News and Blog

E commerce Sites and Live Chat

Submitted by a.foley on Wed, 02/15/2017 - 10:10

A positive customer experience is one of the hallmarks of a company’s long-term success. One of the keys to providing an exceptional customer experience is giving customers the ability to speak with your company directly when they have questions, comments, or concerns.

For e-commerce sites — which are typically known for being streamlined, it might not be feasible to have a customer service department answering calls 24/7. However, a live chat service can solve the customer service aspect, while providing a number of other benefits as well.

Business
Ecommerce
Marketing

Off-Page Optimization Techniques You Could be Penalized For

Submitted by a.foley on Tue, 02/14/2017 - 11:50

#1 Link Building with “Rented” Paid Links
Nowadays, paid links are strictly forbidden by Google. However, once upon a time, link purchasing was the lifeblood of black- and grey-hat SEO. It was effective and cost-efficient.

Basically, “rented” or brokered paid links are links that you use for a limited period of time. When your “rent period” is over, you can either rent the links again or they’ll go back on the market for other SEO ninjas to purchase and use them for their sites.

Obviously, this can be seen as cheating. SEO pros could keep their clients on a tight leash, making sure that they would never get rankings high enough to stop investing in links. For the better, Google put a stop to that kind of cheating.

Business
Marketing
SEO

Mobile Apps and E commerce

Submitted by a.foley on Mon, 02/13/2017 - 11:03

With the rise of smartphones, online customers have been buying more goods with their mobile devices instead of computers.
Mobile apps are more popular than mobile websites and can provide businesses with more customer information compared to a website visit. Also, customers are more likely to remember and return to a mobile app which is more visible on a phone screen compared to an Internet browser’s bookmark.

What does the growing popularity of apps mean for e-commerce websites? Mobile apps are also affecting how shoppers behave, and an e-commerce business needs to understand these trends to get the most out of mobile apps.

Business
Design
Ecommerce

10 Ingredients for Ecommerce Success

Submitted by a.foley on Thu, 02/09/2017 - 10:16

Know your target customer. What products or services do your target customers want and need? How do they search for products? 

Select the right products. Your products must be wanted by consumers. The products also must be differentiated from your competitors in some way. Variables include quality, price, availability, and presentation, as well as content about the products, such as user reviews and social commentary.

Make it easy for find your products. This can be challenging for a new ecommerce business. Earning search engine rankings takes time and perseverance. Search ads are expensive, but almost mandatory today. Social marketing is important, but it only gets you so far. Affiliate marketing is now essential for most ecommerce businesses. 

Business
Ecommerce
SEO

Google debuts Cloud Search

Submitted by a.foley on Wed, 02/08/2017 - 10:34

Google today launched for its business customers a new tool called Google Cloud Search, which will allow users to search across G Suite products, including Drive, Gmail, Sites, Calendar, Docs, Contacts and more. The service was previously available in a limited preview, where it was known as Springboard, and described as something like a Google Now for enterprise workers.

Springboard, now Cloud Search, is designed for use in larger companies where different groups and individuals have access to different files. The search service respects file-sharing permissions, so users can only access what’s available to them, whether that’s company-wide resources like a policy manual, team projects or documents only they can see.

Business
News

3 Steps For Mobile SEO

Submitted by a.foley on Mon, 02/06/2017 - 10:43

Over the next twelve months, Google will be rolling out their mobile-first index, and eventually moving it to be their primary algorithm for search engine results. What does this mean? The short version is that if your brand isn’t presenting well on mobile devices, your SEO campaign is hobbled.

If you’re worried about getting left behind, it’s okay! There’s still time, and the sooner you get your mobile presence in working order, the better. Here are three steps you can take to achieve mobile SEO success:

Make Sure Your Brand Is Represented Accurately

Business
Marketing
SEO

2017's Four Most Important Ranking Factors

Submitted by a.foley on Fri, 02/03/2017 - 11:37

1. Content
Content is one of the most important Google ranking factors, according to Andrey Lipattsev, a Search Quality Senior Strategist at Google. This shouldn’t be news — content has been an important ranking factor for a while — but in recent years, we’ve seen a shift away from keyword-focused content towards more relevant content written in natural language. Expect to see more of that as 2017 unfolds.

2. Backlinks
Backlinks remain an important Google ranking factor, but over the years, Google has learned to weed out the bad links from the good. More links will still result in a higher score, but only if they’re from a number of diverse and authoritative domains.

Business
Ecommerce
SEO

Local Search is all about Mobile

Submitted by a.foley on Thu, 02/02/2017 - 10:28

Optimizing for local search is important, but if you aren’t optimizing for mobile, you’re going to miss out on your most important source of local traffic.

For years, Google has been improving the relevance of local search, from its “Pigeon Update” to Promoted Pins. And since there are more searches on mobile than desktop, it’s no wonder that Google has put a big emphasis on mobile-friendliness in its ranking algorithms.

Taken together, that means that Google is putting a high priority on mobile local search — and so should you.

The fact of the matter is, more and more local searches are taking place on mobile. More importantly, many of those local searches come with a high purchase intent, making local mobile searches an incredibly important opportunity for your business.

People search on mobile because they have an immediate need, and in this day and age, people with an immediate need want things fast.

Business
Ecommerce
Marketing
SEO

It's all about mobile in 2017

Submitted by a.foley on Mon, 01/30/2017 - 11:14

The message for SEO in 2017 is loud and clear: Design your website in a fashion that makes mobile users the priority. If you listen closely, you can almost hear Google whisper, "Or be left behind, mwah ha ha..."

Now, where you may have been focusing very little (if at all) on mobile up to this point, don't just pull a 180 and relegate the desktop version of your site to the digital doldrums while going 100-percent mobile. Think of it this way: You need two websites now -- each of them being as efficient, effective, and targeted as you can make them -- but, thanks to responsive design, your one site can function as two.

Business
Design
SEO

Will Keyword Research Remain Relevant In SEO?

Submitted by a.foley on Fri, 01/27/2017 - 11:02

Keyword research is often the first thing you do when planning a new SEO campaign (or auditing an older one). It provides the skeletal framework for a campaign, and for years has been a mainstay tool in the SEO expert’s belt. But over the past five years or so, keyword research has undergone some interesting evolutions, becoming less relevant in some ways and fundamentally changing in others.

Let’s remind ourselves why keywords are important in the first place. The goal of SEO is to get your site ranked higher for various search queries—but how do you know which queries are best to rank for? This is where keyword research comes in. It allows you to find keywords that offer:

Business
Marketing
SEO
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