🔥 The SEOs Diners Club - Issue #112 - Weekly SEO Tips & News

Here are the weekly SEO insights for the SEOs Diners Club members.

Welcome to another insightful week with The SEOs Diners Club newsletter. Leveraging over a decade of SEO expertise, I aim to distill the week's most critical developments into a concise read that will take less than seven minutes. Let's dive into the insights that matter.

Shopify SEO: How To Optimize Your Store for Google?

Shopify SEO can significantly impact your e-commerce sales. Learn from SEO experts the top strategies that influence your search ranking.

The retail industry has significantly transformed in recent years as people increasingly turn to the Internet for their shopping needs. Convenience (who doesn't love shopping in pajamas?) and necessity (a global pandemic has made it difficult for many physical stores to operate) have propelled the momentum of e-commerce.

As a result, platforms like Shopify have attracted tons of new sellers looking to move their businesses online. Over a million businesses worldwide have found success with a Shopify store. This means a large pool of competitors.

So, what should you do to set your Shopify site apart from others?

Attracting organic search traffic to your store is a surefire way to increase sales. Improving your Shopify SEO will help you achieve higher search engine rankings, which increases visibility. SEO draws people to your site and can even help convert them into customers.

Understanding Shopify SEO does not mean it is challenging to implement. With a basic understanding and a careful strategy, Shopify SEO can yield great results. At Stradiji, we have experienced these methods on internationally focused Shopify sites like Markandday.com, Hughugoli.com, and Ozmoz.org.au.

5 Ways to Improve Your Shopify SEO

  1. Optimize Your Store's Structure: Organizing content is essential for SEO success. Imagine entering a supermarket, and the first thing you see is products scattered on the floor. No signs direct you to a specific section, and you can't find an employee to ask for help. Your first instinct would be to leave. The same is true for Shopify customers. When someone visits your online store, they want to find products quickly.

  2. Minimize User Frustrations: A satisfied buyer is likelier to stay longer, browse more pages, and interact more with your site. This is good for both business and search signals. Speed up your site to enhance the customer experience. People today want immediate results.

  3. Offer Shopify Collections: One way to improve SEO results while enhancing user experience is to offer your customers product collections. A collection (used as a category equivalent in Shopify) is a grouping of products that would typically be hosted in different categories of your site. Optimize and simplify your menu structure. Also, analyze how well your collection structure meets market needs from the start. On most sites, we had to completely redesign the entire collection structure and redirect old collection URLs to new ones. Although we tried to correct previous poor decisions, from an SEO and Google perspective, this means a significant loss of time.

  4. Thoroughly Research Your Target Keywords: Keywords are the foundation of successful SEO. Keyword intent can be assessed as navigational, informational, or purchase-focused. Especially when defining your sales funnel, it's essential to implement this keyword and content strategy properly. (You can find detailed information under the title "Effectively Reach Your Target Audience in the Marketing Funnel with SEO" in this newsletter)

  5. Optimize Your Store's Product Pages: Once you've created a simple (yet organized) site structure and selected some valuable keywords, optimizing your store's pages is time. Use Microsoft Clarity to track user sessions on your Shopify site and improve site design. Make this one of the main agenda items in your weekly customer meetings. As far as we have done this, we have seen that we add value to our clients' businesses. Ultimately, we use SEO to make sales, and there's no need to approach rankings or organic traffic obsessively. Soon, we face the risk of increasingly diminishing organic traffic due to AI-supported search results. Therefore, prioritize branding and see SEO as one of the most essential tools.

Here are some more details:

Technical SEO:

  • Ensure the Shopify theme you use is fast and mobile-friendly. Seek support from a Shopify developer if necessary.

  • Ensure your product images and other media files are optimized. I recommend the Picsmize - Image Optimizer app.

Picsmize - Image Optimizer

  • Set up your store's URL structure to be clean and optimized.

  • I recommend using the Yoast SEO app, which integrates well with Shopify.

  • Properly implement schema configuration.

  • Ensure your store has a sitemap and has been submitted to search engines. Although Shopify automates this, you should still perform your checks.

Content Optimization:

  • Write high-quality and relevant product descriptions for your products and categories. You can use artificial intelligence for this, but ensure that professionals check and edit AI-generated content if necessary.

  • Create informative and engaging blog posts for your store.

  • Add relevant keywords to your products and categories.

  • Optimize your store's meta titles and meta descriptions. You can also use artificial intelligence for this.

Backlink Building:

  • Obtain backlinks from other e-commerce sites and industry authorities.

  • Share your store's content on social media.

  • Create email marketing campaigns for your store. You can even use the email tools that come with Shopify. Consider options for emailing users who have added items to their cart but have not made a purchase (don't harass them!)

  • Encourage your customers to leave reviews for your store. I recommend the Okendo app for reviews. It has a schema configuration that displays reviews with star ratings in Google results.

Stand Out with Shopify SEO

Shopify is a fantastic platform for those wanting to set up their business online. It's intuitive, easy to set up, and offers opportunities to increase traffic and generate revenue. However, even the best Shopify store cannot succeed on its own. You'll need to work a bit to maximize optimization opportunities and attract a loyal following to keep your business operational.

There is so much to share about Shopify SEO that fitting it all into one article is impossible. If you need support on this topic, feel free to contact me.

Strengthen Your B2B SEO Content with Structured Resource Sections

A guide for B2B marketers on enhancing SEO strategy and search visibility with structured resource sections.

B2B companies use websites as powerful marketing tools to attract and convert potential clients. However, standing out in the competitive digital landscape can be challenging. In this article, you'll learn how to use structured resource sections to enhance your B2B SEO strategy and increase your search visibility.

What Are Structured Resource Sections?

Structured resource sections are a way to organize various types of content related to a specific topic on your website. This content can be in different formats, such as blog posts, articles, videos, infographics, webinars, downloadable documents, and case studies.

Benefits of Structured Resource Sections:

  • Better user experience: Users can easily find the information they want by filtering resources by type, category, solution, or audience.

  • Improved SEO: Google and other search engines see structured resource sections as signals that help them better understand your site's content. This can increase your chances of ranking higher in search results.

  • Increased brand awareness: Structured resource sections can help establish your site as an information hub in your industry and enhance your brand's authority.

  • More leads: Potential clients are more likely to spend more time on your site and convert when they can easily find the information they need.

How to Create Structured Resource Sections:

  • Identify Your Topics: Select topics that interest your target audience and rank well on search engines.

  • Create Content: Produce high-quality content in various formats and optimize each piece with relevant keywords.

  • Structure Your Site: Integrate your structured resource sections into your site's hierarchy and label each section with a descriptive tag.

  • Build Internal Links: Create internal links between different resource sections and link to other relevant pages on your site.

  • Monitor Performance: Use your website analytics to track your resource sections' performance and make necessary improvements.

Structured resource sections are a powerful tool for enhancing your B2B SEO strategy and increasing your search visibility. Following the steps outlined in this article can make your site more attractive to potential clients and achieve more conversions.

Advanced Screaming Frog Crawling Tips for E-Commerce SEO

Discover advanced crawling techniques for detailed SEO audits of e-commerce sites with Screaming Frog.

Screaming Frog offers advanced crawling tips and use cases for e-commerce auditing.

The article explains methods for conducting effective audits by limiting certain URL types, conducting separate crawls by site sections, and using Screaming Frog's custom extraction feature.

It also focuses on special techniques for finding out-of-stock products, identifying thin content on product listing pages, and extracting content snippets. These methods can be used to deeply analyze and improve the SEO performance of large e-commerce sites.

Google's Guide to Identifying INP Issues

Google releases a comprehensive video guide on identifying and resolving issues with Interaction to Next Paint (INP).

Google has released a new video guide on identifying and resolving issues related to the time from Interaction to Next Paint (INP) on websites.

Interaction to Next Paint (INP) metric describes the interaction delays your visitors experience while using your website. INP measures how long it takes from a user interaction (such as a click or touch input) to the "next paint" that visually updates the website.

INP has become an essential metric in methods of assessing user experience. This guide, which shows step-by-step instructions on evaluating and optimizing INP performance using Chrome DevTools, offers practical information for SEO specialists and web developers. The guide includes optimizing JavaScript tasks, reducing main thread activities, and simplifying DOM structures to improve your site's performance.

The Future of Search According to Sundar Pichai

Google CEO Sundar Pichai discusses the impact of AI on search technologies and its evolution over the next decade.

Google and Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichai shares valuable insights on how search engines will evolve over the next decade.

Pichai highlights how technology changes due to artificial intelligence (AI) while noting that search engines still rely on the web ecosystem and human-generated information.

AI has been used in search functions for some time, and according to Sundar, this will continue as technology advances. Sundar Pichai suggests that AI transforms search processes and how we access information. He emphasizes efforts to balance the diversity and richness of search results.

As Pichai notes, AI technology is rapidly advancing, changing search engines' fundamental expectations. However, Sundar predicts that search engines and websites will continue to be important, and users will continue accessing diverse information.

AI will enhance its capacity to provide accurate and reliable information, allowing users to access more comprehensive and precise results quickly. This could significantly affect multifaceted information searches and rapid information consumption.

Additionally, Sundar Pichai addresses current challenges in AI models, underlining their capacity to represent different perspectives globally and reflect diversity. This is part of Google's ongoing efforts to improve user experience.

In conclusion, the interview with Sundar Pichai reveals that the future of search technologies will be shaped not only by technological changes but also by being responsive to the needs of users and content creators. While AI may transform how we access information, the importance of human-centered and web-based information sources will continue.

This situation allows SEO specialists and content creators to develop new opportunities and strategies. Observing how search engines evolve and how technology plays a role will be exciting and vital for us in the coming years. These changes provide significant clues on how we can further improve our information access processes.

5 Easy Strategies for Success on LinkedIn

Do you want more engagement, shares, and views on LinkedIn? Apply these five simple strategies to boost the performance of your content.

A new study by Socialinsider has examined posts shared by active accounts from January 2022 to December 2023 to determine which content generates the most shares, impressions, and engagement.

Key Findings

Researchers concluded after a comprehensive review that brands and marketers should consider the following to enhance their performance on LinkedIn:

  • Prefer posts with multiple images for maximum engagement.

  • Prioritize video content to increase the likelihood of your posts being shared on LinkedIn.

  • Use polls to interact with your audience and increase impressions.

  • Keep your captions short and pair them with multiple images to boost engagement.

  • Strategically encouraging employees to create and manage their profiles can significantly enhance the company's message on LinkedIn.

  • Brands should leverage LinkedIn page analytics to understand their audiences better and tailor content to different audience segments.

  • Engagement. LinkedIn engagement is increasing — in fact, it has increased by 44% compared to the previous year. However, it is essential to note that brands are sharing more frequently on the platform than in the past, which is believed to have been influenced without moving away from X., You can use the results of this research to enhance your LinkedIn strategy. Although there is no one-size-fits-all solution, using the findings from this study can help you make data-driven decisions about the type of content you publish.

Posts with Multiple Images

Researchers found that posts with multiple images typically receive the highest engagement on LinkedIn, followed by document posts, photos, and videos. Although the platform phased out carousel posts last year, you can implement a similar strategy by sharing a PDF with each slide containing a different image.

Video Posts

Researchers also discovered that video posts generate the highest average share count on LinkedIn. This finding could be significant for businesses prioritizing brand awareness.

Poll Posts

Polls were found to have the highest view rate on LinkedIn. Researchers attribute this to people's tendency to express their opinions on the platform, and polls provide a simple method.

External Links

The study emphasized that posts containing links to external websites tend to perform poorly on LinkedIn. One strategy publishers use, especially, to overcome this challenge is to post links in the first comment of their posts instead.

  • WhitePress: WhitePress is a content marketing platform that enables accessible article publishing across 90,571 websites in 30 languages, offering native copywriting and automated global publication services.

  • Cannibalization Explorer Looker Studio Report is a tool for identifying keyword cannibalization and providing insights into how keywords perform across different pages.

  • SurferSEO is a tool that helps you create and optimize content for SEO. It analyzes the top-ranking pages for your target keywords and gives you suggestions on how to improve your content. Surfer AI also has a feature that can generate ready-to-rank articles in minutes.

  • Copilot Pro: Copilot Pro is available for $20/month for cloud-based GenAI models and $27/month with Microsoft 365. It is integrated with Microsoft 365 applications and provides access to GPT-4 Turbo and advanced AI rendering tools.

  • AlsoAsked is a helpful tool that can boost your visibility in the “People Also Ask” section of Google's search engine results pages.

  • Semrush Map Rank Tracker is a game-changing tool for local businesses looking to dominate their niche and attract more customers. I've been using the free version for a while now, and I'm impressed with its ease and effectiveness.

  • ContentShake AI is an intelligent writing tool that combines AI with real-life competitor insights. It guides you from ideation to publishing directly to the blog, generates SEO-friendly articles, and helps you optimize them for organic traffic and engagement.

  • Microsoft Clarity has recently introduced a feature called Copilot, which incorporates Generative AI through Large Language Models (LLMs) into the analytics tool. This integration aims to make data more accessible and understandable for users by leveraging the same technology created by OpenAI, which powers the new Bing or ChatGPT.

  • InLinks is an SEO tool that uses a knowledge graph to optimize content for search engines. It automates internal linking and schema markup, simplifying SEO processes and content strategies.

Subscribe to my newsletter to stay informed about the latest in SEO and digital marketing. Next week, I'll continue to share the newest insights, tactics, and strategies for navigating the ever-evolving digital marketing landscape.

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Best,

Mert