Here are 7 mistakes that every search engine optimization should avoid when building and designing ecommerce websites:

1. Slow websites – Customers want to get the information they need in a quick manner. They do not have the time or patience to wait for slow websites to load when other providers can give them what they need twice as fast. There is said to be an abandonment rate of 8% for every 2 seconds that your website loads its pages, according Compuware. This means that conversion rates will increase if your page loads even just 2 seconds faster.

2. Complicated ordering process – Shoppers want to purchase in as few steps as possible. If buying from the website involves at least five steps, then consumers can easily abandon their shopping cart purchases. No search engine optimization company wants that for their client, right? Welcome your visitor, direct them to the billing and shipping section, ask for their preferred payment option, and don’t forget to say thank you once their order is confirmed. This, according to Compuware, is the most effective way to encourage your customers to shop in your store.

3. Confusing credit card log-in details – Shoppers are trained to input credit card information a certain way. There is the industry standard on how consumers are supposed to log-in their credit card details. Changing the way you ask for credit card information can easily frustrate your customers, especially if they have filled on the necessary information only to start from scratch if they miss just one. According to Sucharita Mulpuru of Forrester Research, a search engine optimization company should follow the industry standards to make sure that consumers can fill in the necessary credit card details in a fast and efficient manner.

Other mistakes that we will discuss next week include high shipping charges, overselling tablet apps, incompatibility with other browsers, and irrelevant offers that customers don’t really need. Both a search engine optimization specialist and ecommerce web designer should avoid these mistakes to make sure that ecommerce sites are optimized to get the highest traffic and ROI possible. See you then!

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However, that may just change as Google, the industry’s most influential search engine, has just recently implemented three changes that could very well affect the very core of search engine optimization.

The first and most important change, according to Kim Castleberry of Just-Ask-Kim.com, is the “shift towards a ‘machine based learning’ model. This change will be employing better calculations and it also takes into account social signals, which the recent buzz on social SEO has been all about. It can be adjusted often and it also considers the overall visitor experience.

The second change includes focus on the authorship. This entails verifying people as authors of blog posts and web content. In case you haven’t noticed, search results in Google now display the author of the post as well as the author’s image. The changes in search results will both affect organic and Google+ results, making the set-up of a Google+ page really important at this point.

Finally, Google will be introducing the “Schema” markup, a new search engine standard that helps identify a page’s individual elements and enables a user to search more explicitly.

According to Castleberry, these changes will give websites with great content, easy navigation, fast loads, and no broken links the chance to compete with the bigger fish out there – even with less links and keywording. Simply put, it now emphasis quality over quantity. Finally!

This makes audience engagement and social media agency participation really crucial in any search engine optimization campaign. Passion and dedication now become factors in ranking high in Google’s SERPs. In summary, a search engine optimization company should now focus on giving a genuine user experience without sacrificing quality content for websites to really get that top spot in Google’s SERPs.

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Here are some ways to help small businesses maximize their own search engine optimization campaigns by being involved:

1. The first thing to do after hiring a search engine optimization company is to understand what SEO is all about. Sure, you paid someone else to work on your SEO campaigns but it won’t hurt to know about the search engine optimization process. Know the basics, especially the do’s and don’ts of the business.

2. As the client, it is important to remain in control of your own website. Not all search engine optimization companies practice white hat SEO so it is important that you know what changes are being done on your website and you should have the final say on what recommendations should and shouldn’t be applied.

3. This cannot be stressed enough – be involved in all your search engine optimization campaigns. This means deciding what keywords should be optimized for to gain the best ROI (yes, you should be the one selecting targeted keywords) and what message should be displayed on your website.

4. In line with this, you have to, unfortunately, participate in all the boring stuff from the get-go. Updating contact details, choosing targeted keywords, maintaining blog and social media agency accounts, and finalizing the copy on your website – all these will eventually affect the success of your small business in the SEO world.

5. As previously mentioned, you have to understand what search engine optimization is all about. It means understanding all the necessary components that make SEO campaigns successful. From your own website to keyword placement, from effective copy to social media exposure, from local SEO to links – you should be able to understand how these factors work to make SEO a success.

6. Finally, small businesses, just like any other SEO client, should know that search engine optimization success does not happen overnight. It may take from a few weeks to months before results are seen.

Remember, consistency is very important in SEO. Small businesses should learn to participate in all aspects of their SEO campaigns and not just leave all the work to outsourced search engine optimization specialists.

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With Google Social Search, a personal endorsement from a trusted authority or figure easily trumps 10,000 other endorsements from strangers. The same goes for links – authority links weigh far greater than casual user shares. According to Search Engine Land’s Jordan Kasteler, social SEO allows small businesses and search engine optimization specialists to compete with the bigger sharks out there. This is one reason why social SEO is a vital tool in a search engine optimization company’s SEO campaign.

Kasteler gives a few strategies that could help search engine optimization companies practice social SEO today:

1. Google+ – It is not enough that your search engine optimization company has a Google+ page. The page should be SEO-friendly so search engine spiders can discover and index your page. Google+ posts are now showing up in Google’s search engine results, making it too important to be ignored. Google+ pages do not just show up in social searches, they also appear in standard Web searches.
2. Relationships – Online relationships with industry authorities and followers are becoming increasingly important by the day. Every new follower is another opportunity for your brand to appear in his or her SERPs so gain new followers by hosting contests, increase efforts to reach out, or offer exclusive giveaways.
3. Social media helps not only with followers but with content as well. Today, it is very easy to cross-post content from one social media agency to another so make sure that each content you post is immediately posted on your Twitter, Facebook, Google+, and LinkedIn pages. Of course, it helps if users can share the content on their own pages too. This not only puts your content out there but in terms of search engine optimization, it can get your page indexed a lot faster.

These strategies are among the few ideas shared by Kasteler. Tune in next week as we discuss how shareable content, +1 buttons, Pinterest, and other buttons can help you increase your web presence and search engine rankings. See you!

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From SearchEngineLand.com is Brad Neelan, an authority in digital media and marketing, and he shares a few ideas on how, aside from search engine optimization specialists, B2B marketers can prepare for their social SEO campaigns.

According to Neelan, the first step to do social SEO is to understand the goals and objectives of one’s business. For a B2B marketer, this means differentiating the business against the competition to stand out against his peers. It also means determining the areas where the business can become an authoirity and have the right to influence.

With this, Neelan stresses that “blending an SEO-informed social media presence with socially sharable SEO content will enable your campaign to focus on greater “discoverability” of owned content.” Simply put, finding the perfect balance between social media and SEO is one of the best ways to put your content out there for search engines and potential clients to find.

Neelan also enumerates a few benefits to conducting social SEO. These include increased referral traffic that could influence organic search traffic, access to activated consumers, and reputation management, just to name a few.

Social SEO is still in its early stages and there is no definite answer as to how it really affects search engine rankings; however, it is still an important and valuable tool that both B2B marketers and search engine optimization companies should maximize to earn authority in SEO rankings. Optimizing social signals can be accomplished with a more focused search engine optimization strategy.

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In his SEOmoz.org post, Patel stresses the two kinds of authority links which a search engine optimization company should focus on. Absolute authority sites are one thing while the relative authority sites are another. Examples of absolute authority sites are Google’s Blog, The Daily Beast, and Huffington Post while Dooce and Mashable are examples of relative authority sites. To differentiate, Patel says that relative authority sites are run by bloggers and webmasters who are experts in their respective fields whereas absolute authority sites are labeled “informational” authorities.

Now that Patel has established the kinds of sites that any search engine optimization company should work hard to attract, he gives ideas on how to actually do it.

For example, the basic and most fundamental way to attract links from authority sites is to actually write content that is worthy of a link. The content should fill a need or gap that only you as a website could provide. Personal stories are also encouraged but only to a certain extent.

Additionally, you can also help other websites by pointing them to the dead links found on their webpages. Patel suggests doing it manually or using external tools such as a link validator to find dead links on a particular website easily.

Images always attract readers and building a large library of high-resolution photos can easily attract authority links to your website. A contact form should also be available so a reader can easily grab the file with the linking code of the exact image he or she wants.

Guest blogging is now becoming a common practice among niche experts today. Patel, however, says that this is easier to pull off for relative authority pages than labeled authority sites unless you already have an archive of posts that focus on link building, traffic, and exposure which you can eventually pitch to authority sites.

Finally, to end our first part on authority site-link building, Patel suggests a more personal approach. This means making appearances and actually showing up in conferences and other events where consumers and experts of your respective niche hand out. Converse with influencers and maybe take them out to dinner as you ask for a link back to your website.

Link building is not an overnight project. Results are long-term though so make an effort to get these authority links to your page for your search engine optimization campaign.

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With Google launching its blog series on “Search Quality Highlights”, should search engine optimization specialists be even the least bit surprised that Bing will follow suit? While there are doubts as to why exactly is Google making a series on “Search Quality Highlights”, Bing’s latest blog series aims to give consumers and search engine optimization companies a “deeper insight into the algorithms, trends, and people behind Bing,” as stated by the search engine’s very own Harry Shum.

Accordingly, Shum also revealed that the minor changes that Bing undergoes through are often the result of years and years of research. They team also understands how users are curious as to how search quality is when the results come up so fast in a search engine and other SEO related inquiries. Shum promised topics on social search, whole page relevance, and personal search, to name a few. The blog series, however, will start on the importance of whole page relevance at Bing.

Danny Sullivan of Search Engine Land explains that Bing’s latest blog series is more on “being visible” since they don’t have anti-transparency issues as compared to Google. Additionally, Sullivan thinks that Google’s own “Search Quality Highlights” is the search engine’s attempt to “deal with accusations” since the attack on Google because of its non-transparency on how it conducts search engine results.

For the best SEO company, what exactly does this imply? Share your thoughts and discuss how this could affect search engine optimization specialists in the following months.

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