Thursday, July 30, 2015

Home For Sale 506 Bent Tree Ln, Haslet, TX 76052

506 Bent Tree Lane, Haslet TX 4 bedroom, 3 full bath, Study and Gameroom, large mud-room/laundry. 3045 Sq Feet. FOR SALE!

Friday, July 10, 2015

Why Your Shopify Blog is Horrible for SEO and How to Fix It

HOW TO FIX YOUR SHOPIFY BLOG TO GET MORE WEB TRAFFIC

Shopify offers a solid ecommerce solution.

However, their blog platform is absolutely lacking in comparison with WordPress for any real search engine traction (SEO) on Google, Bing and Yahoo.

Why does this matter…

With a Shopify blog you aren’t being seen online as much as you SHOULD be.

Therefore, you are LOSING MONEY from potential customers.

We urge-beg-even cajole all our Shopify clients into using a WordPress subdomain on their Shopify site.

You should be getting the revenue being spent on products and services you sell into YOUR pocket, not a competitor’s.

Here is how a blog helps you gain site traffic…

Placing fresh content on your site’s blog that includes keywords (terms people search such as “outdoor kitchen contractor dallas”) is the chief way to gain search engine ranking increases.

You should have a list of strong keywords on which to write articles.

You should also have a calendar with due dates so the articles get written. (By you or a ghostwriter who can write in your tone—hint: we do this)

Once you have a solid article written that is beneficial to your customers, it’s time to optimize it so Google will gobble up this content and rank you on that keyword.

This is where the Shopify Blog Problems Emerge…

There are several things wrong with the Shopify blog platform that are essential to SEO that Shopify fails to offer but WordPress has built in.

Because of the list below, you should STRONGLY consider using a WordPress blog on your Shopify site to get FOUND on Google. If not, we have a workaround, but it’s a bit ugly.

Here are the important differences with as little “tech speak” as possible. Let’s pretend you own an outdoor kitchen building company in the Dallas Fort Worth Area.

SHOPIFY BLOG VERSUS WORDPRESS BLOG:

⇒ Shopify Poor Link Structure | WordPress Solid Canonical Links

When you post on the Shopify the link that Shopify generates is bizarre.

It places a long strand of unneeded numbers in the URL.

The post should be simply:

http://ift.tt/1SdEMH7

Instead Shopify turns it into :

http://ift.tt/1SdEOip

This violates every good rule of SEO.

The URL should be as streamlined as possible. Google prefers the keywords you are targeting to occur early in the URL.

This unnecessary insertion by Shopify does three things:

1) It pushes important keywords farther back in the URL.

2) It includes meaningless terms into the URL, which “confuses” Google.

3) It can cause keywords to be truncated altogether.

In contrast, when you post with WordPress blog posts generate URLs that are beautifully attractive to Google and other search engines.

⇒ Shopify No Categories | WordPress Solid Category Options

A key factor to being found on search engines like Google, Yahoo and Bing is to stack posts under categories that are parallel to frequently searched terms. An example of a good category might be outdoor-grills.

Shopify offers no ability to categorize post, instead requiring you to you use tags which don’t work nearly as well as categories (OR you can start a separate blog for each needed category which is an end user NIGHTMARE!)

An ideal URL link should read, where the category outdoor-grill is a highly searched term:

http://ift.tt/1UKuwud

You cannot even get close to this in Shopify:

http://ift.tt/1UKuyCm

Adding categories would be super easy for the Shopify folks to remedy and it is a bit mind blowing as to why this hasn’t been done.

WordPress blogs come default with categories and tags enabled. It is as simple as checking a category box to apply before you post.

⇒ Shopfiy NO Attribution Links | WordPress Simple to Use Attribution Links

The name of the game in gaining search results is getting your blog posts linked to and shared on other sites.

For our clients, we use a large syndication network.

When one of our client’s blogs posts, it shoots out ‘automagically’ to 20+ other sites. This creates huge gains in search.

BUT key to this working is to have an attribution link on the post on syndication site.

An attribution link occurs at the bottom of each syndicated posts that looks like this.

The post Best Grills in Dallas first appeared on Manchester Outdoor.

Otherwise, Google can see these posts as duplicate content (copied content)and can apply a rankin penalty for having multiple pages with the same content.

It is nearly impossible to place a solid attribution link without a hackathon on Shopify.

Because the syndication fires off the moment you publish, and since you can’t know what random numbers Shopify is going to put in front of the URL, it becomes almost impossible to create the first link.

Even if you figure out the blog link through some sort of psychic powers (see the P.S. below), you then have to place that sentence on the actual Shopify blog, publish it and leave it until if fires to the syndication networks, then quickly go back in and pull it off the original Shopify post…a PAIN!

Shopify Blog Horrible for SEO

WordPress offers a simple plug-in to make this easy. It shoots out an automatic attribution link on every blog you publish.

Plug-ins, Plug-ins, Plug-ins

Shopify has no real blog plug-ins to upgrade search engine boosting, keyword frequency, measures alt image tag checkers, and other things needed for good search engine optimization.

WordPress has hundreds of thousands of plug-ins to help improve user experience AND get you blog its best for search engine results. One of the best is the YOAST SEO plug-in.

HOW TO FIX THIS SHOPIFY BLOG SEO PROBLEM.

Keep using Shopify for you main ecommerce site

BUT…

Do NOT use the blog inside of Shopify unless you absolutely have to. By absolutely have to, we mean like you or a loved one are under a threat of death if you do not continue using it.

The best way forward is to park a WordPress blog as a subdomain on your main Shopify site.

Your blog would be WordPress powered and appear at:

http://ift.tt/1UKuySF

Instead of

http://ift.tt/1UKuySH

Ideally you will skin the blog to look exactly like your full Shopify site with ALL the same navigation functions on the blog as on your full shopify site. In this way your users won’t realize they are jumping domains.

(By the way, subdomains DO pass on Search Engine Credit to the main url. This use to be debated, but now it has been shown by testing and stated by Google to be so.)

So http://ift.tt/1UKuySF passes on SEO credit to http://ift.tt/1SdEMHf

While the initial set-up is not for the faint of heart (you’ll need a knowledgeable designer/coder to blend the WordPress and Shopify—we have deep experience with this project), once it is establish keeping your WordPress site up to date is SUPER EASY (literally one or two clicks) and posting new content is also a breeze.

If you have a Shopify site, Moon & Owl will be happy to get your WordPress blog in place and skinned to match your Shopify site.

We can also create your syndication network to launch your content to 20 sites once you hit publish.

Call us 817-889-1487

P.S. If you do decide to band your head against the wall repeatedly by syndicating your Shopify blog posts, here’s how to do it:

1) Make sure you DO place in a hard coded attribution link on your original Shopifyblog post. Strongly consider including a rel=”canonical” in the attribution

2) To see what the final link will be, “publish” your post on a future date. *This prevents the post from triggering your syndication network yet allows you to see what the post’s final link will be.

3) Then when you preview the post, the true Shopify URL will be present

4) Cut and paste this true URL for use in your attribution link.

5) Hard code the attribution link into your scheduled post.

6) Change the publish date to today’s date and time.

7) Hit publish and the post should be syndicated to your IFTTT.com triggered platforms.

8) As soon as you sure all the syndicated platforms have posted, eliminate the attribution link from your original blog. *This needs to be done VERY soon after you publish the original post.

9) Your syndicated blog platforms like Tumblr etc. “should” retain that attribution link.

OR

Just let Moon & Owl set up a WordPress subdomain all the needed plug-ins (especially with YOAST SEO plug-in and a Semantic Mastery Plugin) and going forward one simple click when as you publish your post does all of this for you…BOOM!

The post Why Your Shopify Blog is Horrible for SEO and How to Fix It appeared first on Moon and Owl Marketing

Monday, July 6, 2015

How To Supercharge Your Business Blog for Website Traffic

Why supercharge your business blog content?

“Publish, publish publish,” you’ve heard. So you spend time writing a great blog or article for your small business website, you post it, and wait, wait, wait…and nada.

Not many views and no increase in how high you rank on the search engines (Google, Bing, Yahoo, etc.) for the keyword topic you thought would get you increased traffic.

You get frustrated and think this whole “publish fresh content to get found” idea is a sham. I quit!

STOP!

You can easily supercharge your business blog content to get more traffic to your website. With over 2 million blogs and articles posted daily, with this simple strategy you CAN make your blogs and fresh content COUNT!

HOW?

Create a supercharged network of other web profiles that syndicate your business blog content out “automagically.”

What if every time you posted a blog, article or content on your own website it got posted to 20 other power sites with links back to your original blog? This is largely how Google and other search engines measure how high to rank your article.

And what if you didn’t have to lift a finger to do this once you established this network?

We did exactly this, and soon we had front-page rankings for many of our most profitable keywords (like, Social Media Marketing Fort Worth, Fort Worth Social Media company, and more).

When we fly up a blog like this one, it gets instantly syndicated to these powerful sites:

1. G+ Profile
2. G+ Page
3. YouTube
4. Blogger
5. Page login
6. WordPress.com
7. Gravatar.com
8. Tumblr.com
9. Twitter.com
10. Delicious.com
11. Diigo.com
12. Evernote
13. Instapaper.com
14. Getpocket.com
15. App.net
16. Drive.com
17. OneNote.com
18. Bufferapp.com
19. Bitly.com
20. IFTTT.com
21. Blog.com
22. Facebook.com
23. Pinboard.in
24. LinkedIn
25. Nuzzel

The search engines like Google and Bing see this and say, “Whoa, this content has some serious backlinks on powerful sites, it should rank.” Not to mention loyal users of EACH of the platforms are introduced to our content.

GUESS WHAT? YOU CAN DO THE SAME THING

You can supercharge your business blog by building out your own IFTTT network if you know what you are doing and have about 6 spare hours, plus manage the learning curve…

OR

We can build out your supercharged network and soon your content will start gaining traction.

Once your network gets built, you have a powerful SEO tool that supercharges and amplifies your content.

HOW IS IT DONE?

By using a powerful little app called If This Then That (IFTTT) your content can be supercharged.

supercharge business blog with IFTTT

When you post your blog or fresh content it triggers this powerful little app, which shoots it out to all the other profiles that you’ve created, interlinked to one another and optimized for search engines to LOVE them.

There is are best practices that need to be in place, but if we build your network and then maintain the most up to date recipes, all you have to focus on is great content.

TAKE IT ONE STEP FURTHER

Then the next choice presents itself…

You can start writing your own content using highly searched keywords…

OR

You can let us do all the heavy lifting, giving you more time to RUN YOUR BUSINESS.

If you do decide to write your own content, the keyword research is crucial. Use the powerful tools like SpyFu.com and keywordsnatcher.com to help you know which keywords you can leverage to gain traffic.

business blog supercharge increase traffic

Use the keyword early in the title and in one or two headlines (called H1 and H2’s) in your blog. Also, make sure you don’t overuse the keyword or use it meaninglessly (called keyword stuffing), as the search engines frown on this practice.

Of course, we can do the keyword research and write keyword optimized content in your own voice with your company’s persona and tone. All you have to do is approve the final blog or article, allowing you the time to do what you do best…run your business.

APPLY THE SECRET SAUCE

We have one other step we are using to see our dramatic increases in rankings. We have access to a restricted program that applies the real mojo, using live humans to click through to your blog article after searching it. This dramatically increases the initial value Google gives to your post launching it forward in its placement on search results.

WHAT KIND OF RESULTS CAN I EXPECT?

The speed at which you climb the search engine results totally depends on the competitiveness of your keywords.

If you are going after search results on a very broad term (ex. luxury bedding, prostate cancer, etc.), gaining rank takes more time.

By strategically using longer search terms that still have a solid amount of search, you will typically see the fastest results (ex. Tuscan luxury bedding, prostate cancer surgery side effects).

Local search term ranking tends to be more accelerated than national terms, though rank with even national terms can be gained (luxury bedding in Frisco, prostate cancer treatment in Dallas, TX).

BUT RANKING ALONE ISN’T ENOUGH—YOU NEED REVENUE

Ranking on a certain term doesn’t matter if it doesn’t lead to revenue. You need people to click onto your site who are ready to spend their money on your products and services.

This starts by watching which keyword terms most often turn into paying customers. Your Google Analytics tool, when set up properly, can show you which keywords and resources and leading to paying customers.

Your content must also be valuable to the reader, convincing them to move farther into your sales funnel. A dry, SEO-only written article might get visitors to your site, but unless it is practical and relevant, providing solutions to their needs, it won’t keep them on your site and convert to revenue.

Don’t get suckered into the ranking alone measurement. Your Google Analytics account will tell if you if people coming through your supercharged blogs, content, and articles are staying on your site and visiting subsequent pages.

If you don’t know how to read your Google Analytics Account, we can do a simple training session to:

(1)make sure it is set up properly

(2)tell you how to simply read the sometimes overwhelming report.

You CAN supercharge your business blog and fresh content to ensure the most people as well as the best possible candidates see it and respond.

Our supercharge your blog, content and articles programs start as low as $100 per month. Call us at 817-889-1487 for a FREE consultation. We’ll assess your needs and let you know what program best fits your business.

The post How To Supercharge Your Business Blog for Website Traffic appeared first on Moon and Owl Marketing