25
Apr
5 Reasons To Host Your Blog
In yesterday’s SEO webinar, I received several questions on whether it is better host your blog on your store’s domain or on a hosted platform like WordPress, Blogger or Tumblr.
So which is better? While there are some pros to using Tumblr like gaining in-site traffic through tags & networking, on the whole hosting your blog on the same URL as our store is better for your business’ branding & SEO. But why?
1. SEO
All blogs are great for SEO, but self-hosted blogs allow you more control over SEO. Hosting your blog allows you to add SEO friendly plugins and other SEO features that make your blogging efforts much more effective. Hosting your blog on your domain also tells Google that your site offers fresh content ( which it loves) where as your blogging platform would reap all of your fresh content benefits if you hosted it with them.
2. Branding
.Hosting your blog on your domain reminds users that you are a business not just a blog, and helps build brand recognition. Being a content creator gives your store credibility & authority with customers, but that connection is not as easily made when your blog is hosted on a separate URL than your store.
3. Content Control
When you host your own blog, you have full control over the type of content you publish but if you use free blogging platforms, you are restricted by their guidelines. If you publish mostly promotional content or only write about your products, you could be flagged as low quality or spam. You could even get banned which would mean all of your hard content marketing work would go to waste.
4. Functionality Control
If you host your own blog, the only limits to functionality is your imagination. Key branding tools like social media widgets & buttons, newsletter sign-ups and coupon-codes are hard if not impossible to implement on free platforms.
5. Design Control
Design is a huge part of brand recognition, you want your readers recognize the look & feel of your blog from your store and vice versa. Free platforms do not offer the same customization options as self-hosting does.
25
Apr
Check out The New Rules Of SEO on Youtube!
If you missed yesterday’s awesome webinar The New Rules Of SEO, never fear Youtube is here!
23
Apr
Ask The SEO Experts: Photo-Sharing Links, Redesign Affect On SEO
3dcart’s CMO Joe Palko & SEO Manager Bryan Falla answer SEO, PPC, and conversion questions questions submitted by 3dcart merchants. To submit your questions fill out this form: http://blog.3dcart.com/get-your-seo-questions-answered-by-3dcarts-seo-experts/
Q. Which major photo-sharing sites (i.e. Flickr, photobucket, deviantart, imageshack) allow outgoing links?
A. In terms of dofollow links, most don’t. There are basically two reasons: They are protecting their own “link juice”, and also preventing people from wanting to use them only for the benefit of outbound links. The exception to that rule is Deviantart whose links are dofollow, however a landing page is put between deviantart and your target page which makes it not as valuable.
BUT that doesn’t mean there is not ways to use photo-sharing to build high-quality links: You can upload original images to Flickr’s creative commons and ask that if bloggers use your image or photo to place a one way back link to your blog or site. For example:
“Feel free to use this image for your website or blog as long as you include photo credit with a clickable (hyperlinked) and do-follow link to
blog.3dcart.com.”
It’s the same concept as the embed code used for “sharing” infographics, which pretty much tells people “fee free to share this graphic on your website with this code” and within the code there’s a do-follow backlink embedded.
So you can definitely build backlinks through these sites, but it’s important to understand that it’s more through networking than simply by posting. The backlinks won’t come from the sites themselves but from the people who use these sites.
Q. I’ve recently acquired a website that I feel is a bit too busy and might be confusing for some guests. I’m planning to do a redesign and streamline the site, making it more user-friendly. What are the risks in a redesign and what should I concentrate on when rebuilding with SEO in mind?
The only major risk is that the search engines won’t be able to find indexed content. Avoid this by
1. Try to keep the same URLs and site architecture
2. If that’s not possible, make sure all your indexed pages are redirected properly to their new URLs using 301 redirects
As long as the content is the same, you should be fine. On a side note, often times after redesigning a website, rankings will often increase, especially if the site is structured well, gets improved content, and is coded using best practices. I’ve found a nice list of best practices… http://terrymorris.net/bestpractices/
Make sure to register for 3dcart’s free webinar: The New Rules of SEO and check out 3dcart’s SEO services which can help you fast-track your optimization efforts.
3dcart’s CMO Joe Palko & SEO Manager Bryan Falla answer SEO, PPC, and conversion questions questions submitted by 3dcart merchants. To submit your questions fill out this form: http://blog.3dcart.com/get-your-seo-questions-answered-by-3dcarts-seo-experts/
19
Apr
Join 3dcart’s SEO Experts For “The New Rules Of SEO” Webinar
Join 3dcart’s Search Engine Marketing experts on Tue, Apr 24, 2012 2:00 PM – 3:00 PM EST for “The New Rules Of SEO” Webinar.
Learn how to get your website to rank higher on Google, Yahoo! and Bing. 3dcart CMO Joe Palko & SEO manager Brian Falla will discuss how Relevance, Authority and Quality are all factors the affect their SEO rankings. This hour long informational webinar will also include a Question and Answer session along with appetizers and light refreshments (just kidding).
Register now to reserve your spot!
06
Apr
Get Your SEO Questions Answered By 3dcart’s SEO Experts
Online retail marketing takes a lot of work, know-how, time and money. That’s why this week 3dcart launched a new set of ecommerce marketing services to help drive more website traffic, higher brand awareness and more conversions to online stores & help ease the stress of marketing for online retailers.
3dcart’s new service packages are perfect for small and large retail businesses alike. 3dcart representatives work directly with customers to tailor each solution based on the retailer’s specific needs.
“Buying SEO services from a reputable firm may cost you $3,000 or more per month,” said 3dcart CMO Joe Palko. “In contrast, we’re offering the same services and more that build on years of ecommerce experience at a fraction of the cost because it is in our best interest to help small and medium sized businesses grow.”
And in an effort to offer 3dcart merchants even MORE help marketing their online store, 3dcart’s CMO Joe Palko & SEO Manager Bryan Falla will be answering your SEO, PPC, and conversion questions right here on the 3dcart blog. To submit your questions fill out the below form and keep reading the 3dcart blog!
05
Mar
Why Content For SEO?
Merchants sometimes are a little timid about content marketing – does all the effort you put into creating quality content REALLY affect your SEO?
YES! And the folks at Brafton make a strong case for using content marketing to boost your rank in search engines in their Why Content For SEO” infographic. Here’s some stats and information that you might find interesting:
- 52% of consumers say that blogs have influenced a purchase decision
- 61% of consumers say they are more likely to purchase from an online merchant that offers custom content
- 92% of marketers say that content marketing is “very effective” or “somewhat effective” in SEO
10
Feb
SEO FAQ #Infographic
SEO is confusing. Mostly because it is ever-changing. Once you feel like you have a good grasp on link-building tactics, Google goes and changes your algorithm and all of your techniques no longer yield results! So when we saw this SEo FAQ, we knew we had to share.
We want to highlight out some important points:
1. Choosing Your Long Tail Keywords
Long Tail Keywords are noted in the first portion of the infographic as having lower competition and higher conversion rate than general one-word keywords. While that most definitely is true ( “shoes” will be more competitive and offer less conversions that “blue sparkly high heels”), the most important aspect to consider is WHICH long tail keywords to pursue. See our post “Choosing Buyer Keywords.”
2. Breadcrumbs are great for Google & users
Make sure that each category and product should have its own page and that you create a hierarchy using breadcrumb links. Like the Infograhic says, Google ranks pages and not websites. So by creating a separate page for all products and categories, you can target super specific high-converting keywords for each page. TIP: Showing users breadcrumbs makes the shopping experience much more user friendly. Here’s a great example:
09
Jan
90% Of People Believe Brand Recommendations From Friends
Inbound marketing focuses on getting found by customers and not forcing them to look at you through advertisements (outbound marketing). Inbound marketing is permission marketing centered on relationships and natural SEO.
As an inbound marketing software, Hubspot is obviously all about ‘inbound-marketing’ but they have good reason to be. The impact word-of-mouth and customer reviews on online sales is immense! Just check out some of these facts:
PPC: Only 41% of people believe that ads ( Google Ads etc) are a good source of product information & 75% don’t accept ads as ‘truth’.
SEO: 61% of consumers use search engines to research products before a purchase
SOCIAL MEDIA: 90% of people believe brand recommendations from friends. Thats 20% more than those who believe general consumer opinion
CUSTOMER REVIEWS : Products with over 50 reviews create greater return, 65% more than products with fewer than 5.
09
Jan
Adding The 3dcart Shopping Widget To Your Blog
SEMSEOWizard.com is one of our favorite bloggers for ecommerce SEO and social optimization tips. The Wizard is a big fan of 3dcart and has some awesome tutorials worth checking out.
One of which is this awesome tutorial on how to add the 3dcart shopping widget to your blog like this:
05
Jan
Blogging For Keywords
2012 is a great year to start blogging for your online store. Blogging is key for any successful inbound marketing strategy as it helps build a loyal audience (that converts!), establishes your company as a thought leader and helps with SEO.
If you want an example of a store blogging to success, check out 3dcart client No Meat Athlete.
Like we said above, blogging is a great way to boost your site’s SEO. To make sure your blog goes the SEO distance, its important to think about the keywords for each individual post, but think about content first. We advise writing the entire post without thinking about SEO or keywords, just focus on your message.
