How to Start Your Own Online Store

Achieve Ecommerce Success

If you have ever thought of starting your own online store, you might be surprised to learn that it’s easier than you think! In fact, with so many established companies selling their wares over the web, ecommerce has gone from a novel idea to an industry powerhouse in just the past few years. If you’re thinking about joining in on the fun, read on to learn more about what it takes to start your own ecommerce business.

Overview

Starting your own online store is a great way to make some extra cash on the side and build a sustainable business. It’s also a great platform for selling products that you create or find. One of the best platforms for setting up an ecommerce site is Woocommerce, which is free and easy to use.
First, you’ll need a domain name and hosting for your website. If you already have a website, it should be relatively easy to add an ecommerce store through plugins or extensions that come with it. If not, we recommend Canhost as they provide both domain names and hosting services that are easy to set up.

Step 1 – Registering your domain name

Registering a domain name can be the first step for a new ecommerce store. This is typically done through an EPP code. Be sure to understand the nuances of your desired domain name, including if it’s already taken or not available. Once you’ve registered your domain name, you’ll need to find a hosting service and register that with the same EPP code. A hosting service will keep your website live on the internet, while the registration will ensure that nobody else can steal it! Hosting services are typically inexpensive, but they have options based on what type of website you’re creating. If you’re planning to create a lot of content on your site, then make sure to choose a plan that has sufficient storage space (most hosting plans come with 10GB free).
In addition to domain names and hosting services, any ecommerce business should have security measures in place as well. Fortunately there are several reliable companies who provide inexpensive SSL certificates for just this purpose. You want these certificates so hackers don’t get into your site and expose sensitive information about customers like their credit card numbers or passwords!

Step 2 – Choosing a niche

Choosing a niche is one of the most important decisions you’ll make in starting an ecommerce business. It’s often a difficult decision, as it will determine the success or failure of your store.
Niche selection should be based on three key factors: The products you want to sell, your financial resources, and the target market for those products.
When making this decision it’s important not only to consider how many competitors are already in that niche, but also how much traffic there is for that type of product. A high demand for your product means more traffic and potential customers for your store!
The best way to get started with choosing a niche is with Google Trends.

Step 3 – Create an attractive website

The first step to start your ecommerce success is to build an attractive and easy-to-use website. To do this, you can use WordPress, which will make website development much simpler. At Rad Websites we love word press. Our suggestion? You can also use a self-hosted WordPress site or purchase hosting from a company like CanHost. Just make sure that your store meets the expectations of your target audience, as we have seen that some millennials prefer mobile stores and others desktop stores, so having both options will increase customer satisfaction.
The next step is Setting up your Google Analytics account and promoting your site on social media networks.

Step 4 – Google Analytics Setup

Set up Google Analytics on your website. This is a free tool that allows you to track how people are using your site. You can find out what pages they’re visiting, where they’re coming from, and how long they’re spending on your site.
This will help you see what’s working and what’s not so you can make adjustments accordingly. It’ll also help you know where the majority of visitors are coming from so you can set marketing dollars in the right places. If you want to get really advanced with this, add tracking codes for every ad campaign or link that sends traffic to your website. If one campaign gets more clicks than others, you’ll know which campaigns work best!
Now all you need is inventory! The third step would be setting up an inventory management system. With WooCommerce, Shopify Plus, Magento Community Edition and even WordPress e-Commerce plug-ins like WOOFox, it’s easy to import products directly from manufacturers like Amazon or Ebay. These systems provide templates for designing catalogues as well as front end shopping carts for customers who purchase items through your website – without any coding knowledge required! They allow customers to buy products at the time of order and choose when they receive their purchases instead of having them delivered automatically after ordering – saving you money on postage and packaging fees (and making sure each customer receives their purchase as quickly as possible).

Step 5 – Choosing Payment Methods

One important thing to know when starting an online store is the payment methods. There are two main types of payment methods, with a few subtypes. The two main types are b2b and b2c (business-to-business and business-to-consumer).
B2C is most common, since it’s direct between customer and the store. Subtypes include traditional credit cards, PayPal, Google Wallet, Apple Pay, etc.
B2B is less common but can be advantageous in certain situations because it allows for invoicing or purchase orders. Subtypes include accounts payable and eCommerce platforms like Shopify or Magento.

Step 6 – Launching your store

Launching a store is one of the most exciting parts of starting your own online store. You should make sure your website is developed by a professional website development company that knows how to create an ecommerce site using Woocommerce, which is the leading e-commerce platform. This will ensure that you have an easy-to-navigate site that provides a great customer experience. Additionally, it’s important to set up your business so that you’re able to start getting orders as soon as possible. Once you launch your store, promote it on social media and other channels so customers can find out about it!

To Conclude – Summary

To summarize, starting an ecommerce business is a big undertaking and requires a lot of planning. For example, you need to identify your niche, research and develop ideas for products and services, decide on pricing points, find suppliers, determine what technology will work best for you, create a website design, choose the store’s look and feel based on your target demographic. If you’re ready for the challenge but don’t know where to start or what steps are involved in the process of starting an ecommerce business then this post has hopefully been helpful. We discussed everything from identifying your niche, developing product ideas and choosing suppliers to determining how much inventory to order, setting up payment options and building a website that’s engaging with great content. We even shared some tips for hiring a web designer and social media manager!
In conclusion – A successful ecommerce business starts with solid groundwork. The more research you do before launching your site the better prepared you’ll be when it comes time to take orders. Set realistic goals for yourself by mapping out all the important aspects of launching an online store such as branding, inventory levels, marketing budget etc. Once you’ve done that it’s time to get creative!

SEO Blogging: 12 Tricks You Must Know To Attract Traffic

September 29, 2024

by Award Winning Author AJ Frey Ecommerce Tips SEO Tips WordPress Tips

SEO blogging is an art. Not many people have the kind of discipline it requires to ensure that the right amount of keywords are strategically placed in the blog content.

Either they put too many (especially towards the end), or not enough (especially in the first paragraph–which should always have at least one). Of course, if you are blogging using the WordPress CMS, you have the benefit of their Yoast SEO partner, which will guide you into placing the required numbers that will meet Google’s best practices.

Still, even after all that, there is no guarantee you will start seeing traffic to your website as there are other factors that can prevent Google’s algorithms from ranking your site. So how can you guarantee traffic flows to your website through blogging? By using the Best SEO in Canada. However, if for whatever reason you are unable to avail yourself of the excellent services of our SEO-expert A J Frey, fear not. We will share with you 12 tricks you must know to attract traffic through SEO blogging when DIY.

Attracting Traffic Through SEO Blogging

Here’s the thing: Google is on a mission. And so are you. Google’s mission is to ”organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful”. What’s your mission? If you wish to succeed in attracting traffic to your website, you must familiarize yourself with Google’s mission, which means you have to understand search engine optimization (SEO). Is your blog in line with Google’s mission?

If you’re reading this article, then it means We have succeeded in attracting traffic through SEO bogging. It means We have succeeded in showing search engines like Google and Bing that our blog is a relevant source for people like you who are searching for information about attracting traffic to your website. That’s what SEO blogging is all about.

Do you think We could help you do the same? Sure we can. Here, then, are the12 tricks you must know to attract traffic through SEO blogging:

1. Use a SEO-friendly CMS

What’s a CMS, you ask? Content Management System. The text and images on your blog are called contents. It’s a no-brainer: If you’re doing SEO blogging you need a CMS that not only facilitates SEO blogging but also promotes it.

It is a documented fact that WordPress is, by far, the best CMS on which to blog, especially SEO blogging. WordPress not only allows SEO plugins like Yoast (which is the closest thing to a human SEO expert), but also facilitates Google Analytics so you can do your own informal audit of your site.

2. Conduct a SERP Research for your keyword/phrase

SERP stands for Search Engine Results Page— it’s your go-to to learn which pages are ranking using your search term. Knowing what the search results page looks like for the term you’re targeting is important.

After spending time analyzing the top five or so posts to see what they are doing right, you are now armed with the necessary information on how best to optimize your blog posts to not only land the best spots on the results page, but to ensure your content is outstanding.

Researching your keyword/phrase is perhaps the foundation for your plan as it shows you how many people are already searching for your keyword/phrase, which sites are ranking for your keyword/phrase and even make suggestions for alternate keyword phrases that could potentially be more successful for your website.

3. Strategically place the keyword/phrase

Another “trick” you must know to attract traffic through SEO blogging is placement. One of the reasons many people are turned off SEO is due to misunderstanding. They believe SEO is stuffing keywords into headers and body of content that does not make sense. That is what’s called keyword stuffing, and actually frowned on by Google. See our article Good SEO Practices vs Bad SEO Practices to learn more.

Good SEO practices actually include placing keyword/phrases in headers and paragraphs of content that has been well-researched and is coherent. It means when a searcher enters a search term like “how to bake a cake”, he/she is looking for an actual Recipe, not a site with the phrase “how to bake a cake” a million times, but no Recipe.

If this has ever happened to you, you know how frustrating that is. That’s why Google heavily penalizes sites that practice keyword stuffing.

But where do you place these keywords/phrase you ask? AJ Frey and his team of SEO experts suggest placing them at the following places:

URL:

The first and most obvious place for your keyword/phrase is in your Url. The Url with the main keyword/phrase gives a hint of what is on the page. Besides, It is a big turn off for Google to see these Urls with a string of characters and numbers.

Page title:

The page title is the “main idea” of your page, and should show up first in a search result. This is a no-brainer.

Headings (and subheadings):

These are phrases used to segment the content on your page. They make the content more scannable, and also help visitors to your page to decide which sections to read, in the event they are unable to read the entire article.

Content:

This is the tricky part, and where most people err. There’s a not-so-thin line between keyword stuffing and strategically placing keywords in the body of your article. Rule of thumb: One in the opening paragraph, one in the closing paragraph and at least 2 – 3 in the body of the text. This, of course, is dependent on the length of the article. You wouldn’t want to have half a dozen keywords in your 500-word article. That could get penalised by Google.

Meta description:

Do you ever notice the block of text in a search result? Sure you have? That’s what decides whether or not you will click on the link in that search result. That’s what we call the meta description. It is very important, as it not only helps Google to determine how relevant is your content, but it also helps searchers to decide whether or not they should click the link to your website. Including the target keyword/phrase clearly makes your content more relevant to the search.

4. Use internal links

There are only a few times that I’ve gone on a website for a minute and end up staying for hours, and that’s usually caused by the interlinking of their articles. I.e., linking from one post to another on the same site. I would start to read one article, but it linked to a few others that I was interested in reading. This is a wonderful trick by the SEO experts for that site, because they managed to accomplish what many experienced webmasters failed to do–keep visitors on their site.

Google rewards such SEO practices. By using internal links you’re helping search engines better understand the topic of your blog content, and keeping visitors on your site longer, which ultimately can lead to paying customers.

If you’re new to blogging, don’t worry. It will only be a matter of time before you find yourself with a solid library of posts that you can interlink.

5. Add internal links to new pages

Internal links are backlinks from one page to another on your website. As mentioned before, they keep visitors on your site, and also help visitors to navigate from page to page, distribute ‘link authority’ throughout your site, and allow Google to use their anchor text to understand context.

The problem is that most people forget to add internal links whenever they publish a new page. However, if you want your page to stand the best chance of ranking on Google or any other search engine for that matter, then you must remember to add internal links to it.

6. Long-tail keyword/key phrase

Long-tail keywords are also called key phrases. They’re highly specific, consisting of three or more words. For example, “12 Tricks You Must Know To Attract Traffic Through SEO Blogging” is considered a long-tail key phrase. Four reasons long-tail keywords are so effective are:

They generate more qualified leads

Searchers using long-tail keywords have a more defined search query, which typically results in more qualified leads. Someone searching for “SEO blogging” might just be looking for information on what is search engine optimization and how to use it in a blog post; whereas someone searching for “12 Tricks You Must Know To Attract Traffic Through SEO Blogging” as clearly pass that stage and is more than likely looking for other ways to attract more traffic to their site.

There’s less competition

Long-tail keywords/key phrases also have less competition, which makes it easier to rank for organically and cheaper to bid for when advertising. They make up more than seventy percent of online searches, but they have less traffic, making them more effective for smaller eCommerce brands to rank highly in SERP.

They result in more conversions

The third reason they are so effective is that they result in more conversions. Online shoppers searching for long-tail keywords have high purchase intent, making them more likely to convert and generate profit. They’re no longer in the discovery phase of what is “SEO Blogging” – they know they want “12 Tricks You Must Know To Attract Traffic Through SEO Blogging” and they’re ready to apply them.

You can create targeted content

Finally, long-tail keywords enable you to create more targeted content for your audience. Information on 12 Tricks You Must Know To Attract Traffic Through SEO Blogging is relevant to your audience and geared towards creating trust and value that increases spend and customer lifetime value. Your site becomes the “go-to” site for all things SEO, and before long, they are purchasing one of the best SEO packages in Canada.

7. Fix pages with broken backlinks

Backlinks are hyperlinks that link one website to another. However, the link is incoming. Meaning that the other website is linking to your website. The more backlinks you have pointing back to your site, the more popular your site becomes.

However, if the linked page is dead, then it is not ranking, and is probably preventing other pages on your site from ranking. If the websites linking to your site are high quality–what we call “high-quality backlinks”–then it is worth fixing these “dead” pages. However, if they’re not, then you can leave them as 404 pages (that’s the error message you get when a page is dead).

8. Update old posts to keep them current

It takes a lot of work to create fresh content on a regular basis. One way to ease the “stress” is to look for good, older posts that may have become “outdated” and spruce them up with “new” information.

This is especially applicable to those pages ranking on Google’s page 2 and older. Analyse them to see what could have prevented them from making it to Page 1 and fix the problem. This could also mean adding missing information.

9. Feature Influencers in your blog posts

One of the big “tricks” to attracting traffic to your website is finding ways to collaborate with Influencers. This is useful as it exposes your blog to a wider audience. Collaboration could be in the form of interviewing them, featuring a quote from them, or referring back to advice they provided on their site (with a link).

By featuring them, you not only get on their radar (you’ve initiated a relationship with them), but they may thank you by sharing your blog post with their audience. And the rest, they say, is history.

10. Optimize Your Images for SEO

As mentioned earlier, blog posts consist of text and images. At least, it should be. If your blog post has text only, it may be intimidating to read for the visual learners. As such, every blog post you publish should include at least one image, and sometimes more. But don’t just post them, optimize them!

Every image you include in a blog post gives you an extra opportunity to add your keyword/phrase to the page. You can use either the alt text and/or the image file name. If possible, you can even add it to the caption text. That’s a few more ways to signal to Google what the page is about.

11. Embed your videos in relevant posts

You can take it a step further and add videos, in addition to your image(s) to your blog posts. Videos can really bring your blog to life and make the visitor experience more engaging and interactive.

12. Make sure your site is optimized for Speed and Mobile Use

The days when web browsing was done exclusively on a desktop are long gone. It is proven that more people access the Internet on a mobile device than ever before, which means more people are searching the web on their mobile devices than ever before. This is the reason your site must be optimized for mobile.

Your mobile site should have a responsive web design with a fast page speed, so people don’t bounce from your site. If your mobile site delivers a positive experience, visitors will stay longer on your page longer and even return. These behaviors show search engines like Google that your site is helpful and easy to use. This will improve your ranking and send more traffic to your site.

Conclusion

And that’s it. 12 Tricks you must know to attract traffic through SEO blogging:
Use a friendly CMS like WordPress
Conduct a SERP Research for your keyword/phrase
Strategically place the keyword/phrase
Use internal links
Add internal links to new pages
Use long-tail keyword/key phrase
Fix pages with broken backlinks
Update old posts to keep them current
Feature Infuencers in your blog posts
Optimize your Images for SEO
Embed your videos in relevant posts and make sure your site Is optimized for speed and mobile use.

We guarantee if you follow these 12 “tricks”, you will start to see traffic flowing to your website. Did we leave out any you think should have been among these twelve? Let us know in the Comments box below.

What is eCommerce?

July 29, 2024

by Award Winning Author AJ Frey Ecommerce Tips SEO Tips

What is e-commerce?

E-commerce stands for ‘electronic commerce’ or ‘internet commerce’ which occurs when people buy or sell things through online services/the internet. E-commerce can be done through a variety of technologies and ways such as simply buying a pair of brand new shoes from your smartphone, selling your services to customers online, downloading a paid for song and more. E-commerce is broken down into four main categories including:

Business to business (B2B)
Business to consumer (B2C)
Consumer to consumer (C2C)
Consumer to business (C2B)

When looking at electronic commerce, it’s easy to believe that it just entails simple transactions such as a business selling their product online to a consumer. For instance, Amazon is selling you your favourite cookbook. While this is an example of ‘business to consumer’, e-commerce spans over many more types of transactions as long as the web is being utilized for at least part of it. A simple way to look at the lifespan of an e-commerce transaction is the transfer of services and/or goods, the transfer of funds and then finally the exchange. Whether this occurs only between consumers, businesses or both depends on what type of model the transaction is. E-commerce has become one of the biggest and fastest growing industries across the world especially since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic when people resorted to shopping online even more.

Business to business e-commerce

B2B e-commerce occurs when businesses carry out transactions with one another without involving consumers. This can happen when a manufacturer sells their products to a retailer or wholesaler. This is a very popular e-commerce model as many businesses order their goods online and have left traditional in-person transactions behind. The reason for this all comes down to convenience and what saves a business time and money. B2B e-commerce takes away stress and time by providing a business with a safe and reliable way to restock merchandise, access services and get quotes on items. This means a B2B wholesaler will sell their products online in bulk to other businesses and retailers. And in recent years many wholesalers have invested in creating online platforms to sell their products and services, widening their reach and utilizing the positive effects of B2B e-commerce. Other ways a business can involve themselves in B2B commerce is selling their online services to companies in need, just like what we do here at RAD Websites! The variety of B2B commerce models is large and the opportunities are endless. Other examples of B2B include websites like AliExpress, Rakuten, HubSpot, Amazon Business and Salesforce.

Business to consumer e-commerce

This type of e-commerce is the most popular model as the average person has purchased items or services online through e-commerce giants like Amazon, Knix, Spotify, Walmart, Adidas and even Netflix! Let’s say you are an average consumer looking to purchase an item such as a new blender or a service such as movie streaming online. You carry out an online transaction to achieve this good or service and then you finally receive your goods or services. Boom, you’ve just participated in a B2C e-commerce transaction! Having access to business to consumer e-commerce alleviates the need to physically go somewhere in order to purchase goods. This has allowed for convenient spending while turning many consumers away from traditional shopping at brick-and-mortar locations. Because of this, many brick-and-mortars have invested in creating online websites for their customers to use while also vastly increasing their brand awareness. B2C e-commerce gained even more popularity during the COVID-19 pandemic when people were told to stay home and limit their in-person contacts. Now that lockdowns and mandates are no longer affecting people, consumers have more of a choice on how they get their goods and services although many have realized how easy it is to shop online.

Consumer to consumer e-commerce

C2C e-commerce is simply a model which sees two consumers engaging in online business with one another. If one person decides they want to sell a used coffee machine and they decide to list it for sale on a third party website for $20 and you buy it, you and the seller have engaged in C2C e-commerce. Some third party sites will charge sellers a small fee in order for them to sell their items but others are free. Depending on the quantity and frequency of the items you sell, you may find paid-for sites are the way to go. Some great examples of C2C e-commerce websites include eBay, Facebook Marketplace, Craigslist and Esty. Lots of people love this form of e-commerce because it’s less costly than buying new products, it’s easier to sell things because of the lower price expectations, it’s extremely convenient and it’s good for the environment. However, there are some things to be aware of when engaging in C2C e-commerce. You cannot guarantee the quality of products which means people can misrepresent the product they are selling. It’s also important to note that scammers will sometimes use C2C e-commerce to take advantage of buyers. Never make an online payment before receiving your item and always exercise caution when it comes to providing payment.

Consumer to business e-commerce

Last but not least, C2B e-commerce flips the script when it comes to the ‘business and consumer’ relationship. This happens when the consumer offers a business a service or product. The exchange involves payment to the consumer through funds or other benefits. A freelance writer who writes copy for a business in turn for payment is a perfect example of C2B e-commerce. These individuals are considered consumers and not businesses because they create their own terms and they negotiate their own transactions when offering a service and/or product to a business. This model is great for individuals who want to provide products to businesses without making a business of their own. It allows consumers to pick and choose who they want to provide their services to for whatever benefits they decide and it offers great flexibility to both the consumer and the business. This idea has grown exponentially through social media and social media influencers who promote and showcase a company’s products on their platforms in turn for free products, money and or experiences.

Conclusion

E-commerce can be a tedious subject but once you familiarize yourself with the different categories, it won’t take long for you to understand the processes and benefits it can have for your business. RAD Websites is a great starting point for you to grow or start your own online presence. After being awarded the Best E-Commerce Website Agency in Western Canada and the Best E-Commerce Design Agency Canada-wide, it’s obvious that we have all the tools you need to achieve your goals.

Why WordPress Is Still The Best

June 29, 2024

by Award Winning Author AJ Frey Ecommerce Tips Marketing Strategy Tips Online Marketing Tips SEO Tips WordPress Tips

WordPress is by far the most popular open source CMS (content management system) – around 60% of all websites use WordPress and for good reason. In fact, over 10 million websites use WordPress, with 500 new ones added each day, according to the latest statistics.
In this blog article, we’ll go through the reasons why you should choose Wordpress over other CMS systems such as Shopify, Wix, Joomla or Drupal.

Why Is AJ Frey So Sure About Your Website’s Success?

July 29, 2023

by Award Winning Author AJ Frey Ecommerce Tips Marketing Strategy Tips Online Marketing Tips SEO Tips WordPress Tips

Why Is AJ Frey So Sure About Your Website’s Success?

On his website he’s described as handsome, debonair, suave, charming and a technology-lover who also loves Ghostbusters, StarWars and cheesy 80’s TV. You may disagree with all of the above–after all, beauty is in the eye of the beholder, or the buyer, according to AJ Frey.

However, one truth that is undeniable is that AJ Frey is an incredibly brilliant Search Engine Optimization specialist aka SEO expert, who hates pay per click. Thought that would get your attention! It is no secret that AJ Frey has a sense of humour.

But when it comes to his clients and helping them to achieve website’s success, he will do whatever it takes to position your product or service on page one. AJ Frey is the owner of Best SEO in Canada.

He Offers a comprehensive range of SEO services, dedicated to driving traffic that meets your lead, acquisition, or sales objectives.

But why Is AJ Frey So Sure About Your Website’s Success? Because success leaves clues. What he has done for others he will do for you. Let’s look at some of what he’s done for others and for himself to make it to page one on Google’s search engine:

1. Experience and Process for SEO Delivery

When it comes to SEO these days, anyone with a laptop, access to the Internet and a WordPress-installed blog can boast of being an SEO expert After all, YOAST plug-in is the #1 WordPress SEO plugin, and is available on all WordPress sites.

What you won’t see behind those claims, however, is the experience and process they take to deliver results. This is fundamental, and something you should watch out for. When a so-called SEO expert is offering his or her service, the first thing you should do is visit his/her website.

Next, do a simple search in Google to see if they show up on the search engine’s organic positions. If they don’t, it means they have little to no experience, nor have they implemented whatever SEO strategy they are claiming to deliver. How can you give what you don’t have?

Therefore, a fundamental characteristic of great SEO experts is that they have experience implementing SEO for themselves first. In addition, they should have a process, showing you how they intend to make your website a success:

2. Thought Leadership

SEO is always evolving, as you no doubt have seen with the genesis of BERT–Bidirectional Encoder Representations from Transformers (BERT), which is another attempt by Google to improve their natural language processing in order to better understand the search queries of their end users.

And if you’re just returning to the planet and have no idea what I’m talking about, check out this article (link to: What is the Best Word Count for SEO in Canada?).

This is Google’s last major update. However, in one year alone, Google made upwards of 3,200 updates to its search engine algorithms. How can you be expected to keep tabs of all these updates while focusing on managing your business?

You need thought-leadership, and that’s another characteristic of great SEO experts. They must know what is happening in the industry and are able to adjust accordingly. Ensure they’re keeping up with these ever evolving SEO best practices and are sharing tips to help your business adjust for maximum impact.

3. An Outstanding Portfolio

Experts aren’t born, they’re created. Becoming an SEO expert overnight is impossible.

In order to be an SEO expert, you have to put in a lot of work and dedication. Experts study a lot and practice a lot. This gives them impressive portfolios which every SEO expert wants to show off.

Who wouldn’t toot his own horn? In the world of SEO the louder the horn the better. When an SEO expert works with a client to put his/her website on Google’s page one, this gives him/her a feeling of great pride and accomplishment.

And they should feel proud of their accomplishments. Getting on Google’s page one is hard work! Naturally, they are going to publicise this great feat by posting it on their websites.

This is good for you. This is your opportunity to scroll through their portfolio to see the kind of work they have done and are doing. You will also get to see the calibre clients with whom they work to determine if you, too, would want to be in that “club”.

As an SEO expert, AJ Frey is no exception in wanting to highlight his outstanding portfolio. Here you can peruse some of the work he has done for clients just like you.

4. Real Life Testimonials

Naturally, if an SEO expert has a portfolio, it means he/she has clients. What do satisfied clients do? They give testimonials. So not only do SEO experts toot their own horns, but their clients toot louder.

Developing winning SEO strategies, managing their implementation, and guiding teams on their execution to generate results is not easy. When an SEO Expert does all this hard work and gets those fantastic results, their clients reward them with testimonials, having gotten value for their money.

Thus, sharing real-life testimonials is a characteristic you’ll find with most great SEO experts like AJ Frey.

5. We’re a Team of Creatives

When you hire AJ Frey you’re not just getting the most brilliant SEO expert on the planet, you’re getting his team — an eclectic group of creatives with various backgrounds, who manage to work together with our clients to plan out and implement an extensive strategy to boost your website in the Google rankings.

10 years ago a crack squad SEO unit was sent to prison by a Google court for a crime they didn’t commit. These men promptly escaped a maximum security stockade, changed their SEO strategy, and went underground.

Today still wanted by the search engines they survive as web designers and SEO specialists. By bringing together a team of the very best SEO experts in Canada with specialties in site optimization, mobile UX, link building, analytics and SEO content, AJ Frey is sure about your website’s success.

AJ Frey doesn’t only talk the talk, but he walks the walk. He specialises in helping anyone (small businesses, large enterprise businesses and everything in between)boost their online presence and get found on not only Google, but all major search engines across the world – not only in Canada.That’s a recipe for success–your success!

6. Only SEO-optimised Content Marketing

And that’s not all!

AJ Frey, through his evolving proven whitehat secret recipe generates millions of organic SEO traffic to his clients’ blogs and websites–all done organically. I.e. no Instagram and Facebook Ads.

Only SEO-optimised content marketing. It is for this reason that many small and large businesses trust AJ Frey to deliver SEO strategies that put them on Google’s page one.

7. 5-star Ratings

Still don’t see why AJ Frey is so sure about your website’s success? How about this: Across several review sites, including this one, this SEO expert’s team of creatives’ expertise and penchant for perfection have seen them receive 5-star ratings from happy customers.

8. King of Backlinks

At the beginning of the article we mentioned BERT–Google’s AI that interprets data on a page and delivers meaningful search results for your keyword search.

One of the algorithms BERT interprets is the number of backlinks pointing to web pages and websites on a whole. The more backlinks, the more BERT sees your site as authoritative.

However, due to its “intelligence”, Google’s search engine cannot be fooled by many backlinks that are from dummy sites, or sites with irrelevant information–though many have tried.

When it comes to acquiring backlinks, AJ Frey comes highly recommended as the king of backlinks.

He will help you to generate high-value backlinks, ensuring search engines interpret your website as important and rank it above those of your competitors for keyword searches. This is another reason AJ Frey is so sure about your website’s success.

When you sign up for one of AJ Frey’s SEO packages you receive expert consultations, market and keyword research, search engine webmaster tools setup, and a myriad of other tools that will aid in the success of your website.

Whether or not you own an ecommerce website, or maybe you just have a simple landing page, but you want it to be on Google’s page one for your keyword search, you need a team of creatives who are passionate about organic traffic and SEO white hat best practices.

You need AJ Frey–who is sure about your website’s success.

What to Expect from The Best SEO in Canada

1. Onboarding and Project Management

We value your business. We understand how important your website is to you. In order to assist you to reach your goal(s), we will assign a project manager to handle your account. He/She will need access to some of your assets.

Depending on the scope of work, this could mean anything from access to your website/blog, your Google Analytics login info, your in-house staff, etc. This is why an onboarding process is important.

From this exercise, the project manager will be able to advise concerning the management of your project. I.e. how long the process will take, what is the full scope of the project, etc.

2. Strategy session

Of course, before your project manager proceeds with the onboarding process, a strategy session is organised. Your decision to work with AJ Frey, an SEO expert, came from the desire to rank high on Google’s search engine.

Or, it may be that you are seeking to generate more traffic to your site. Whatever the reason, you’re here for results. You have heard that AJ Frey can make your business successful, and trial and error is costly.

We know that no two businesses are alike, therefore, the SEO strategies that work for one may not work for the other. Great SEO experts like AJ Frey, from experience working with different businesses, know this.

Thus, we do not simply take your information and send you proposals. Instead, and in order to help you, we allow you to share your unique needs and business case during our strategy session.

3. Research and Recommendations

After sharing your needs and business case with our SEO expert during our strategy session, your information is then used to conduct in-depth research. This is done in order to gain insights into your industry and your target audience.

Once done, our SEO expert will share the results of the research, and offer recommendations based on the findings, in order for your website to be successful.

We use all the available digital channels available to you, including telephone, email and video conferencing.

4. A Contract Detailing the Deliverables

So far, you’ve had several “meetings” with our SEO expert, and no mention yet of a contract. We believe in value for money and putting our money where our mouth is.

So, we will only offer a contract for your acceptance, after our strategy sessions, which includes a digital project kickoff meeting with your team (onboarding) and platform specific optmsation consultations (See numbers 2 & 3 above).

If our strategy session and follow-up discussions with our SEO expert looks like a good fit for the exchange of mutual value, then and only then you’ll receive our contract for your business.

Not only that, but our brilliant SEO expert won’t just send you a contract, but you’ll receive the contract detailing our deliverables–what we’ll deliver, how we’ll deliver and when you should start expecting results.

AJ and SEO

Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) is not a one-size fits all, fly-by-night strategy implemented by black hat SEO “experts”. SEO takes time before its results become apparent.

Any SEO “expert” who tells you he/she can produce overnight success is clueless about SEO strategies, or is practising black hat techniques–which will find your website being penalised by Google for illegal practices.

The minimum time on average for any signs of improvement is approximately 3 months. It could be sooner, but we do not make wild promises. We prefer to be conservative, and work hard at fulfilling our obligations.

AJ Frey is an incredibly brilliant Search Engine Optimisation specialist aka SEO expert, who hates pay per click. His strategy, which he calls his secret sauce, is a white hat, Google-friendly strategy that is guaranteed to get you positive search results, regardless of the search engine.

He offers a comprehensive range of SEO services, dedicated to driving traffic that meets your lead, acquisition, or sales objectives. If you give it approximately 3 months, you’ll start seeing results—qualified traffic, leads and sales.

AJ Frey can do all that was mentioned above and then some. As you have seen from the testimonials, many clients have testified to the success of their websites. If he is able to help make their websites successful, he is sure about your website’s success.

A few words From AJ to You

Hi! I’m AJ Frey, and I would love to hear from you.

If you enjoyed this article and are in need of digital marketing, a cool website, or improving your ranking on the search engines, contact me at 1 250 801 6588, or just leave me a comment in the box below by way of introduction. Your website’s success means business for me!

My team and I will help you build a RAD website that will attract customers through good design, cool integrations and SEO.

So why is AJ Frey so sure about your website’s success? Because you found him on page one. If he can do that for himself, imagine, just for a moment, what he can do for you!

He hates PPC! That’s someone you want in your corner.

Good SEO Practices Vs. Bad SEO Practices: A Simple Guide

May 29, 2021

by Award Winning Author AJ Frey Ecommerce Tips SEO Tips

Twenty-first century websites are usually built and maintained following the standard set by the search engine giant, Google. These standards include Search Engine Optimization (SEO) best practices. As such, webmasters such as the Best SEO in Canada strive to follow good SEO practices that are ethical and up to date with the latest developments of ranking algorithms.

In the past, webmasters employed bad SEO practices such as keyword and banner stuffing, link building and cloaking in order to rank on Google’s first page.

However, Google’s latest algorithms make those practices almost impossible. Nevertheless, there are always unscrupulous webmasters who try to get around Google’s best practices.

Whether you are new to website development or a seasoned veteran at building websites, here is a simple guide to Good SEO Practices vs. Bad SEO Practices, so you can beware when making SEO decisions while building or maintaining your websites.

Good SEO Practices

Good SEO practices consist of what is called “white hat” techniques. These include:

● Security Certificate:

Up to recently, most people did not know what the ‘https’ at the beginning of a domain stood for. However, they understood that if a site had this “lock”, it meant the site could be trusted.

Today, Google has added security certificates as a requirement in their list of best practices for SEO. So websites with the https automatically rank higher in their search results.

HTTPS stands for hypertext transfer Protocol Secure, and enables websites to be more secure by encrypting the information sent between the visitor to the site and the server. It has been a Google ranking factor since 2014.

You can tell if your site is already using HTTPS by checking the loading bar in your browser. If there’s a lock icon before the URL, then it means your site is secure. If there is no lock, then you need to ‘buy’ one by installing an SSL certificate.

Due to Google’s standards, most web hosts offer these in their packages. If yours does not, you can depend on AJ Frey, owner of Best SEO in Canada, to pickup one for you.

This is a one-time installment, and once done, you can expect security on all your pages, including those you may add in the future.

● Placement of your target keyword / phrase:

Google’s best practices suggest that your target keyword / phrase should be in at least these three places. These are your title tag, heading and URL. Let’s take a closer look at each:

a) Title tag

According to Google, title tags should be written that accurately describe the page’s content. If you’re targeting a specific keyword or phrase, then this should do precisely that. However, search engine optimization isn’t just about improving rankings, but also enticing clicks. This is why your title tags must also be compelling.

N/B: Readability always comes first. Your title tag must make sense to the searcher. For example, if your target keyword/phrase is “saskatoon berry pie cheap,” then that doesn’t make sense as a title tag. Rearrange the words so it makes sense, even if you have to add stop words—Google is smart enough to understand what you mean. At Best SEO in Canada, AJ Frey knows just how to do this for you.

Finally, keep your title tags under 60 characters and use only “title case” for titles.

b) Heading (H1)

In addition to your title tag, your target keyword / phrase should also be in your heading. N/B: Every page should have a visible H1 heading on the page, and it should include your target keyword/phrase where it makes sense.

c) URL

The third place according to Google, where you target keyword / phrase should be is in your URL. According to Mozilla, “URL stands for Uniform Resource Locator.

A URL is nothing more than the address of a given unique resource on the Web. In theory, each valid URL points to a unique resource. Such resources can be an HTML page, a CSS document, an image, etc.”

Your URL should be short and descriptive, according to Google, as long URLs may intimidate web searchers. As such, it is not always best SEO practice to use the exact target query as your URL.

N/B: Earlier we noted that it was okay to add stop words to your title tags. However, it is good SEO practice to remove stop words from your URL. What are stop words? Words such as The, Is/Are, At and On. There are others, and different search engines have different criteria for stop words.

Finally, your keywords/phrases in URLs should be relevant to your page’s content.

● Match search intent:

Another good SEO practice is to match search intent. This means to align your title and the description of your page with search intent. Nobody wants to see product pages in the search results for “how to make blueberry grunt.” Clearly, these people are in learning mode, not buying mode.

Google understands this, which is why all of the top results will be blog posts—not pages selling blueberries, lemon and sugar.

The opposite is true for a query like “where can I buy blueberries.”

People aren’t looking for a blueberry grunt recipe; they’re looking to buy some blueberries. This is why most of the top 10 results are going to get ecommerce category pages, not blog posts.

Matching search intent goes beyond creating a certain type of content. It’s also about creating the content from a particular angle and in a specific format. Which brings us to the next good SEO practice.

● Write thorough and relevant content on a regular basis:

How do you rank for more queries? By making your content more thorough and relevant. But how do you do that? Here are a few tips:

Complete sentences with good spelling and grammar. There are a few reputable software programmes that offer spelling and grammar corrections, so there is no excuse for poor grammar and typographical errors on your website. This would not be a good SEO practice.
Make sure that your content is unique and original. There is nothing wrong with publishing content that is written by others, however, it must be unique and original.
Well-labelled images: If you use images in your content, ensure that each is properly labelled. If in case the images cannot load, at least the searcher can know what the image is about by reading the label.
Make sure that your content is relevant. Quality over quantity. While the length of your content may be important in certain contexts, at the end of the day, it must be relevant to your searchers’ queries. Btw, this not only applies to blog posts, but also to other types of content on your website.

N/B: Publishing new content on a regular basis is a good SEO practice, but it is also important to keep a balance between content produced by the website and content offered to the website by an author, in exchange for a link in the author bio. In this case, it is better not to publish, than to break this rule.

● Relevant internal links:

Internal links are those from one page on your website to another. Adding internal links from other relevant pages is a very good SEO practice. This is one of the foundations of Google’s ranking algorithm and remains important even today.

Internal links also help Google understand what a page is about. Look for suitable places to add internal links on pages that fit the bill.

Unfortunately, Google discontinued public PageRank scores in 2016, so there’s no way to check them anymore. But in general, the more links a page has—from both external and internal sources—the higher its PageRank.

Which brings us to last, but not least:

● Get more backlinks:

Backlinks are another foundation of Google’s algorithm and remain one of the most important page ranking factors.

Google confirms this on their “how search works” page, where they state: “If other prominent websites on the subject link to the page, that’s a good sign that the information is of high quality”.

Finally, you should aim to build backlinks from authoritative and relevant pages and websites.

Bad SEO Practices

On the other hand, persons who wish to take the shortcut to ranking high on Google’s pages employ bad SEO practices referred to as “Black Hat” techniques. These include:

● Duplicate content:

Duplicate content is a very common practice, as some webmasters will publish content that has already been published elsewhere. In and of itself, that is not a bad thing; there are many sites with information you may think is useful for your visitors.

If your intent is not to try to rank for a certain keyword or “stealing” someone else’s work, then you should “no index and no follow” those pages so that you are not penalised by Google for bad SEO practice. Non-unique content is not good for SEO. Think about it: If search engines already have the same content in their index, why would they index your web page since it has nothing new to offer?

● Invisible text and keyword stuffing:

It is not as common today, but there was a time when “black hat” strategists used to include many keywords at the bottom of a webpage, but make them the same colour as the background so they weren’t very noticeable to the human eye.

Google has been known to penalise such practices. The same goes for “stuffing” keywords where they are irrelevant. Have you landed on a page with a keyword search and that page was filled with the keyword, and barely anything else?

That is an extreme example of what we’re stating. This is a very bad SEO practice. Not only will it discourage visitors to your site who are looking to read relevant information on their search term, but it is also a red flag for search engines such as Google that you are trying to manipulate their algorithms.

N/B: It is enough to mention your keywords in the title, description, opening paragraph and a few other places in the body of the text.

● Cloaking and redirecting:

“Cloaking”, a very common practice of old, is when webmasters hide the real destination of a link, while “redirecting” is sending multiple “keyword-rich” domains to a single website.

Now, there may be times when redirecting is necessary for your business. However, there is a thin line between redirecting to a subdomain or domain and buying several domains just for the purpose of redirecting their traffic to a single website.

Showing different versions of a page to web crawlers and visitors to a website was a common practice in the past, but due to Google’s best practices thankfully this has been discontinued.

However, in case you just arrived on the planet and do not know Google’s best practices, please be advised that using such “black hat” techniques now is considered a very bad SEO practice.

● Poor linking practices:

Going out and purchasing a Fiverr package promising you 5,000 links in 24 hours is not the right way to build links. You need to get links from relevant content and sites in your niche that have their own traffic.

There are many other bad SEO practices one can employ including guest posting for links and accepting low quality guest posts. However, we will continue that discussion in a later article.

Conclusion

Google’s best practices reward good SEO practices such as Security Certificates, applying keywords to title tags, headings and URLs, having unique and relevant content, using appropriate internal and backlinks, while penalise bad SEO practices, which we call “black hat” techniques such as keyword stuffing, excessive link building and cloaking.

If you wish to have a successful website that ranks high on Google’s pages, then it behooves you to master good SEO practices.

AJ Frey can help you to develop and maintain a successful website that sees you ranking on Google’s first page with no fear of penalty due to bad SEO practices.

He offers a comprehensive range of SEO services dedicated to driving traffic that meets your lead, acquisition, or sales objectives. You should start seeing results–qualified leads, sales and traffic–in approximately 3 months.

That’s it. A list of Good SEO practices vs. Bad SEO practices, which we hope will help you to stay in Google’s good books, and any other search engine you wish to rank on. We know there are others. Why not share them in the comments section below? Ready to let an SEO expert help you maintain good SEO practices on your website? Give us a call or send us an email.

SEO Practices That Make Google Penalize You

November 29, 2020

by Award Winning Author AJ Frey Ecommerce Tips SEO Tips

Updated: Dec 15, 2022 10:00am SEO Practices That Make Google Penalize You
Originally Published: Dec 15, 2021 8:43am Top 10 of the Worst SEO Practices That Make Google Penalize You

SEO Practices That Make Google Penalize You

One of the worst things that could ever happen to an eCommerce website is a fall in ranks. Usually, bad SEO practices are the usual suspect behind. And that is mild if you compare it to what can happen when you’re penalized by Google. But what could ever cause Google to penalize you?

A lot, actually. You’d be surprised by the number of black hat tricks or bad SEO practices employed by webmasters in order to appear on Google’s page one. However, for the purpose of this article, we are only going to list the top 10 of the worst SEO practices that make Google penalize you.

1. Keyword Stuffing

There was a time when site owners actually got away with this bad SEO practice. But I am getting ahead of myself. You’re not sure what I’m talking about because this is such an old practice–perhaps before your time. What is keyword stuffing? Let me let Google tell you:

“Keyword stuffing” refers to the practice of loading a webpage with keywords or numbers in an attempt to manipulate a site’s ranking in Google search results. Often these keywords appear in a list or group, or out of context (not as natural prose). Filling pages with keywords or numbers results in a negative user experience, and can harm your site’s ranking. Focus on creating useful, information-rich content that uses keywords appropriately and in context.

In other words, Keyword stuffing is when you place your keywords too many times in your web content. You’ve probably seen it, because unfortunately, it is still being used today, but didn’t know what it was. Have you ever been to a website after your search term produced some favourable looking results, but when you try to read the article it doesn’t really make sense? I like WebFX’s example (The keyword, in this case, is “yellow rubber duckie.”):

“Get a yellow rubber duckie for your children”. A yellow rubber duckie is a charming toy, so buy a yellow rubber duckie today. With a yellow rubber duckie, you can have tons of yellow rubber duckie fun. It’s easy to make bath time great with a yellow rubber duckie, and a yellow rubber duckie from our company guarantees yellow rubber duckie enjoyment.

According to Google, don’t do that. Not only will it damage your brand, but you will lose credibility with your clients. Your website falling in Google rankings is also a negative outcome.

2. Duplicate Content (Whether Yours Or Others)

What is duplicate content? Let’s hear from Google: Duplicate content generally refers to substantive blocks of content within or across domains that either completely matches other content or are appreciably similar.”

In other words, either you or someone working for you decided that the content on another website matches info you would like to share with your audience. However, instead of using the content as reference, you instead chose to copy word for word that content on your website.

If that is you, stop it! It’s not worth it. We know content is king. That’s why the Best SEO in Canada offers evergreen content at affordable prices. We guarantee that every article written will pass plagiarisma.

We know that by and large, people are honest, so sometimes mistakes happen. You didn’t deliberately set out to duplicate content, however you recently updated content on your website, accounting for the duplication. If this is you, don’t panic. All you have to do is use 301 redirectswhen you create new pages so that the old pages are no longer accessible.

You can also use the tag: rel=canonical for pages with similar content, in order that Google, or any other search engine for that matter, will know which content is the original; while the “no index” tagshould be used for those pages you do not want Google to search.

Let’s take this article for example: You’re reading this article, Top 10 of the Worst SEO practices That make Google Penalize You, and we noticed that it was getting traction and moving up the ranks, we could not use this content on any other page or website that we own (even though we are the original owners of the content). We would be penalized by Google if we were to “duplicate” this content.

3. Scraped Content

Further to #2 is scraped content. What’s the difference, you ask? It’s like apples and oranges. They are both fruits, but not all fruits are apples or oranges. So scraping does result in duplicate content, however, the act of scraping is deliberately copying and pasting content and publishing it as your own.

While Google will overlook duplicate content if they recognise that identical content which (often unintentionally) appears in more than one place on your site, they will penalize websites with scraped content–and you can bet they know the difference.

4. You’re linking to low-quality sites

According to Google, “Any links intended to manipulate PageRank or a site’s ranking in Google search results may be considered part of a link scheme and a violation of Google’s Webmaster Guidelines. This includes any behavior that manipulates links to your site or outgoing links from your site.”

So, if you have links pointing to low quality websites, Google will penalize you.

5. You’re buying links

Further to #3 above, is the practice by link builders and some webmasters of purchasing links. Whether you choose to pay for a slot on a blog post so you can add links, or you are directly purchasing links in a directory, buying links is one of the fastest ways for you to get penalized by Google.

According to Google, exchanging money for links, or posts that contain links is considered a violation of their guidelines.

6. Coaking

“Cloaking refers to the practice of presenting different content or URLs to human users and search engines. Cloaking is considered a violation of Google’s Webmaster Guidelines because it provides our users with different results than they expected”. (Google’s Webmaster Guidelines.

It is a very bad SEO practice to show one content to the web crawlers in order to rank higher, while showing a different content to your site visitors. If you do this, you will be penalized by Google.

BTW, Google is aware that hackers use cloaking to hide their activities, so the only instance you will not be penalized by Google is if your website gets hacked.

7. Auto-generated content

Interestingly, this makes the top 10 list because Google does take action against websites where content is automatically generated (also called “auto-generated”—content). Believe it or not, filling pages with auto-generated contents is a sign of bad SEO practices.

If your content is “translated by an automated tool without human review or curation before publishing”, “generated from scraping Atom/RSS feeds or search results” and “generated through automated processes”, among others, they are all considered auto-generated content and will be penalized by Google.

This is sometimes done to save time and money, but you could end up being penny wise and pound foolish. If you must have these types of content on your site, Google has some best practices you can implement to prevent them from showing up in Search.

8. Doorway Pages

This is an interesting one, because there was a time when doorway pages were considered good SEO practice. To use BrightEdge’s example, “…a nail salon with two branches that wants to bring in traffic for two cities may have pages targeted for each city that have the same or similar content and describe the same nail salon”.

Six years ago, this would have been an okay SEO practice. However, the good must now suffer for the bad, as search engines realize unscrupulous black hat technicians have manipulated the system to create doorway pages that lead searchers to intermediate pages (as final pages) that are not useful.

So have you guessed what are doorway pages? Indeed, it’s having multiple domain names or pages targeted at specific regions or cities that funnel users to one page. But in the case of Bad SEO practice they are sites or pages created to rank for specific, similar search queries.

According to Google, “They are bad for users because they can lead to multiple similar pages in user search results, where each result ends up taking the user to essentially the same destination”.

9. Hidden Text

While hiding text in and of itself is no longer considered them as bad SEO practices, Google may consider it a violation of their webmaster guidelines and penalize you.

There is a saying, it’s not what you do, but how you do it. This would be one such time. For example, if your website includes technologies that search engines have difficulty accessing, like JavaScript. Or if there is sensitive information you do not want everyone to have access to.

What Google penalizes is the deliberate attempt to manipulate the system in order to trick search crawlers.

For example, making your keyword text the same colour as the background of your website or locating text being an image. Because search crawlers are robots, or bots, they don’t see the Internet the same way we do. They can see your “invisible” keywords. And they are smart enough to know the difference, especially in cases where keyword stuffing is present.

10. Sneaky Redirects

According to Google,

“Redirecting is the act of sending a visitor to a different URL than the one they initially requested. There are many good reasons to redirect one URL to another, such as when moving your site to a new address, or consolidating several pages into one.
However, some redirects deceive search engines or display content to human users that is different than that made available to crawlers. It’s a violation of Google Webmaster Guidelines to redirect a user to a different page with the intent to display content other than what was made available to the search engine crawler”

So there you have it: Straight from the proverbial horse’s mouth. Need we say more?

Final Thoughts

We at Best SEO in Canada know you would never wittingly use any of these top 10 worst SEO practises that make Google penalize you. But just in case you unwittingly did and now your website has lost its ranking. Don’t panic. It’s reversible. Let us help you.

AJ Frey and his team “have a constantly evolving proven whitehat secret recipe that can help you get on the first page of Google and start converting potential leads into actual, paying customers”.

If you have questions about avoiding bad SEO practices or can suggest a few more, send them to us in the comments section below. We’d love to hear from you!

Why Is Shopify’s SEO Bad?

October 29, 2020

by Award Winning Author AJ Frey Ecommerce Tips Marketing Strategy Tips Online Marketing Tips SEO Tips WordPress Tips

Shopify, not to be confused with Spotify– the world’s largest music streaming service provider, is an eCommerce platform “for online stores and retail point-of-sale systems. The Shopify platform offers online retailers a suite of services including payments, marketing, shipping and customer engagement tools,” (Wikipedia).

In other words, the Shopify platform “helps people achieve independence by making it easier to start, run, and grow a business”. Over 1,700,000 businesses in more than 175 countries are powered by Shopify. Same, it “creates the best commerce tools for anyone, anywhere, to start and grow a business”, (Shopify.com). The platform is simple, sleek and integrates well with many different apps at just the click of a button.

Plus, you don’t have to take out your wallet to start. This means, they allow you to set up your store for free, and try their service for 14 days before you’re asked for your credit card. Did I tell you that they are also headquartered in Ottawa, Canada? Nice! However, not everything shines when it comes to Shopify. So, the next question is, what’s not to love? Their SEO.

Obviously, if SEO is critical to your business, you need to read this article as I try to answer the question: Why is Shopify’s SEO bad?

Can you do SEO with Shopify?

First of all, let’s be clear, you can do SEO with Shopify. But it’s limiting. Here are many quick, technical wins.

If you are new to eCommerce and just looking for a place to start, then Shopify is the perfect place for your online store. However, once your business starts to take off that’s when you start to see how Shopify actually holds you back.

Look at it this way:

You can become 80% competitive on Google’s search engine using Shopify, but that’s it. It won’t get better. If you know what you’re doing and put in the effort, you may even rank on less-competitive searches. However, profitable rankings are extremely competitive, so trying to make up for that last 20% of lost performance will over time become frustrating.

Now that I’ve got your attention, let Best SEO in Canada show you five problems with Shopify’s SEO that might make you think twice about choosing their platform. You might even become motivated to migrate to BigCommerce–our go-to eCommerce plugin for all things WordPress.

1. Canonical URLs

The first problem is Shopify’s Canonical URLs. Canonical issues are all about copies of the same content getting spat into Google.

If you asked them, Shopify would say that they solved the problem using the rel=”canonical” HTML tag, but they would be wrong. It’s not that they’re using the code wrong (I actually love that they make it so easy). Rather, they’re simply expecting this HTML tag to do something that it was not meant to do.

For example, Northcutt, based out of Chicago, had a Shopify client with the following URLs all visible in Google when they searched for site:theirdomain.com:

searched for site:theirdomain.com; proving that all four copies were indeed in Google’s index:

/products/Batteries

/products/batteries

/products/batteries/

/products/BATTERIES/

>Their “batteries“>” product page contained the rel=”canonical” tag. So what happened?

By Google’s own definition, the rel=”canonical” tag is a suggestion. In my experience, they’ve only occasionally followed their own suggestion.

And if you tried patching things together using Shopify’s redirect tool, you would find that this doesn’t work either. At least not if the page to which you are redirecting technically exists.

We still recommend rel=”canonical” HTML tags, but it is unreliable in this situation. The role of this tag is entirely different — perhaps we’ll do another article on that at a later date. Note that in this case, too, JavaScript redirects cannot be relied upon.

These problems can only be solved by using .htaccess or vhost files. Period. And you cannot access these files on Shopify. They know this. Shopify Plus support confirmed this problem, but were unwilling or unable to fix it.

2. Breadcrumb URLs

The second problem is a variant of problem #1: Shopify creates breadcrumb URLs of products beneath categories. What that means is that you will often find two copies of the same page in Google’s index:

/collections/collection-title/products/product-name

/products/product-name

So using MinistryofSupply.com (a clothing store) as an example, Shopify’s default canonical behaviour will state that only the second URL should get indexed. I.e. /products/product-name:

However, a search on Google proves this suggestion often just doesn’t work:

shopify SEO

This, right here, is just foolish behaviour. What is the purpose of creating so many conflicting URLs with the same content? None. There is no benefit. Worst of all, like problem #1, Shopify will not provide access for you to solve this problem.

3. No Plusses, Please!

The third problem with Shopify’s SEO is the inability to modify the indexing file, which contains the + sign that must be deleted in order for search engines to crawl the site. Let me explain. There is a file named robots.txt that sends signals to Google about how to index your site, and all other sites. On Shopify, you cannot edit this file. Here’s what’s inside by default:

# we use Shopify as our ecommerce platform

//User-agent: *

//Disallow: /admin

//Disallow: /cart

//Disallow: /orders

//Disallow: /checkout

//Disallow: /3092321/checkouts

//Disallow: /carts

//Disallow: /account

//Disallow: /collections/*+*

//Disallow: /collections/*%2B*

//Disallow: /collections/*%2b*

//Disallow: /blogs/*+*

//Disallow: /blogs/*%2B*

//Disallow: /blogs/*%2b*

//Disallow: /*design_theme_id*

//Disallow: /*preview_theme_id*

/Disallow: /*preview_script_id*

//Disallow: /discount/*

//Disallow: /apple-app-site-association

//Sitemap: https://ministryofsupply.com/sitemap.xml

//# Google adsbot ignores robots.txt unless specifically named!

//User-agent: adsbot-google

//Disallow: /checkout

//Disallow: /carts

//Disallow: /orders

//Disallow: /3092321/checkouts

//Disallow: /discount/*

//Disallow: /*design_theme_id*

//Disallow: /*preview_theme_id*

//Disallow: /*preview_script_id*

//User-agent: Nutch

//Disallow: /

//User-agent: MJ12bot

//Crawl-Delay: 10

//User-agent: Pinterest

//Crawl-delay: 1

Most of these instructions are useful. However, these default instructions also cause problems. Not least of which is that products and vendors that contain a plus (+) or a space character will be blocked from crawling. Take a look again at the instructions. Do you see those lines that contain a “+”, “2B”, or “2b“? Those “instructions” keep those pages from being added to Google’s index. They also disrupt Google’s crawl pattern, which can lead to other indexing problems.

4. That Blog… It’s No WordPress

The fourth problem with Shopify’s SEO is its blog. Indeed, every eCommerce site should have a blog for content marketing. Not doing content marketing? Why ever not? Don’t you know it is always better to own attention rather than rent? In order to thrive, mature brands must become natural link-earning machines.

But let’s be real: Shopify is an eCommerce platform, not a content-marketing platform.

I mentioned WordPress at the beginning of the article with good reason. WordPress is the number one content management platform on the planet. According to the latest statistics. as of March 11, 2021 some 455,000,000 websites are using “>WordPress right now! That means around 20% of all self-hosted websites use it, too.

Shopify has a default blogging engine, but there are too many issues and limitations that are beyond the scope of this article. Suffice it to say, the solution would naturally be to install WordPress in a subfolder on the site for your blog. Sounds simple enough, right? Wrong. Shopify does not allow you to install anything in a subfolder on their site. You will have to host the blog somewhere else and then point the subdomain there, like content.yoursite.com.

In SEO, a closer affiliation is implied when your content shares the same subdomain (such as “www”). This is why it is a part of our best SEO practice to host your blog, news, ebooks, infographics, etc, in a subfolder. However, on Shopify, you can’t do that.

5. The Rest

If by now you are not convinced Shopify’s SEO is bad, then it makes no sense to continue, so we’ll just lump all the other problems as “the rest”. Moreover, I’ve given you a taste of how limiting Shopify’s SEO capabilities can be. But it doesn’t get better. It gets worse; especially once you get into creative keyword architecture, segmentation for account-based marketing, performance tweaks, and other situational fixes (the rest).

Conclusion

Shopify is a great eCommerce platform–for beginners and nontechnical users of the Internet. However, if you are a developer, SEO expert, or a business person with a huge eCommerce store, be aware of what you’ll never be able to do with Shopify’s SEO:

First, customize robots.txt
Second, customize web server headers
Third, customize URL handling and subfolders
Four, install the world’s greatest content management system for your link-earning endeavours.

Those aren’t just unsolvable problems. They’re three categories of problems and then some. For these, there are no hacks or workarounds. So, if SEO is critical to your business, Shopify is not for you. Why is Shopify’s SEO bad? In a nutshell: There’s no room for growth–your growth!

At Best SEO in Canada, AJ Frey wants to see you grow. He wants to help your business to scale up. As an SEO expert, he knows how to get your business ranking on Google’s page one, using only organic search strategies, because he hates PPC.

“So whether you’re an enterprise company or a small independent business, your success online depends largely on ensuring your target audience finds you on Google” through SEO. AJ Frey offers an extensive range of SEO services, exclusively for driving traffic in order to meet your lead, acquisition or sales objectives. So are you ready to make that move? Give AJ Frey a call at 250-801-6588 or drop him a

So, did we answer the question, “Why is Shopify’s SEO bad”? We surely hope so. Let us know in the Comments box below.

The Top Pricing For SEO Audit Services In Canada Ranked

August 29, 2020

by Award Winning Author AJ Frey Ecommerce Tips Marketing Strategy Tips Online Marketing Tips SEO Tips

Updated: Nov 28, 2022
Originally Published: Sept 30, 2021

The Top Pricing For SEO Audit Services In Canada Ranked

An SEO >audit refers to a full analysis of all the factors that affect a website’s visibility in search engines. It determines the strengths, as well as the weaknesses of your website when it comes to SEO. Let’s find out below about top rank pricing for SEO audit services in Canada.

An SEO audit can give you insight into the challenges you’re facing, why you may not be achieving your SEO goals and also realise the strategies your competitors are using to be successful. Based on the results from the SEO audit, you receive a list of recommendations from an SEO expert like AJ Frey (Rad Websites – Best SEO in Canada), who further implements these recommendations on your behalf, if you do not have your own SEO team.

There are many articles on the Internet for DIY website owners on how to conduct an SEO audit. However, if you’re not tech savvy, or have the time to do a thorough audit, enlisting the services of an SEO expert is the best gift you could give yourself. But how much should you be doling out to an expert to audit your site?

In this article, we are going to list the top rank pricing for SEO audit services in Canada. Check No. 5.

SEO Audit Services In Canada

1. Arhefs

At the top of the list is Ahrefs –a well-known toolset for SEO analysis. Though based in Singapore, Ahrefs is worldwide, including in Canada. They make the top of the list because their prices range from US$99 – 999/month, with a wide array of services, including their SEO site audit tool for DIY web owners.

An SEO site audit tool automatically audits a page on your website — all you have to do is enter your Url. The tool then “crawl” your site before generating a report, which highlights the strengths and weaknesses of a webpage. Other SEO audit tools on the market include Moz, Semrush, Alexa, Serpstat, to name a few.

Most SEO audits have two things in common: They’re too technical and they take DAYS (or even WEEKS) to complete! Ahrefs SEO audits take hours. They do have a caveat: If your website is HUGE, i.e. hundreds of thousands, or even millions of pages—it may take longer than a few hours. However, for most small to medium-sized sites, this should be doable in hours rather than days.

They also give you a breakdown of their SEO audit process:

Steps 1–4: check for BIG issues (that may be holding your site back)
Steps 5–9: uncover easy-to-fix on-site problems;
Steps 10–12 analyze organic search traffic (and find low-hanging opportunities);
Steps 13–14 backlink analysis (VERY important!);
Steps 15–16 content audit AND “content gap” analysis.

As well as the “tools” they use during the audit process:

Ahrefs reports usually include recommendations for optimizing your webpage’s SEO.

2. Webfx

According to Webfx, whether you’re a small-to-midsize business (SMB) or established enterprise, you can expect to pay between $650 and $14,000 for an SEO audit. Granted, if you’re a larger company with a bigger website, you will have higher SEO audit costs than a startup with a small site.

Like the size of your website, several factors affect the price of your SEO audit. Their figures quoted are also one time prices–but again, depending on the size of the website and other factors. WebFX also provides SEO services to clients around the world! So whether you needSEO in Boston, orSEO in Charlotte, or Canada, they’ve got you covered.

3. Neil Patel

Well-known marketing expertNeil Patel comes in at #3 because his website generates millions of organic search traffic—about3.5 million 3.5 million. No ads, only through SEO-optimized content marketing. That qualifies him as an expert on SEO marketing.

He states that at a minimum, a technically sound website should be secure, quick to load, easy to crawl, have clear and actionable navigation actionable navigation, and not contain any duplicate links or content. It should also have systems in place to engage users even if they do hit a dead end, such as content created for 404 errors and 301 redirect pages

Finally, a site should have structured data to help search engines understand the content. This can come in the form of
schema graphs and XML sitemaps
His SEO Analysis doesn’t just point out errors, he says, but gives you step by step instructions on how you can fix each of them. Each SEO report contains video tutorials to step by step instructions.

His prices come with two options: a 30-day money back guarantee on a one-time lifetime payment ranging from $120 – $400 or a $12 – $40/month with a 7-day free trial.

4. Semrush

Semrush is a SaaS platform used for keyword research and online ranking data. It’s SEO audit tool can do a full website scan in minutes. If your website is under 100 pages you get your audit free. Their audit report includes Intuitive charts, instructions and directions for:

Loading speed
Crawlability
Content issues
Meta tags
HTTPS security protocols
Internal linking
JS and CSS errors
AMP implementation

With their SEO checker, you get a quick report card on how your site’s doing from an SEO perspective. That report can serve as a handy resource when discussing with decision makers why a professional SEO audit is necessary.

Their pricing ranges from $119.95/mo for marketing newbies, to $449.95/mo for large agencies and enterprises. Bear in mind, Semrush is a tool, not a person like No. 5.

Which brings us to:

5. Rad Websites / Best SEO in Canada / AJ Frey

SEO expert AJ Frey starts his audit with a web crawl. This procedure is so important that you need to run it first before you do the other steps, he says. Why is this important? Because this is where you identify your website’s problems for example:

duplicate contents
low word count
unlinked pagination pages
excess redirects
Loading speed
Crawlability
Content issues
Meta tags
HTTPS security protocols
Internal linking
JS and CSS errors
AMP implementation

AJ Frey’s professional SEO audit focuses on in-depth, customized assessment of your entire website by his experienced team of digital marketers. And AJ 100% agrees with Neil Patel on the many aspects he considers when performing a technical SEO audit. These include:

mobile optimization
page load speed
link health
duplicate content
schemas
crawl errors
image issues
site security
URL structure
404 pages
301 redirects
canonical tags
XML sitemaps
site architecture

For Audits they use Moz and Spyfu as their primary tools. Other tools to produce a comprehensive audit report include:

Google Search Console
Google Page Speed Insight
Google Analytics
SpyFu
CrazyFrog

An SEO audit by the Best SEO in Canada delves deep into your marketing data to analyse the meaning and implications of the site’s SEO performance. What you will end up getting is valuable insights, historical contexts (past and present performance) and meaningful recommendations from AJ Frey for what to do next.

If you do not have your own SEO team, AJ Frey offers his at competitive packages to meet every budget. The Best SEO in Canada prices range from CA$699 (for those on a budget) to CA$2499–their best value is the local Rad package at CA$1499.

6. OuterBox

If you’re an online retailer, the team atOuterBox has extensive Ecommerce expertise and can deliver one of the most detailed and comprehensive Ecommerce SEO audits available. The audit will help you be more prepared and eliminate unknowns when heading into a full comprehensive SEO campaign. Outerbox also offer a free SEO audit quote.

Their SEO audit process begins with their team analyzing your website content, code, structure and more to determine the strengths and weaknesses. They’ll also review your competitors to see what they are doing well and reverse engineer their strategies.

Their SEO audit final report will include all findings along with recommendations and how to find the problems. Their SEO audit process typically takes between 4-6 weeks. However, throughout the process you will work with various team members at OuterBox.

7. SEO North

SEO North has been in the industry for close to a decade, which means they have the experience to create a unique service and withstand the new regulations set by major search engines that may hinder your site’s high ranking.

Also, they base their SEO audit on the developed algorithms, strategies, and links. The digital marketing services allow them to work remotely, and their clients have the option to contact them anytime.Their main tasks in the audit process involve:

We check and identify the highest performing content.
Check for any website errors and identify each comprehensively.
Develop solutions and seamlessly implement them on the site

Markedly, technical SEO Audits are designed to identify technical barriers in the way of your content ranking higher in search results is what their site states. However, what can one get for CA$100– their one-time fat rate?

8. Optimized Webmedia Marketing

And finally, Optimized Webmedia Marketing is also based in Canada. They offer a “Free” SEO Audit, but by their own admission, nothing is truly free and there’s no such thing as “cheap SEO”–you get what you pay for. They’re on the list because they do offer good SEO Audits based on their testimonials–but it costs $150 per hour, which is more realistic than SEO North’s one-time fee of $100.

We can only surmise though that if they\re offering “free audit”, then they are using the foot-in-the-door technique. If so, you can expect to pay anywhere between $650 (low end), $2000 (average) to $5000+ (high end) on a monthly basis, or $100 to $300+ on an hourly basis.

Don’t expect to spend less than $650 if you choose the monthly plan, for according to OWM, they don’t do “Cheap SEO”. Cheap SEO is considered to be anything less than $650 per month and provides the level of “skill, time, and customization that is unique for every single website”.

What An SEO Audit Services Means

It was tough putting this list together because of each’s uniqueness and the wide range of prices offered by each. In most instances it was not a case of which was “cheaper”. But which is more aligned with your goals for your website.

The top rank pricing for SEO Audit services in Canada tried to find the best SEO audit service whether by a team or a SaaS platform.

Unlike many of our competitors, we did not rank ourselves first

–as we so easily could.
We believe AJ Frey at Rad Websites is the Best SEO in Canada because he provides top notch SEO service that places you on page one for your search term. Not many agencies can say that based on their own placement on the search engines.

Important to realize, Ahrefs and Neil Patel offer the best organic results. Semrush will get you on page one with paid SEO, and Semrush is an SEO tool.

Final Thoughts

Optimized Webmedia Marketing gives more flexibility by offering both hourly and monthly rates, but there’s a grey area, as they offer a “free page audit”, while stating on their blog that the “cost for a manually created audit varies from $1,500 to $10,000, with the average cost in Canada being $2,500”. You decide if this is a foot-in-the-door technique. You decide also if we were fair in our assessment by ranking ourselves No. 5.

Notwithstanding, whether we’re Noi. 5 or No. 1, at Best SEO in Canada, we don’t depend on cheap sales tactics to lure our customers. Our work speaks for itself. The fact you are here means you found us on Google’s page one.

We have done the same for all of our clients. AJ Frey is the best SEO in Canada. If you want him to carry on SEO audit services and optimize it for the search engines, just drop us a line via email, or call us at 1 250 801 6588. You won’t regret it!

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Why WordPress Is The Best

April 29, 2020

by Award Winning Author AJ Frey Ecommerce Tips SEO Tips WordPress Tips