volusion's seo boot camp
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Join Volusion's SEO Manager, Alison Garrison as she teaches you the basics of SEO and helps you set up your online store's SEO foundation.TRANSCRIPT
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SEO Boot Camp
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SEO Boot CampA quick-start guide to an effective SEO foundation for long-term success
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Your Host and Boot Camp InstructorAlison Garrison, SEO Manager
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Topics We’ll Cover Today
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An Introduction to SEO
Website Architecture Workshop
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Title Tags & Meta Descriptions3
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4 Basic SEO Features & Settings
Closing Tips
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An Introduction to SEOBecause understanding how SEO works leads to better SEO
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What is SEO?
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Search engine optimization
• A collection of marketing strategies aimed at building organic search visibility
• SEO is about earning a spot in the organic results for relevant search queries
Organic traffic• Makes up roughly 50% of website traffic
• Is often perceived as most trustworthy
• Fabulous medium for website and brand “discovery”
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The SEO Trinity
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SEO Friendly Does Not Mean Optimized
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You can’t just “turn on” SEO
• Software can be programmed to be search engine friendly, but an optimized website requires human intellect and creativity
• Truly great optimization requires SEO expertise and marketing know-how
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The Human Element
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What are People Searching?
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Website Architecture Workshop How you categorize your products will profoundly influence SEO
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Website Architecture Matters
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Strategic website categorization
• Empowers customers to find what they are looking for quickly and with less effort
• Allows for specific keyword targeting for each landing page
• Brings in targeted, highly-relevant traffic to specific landing pages, increasing conversions
• Provides search engines with context
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Categories Should Be Logical & Useful
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And Reflect Search Behavior
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A Strong Primary Navigation
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Can Be Enhanced by More Nuanced Sorting
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Which Also Allows for Keyword Targeting
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Optimize your Architecture
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4 Easy Steps to Thoughtful Categorization
Brainstorm different ways to categorize products.
Decide on a primary navigation.
Consider secondary navigation opportunities and determine where these best fit within the context of the website design and/or navigation structure.
For each landing page and level of architecture, use different keyword themes. As you go deeper into the site, use more specific keywords and adjectives.
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Optimize your Architecture
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Helpful Tips
• Create an appropriate amount of categories and subcategories
• Too few or too many products in a category impacts searchability
• Within categories, set products to sort so that the most important products display first
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Tall vs. Flat Architecture
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• Generally, it is better to have a flat website architecture rather than a tall one
• Tall website architecture features excessive subcategories between the home page and the products, requiring more clicks
Tall Navigation is Too Deep
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Tall vs. Flat Architecture
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• Flat architecture brings products closer to the home page so that they are only a few clicks away
Flat Navigation is Best for Humans & Search Engines
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Last but not least…
• Whether your navigation is structured with JavaScript or HTML & CSS, it is important to ensure the search engines have a clear map to the website
• A sitemap will ensure each important
landing page is accounted for, crawled and indexed
• Your sitemap is located at www.URL.com/sitemap.xml
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Submit a sitemap to Google and Bing
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Title Tags & Meta DescriptionsHow the search engines use these critical tags
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Title Tag & Meta Description
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Unique, optimized tags are critical• Title tag
• Approximately 70 characters• Most important HTML real estate• Communicates the main theme of the
page • Should naturally contain targeted
keywords
• Meta description• Approximately 156 characters• A page’s marketing pitch• Influences click-through and user
expectation
• Meta keyword tag• Largely ignored by search engines
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The Google Search Snippet
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Well-Written Tags Attract Clicks
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Basic SEO Features & SettingsPart 1 – Website SEO settings
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Website SEO Settings
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Marketing > SEO
• Scroll down to “Search Engine Friendly URLs” and expand
• Check the boxes next to:• Enable Search Engine Friendly
URLs (recommended)• Use Hyphens (-) instead of
Underscores(_)• Enable Canonical Links
(recommended)• Do NOT enable full URL unless
that is a specific part of your strategy
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Website SEO Settings
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Website SEO Settings
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Under “Search Engine Friendly URLs”
• Check the following boxes:• Enable Search Engine Friendly URLs (recommended)• Use Hyphens (-) instead of Underscores(_)• Enable Canonical Links (recommended)• Do NOT enable full URL unless that is a specific part of your strategy
• Don’t forget to click “Save”
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Home Page Title Tag & Meta Description
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Basic SEO Features & SettingsPart 2 – Category Page SEO
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Category Page SEO
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Category Page SEO
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Volusion Blog: How to Increase SEO by Adding Content on Category Pages
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Category Page SEO
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Basic SEO Features & SettingsPart 3 – Product Page SEO
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Product Page SEO
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Product Page SEO
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Happy Optimizing!
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A few final words…• Install Google Analytics
• It’s free! • It will allow you to monitor your SEO performance over time and make informed
decision regarding your online marketing strategy• Instructions in the Volusion Knowledge Base• Volusion also offers an Ecommerce Analytics Installation service
• No marketing strategy is an island!• PPC• Shopping Feeds• Social Media• Well-behaved traffic will positively influence your SEO
• If you need some assistance or simply want to outsource your online marketing to experts, Volusion’s Marketing Services team is available to you and can be reached at 888-750-3996.
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Thank you!