Shopify Expert Insights

As businesses realize the importance of SEO marketing, it's become increasingly difficult to rank a small business for their relevant niche keywords. Local SEO is a much less competitive (and therefore more realistic approach) for small businesses to make inroads in to search marketing. A local business should start by optimizing its own website. Including their targeted city's name in the page title is a strong indicator to Google that they're relevant to that city. The site's footer should include the local address and local (not toll free!) phone number. Not only does this let Google know that they're local, it's also convenient for their users.

Creating a Google Places page is critical. In many local searches, Google often shows the top ten businesses with Places pages before any of the search results. When creating a Google Places page, one must be careful to only include strictly relevant information as these listings are carefully moderated by Google. Local directories are important to increasing a business's visibility in local search. These directories are not only geographically-sorted, they're also used by Google as a contributing factor to Google Places called citations. We have a list of ten local directories that we recommend every business consider submitting. It's important to note that with any SEO effort, it can take up to six months before results can be measured. While SEO is an important part of driving sales, it is most successful when used as part of a diverse marketing mix.

When selling a product online, an e-commerce website's primary aesthetic purpose should be to depict that product in a compelling way. There is no better way to do this than with beautiful photography. Being unable to touch, smell, or taste the product, the user is relying on presentation to fill those gaps. Photos make users more confident which improves conversion rates. Sample photos from the EtherCycle studio:

The secret to great photography is to hire a photographer. Lighting is equal parts art and science. It's not just the gear. An expensive camera can just as poor photos as any other camera. If you doubt the importance of professional photos as an stimulus to sales, consider that in television commercials, the last three seconds are usually a still product shot.

A client sent me a screenshot of a web page using @font-face. As Apple fanboys typography-enthusiasts, we reacted with the kind of revulsion that is normally reserved for a vegetarian in a Brazilian steakhouse.

Follow these ten tips, and in one day you will improve your customers' satisfaction with your brand, ultimately increasing your conversions.

1. Links should have meaningful anchor text. "Click here" is meaningless.
2. Edit your content, most people won't read more than 350 words of text on a single page.
3. Use bullet points to summarize content.
4. A humorous 404 page softens an otherwise annoying experience.
5. Navigation should be ordered "nouns" then "verbs." "Home" is first, "contact" is last.
6. Make your phone number easy to find.
7. Unless you're the Chicago Tribune, your website probably doesn't need a "latest news" page.
8. Your website has redundant, outdated pages that only you visit. Hide them to make relevant information easier to find.
9. Redirect outdated or missing pages to their new appropriate counterparts.
10. Headlines tell people what a page is about. Use them on every page.

Everything you do to make your customers life a little easier earns your brand that much more goodwill.

It is one of our New Year's Resolutions to spread the proper pronunciation of the new year. Please perform your civic duty and print the informational flyer for your community's benefit. Saying "twenty-eleven" is 267% more efficient than saying "two thousand and eleven."