Below you'll find a list of all posts that have been categorized as “SEO”
In early 2022 X-Cart made a major change to their business model. Instead of downloading the code, paying a one off licence fee (c. $500) and ‘off you go’ the new setup requires a $199+ monthly subscription. That’s a major on cost for some businesses. With X-Cart now effectively costing $2,400+ per year is it the best option for businesses who rely heavily on SEO to get their traffic?
Creating the content needed to rank – or continue ranking – as Google’s Natural Language Processing (NLP) changes roll out over the coming months could put you back thousands of dollars per page. If you’re a small business without a hefty budget I’ll show how you can minimize the costs.
Google’s latest algorithm update in late September left many people scratching their heads but when you consider it alongside the search giant’s main strategy everything becomes clear. First let’s run down what a great many webmasters experienced … reduced visitor numbers. But this wasn’t the usual swipe at spammers or the loss of prized keyword rankings.
It’s a SEO mantra, “Content is king”. You can’t rank without it. So when Neil Patel claimed in February 2019 that content wasn’t king anymore was he onto something? Neil Patel If you haven’t come across Neil Patel before he holds a celebrity status with some do it yourself search engine optimizers. You can’t help but enjoy his upbeat persona as he bounces around the screen on YouTube videos or throws out his tips on podcasts.
I’ve been doing quite a bit of traveling recently which has given me the chance to catch up on some podcasts. They’re a great way to learn something new when there is nothing else going on except motorway tarmac or air stewardesses trying to sell you over priced drinks. Most podcasts are interviews with people who have achieved some level of online success and listening to a number of these back to back I started to get a picture of characteristics they all have in common.
This summer Google started rolling out its new way of thinking. It hit some online businesses hard while others will not have noticed a thing … for now. The industry Google was taking to task was pharmaceuticals and medication in general. Where Google had once in the past seen links from quality sites to yours as a reason why you should rank highly in the search results it now wants to see extra authority.
First came the likes of SEO Nuke, massive link building operations that worked for a while before they (and the sites that used them) were sent to oblivion by Google penalties and algorithm updates. Then came article sites, article spinners, link wheels and networks such as MyBlogGuest. Once again those who used them benefited for a while until, once again, Google caught up with their systems and devastating consequences were felt by those who had believed them to be ‘safe’.
Mobilegeddon came and went a year ago last Spring. Disasters forecast never materialised but Google’s new ‘Mobile First’ approach to ranking may be the real Mobilegeddon. Is your website prepared? Back when Google announced it would flag websites that weren’t mobile friendly in the search results there followed a stampede of webmasters looking for changes to make their pages look tip top on smart phones and tablets.
I, like most people, used to use the Ecommerce Sales Performance report in Google Analytics to get an idea of which channels were generating sales … until I realized the data is mostly useless. Oddly it was a new feature in Analytics itself which proved it. Today I’ll show you how to check if your Sales Performance data is worth the pixels it is displayed in and how to find the real source or your customers or goal converting visitors.
It’s one of those metrics so many webmasters fret over and it has generated endless blog posts about how you should reduce it in the name of SEO but should you even be giving it the time of day? Here I’ll cover why bounce rate matters if you understand what it really is, how to know if your bounce rate is real, what a ‘bad’ bounce rate really is and how to handle the dreaded increasing bounce rate!
