In the old days, before the creation ofthe Google search engine, back when internet browsers didna��t exist yet, let alone websites, blogs or e-commerce sites, conventional marketing methodologies the only means for businesses to showcase their services or products to the public at large. In those days, Miami SEO Company was a concept that would have sounded alien to anyone, for the simple reason that this particular expertise wasna��t even in the planning stages yet.

seo guide for ecommerce

In a world,yet to be invented, in which search engine marketing would ultimately become the marketing tool of choice for SEO marketers everywhere, businesses commonly relied upon Miami advertising agencies for most of their marketing needs. Indeed no one had ever heard of the concept of doing business online, and bringing customers to a place of business was a relatively straightforward process which relied upon:

  1. Television advertising (Very expensive)
  2. Radio advertising. (Less costly)
  3. Printed advertising (ads in newspapers, magazines etca��)
  4. Direct mail marketing

Back then, business life was a whole lot less complicated.A� If you had the money to advertise, a sound business model to expand from and products and services of the required standards to fill the needs of your customers, then the prospects of any business endeavor being successful would have been extremely favorable indeed.A� More so since in those days, businesses didna��t have to compete with thousands of other well-funded businesses all vying for the same customers and selling more or less the same thing as you did.

Fast forward thirty years or more, and today, we find ourselves in an era in which the way we conduct business has drastically changed. Of course, TV advertising is still being used but this media has become so prohibitively expensive that it is now exclusively in the purview of large corporations with deep pockets and unlimited budgets. Likewise, companies still use printed media to advertise their products and services, but the business world has moved on from the brick and mortar model of yesteryears straight into acloud, this new undescriptive world of abstract websites, blogs and e-commerce shopping portals which are now dwelling in this brand-new world of ours, the internet.

Cometh the hour, cometh the world of SEO

There are millions of websites on the internet, selling all manner of things to a virtual online population of customers who now spend millions upon millions of dollars per month on goods and services. These purchases are made through specialized website portals, also called e-commerce business websites, and for a lot of these online businesses, the marketing methods of the past have given place to the new kids on the block, the holy grail of internet marketers: SEO.

SEO, or search engine optimization is seen as the corner stone of internet marketing and is a process which implies that search engines (like google) need to be presented with content that is adequately optimized, before they can be deemed to be of sufficient value and thusly highly ranked, nearest to the top of the result pages as possible.

When you talk about SEO, there are two aspects upon which this specialty evolves

  1. On-Page SEO
  2. Off-Page SEO

On-Page SEO is a process that is controlled by the sitesa�� owners since they are the ones writing the content. In doing so, they must make sure that their content is of sufficient quality that visitors to their websites will actually want to read it.A� On-page SEO also implies that particular attention is given to the structure of the content being written, such as headlines, page structure, keywords weight etc.

Off-page SEO is the process which you have little control over, other than making sure you have used sound on-page SEO methods in writing your content in the first place.A� Off-page SEO encompasses all the variables that come under the purview of the search engines and takes into consideration outside sources suchas the blogs in your particular industry who may link to your site, social media network activities and even the personal search history of the visitors.

The Almighty Power of Search Engine and the Role of SEO

A�Consider this:

  • In 2017, six billion five hundred and eighty-six million, thirteen thousand, five hundred and seventy-four searches per day are conducted worldwide. (6,586,013.574 searches)
  • Over 90% of online experience start with a search engine

Of course, you dona��t need the expertise of a genius statistician to realize the importance good search engine rankings can have on a businessa�� Any business.

The relevance of search engine results pages and howSEO Optimized pages can achieve high rankings.

For example, say you typed the keywords a�?StudioX Designsa�? (this website slogan) in Google.

Ranking Image

If your company was targeting that particular keyword combination, the higher it would feature in the google rankings the more highly qualified traffic your website would get.

StudioX Designs is our very own company slogan, and right now it is ranked number two in the SERPs (Search Engine Results Pages)!

Of course, in an ideal world, all our keywords combinations would be ranked at the very top of the SERPs, that elusive number one spot, and competing websites work really hard at improving their own rankings so that theirs may supplant yours.

In the case of our website, being ranked at number two (ita��s a position that may fluctuate) is a position we have achieved using the information provided in this Miami SEO Guideline.Ita��s taken a few months to get to that position using an approach that never stretched the limits of white hat SEO techniques and you will notice for example that the description in the google image above shows a lack of descriptive optimization.

How we have set upon achieving this result is the subject to the remainder of this article.

Remember:

SEO is all about making sure that your website does indeed feature prominently at the top of the SERPs. A properly optimized website is one of the reasons why this high ranking is even possible.

Why do we all work so hard to be number one? Ita��s all about traffic.

The higher your position is in the SERPs, the more traffic your website gets.

Consider this: The very first page of Google SERPs is responsible for 96% of all the clicks. And the higher you are within that first page, the more clicks youa��re likely to get.

How many clicks?

  • First position: 33%
  • Second position: 20%
  • Third position: just under 15%

of all the clicks!

A step-by-step guide we use as a blueprint in our own Miami SEO

Right now, it is likely that you might be asking yourself the following two questions:

  1. How did we rank number two for our targeted keyword combination?
  2. Can you achieve the same results for your own set of keywords?

The simple answer to those million (billion!) dollar questions is a�� Ita��s complicated.

Here is a humbling statistic: there are well over 2 million blog posts published every single day on the world wide web.

When large numbers are being branded about, like this one (2 million), it is sometimes difficult for our mind to fully comprehend the sheer magnitude of these numbers. You might say, yes, ita��s a lot of posts but would your mind be able to get a clear picture of the different between say two hundred thousand posts and two million posts?

Most people find this visualization a little perplexing. So, let me put this in another way.

From the moment you laid your eyes on the title of this paragraph (A step-by-step guide we use as a blueprint in our own Miami SEO) till you get to this pointA� x AY nearly 50 people will have published a new post on their blogs. Thata��s 50 different articles published during the time it took you to read the last 4 or 5 sentences.

Staggering as this number may seems, if you want to make your website successful, you too should be looking at publishing new posts on a regular basis.

You remember the simple answer to the above second question? Well now is the time to refine the answer.

Yes, you can achieve the same results for your own set of keywords. Ita��s complicated. But with a lot of work and the right kind of SEO, you too can do the same.

So where do you start?

1 – Here is step number one: If you want to get noticed by google, you must:

A�Publish new content>Make it compelling> Optimizeit

In plain language, you must:

  • Publish new content on a regular basis, and not only that,
  • Ensure that the content is interesting enough for people to read it so that google might then consider ranking ita�� ANDa��
  • Make sure it is optimized.

But what does a�?optimizeda�? really mean?

  1. Is it the structure of the site?
  2. The outgoing and incoming links to and from the site?
  3. The quality of the content of its posts or articles?

The simple answer to the above questions are:

Yes, yes and yesa�� And then some.

According to Wikipedia, SEO is a�?the process of affecting the visibility of a website or a web page in a search enginea��s unpaid results.a�?

If you know what that means, congratulations, youa��re ready for the next step, but if you think you understand the underlying meaning of this statement but would like it clarified further, here is what we think SEO really is:

Search Engine Optimization is the art of constructing your online content, through a variety of on-page and off-pages methodologies which include writing quality content (articles), emphasizing this content by way of recommendations from other quality websites, and structuring itin such a manner that search engines will eventually show your site at the top of searches for a variety of keywords. (Our definition of SEO)

Following our very own definition of what good SEO is, writing quality content and making sure it is not only compelling to read, but optimized for the search engines to notice is but the first of many steps we have taken to achieve the high rankings for our keyword combination. Here is the second stagea��

2 – Step number two: make sure your content stands out.

Google has devised a hugely complex and forever improving (changing) ranking formula to sift through the millions of posts that are published on a daily basis. This formula enables it to analyze each post, and determine which one isworthy of being listed at the top of their search result pages, and which one is not.

Remember:

Google is responsible for 90 % of all search engine traffic so you want to do everything you can to ensure that after Google has paid your site a visit, it will think very highly of its quality in terms of content, and the friends it keeps.

It is impossible to overstate the fact that what Google thinks about your website can affect your bottom line.

In order to reach its conclusions, and form an opinion on the value of your content, google takes into considerations a wide variety of parameters and complex computations that separate the good from the bad (in their eyes). They call this secretive formula an algorithm which relies more and more on artificial intelligence to draw a clear picture of the value of a given post against that of competing posts.

The good news is that google makes you the master of your own destiny for any post you write. You must write articles that your visitors want to read, that are grammatically sound, and present them in a way that makes them uniquely different from all the others.

In other words, whilst it is not uncommon for tens of thousands of articles to be talking about the same subject, it is vitally important that your article be considered sufficiently unique and of sufficient quality to be recognized by Google as worthy of being investigating further.

Remember:

Your article may not win any literary awards for the excellence it its composition but the great news is that this isna��t what google is looking for. Google wants articles that are of value to the visitors google it is considering sending to your site.

Here comes the thirst parameter in the search engine algorithm:

3 – Step number three: If you want your content to stand out, make sure others talk about it.

Now leta��s assume that you are a web developer who specializes in search engine optimization. Some people among your peers may even refer to you as Miami SEO Experts. As a service to your readers, you are writing your ownstep-by-step SEO guide and you want it to be as thorough and helpful as you can make it.

As part of the research needed to write your next post, you have come across this article and found that it contains information that would be relevant to your own readers. And so, as you begin the process of writing your own article, you also recommend to you readers that they have a look at this Miami SEO Guide. And so,you place a link to this page from yours.

Leta��s make one last assumption.A� Over time, and through a lot of hard work, you have developed a website that is now regarded as an authority website by google (which views it as a leader in the field of search engine optimization). Your website is brimming with quality content which your readers love and is known in the industry as a hub of information, turning you into the next best thing to an SEO guru.

Now, leta��s pause a moment and focus on that link you have placed on your webpage.A� The links that point to this page. Coming from you, an authority on this subject, this link is a recommendationthat would mean a great deal to us.

But it would also mean a great deal to google!

Why?

Because it serves as a vote of confidence coming from a website that google rates highly. Your site.

So, what does this mean to this page?A� Having sent a bot to look at our website and received back the data the bot collected during its visit, here is the situation as google now sees it:

  1. We have a well written article (written by us) that checks all the marks of efficient content composition.
  2. And this article is of such value, that another website in the same industry, highly rated by its peers and by google themselves, thinks the information it contains is of such value that it is linking back to it.

That is step number three.A� Ita��s a more difficult feast to accomplish because it takes a lot of work and really good and knowledgeable content to convince other people to link to you, but if you can manage it, then you can be moderately confident that we all things being equal, the rankings will follow.

The more quality websites link to your page, the more relevant your content will come to be regarded by google.

And thus, is Google crucial next phase:

  • To check whether other websites are linking to yours,
  • To analyze the quality of those websites,
  • To see what other websites are linking to them, and who they are linking to.

This phase is underlined by an elaborate system of scoring (quantifying) each one these aforementioned elements, thus enabling Google to begin to form an opinion on the overall neighborhood your website resides in.

If high quality websites link to yours, then your score goes up.A� The other side of the coin is that if low quality websites, with low quality content, residing in low quality neighborhood link to you, this a�?bad neighborhooda�? will bring your own score down.

Miami SEO Made Easy

If youa��ve searched the net for answers on how you too can begin the process of improving the rankings of your website, you will have no doubt come across a variety of claims from people claiming to be SEO experts. For businesses living in South Florida, there is a Miami SEO company we can wholeheartedly recommend, since it is a�� ours.

Call us for an informal chat during which we will be delighted to answer any questions you might have about search engine optimization and efficient website marketing. This conversation will also help us ascertain as to whether wea��re a good match for each other. Or not.

If we maya��

Wea��re not salespeople so we can guarantee that you will not be subjected to sales pitch forcing you to make a decision on the spot.

Miami SEO Made the Right Way: One Final Step

Search Engine Optimization is a long-term project which requires a certain investment on the part of anyone interested in improving his or her companya��s website rankings. There are no quick fixes, magical potions and secret softwaresolutions that can improve anything.A� In the fascinating world of SEO, there are two school of thoughts, and we, as a Miami SEO agency, adhere wholeheartedly to the first one:

White Hat SEO

This methodology implies that nothing you do in your optimization efforts goes against the search engine guidelines.A� It implies that a well-constructed website is first and foremost optimized for the benefit of its human visitors rather than the search engine bots.

White hat strategies require at least the following criteria:

  • Relevant content
  • Relevant links from quality websites
  • Grammatically correct sentences checked for spelling mistakes
  • Sound HTML standards
  • Appropriately LabeledA�images
  • Unique and relevant page titles

Black Hat SEO

Before we say anything else, let us say that we dona��t do that kind of SEO as it stretches and often goes beyond any limits of marketing decencies.

This method concentrates on the search engine bots, serving content designed for the search engines rather than for actual people.A� Since the target here are the bots (online software robots search engine launch to analyze website content), the content being served by these sites is usually bad and spammy.

It is an approach that often times brings thousands of quick dollars to black hat SEO Experts because they boast good and fast results.A� The problem of course with this approach is that if a website is engaged in back hat SEO then it risks being (and more often than not actually will be) banned as soon and as fast as it is discovered by the search engines.

The SEO experts responsible for these types ofsearch engine optimization train wreck can make a lot of money (thousands of dollars) from generally unsuspecting customers and then move on to the next ones. Several such customers a year, and you begin to understand that this unsavory and ultimately unreliable method of SEO can mean a substantial yearly income for the people promoting it.

For the customers, it is an entirely different story. The reality is that more often than not, they will find themselves with a website that had originally been seen to perform extremely well in the search engine, only for these newly acquired rankings to quickly disappear into oblivion.A� The sad part of this is that once a website is deemed to having used black a�?black hata�? techniques by google and other search engines,it is very difficult to bring it back from the oblivion it has been condemned toa��

Black hat strategies can be summarized as such:

  • Use of duplicate content
  • Badly written and machine spun content
  • Invisible text and keywords stuffing
  • Cloaking (the action of redirect the visitor to another site or page)
  • Links from link farms, sites from non-relevant content and sites also engaged in black hat SEO.

4a�� Step number Four:Social Media Marketing (SMM)

A�In an ever changing business and social landscape, it is impossible to talk about SEO without mentioning Social Media Marketing.

A customer I was talking to the other day asked me to give him an explanation that would fill in the blanks as to the increasing intertwining dynamic of Organic SEO and Social Media. For lack of a better explanation I gave him the following example:

Take your favorite pasta dish. You love the combination of the actual pasta, with the accompanying sauce that dresses it further and finally the signature cheese that makes the whole dish so delicious. You could eat the pasta with just the sauce and would still like it, but wouldna��t it so much better it you added the cheese?

The truth of the matter is that nowadays, Miami SEO is a whole lot less effective on its own than when social media kicks in.

Embarking on SEO without a plan to tap into the power of SMM will eventually yield the positive results you are hoping for but would it unlock all of your website potential? It is not surprising that the two have become so closely intertwined and businesses would be amiss if they missed out on this opportunity.