Shift4Shop eCommerce Blog | SEO (5)

E-commerce is growing rapidly.

According to the U.S. Department of Commerce’s latest figures, e-commerce sales in the third quarter of 2017 accounted for 9.1 percent of total U.S. retail sales.¹ And it’s expected to account for 17 percent of all U.S. retail sales by 2022, according to Forrester Research. At the same time, payment technology is continuing to evolve at a blistering pace, giving retailers the ability to accept a wide range of payments and radically simplifying the payment[...]

No matter what kind of online business you run, context matters. In most cases, it’s your job as an online store owner to set the right context for your customers.

One of the biggest contextual areas websites take for granted is search context. You can put tons of resources into creating content in the hopes of building up your search ranking. But if you haven’t put thought into how your search result appears to a potential customer, content will only get you so far.

Just two years ago, mobile ecommerce represented only 15% of dollars spent online, even though people spent an overwhelming amount of time on their mobile devices.

That number is rapidly changing, and it’s partially thanks to the work done on Google’s open source Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP) project. Even if you don’t know what AMP is, you reap the benefits every day when you browse the web on your phone, where pages load much faster than they did just a few short years ago.

The internet’s[...]

If you’ve invested some time in understanding how SEO works, you might be worried about duplicate content on your ecommerce website. And rightfully so -- but not necessarily for the reason you might think.

There are two kinds of duplicate content. One kind isn’t necessarily harmful, though it indicates you might be ignoring an opportunity to do better SEO. Done frequently, the other kind is flagrant and can cause penalties to your website.

How do you know which duplicate content is okay and[...]

Online stores can’t understate the importance of a comprehensive SEO strategy. That said, there is such a thing as an overzealous one. If your SEO program is over the top, Google and other search engines won’t look kindly on your website.

You migth not be aware that your website has been penalized by Google, but if visits keep slowing down, follow the simple actions listed below to help you determine if your website is currently being penalized. And learn the common reasons that could be[...]

Whether you’re the sole employee or have a team of ecommerce wizards at your disposal, digital marketing might be the most time-consuming part of running an online store. Entrepreneurship is all about growth, and marketing is how you grow your online presence.

In the digital marketing realm, SEO often gets a bum wrap. It seems technical, whereas marketing tactics like establishing your social media presence and putting an email marketing plan in place might seem more straightforward. It’s true[...]

The internet is a noisy place. How does your online store stand out from the competition?

We frequently see online stores grapple with the discovery phase of marketing their websites. It can take time for your store to gain enough traction for potential customers to find you. A little patience can go a long way for your store. That and a whole lot of optimization. If you find drawing in customers is taking too long, you might be committing some of the cardinal SEO sins, and you’ll want to take[...]

SEO is such an important factor in online marketing today that good SEO features are an absolutely crucial part of any website. When building an online store, you need to be sure that your eCommerce platform supports all the features that will let you implement SEO best practices.

But what makes an eCommerce platform great for SEO? We reached out to several SEO professionals for their input.

Search Engine Optimization is one of the most important parts of eCommerce, but also presents significant challenges.

Any business owner knows they're going to encounter problems and obstacles along their journey to success, but thankfully we can look to the strategies that prosperous businesses have in place. This is true for all aspects of eCommerce, including SEO.

In this article, we'll hear from some successful eCommerce merchants about the specific challenges they've faced in the realm of[...]

SEO — Search Engine Optimization — is a critical part of today's marketing efforts, and yet many online sellers miss the mark. This is partially because there's so much information out there, and a lot of it is outdated. Google is the leader when it comes to determining best SEO practices, and they're always implementing changes to ensure only the best content reaches the top of search results. The side effect of this is that tactics that used to be quite effective are now not only outdated,[...]

SEO (search engine optimization) is the driving force behind a business’s growth and customer acquisition, and as such, is the single most important factor to affect an online store’s long-term success. Businesses that adopt and implement a well-strategized SEO plan consistently benefit from a massive increase in visibility and sales, regardless of previous notoriety.

A year after the release of Google’s mobile-friendly testing tool, Bing has launched their own version, the Bing Mobile Friendliness Test Tool. Merchants looking to improve their ranking in Bing search results on mobile devices are urged to check out the new tool, which may alert merchants to factors that may be negatively impacting their site.

Feel like you’re not getting the most out of your Google AdWords™ account? Check out the following simple ways you can increase your ROI and avoid wasting money.

Google's recent announcement in their Webmaster Central Blog, uncovers some details of their major algorithm update to be released on April 21st.

No matter how amazing your site content is, it won't be discovered by your target audience or anyone for that matter if you don't have optimized site accessibility. This means that search engines won't be able to crawl your pages and contents, thus they will not show up on search results. It's therefore a must to register with Google's Webmaster Tools and employ a variety of techniques to improve site accessibility. Examples of these techniques are the submission of a sitemap to search engines,[...]

Still a bit fresh out of its beta launch, the new Google Universal Analytics is no doubt making waves across the vast terrains of eCommerce. After all, it's the latest offering of Google for business owners who intend to monitor the progress of their websites and apps as well as track the activities of targeted web users across various platforms.

So what is it?

Google Universal Analytics is the upgraded version of Google Analytics. It's a valuable tool in gathering useful data for your[...]

Recently, We were asked a question from a online store business owner, and it was such a good question that we wanted to share the answer with our blog readers.  The question is as follows...

I am trying to get a better handle on our SEO. I'm being asked by other people in our company what is being done monthly in terms of SEO and I can't answer the question. I see blog articles and Facebook posts, but why can't you show me that I am ranking better for the specific keywords that I want to rank[...]

Title tags are a very important part of on-page search engine optimization, so it's crucial to use them properly. They also come into play in helping search engine users decide to click on the link to your site rather than another. Badly-formatted title tags can harm your search rankings and make your links less appealing even when they do appear on Google's first page, so it's important to get them right.

Good title tags, however, can make a huge positive difference. They can raise your[...]