusion’s pricing is a bit different than other platforms. It’s meant to scale as your business grows, ensuring that you aren’t paying exorbitant fees while you are still in the startup phase.

As you can notice, payment options, product listings, storage, and many other features come included in all packages. Pricing will increase as your online sales increase.

As you scale up in revenue per year, you unlock more critical features with the better plans, like reviews, a dedicated success team, and more.

And the beauty of it is that Volusion’s success teams want you to succeed due to their pricing model.

Compared to BigCommerce, Shopify, and 3dcart, the pricing is very competitive.

One of the biggest selling points of Volusion is their themes. Not just because they are good looking, but because they have numerous in-house ecommerce CRO experts that have helped build them for sales-focused entrepreneurs.

While they only have a limited selection of themes, each is customizable with countless elements.

So, is Volusion any good for SEO?

Is Volusion a Good Ecommerce Platform for SEO?

Volusion is an optimization-focused ecommerce platform. It’s why their themes are designed for conversion rate improvement and why they have put time and effort into their tool stack.

With Volusion, standard SEO features you can expect are:

Metadata customization

Sitemaps

Robots.txt

Custom product page and blog URLs

In-depth guides on SEO

Search engine optimization is constantly changing.

Get Your Free Volusion SEO Cheatsheet

Enter your email and instantly get a Volusion SEO Cheatsheet to ensure that your store is following SEO best practices.

If you are human, leave this field blank. Get Cheatsheet

There are between 500 and 600 algorithm changes to Google a year.

Volusion does a fantastic job of keeping their guides up to date, providing expert knowledge on almost any topic in ecommerce and SEO:

With over 200 existing guides on topics from data analysis to PPC to SEO to holiday marketing, you always have access to detailed information on improving your growth.

Plus, Volusion has a great track record of SEO success when you look at client case studies. In fact, Volusion actually offers professional marketing services beyond general hosting packages if businesses need help taking their sales to the next level.

For instance, one Volusion-backed store Boat Lift and Canopy was struggling to optimize their site’s product pages, metadata, and navigational UI with a conversion focus.

To combat this, they focused on on-page optimization to rank higher in search for their target keywords. Optimizing FAQs and articles on their site, they could drive huge increases in organic traffic.

The final nail on the head was implementing a content strategy on their blog to build brand awareness in their niche.

The results? They speak for themselves:

Volusion’s offering made it easy for Boat Lift and Canopy to implement SEO. Using Volusion Blog they easily started their own content machine that could pull organic traffic. With metadata optimization, targeting the right keywords and increasing organic click-through rates was a piece of cake.

Here is how you can utilize Volusion’s SEO features with five tips to improving your organic performance.

5 Tips to Improve Organic Performance Using Volusion

Volusion packs impressive SEO features and a focus on optimizing pages for traffic.

Here are five critical ways to improve your organic traffic with a Volusion store.

Establish a Blog on Your Volusion Store to Drive Traffic

Blogging and content marketing are still king. While the market for content becomes more saturated, it’s still important to produce top quality content that can rank.

HubSpot found that B2C companies that blog more than 16+ times per month generate significantly more leads and sales than those that blog less than 16+ times per month. Simply put, the more blog posts you have, the more traffic and ranking potential you have:

(Image Source)

Get Your Free Volusion SEO Cheatsheet

Enter your email and instantly get a Volusion SEO Cheatsheet to ensure that your store is following SEO best practices.

If you are human, leave this field blank. Get Cheatsheet

Blogging in your niche should focus on building your brand. For online shoppers using Google to find products and companies, brand recognition was the number one factor that drove clicks in organic search.

(Image Source)

Known retailer is the number one thing that users look at when deciding whether or not to click on your organic listing for products.

To build your brand, there is nothing better than starting a blog and writing on topics that your customers care about. With good keyword research, you can uncover great blog ideas to jumpstart your traffic.

To create a new post on your Volusion store, head to the Pages section of your dashboard:

From here, create a new page using the “Blog Post” selection from the templates list:

Here you can start to write directly within the Volusion blog post editor, or simply copy and paste from an outside Google Doc or wherever you decide to write the blog post:

Before publishing your blog posts live, be sure to create SEO friendly URLs just like you would on product and category pages for your store. On your Volusion blog post, scroll down past the text editor and you will see an SEO section to add your URL string.

For instance, if your next post is on ecommerce SEO as your keyword and topic target, use that for your URL string:

This keeps the focus on your target keyword, and when users are looking on search results they will see your URL string and be reaffirmed that you are covering the topic they searched for, helping to improve your organic click-through rates.

If you prefer an outside blogging platform like WordPress or Blogger, you can link it to your Volusion-hosted store. To do this, follow Volusion’s guide to setting up your WordPress or Blogger with your store.

Get Your Free Volusion SEO Cheatsheet

Enter your email and instantly get a Volusion SEO Cheatsheet to ensure that your store is following SEO best practices.

If you are human, leave this field blank. Get Cheatsheet

Meta Descriptions

With algorithm changes coming every single day, it’s hard to know what SEO factors can really make an impact on your organic traffic.

But the latest data shows that meta descriptions are still impactful for increasing CTR.

One company was able to increase their organic traffic by 48% through writing better meta descriptions.

On your online store pages, you will see the same SEO box that appears on your blog posts at the bottom of each product and category page:

This is where you can enter meta description and title tag information for each page.

The key to success here is making every single title tag and meta description unique. Duplicating them will only lead to penalties with Google and bad rankings.

Follow these best practices when writing meta descriptions and title tags:

Create unique descriptions and titles for every page

Include main keyword in your title + meta description naturally

Craft a meta description that is enticing to click for searchers

Link Google Analytics For Data

Google Analytics is a treasure-trove of data that any ecommerce store can benefit from.

Stores looking to produce blog content and drive organic traffic shouldn’t go a day without Google Analytics installed.

GA can help you understand what content pieces resonate well with your audience, traffic levels, referral sources, and even on-site search keywords that can give you easy content wins:

Can’t I just use Volusion’s store analytics? Absolutely…not. While it’s nice that platforms like Volusion offer integrated Analytics, they aren’t in-depth enough to help you improve performance at a high-level.

To integrate Google Analytics, you can paste your Google Analytics code directly into the <head> section of your live editor.

For more details on this, follow Volusion’s guide directly on your store.

Get Your Free Volusion SEO Cheatsheet

Enter your email and instantly get a Volusion SEO Cheatsheet to ensure that your store is following SEO best practices.

If you are human, leave this field blank. Get Cheatsheet

Optimize Image Alt tags

Search engines can only scan your text for information and contextual relevance. Images without alt tags give search engines no additional information, and they can also impact disabled persons when browsing who can’t see your image.

Optimizing image alt tags takes just a few extra seconds of time and can help you boost relevance and SEO.

To add alt tags to your images on Volusion, simply hover over them in the editor and it will reveal the following toolbar:

Click on the “i” info button to pull up image alt editing.

Be sure to follow these best practices for Volusion alt tags:

Limit the text 125 characters or less

Describe the image you are showing

Only use keyword if it naturally fits, DO NOT keyword stuff

Don’t use “image of” to describe, that’s already a given

Optimize Product Pages

Optimizing category and product pages on your ecommerce store are critical components of good SEO.

Targeting the right keywords and including the right content tapping into pain points can help you bring in more organic traffic that is qualified to buy from you.

When adding new products on your Volusion store, start by naming your product and providing the product image, as well as editing the alt tags like we discussed earlier.

The key section here will be optimizing your content on that page. This includes the text you write about the product and category itself.

Where most go wrong is thinking that more is always better. But on product pages, you want to keep the description short and sweet, focused on the benefits of the product for customers.

A great example of this is from from Bolthouse Farms:

Keeping content short and to the point, they focus on a small description of the product and its benefits, like increasing your vitamin intake.

Using semantically related keywords they can help provide more context to search engines.

On your category pages you can start to offer more content and descriptions that are long-form compared to individual product pages, like Beyond Pet Food’s natural dog food category:

On this category page, they communicate tons of value to customers and also improve their SEO by writing more relevant content on the topic.

Expand your category and product pages to include your keywords and relevant information.

But remember: don’t add content if it isn’t helping your brand or SEO.

Conclusion

Volusion may be a lesser-known ecommerce hosting platform in a market dominated by Shopify and BigCommerce, but that doesn’t mean it’s devoid of features and a pricing scale that work.

Volusion is backed by high-level marketers who have helped the company design CRO focused themes, easy SEO measures, and a world class content guides to help anyone from the new store to a thriving giant.

When optimizing your store with Volusion, the first step you should take is to initiate your blog. This is the meat and potatoes of SEO and is one of the best ways to start bringing in new traffic.

Link your Google Analytics to get insights on blog success and your market.

Optimize your product pages for target keywords and don’t forget to tag those images for an added SEO boost.

Volusion is a fast growing ecommerce hosting platform with great features. Now it’s up to you to put them to use to grow your online store.

The post Volusion SEO Best Practices: 5 Traffic Boosting Tips That Work appeared first on HigherVisibility.

from The SEO Advantages https://www.highervisibility.com/blog/volusion-seo-best-practices-5-traffic-boosting-tips-that-work/

0 notes

anthonykrierion · 6 years ago

Text

Volusion SEO Best Practices: 5 Traffic Boosting Tips That Work

Volusion is a relative ‘newcomer’ for ecommerce websites & shopping cart software.

They might not be as notable as Shopify, but they pack Shopify-level features at competitive pricing.

Plus, their SEO options are no joke and can help your store bring in more traffic and sales.

As an ecommerce brand, you need organic traffic for your business to thrive.

Sure, you can get away with paid traffic for a while, but as you scale, that simply becomes a losing, uphill battle where you have to spend thousands upon thousands a week to see bottom-line impact.

Here is why Volusion is a great platform for ecommerce SEO and five different ways you can bring in more traffic from your store by using it.

What is Volusion? Why Should You Use It?

Volusion is an ecommerce hosting platform with over 180,000 online stores being hosted using their technology.

With a focus on the small business, they represent amazing startups like Notch, Tiny House Coffee and Capital Teas.

Get Your Free Volusion SEO Cheatsheet

Enter your email and instantly get a Volusion SEO Cheatsheet to ensure that your store is following SEO best practices.

If you are human, leave this field blank. Get Cheatsheet

If you aren’t familiar with building websites or coding and want a DIY-approach, Volusion has solid themes that rival Squarespace in beauty and BigCommerce in functionality:

Like most other ecommerce platforms out there, Volusion has you covered on integrations. Want to connect your email marketing, PayPal, Shippo, Stripe, or anything else? With Volusion, you can.

With inventory management, payment collection options, and unlimited product listing, you can host a store that sells a few products or a few hundred products.

So, what’s the pricing?

Volusion’s pricing is a bit different than other platforms. It’s meant to scale as your business grows, ensuring that you aren’t paying exorbitant fees while you are still in the startup phase.

As you can notice, payment options, product listings, storage, and many other features come included in all packages. Pricing will increase as your online sales increase.

As you scale up in revenue per year, you unlock more critical features with the better plans, like reviews, a dedicated success team, and more.

And the beauty of it is that Volusion’s success teams want you to succeed due to their pricing model.

Compared to BigCommerce, Shopify, and 3dcart, the pricing is very competitive.

While they only have a limited selection of themes, each is customizable with countless elements.

So, is Volusion any good for SEO?

Is Volusion a Good Ecommerce Platform for SEO?

Volusion is an optimization-focused ecommerce platform. It’s why their themes are designed for conversion rate improvement and why they have put time and effort into their tool stack.

With Volusion, standard SEO features you can expect are:

Metadata customization

Sitemaps

Robots.txt

Custom product page and blog URLs

In-depth guides on SEO

Search engine optimization is constantly changing.

Get Your Free Volusion SEO Cheatsheet

Enter your email and instantly get a Volusion SEO Cheatsheet to ensure that your store is following SEO best practices.

If you are human, leave this field blank. Get Cheatsheet

There are between 500 and 600 algorithm changes to Google a year.

Volusion does a fantastic job of keeping their guides up to date, providing expert knowledge on almost any topic in ecommerce and SEO:

With over 200 existing guides on topics from data analysis to PPC to SEO to holiday marketing, you always have access to detailed information on improving your growth.

For instance, one Volusion-backed store Boat Lift and Canopy was struggling to optimize their site’s product pages, metadata, and navigational UI with a conversion focus.

The final nail on the head was implementing a content strategy on their blog to build brand awareness in their niche.

The results? They speak for themselves:

Here is how you can utilize Volusion’s SEO features with five tips to improving your organic performance.

5 Tips to Improve Organic Performance Using Volusion

Volusion packs impressive SEO features and a focus on optimizing pages for traffic.

Here are five critical ways to improve your organic traffic with a Volusion store.

Establish a Blog on Your Volusion Store to Drive Traffic

Blogging and content marketing are still king. While the market for content becomes more saturated, it’s still important to produce top quality content that can rank.

(Image Source)

Get Your Free Volusion SEO Cheatsheet

Enter your email and instantly get a Volusion SEO Cheatsheet to ensure that your store is following SEO best practices.

If you are human, leave this field blank. Get Cheatsheet

(Image Source)

Known retailer is the number one thing that users look at when deciding whether or not to click on your organic listing for products.

To create a new post on your Volusion store, head to the Pages section of your dashboard:

From here, create a new page using the “Blog Post” selection from the templates list:

Here you can start to write directly within the Volusion blog post editor, or simply copy and paste from an outside Google Doc or wherever you decide to write the blog post:

For instance, if your next post is on ecommerce SEO as your keyword and topic target, use that for your URL string:

Get Your Free Volusion SEO Cheatsheet

Enter your email and instantly get a Volusion SEO Cheatsheet to ensure that your store is following SEO best practices.

If you are human, leave this field blank. Get Cheatsheet

Meta Descriptions

With algorithm changes coming every single day, it’s hard to know what SEO factors can really make an impact on your organic traffic.

But the latest data shows that meta descriptions are still impactful for increasing CTR.

One company was able to increase their organic traffic by 48% through writing better meta descriptions.

On your online store pages, you will see the same SEO box that appears on your blog posts at the bottom of each product and category page:

This is where you can enter meta description and title tag information for each page.

The key to success here is making every single title tag and meta description unique. Duplicating them will only lead to penalties with Google and bad rankings.

Follow these best practices when writing meta descriptions and title tags:

Create unique descriptions and titles for every page

Include main keyword in your title + meta description naturally

Craft a meta description that is enticing to click for searchers

Link Google Analytics For Data

Google Analytics is a treasure-trove of data that any ecommerce store can benefit from.

Stores looking to produce blog content and drive organic traffic shouldn’t go a day without Google Analytics installed.

GA can help you understand what content pieces resonate well with your audience, traffic levels, referral sources, and even on-site search keywords that can give you easy content wins:

To integrate Google Analytics, you can paste your Google Analytics code directly into the <head> section of your live editor.

For more details on this, follow Volusion’s guide directly on your store.

Get Your Free Volusion SEO Cheatsheet

Enter your email and instantly get a Volusion SEO Cheatsheet to ensure that your store is following SEO best practices.

If you are human, leave this field blank. Get Cheatsheet

Optimize Image Alt tags

Optimizing image alt tags takes just a few extra seconds of time and can help you boost relevance and SEO.

To add alt tags to your images on Volusion, simply hover over them in the editor and it will reveal the following toolbar:

Click on the “i” info button to pull up image alt editing.

Be sure to follow these best practices for Volusion alt tags:

Limit the text 125 characters or less

Describe the image you are showing

Only use keyword if it naturally fits, DO NOT keyword stuff

Don’t use “image of” to describe, that’s already a given

Optimize Product Pages

Optimizing category and product pages on your ecommerce store are critical components of good SEO.

Targeting the right keywords and including the right content tapping into pain points can help you bring in more organic traffic that is qualified to buy from you.

When adding new products on your Volusion store, start by naming your product and providing the product image, as well as editing the alt tags like we discussed earlier.

The key section here will be optimizing your content on that page. This includes the text you write about the product and category itself.

Where most go wrong is thinking that more is always better. But on product pages, you want to keep the description short and sweet, focused on the benefits of the product for customers.

A great example of this is from from Bolthouse Farms:

Keeping content short and to the point, they focus on a small description of the product and its benefits, like increasing your vitamin intake.

Using semantically related keywords they can help provide more context to search engines.

On your category pages you can start to offer more content and descriptions that are long-form compared to individual product pages, like Beyond Pet Food’s natural dog food category:

On this category page, they communicate tons of value to customers and also improve their SEO by writing more relevant content on the topic.

Expand your category and product pages to include your keywords and relevant information.

But remember: don’t add content if it isn’t helping your brand or SEO.

Conclusion

Volusion may be a lesser-known ecommerce hosting platform in a market dominated by Shopify and BigCommerce, but that doesn’t mean it’s devoid of features and a pricing scale that work.

When optimizing your store with Volusion, the first step you should take is to initiate your blog. This is the meat and potatoes of SEO and is one of the best ways to start bringing in new traffic.

Link your Google Analytics to get insights on blog success and your market.

Optimize your product pages for target keywords and don’t forget to tag those images for an added SEO boost.

Volusion is a fast growing ecommerce hosting platform with great features. Now it’s up to you to put them to use to grow your online store.

Volusion SEO Best Practices: 5 Traffic Boosting Tips That Work was originally posted by Video And Blog Marketing

#Video And Blog Marketing

0 notes

viseomarketing · 7 years ago

Text

InsideLocal Webinar: How to Optimize your Website to Maximize Traffic and Convert New Customers

2018 is the year every business, large and small, will need to take time to include schema (or structured) markup on their site.

Search engines are using this information more and more, not least in featured snippets and voice search results, and so to future-proof your site for new search features you'll need to have a plan in place for marking up your on-page content correctly. Get it wrong and you might face a Google penalty, so it's key to get it right first time.

Contents

Webinar recording

Poll one: How confident are you in your knowledge and use of schema markup?

Poll two: What percentage of time do you spend on content creation and management for a typical SMB?

Resources

Q&A

In our May 16 webinar, host Myles Anderson was joined by two SEO experts, Martha van Berkel and Gyi Tsakalakis, to discuss what tactics work best when optimizing your site for a local audience.

Our webinar recap includes the full webinar recording, the live poll results, all the resources the panel discussed, and highlights from the text Q&A. If you've got any thoughts or questions, please share these in the comments below.

Video: How to Optimize your Website to Maximize Traffic and Convert New Customers

Using Schema

For an overview of the use of schema, take a look at Martha's blog, 'What Is Schema Markup and Why Is It Critical to Local Business?'

Only 30% of websites are using schema markup. Plenty of opportunity to get ahead of the competition if you implement it soon! #OptimizeLocal pic.twitter.com/OaZbiEDFDS

- BrightLocal (@bright_local) May 16, 2018

Martha told us that only 30% of businesses are currently using schema, with just 5% doing it well-so using it properly is a great way to stand out from your competition. In relation to snippets, Gyi believes we're at the tip of the iceberg: with the Internet of Things growing ever more important, making your site easily readable by machines is critical.

“Review snippets tend to be the most impactful, so AggregateRating schema is definitely the first one to focus on.” – @gyitsakalakis #OptimizeLocal

- BrightLocal (@bright_local) May 16, 2018

Poll one: How confident are you in your knowledge and use of schema markup?

Just 10% are very confident

44% said they were confident

56% aren't confident-with 17% saying they weren't confident at all

Local Business Websites

The panel discussed the importance of local business websites-with Gyi saying companies such as law firms were more likely to continue to need a great local website than restaurants. Martha believes websites remain important today-but in 5-7 years time, businesses may see consumers interacting in alternative ways.

Poll two: What percentage of time do you spend on content creation and management for a typical SMB?

55% spend up to 40% of their time creating SMB content

19% spend more than 60% of their time on this

Respondents spend an average 39% of their time on SMB content

Structured Data and Content

Gyi discussed which content he believes is most important to regularly be updated for professional services firms: professional bio pages, testimonial pages, and FAQs.

Content should respond to users' needs, and this is normally research-based. Don't worry about creating different blog posts for every possible question that a user may have, he says. Martha recommended Q&A schema markup for FAQ pages.

Gyi says, if you have the opportunity to use a feature that Google has created documentation on, you should try to implement it: “They're telling you what's important, and what they're going to reward you for. But don't abuse it-don't create recipes for your law firm.”

Martha then shared the current list of possible features, and noted that there were plenty more not highlighted by Google here:

Gyi provided a great tip about understanding how your target audience uses search to find answers. “The way that the business owners talk about their business and what they do is often vastly different from how their clients or customers describe what they do. Ask customers or others in the community to find out how your target audience uses search = and once you have that, go and structure your site.”

“For local businesses, the language people use on a local level is very specific to a geography. If you introduce the language specific to a vertical, it's clear that you can't just be broad, you have to understand location/industry & use the right language.” – @gyitsakalakis

- BrightLocal (@bright_local) May 16, 2018

Links in content remain important, according to Gyi. He recommended creating content that attracts local links, and talks of how this continues to move the dial for legal businesses.

Multi-Location Businesses

For multi-location businesses, Gyi treats every location like a different business when developing content: “The language your customers use, the streets and zipcodes, the businesses in the community, and the journalists that cover the topic are all different. Each location needs to have its own section for targeting local queries: local content, local resources, and local questions, each with its own structured markup.”

Martha shared a useful schema tip for linking services and offers for different locations. For more information on how to do this, see How-to Create Services Schema Markup for Businesses.

The Future

Gyi Tsakalakis: “The search engines want to go towards providing end journeys on search results. The more they can help users find what they're looking for, the better. Think about the impact of voice on your content. But for now, you still should be focusing on identifying the opportunities for featured snippets and search features, and building content and marking up pages that address features of today.”

Martha van Berkel: “I really believe that we're going to have to start managing our brands for consumption by machines. We need to create content and describe things for humans, but also make sure we're acknowledging the machine layer we need to understand. Assistants are only the beginning, the Internet of Things will be every single thing connected. We'll have to be able to ask our car where we're going to go, or who's the best lawyer in this area? Our fridge will be able to answer questions. Today, think of it as translating page-by-page and connecting the dots between things. And in the future, this should be your strategy from the get-go. I'm a big believer in finding ways to automate things.”

Resources

What Is Schema Markup and Why Is It Critical to Local Business?

Schema.org

Introduction to Structured Data

A reintroduction to Google's featured snippets

Google case studies

How to create Question and Answer Schema Markup for Best Answer Answer Cards

How-to Create Services Schema Markup for Businesses

How to Develop a Schema Markup Strategy for a Website

Ultimate How-to Guide for Local Business Schema Markup

Impact of Reviews and Ratings on Search Click-Through Rates

Voice Search for Local Business Study

Q&A

Q. Can I add schema markup to Wix and Square Space?

A. Wix = Yes, SS = Yes And I believe SchemaApp has solutions for both. – Colan Nielsen

Q. We see many businesses “abusing” aggregateRating by making up a value. Does the panel have a position on the ethical application of this Schema?

A. Google is very clear that you should only markup what is visible on the page. For reviews, you have to be able to show where the reviews are in detail. In the recommendation (https://developers.google.com/search/docs/data-types/review) they state that the company should own their reviews. This means they should only show reviews they have collected and not reference reviews that are on a 3rd party (such as Google, Facebook, etc). However, we have seen companies be able to get an aggregate review if they show a sample of the 3rd party and a VERY clear link to where the third party reviews sit. You should only show the review on the page they are shown, NOT every page. Finally, the reviews should be about the primary topic of the page, such as the Local Business, Service, or blog post. – Martha van Berkel

Q. We've seen a couple of Schema plugins for WordPress. Do you recommend using them or add the code manually? Or can you even recommend a good plugin?

A. I'd suggest using a plugin for larger, enterprise websites. But for a typical SMB website, depending on your goals, you can get away with manual implementation. SchemaApp has a solid WP plugin. – Colan Nielsen

Q. Does the same schema markup go on every page or does it get customized per section of the website, for example: contact, products, services, FAQ, etc?

A. Typically schema is unique to the page, an example of this might be a review score of a specific product which is dedicated to one page. But there are other exceptions like name, address and phone number which might be on every page tagged in schema in the footer of the site. – Matt Coghlan

Q. I have several Plumbing & HVAC clients. Schema markup forces me to choose just one category. I haven't seen a plumbing & HVAC company that wants to get listed as just one of these categories. What to do?

A. Pick one for the homepage and some of the more general pages. And use the specific category for the specific service pages. You can also look into the “Services” schema – https://www.schemaapp.com/how-to/services-schema-markup-schema-org-services/ – Colan Nielsen

Q: How do you do 'founded in' and what does it look like in Google?

A. 'Founded in' is a property in LocalBusiness schema markup. It just informs Google, no rich result. You can see it listed as a property on Schema.org/localBusiness – Martha van Berkel

Q. I tried some of these rich results snippets, added the code, tested it (Using Google Testing Tool and it checks out), but it still does not produce a rich snippet. Is there a specific step I have to do after adding the code to get a rich result?

A. Sometimes it takes 6+ weeks to see results, and sometimes you never see the rich result. Having the schema markup makes you eligible for the result. In the end, it is up to Google. – Martha van Berkel

If you've got any more questions, please leave a comment below. We hope to see you at the next InsideLocal webinar!

The post InsideLocal Webinar: How to Optimize your Website to Maximize Traffic and Convert New Customers appeared first on BrightLocal.

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kristinejrosario · 7 years ago

Text

How to Edit Your Blog Posts Like a Pro

It’s every blogger’s worst nightmare.

Your latest post gets shared by a big-name blogger, and you start getting lots of traffic. Hurrah!

But then someone sends you an email (or worse, leaves a comment) pointing out a glaring mistake in the first paragraph.

Mistakes can knock your reader’s confidence in you. A study in the UK a few years ago suggested that spelling mistakes might be costing businesses millions of dollars.

Of course, editing isn’t just about fixing typos and spelling mistakes. It’s also about shaping your post so it’s easy for readers to engage with. Even if your post is free of grammatical and spelling mistakes, you’ll still lose readers if it takes forever to get to the point, or switches between topics too much .

Perhaps you’ve struggled to edit your posts effectively in the past. You may have spent hours tweaking them, only to feel the result wasn’t much better than what you started with. Or maybe you think it simply takes too long.

In this post, I’ll explain how to create a simple checklist to help you edit – just like we do here at Problogger.

Our Editing Process at ProBlogger

Every post we publish goes through the same streamlined editing process.

Several members of the ProBlogger team write content (mainly Darren and me), and we also publish posts from our subject matter experts. This means we need a clear, step-by-step editing process that makes it easy for everyone to collaborate. and ensures all posts follow our style guide.

Part of our process is this checklist template, which we apply to every post in CoSchedule.

Even if you’re the only person who ever writes for your blog, it still helps to have a clear editing process.

Also think about where you edit. If you’re working with outside parties (e.g. guest posters or companies/agencies providing sponsored content), you may want to use Google Docs like we do. You can collaborate with the author as you edit, and hand the post on to someone else who may be handling formatting and uploading.

If it’s just you, it’s still important to have a self-editing process. It could mean clearly separating your roles as “writer” and “editor” so you’re not trying to edit as you write.

I also recommend coming up with a checklist you can use again and again so you never have to worry about missing a crucial step when editing a post. Here’s how.

Creating Your Own Editing Checklist

You probably already have a process you work through when editing, whether you realise it or not. Open a blank document and type out the typical steps you go through. For instance, maybe you always add the formatting (subheadings, bold text, lists, etc.) when you edit, rather than while you’re drafting.

Now, see if anything is missing from your checklist. Here are some important things to include:

#1: Introduction

Make sure your introduction has a hook, ideally in the very first line. What will the reader gain from this post? Give them a clear reason to keep reading.

Avoid overly long introductions. You’ll lose readers when they’ve barely started on your post. One trick to try is to remove the first paragraph or two of your post entirely. Does it work just as well (or even better) without them?

Further reading: 10 Tips for Opening Your Next Blog Post, Darren Rowse

#2: Subheadings

Unless your post is very short, add subheadings to break it into sections. This helps all your readers. Those who skim for information can quickly find the relevant parts of your post, while those who read every word won’t feel lost in a sea of text.

You should format subheadings by using a heading tag. Make sure the hierarchy is correct (i.e don’t skip from H1 to H3). This is something we always check for here at ProBlogger.

Further reading: How to Use Subheadings to Add Structure to Your Blog Posts , Darren Rowse with Ali Luke

#3: Visual Breaks

Create white space in your post wherever possible. If you can put something into a bulleted list, do it. We also use the blockquote format to highlight key parts of a post. It gives the content more space, and makes it look more attractive.

Images can also create useful breaks in your post. They’re particularly useful if you’re giving instructions on how to do something, because you can show readers how it should look at each step.

Don’t be afraid to use one-sentence (or even one-word) paragraphs. They can be tremendously powerful. Smart Blogger and Copyblogger both make great use of them in their posts.

Further reading: How to Write a Great Paragraph, James Chartrand

#4: Extraneous Material

Delete anything that isn’t relevant to your post, no matter how witty, clever, or well-written it is. If you can’t bear to lose it completely, copy it into a ‘snippet’ file. You might be able to use it in a future post. (A great tip from Bill Harper who edits our posts.)

If your post includes a lot of detail to get beginners up to speed (or to give experienced readers extra food for thought), consider linking to that information in other posts (yours or someone else’s) instead. That way, you can give those who need more help (or want to go deeper) the information they need without everyone else getting bogged down in your post.

This doesn’t mean you can’t write long posts. Some topics require more space to cover all the details. Just make sure every paragraph is necessary.

Further reading: ProBlogger FAQ: How Long Should Posts Be?, Darren Rowse

#5: Conclusion

Make sure your post has a conclusion. Some bloggers have a tendency to end their posts abruptly – especially if they’ve written a list post. Remember, the last few lines of your post are an opportunity to leave your readers with a good impression. You can also give them a call to action, such as leaving a comment, sharing your post, or even buying your product.

Like introductions, conclusions don’t need to be long to be effective. But they do need to be there.

Further reading: 7 Powerful Ways to End Your Next Blog Post, Ali Luke

#6: Complex Sentences, Phrases and Words

Read your post out loud. Another great tip from Bill (that I don’t have the patience to do myself). Are any of your sentences too long? (You shouldn’t need to take a breath mid-way.) Are some a bit of a tongue-twister? Listen to how your writing sounds, and split up or rewrite any sentences you struggle with.

Look for words and phrases you can replace with simpler ones. For instance, don’t say “obtain” when “get” works just as well.

Further reading: Shorter, simpler words: Guide to concise writing, KingCounty.gov

#7: Links to Other Posts

Linking to other posts on your blog is always a good idea. And not just for the potential search engine benefits. It also helps new readers dig more deeply into your body of work, and increases the chances they’ll stick around.

As you edit, look for opportunities to include a link to a post in your archives. Consider linking to other blogs too. It shows readers that you read and research in your niche, and can be a great way to build a strong relationship with fellow bloggers.

Further reading: Why Interlinking Your Blog Posts is a Must (and Not Just For SEO), Daniel Vassiliou

#8: Before Publication

You may want to include this step as part of your editing checklist, or create a separate checklist for ‘uploading’ or ‘publishing’ blog posts. (It’s particularly useful if you work with a virtual assistant.)

Depending on your theme, and how you like to format your posts, it might include things like:

Ensuring the post is assigned a category and, if you use them, tags

Including a featured image for your post

Adding a “read more” link (so only the first part of your post appears on the front page of your blog)

Scheduling your post to appear at a future date

Further reading: Categories vs Tags – SEO Best Practices for Sorting your Content

While content isn’t the only thing you need for a successful blog, it’s crucial that your posts are as good as you can make them. That means careful editing. And if you use a consistent process like we do here at ProBlogger, you’ll always be able to edit quickly and effectively.

Di we miss any items that you have in your checklist? Share them with us in the comments below.

Image credit: Joanna Kosinska

The post How to Edit Your Blog Posts Like a Pro appeared first on ProBlogger.

from http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/ProbloggerHelpingBloggersEarnMoney/~3/3o4r0jNO7r8/

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richardrobertsimsuccessblog · 7 years ago

Text

How to Edit Your Blog Posts Like a Pro

It’s every blogger’s worst nightmare.

Your latest post gets shared by a big-name blogger, and you start getting lots of traffic. Hurrah!

But then someone sends you an email (or worse, leaves a comment) pointing out a glaring mistake in the first paragraph.

Mistakes can knock your reader’s confidence in you. A study in the UK a few years ago suggested that spelling mistakes might be costing businesses millions of dollars.

In this post, I’ll explain how to create a simple checklist to help you edit – just like we do here at Problogger.

Our Editing Process at ProBlogger

Every post we publish goes through the same streamlined editing process.

Part of our process is this checklist template, which we apply to every post in CoSchedule.

Even if you’re the only person who ever writes for your blog, it still helps to have a clear editing process.

If it’s just you, it’s still important to have a self-editing process. It could mean clearly separating your roles as “writer” and “editor” so you’re not trying to edit as you write.

I also recommend coming up with a checklist you can use again and again so you never have to worry about missing a crucial step when editing a post. Here’s how.

Creating Your Own Editing Checklist

Now, see if anything is missing from your checklist. Here are some important things to include:

#1: Introduction

Make sure your introduction has a hook, ideally in the very first line. What will the reader gain from this post? Give them a clear reason to keep reading.

Further reading: 10 Tips for Opening Your Next Blog Post, Darren Rowse

#2: Subheadings

You should format subheadings by using a heading tag. Make sure the hierarchy is correct (i.e don’t skip from H1 to H3). This is something we always check for here at ProBlogger.

Further reading: How to Use Subheadings to Add Structure to Your Blog Posts , Darren Rowse with Ali Luke

#3: Visual Breaks

Images can also create useful breaks in your post. They’re particularly useful if you’re giving instructions on how to do something, because you can show readers how it should look at each step.

Don’t be afraid to use one-sentence (or even one-word) paragraphs. They can be tremendously powerful. Smart Blogger and Copyblogger both make great use of them in their posts.

Further reading: How to Write a Great Paragraph, James Chartrand

#4: Extraneous Material

This doesn’t mean you can’t write long posts. Some topics require more space to cover all the details. Just make sure every paragraph is necessary.

Further reading: ProBlogger FAQ: How Long Should Posts Be?, Darren Rowse

#5: Conclusion

Like introductions, conclusions don’t need to be long to be effective. But they do need to be there.

Further reading: 7 Powerful Ways to End Your Next Blog Post, Ali Luke

#6: Complex Sentences, Phrases and Words

Look for words and phrases you can replace with simpler ones. For instance, don’t say “obtain” when “get” works just as well.

Further reading: Shorter, simpler words: Guide to concise writing, KingCounty.gov

#7: Links to Other Posts

Further reading: Why Interlinking Your Blog Posts is a Must (and Not Just For SEO), Daniel Vassiliou

#8: Before Publication

Depending on your theme, and how you like to format your posts, it might include things like:

Ensuring the post is assigned a category and, if you use them, tags

Including a featured image for your post

Adding a “read more” link (so only the first part of your post appears on the front page of your blog)

Scheduling your post to appear at a future date

Further reading: Categories vs Tags – SEO Best Practices for Sorting your Content

Di we miss any items that you have in your checklist? Share them with us in the comments below.

Image credit: Joanna Kosinska

The post How to Edit Your Blog Posts Like a Pro appeared first on ProBlogger.

How to Edit Your Blog Posts Like a Pro

#Richard Roberts IM Success Mix #How to Edit Your Blog Posts Like a Pro

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silvino32mills · 7 years ago

Text

How to Edit Your Blog Posts Like a Pro

It’s every blogger’s worst nightmare.

Your latest post gets shared by a big-name blogger, and you start getting lots of traffic. Hurrah!

But then someone sends you an email (or worse, leaves a comment) pointing out a glaring mistake in the first paragraph.

Mistakes can knock your reader’s confidence in you. A study in the UK a few years ago suggested that spelling mistakes might be costing businesses millions of dollars.

In this post, I’ll explain how to create a simple checklist to help you edit – just like we do here at Problogger.

Our Editing Process at ProBlogger

Every post we publish goes through the same streamlined editing process.

Part of our process is this checklist template, which we apply to every post in CoSchedule.

Even if you’re the only person who ever writes for your blog, it still helps to have a clear editing process.

If it’s just you, it’s still important to have a self-editing process. It could mean clearly separating your roles as “writer” and “editor” so you’re not trying to edit as you write.

I also recommend coming up with a checklist you can use again and again so you never have to worry about missing a crucial step when editing a post. Here’s how.

Creating Your Own Editing Checklist

Now, see if anything is missing from your checklist. Here are some important things to include:

#1: Introduction

Make sure your introduction has a hook, ideally in the very first line. What will the reader gain from this post? Give them a clear reason to keep reading.

Further reading: 10 Tips for Opening Your Next Blog Post, Darren Rowse

#2: Subheadings

You should format subheadings by using a heading tag. Make sure the hierarchy is correct (i.e don’t skip from H1 to H3). This is something we always check for here at ProBlogger.

Further reading: How to Use Subheadings to Add Structure to Your Blog Posts , Darren Rowse with Ali Luke

#3: Visual Breaks

Images can also create useful breaks in your post. They’re particularly useful if you’re giving instructions on how to do something, because you can show readers how it should look at each step.

Don’t be afraid to use one-sentence (or even one-word) paragraphs. They can be tremendously powerful. Smart Blogger and Copyblogger both make great use of them in their posts.

Further reading: How to Write a Great Paragraph, James Chartrand

#4: Extraneous Material

This doesn’t mean you can’t write long posts. Some topics require more space to cover all the details. Just make sure every paragraph is necessary.

Further reading: ProBlogger FAQ: How Long Should Posts Be?, Darren Rowse

#5: Conclusion

Like introductions, conclusions don’t need to be long to be effective. But they do need to be there.

Further reading: 7 Powerful Ways to End Your Next Blog Post, Ali Luke

#6: Complex Sentences, Phrases and Words

Look for words and phrases you can replace with simpler ones. For instance, don’t say “obtain” when “get” works just as well.

Further reading: Shorter, simpler words: Guide to concise writing, KingCounty.gov

#7: Links to Other Posts

Further reading: Why Interlinking Your Blog Posts is a Must (and Not Just For SEO), Daniel Vassiliou

#8: Before Publication

Depending on your theme, and how you like to format your posts, it might include things like:

Ensuring the post is assigned a category and, if you use them, tags

Including a featured image for your post

Adding a “read more” link (so only the first part of your post appears on the front page of your blog)

Scheduling your post to appear at a future date

Further reading: Categories vs Tags – SEO Best Practices for Sorting your Content

Di we miss any items that you have in your checklist? Share them with us in the comments below.

Image credit: Joanna Kosinska

The post How to Edit Your Blog Posts Like a Pro appeared first on ProBlogger.

from ProBlogger http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/ProbloggerHelpingBloggersEarnMoney/~3/3o4r0jNO7r8/

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bizmediaweb · 7 years ago

Text

How to Edit Your Blog Posts Like a Pro

It’s every blogger’s worst nightmare.

Your latest post gets shared by a big-name blogger, and you start getting lots of traffic. Hurrah!

But then someone sends you an email (or worse, leaves a comment) pointing out a glaring mistake in the first paragraph.

Mistakes can knock your reader’s confidence in you. A study in the UK a few years ago suggested that spelling mistakes might be costing businesses millions of dollars.

In this post, I’ll explain how to create a simple checklist to help you edit – just like we do here at Problogger.

Our Editing Process at ProBlogger

Every post we publish goes through the same streamlined editing process.

Part of our process is this checklist template, which we apply to every post in CoSchedule.

Even if you’re the only person who ever writes for your blog, it still helps to have a clear editing process.

If it’s just you, it’s still important to have a self-editing process. It could mean clearly separating your roles as “writer” and “editor” so you’re not trying to edit as you write.

I also recommend coming up with a checklist you can use again and again so you never have to worry about missing a crucial step when editing a post. Here’s how.

Creating Your Own Editing Checklist

Now, see if anything is missing from your checklist. Here are some important things to include:

#1: Introduction

Make sure your introduction has a hook, ideally in the very first line. What will the reader gain from this post? Give them a clear reason to keep reading.

Further reading: 10 Tips for Opening Your Next Blog Post, Darren Rowse

#2: Subheadings

You should format subheadings by using a heading tag. Make sure the hierarchy is correct (i.e don’t skip from H1 to H3). This is something we always check for here at ProBlogger.

Further reading: How to Use Subheadings to Add Structure to Your Blog Posts , Darren Rowse with Ali Luke

#3: Visual Breaks

Images can also create useful breaks in your post. They’re particularly useful if you’re giving instructions on how to do something, because you can show readers how it should look at each step.

Don’t be afraid to use one-sentence (or even one-word) paragraphs. They can be tremendously powerful. Smart Blogger and Copyblogger both make great use of them in their posts.

Further reading: How to Write a Great Paragraph, James Chartrand

#4: Extraneous Material

This doesn’t mean you can’t write long posts. Some topics require more space to cover all the details. Just make sure every paragraph is necessary.

Further reading: ProBlogger FAQ: How Long Should Posts Be?, Darren Rowse

#5: Conclusion

Like introductions, conclusions don’t need to be long to be effective. But they do need to be there.

Further reading: 7 Powerful Ways to End Your Next Blog Post, Ali Luke

#6: Complex Sentences, Phrases and Words

Look for words and phrases you can replace with simpler ones. For instance, don’t say “obtain” when “get” works just as well.

Further reading: Shorter, simpler words: Guide to concise writing, KingCounty.gov

#7: Links to Other Posts

Further reading: Why Interlinking Your Blog Posts is a Must (and Not Just For SEO), Daniel Vassiliou

#8: Before Publication

Depending on your theme, and how you like to format your posts, it might include things like:

Ensuring the post is assigned a category and, if you use them, tags

Including a featured image for your post

Adding a “read more” link (so only the first part of your post appears on the front page of your blog)

Scheduling your post to appear at a future date

Further reading: Categories vs Tags – SEO Best Practices for Sorting your Content

Di we miss any items that you have in your checklist? Share them with us in the comments below.

Image credit: Joanna Kosinska

The post How to Edit Your Blog Posts Like a Pro appeared first on ProBlogger.

How to Edit Your Blog Posts Like a Pro published first on http://ift.tt/2u73Z29

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