SEO promotion - Cart-Power

How to Boost Sales in Your Online Children’s Store: A Comprehensive SEO Guide

Ksenia Cheburova — Fri, 05 Jul 2024 12:39:38 +0000

In a highly competitive market, offering high-quality products is only half the battle. Effectively promoting them online is equally important. Many owners of online children’s stores face a common challenge: their websites exist, but their search engine rankings are too low, causing potential customers to miss out on their products. This results in decreased website traffic and, consequently, lost sales.
Proper SEO optimization helps improve your website’s visibility in search engines, directly influencing the influx of new customers and sales.

Our expert, Svetlana Sapunova, has prepared practical recommendations for internal and external SEO optimization tailored specifically for an online children’s store. Svetlana has been working in the SEO field since 2015. She is currently a project manager, responsible for analytics and managing a team of SEO specialists. She’s also a mom of two daughters and knows exactly how to capture parents’ attention when it comes to children’s products online.

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Internal SEO Optimization

Internal SEO optimization involves measures you can take directly on your website to improve its search engine rankings. This is a critical aspect of successful promotion, as it helps search engines better understand and index your content. Internal SEO optimization includes semantic work, content optimization, and technical optimization.

Semantic Optimization

Keyword research involves identifying the keywords and phrases people use in search engines to find products like yours. Proper keyword research helps your store appear in search results and attract users who are likely to become customers.

Steps for Keyword Research:

Step 1: Understanding Your Target Audience. First, you need to understand who your customers are. They could be young parents, grandparents, or people looking for gifts for children. Think about the questions and needs they might have. For example, parents might search for safe toys for newborns, educational games for toddlers, or back-to-school supplies.

Step 2: Creating an Initial List of Keywords. Start with brainstorming and create a list of all the keywords you think are relevant to your store. For example, if you sell toys, your keywords might include "children's toys," "educational toys," "newborn toys," "gifts for kids," etc.

Step 3: Using Keyword Research Tools. There are many online tools that can help you expand your list of keywords. Tools like Google Keyword Planner, Ahrefs, SEMrush, and others can suggest additional keywords that users frequently search for. For instance, entering "children's toys" into these tools might yield suggestions like "best children's toys 2024," "educational games for toddlers," "safe toys for babies," and many more.

Step 4: Competitor Analysis. Look at what keywords your competitors are using. Tools like Ahrefs or SEMrush can show you the keywords your competitors rank for. This will give you ideas for new keywords and show which ones are most effective in your niche.

Step 5: Keyword Clustering. Once you have an extensive list of keywords, you need to structure and group them. This is called clustering. Keywords can be grouped by topics and categories. For example, if you have a category for "educational toys," it might include keywords like "educational toys for toddlers," "learning toys," "logic development games." This helps you create structured content for your site and improve navigation.

Here’s how the keyword research process might look for an online toy store:

Identify that your main customers are parents of children aged 0 to 10 years.
Create an initial list of keywords: "children's toys," "newborn toys," "toddler toys," "educational games," "children's building sets."
Use Google Keyword Planner to find additional keywords: "best toys for newborns," "educational games for toddlers," "top toys for kids 2024."
Analyze competitors and find they also use keywords like "early development toys," "learning toys," "safe toys for children."
Cluster keywords and create groups: "newborn toys," "educational toys," "learning toys," "outdoor toys."

Now you have a structured list of keywords to use for content creation and page optimization.

** As you can see, collecting semantics is a long and meticulous task that takes a lot of time. Indexing the changes made can take up to 3 months. To ensure that your site starts ranking for the collected keywords as soon as possible, I recommend collecting semantics in the following manner. Prioritize your product categories in a list. Organize the semantic collection in stages based on these priority categories. That is, collect semantics for one category, create meta tags, write the text (if necessary), and send the page for re-indexing. Then move on to the next category. And the main rule: one group of key queries corresponds to one product category.

Content Optimization

Proper content optimization is an integral part of internal SEO. It includes the use of meta tags (title, H1, and description), creating a clear and understandable URL structure, and optimizing images. Let’s take a closer look at each of these aspects.

Title Tags

The title tag is the headline that appears in search results and on the browser tab, helping search engines and users understand what your page is about.

For example, “Buy Educational Toys for Kids – YourStore Online.”

Header Tags (H1-H3)

Header tags structure your content and help search engines understand its hierarchy and content. The main header (H1) should be unique and include the main keyword.

H1: The main header of the page, accurately reflecting the content. For a page with educational toys, the H1 could be “Educational Toys for Kids of All Ages.”
H2 and H3: These help break the text into logical blocks and can also contain keywords and their synonyms. For example, H2 might be “Best Educational Toys for Toddlers,” and H3 could be “Toys for Motor Skill Development.”

Meta Description

The meta description is a brief description of the page that appears in search results under the title. It should be attractive and include main keywords.

Example: “Buy the best educational toys for kids in our online store. Large selection, high quality, and affordable prices!”

URL Structure

Clear and understandable URLs make the site more user-friendly and search engine-friendly. URLs should be short, logical, and contain keywords. Using keywords in the URL helps search engines better understand the page content and improves its ranking.

Example of a good URL: www.yourstore.com/educational-toys
Example of a bad URL: www.yourstore.com/product?id=12345

Image Optimization

Alt and title attributes help search engines understand the content of images and improve accessibility for users with visual impairments.

Alt Text: Should briefly describe the image and include a keyword. For an educational toy image, the alt text might be “educational toy for kids.”
Title Text: Can be similar to the alt text but more detailed. For example, “Educational toy for kids – buy in our online store.”

Assume you have a page with educational toys. Here’s how you can optimize it:

H1: "Educational Toys for Kids of All Ages."
H2: "Best Educational Toys for Toddlers."
H3: "Toys for Motor Skill Development."
Title: "Buy Educational Toys for Kids of All Ages – YourStore Online."
Description: "Buy the best educational toys for kids in our online store. Large selection, high quality, and affordable prices!"
URL: www.yourstore.com/educational-toys
Images: Alt text: "educational toy for kids," title text: "Educational toy for kids – buy in our online store."

** Be sure to add upsell blocks to the product card: similar products, recently viewed, purchased with this item, sets. For example, on the diaper product card, include a "Customers also bought" block and add wet wipes, baby powder, baby cream, etc. These blocks provide an opportunity to increase the average order value and add additional internal linking to the site's products.

Technical Optimization

Technical optimization of the website plays a crucial role in its successful promotion. Key aspects include optimizing page load speed by compressing images, using a Content Delivery Network (CDN) for fast content delivery, and caching, which improves user experience and reduces bounce rates.

It’s also important to ensure a responsive design that displays correctly on all devices, including mobile phones and tablets. Creating an XML Sitemap and configuring robots.txt helps search engines effectively index the site and manage access to its pages. These measures not only improve the site’s SEO performance but also enhance its visibility and appeal to users.

** Correcting all technical errors on the website (404 errors, duplicate meta tags, last modification header errors, redirects, etc.) is crucial as they directly impact the site's ranking in search results. I recommend keeping track and conducting a technical audit monthly to promptly fix any errors. If you encounter issues with loading speed, ideally, it's best to order a comprehensive site speed audit. This audit will identify errors and vulnerabilities that hinder the site's stable operation and impede its development. The audit results are compiled into a detailed technical specification (TS), which is convenient to use. For instance, when we conduct a technical audit, we prepare a detailed report outlining the issues, prioritizing them, explaining their significance to the web resource, and providing advice on how to fix them. Essentially, the client receives a ready-to-use guide for further actions.

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External SEO Optimization

External SEO optimization involves actions aimed at increasing the authority and visibility of your website beyond its borders. The main goal of external SEO is to create and improve your site’s reputation on the internet, helping it achieve higher positions in search engines.

Backlinks

Obtaining high-quality external links from other authoritative websites is crucial. The more quality backlinks you have, the higher your site will rank in search engines.

For example, you can partner with popular parenting blogs and websites to publish articles or reviews with links to your store. A popular parenting blog might publish a review of your educational toys with a link to your site.

Social Media

Activity and mentions of your site on social media also impact its visibility. Likes, shares, and comments can serve as positive signals for search engines.

Maintain pages for your store on social media platforms like Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter, and regularly publish engaging content that users will want to share. For example, you can run a contest for the best photo with your toys and ask participants to share posts with your hashtag.

Reviews

Positive reviews on external platforms and product review sites also improve your site’s reputation.

Encourage customers to leave reviews by offering discounts on their next purchase in exchange for a review.

Mentions in Media and Blogs

Publications about your online store in news resources, blogs, and forums help increase brand recognition and attract more traffic.

Collaborate with editors of popular parenting magazines and online resources to publish articles about your products. For example, an article in a well-known parenting magazine discussing the benefits of your educational toys and including a link to your online store.

Content Marketing

Creating valuable articles, video reviews, and guides helps attract attention and makes your store more well-known. When you create content with the right keywords and include links to your products, it helps your site rank higher in search engines. This way, customers can easily find the products they need and are more likely to make purchases.

Articles, Guides, Selections

Regularly publishing articles on your site on topics related to children’s products and parenting is an effective content marketing tool. For example, you can write about choosing developmental toys or what games foster creative development in children.

To improve search engine visibility, include keywords in titles, subtitles, and the main text of articles. For example, if you write an article on “The Best Educational Toys for Toddlers,” make sure to include this phrase in the title and throughout the article. This will help your site appear in search results when users search for “educational toys for toddlers.”

Video Reviews

Creating video reviews of your products is a great way to attract more customers. In video reviews, you can demonstrate the benefits and features of your products, answer common questions, and provide useful tips for parents. Publish video reviews on your website, YouTube channel, and social media to reach a larger audience.

Internal Links

Internal linking helps distribute the weight of pages within your site and improves navigation. Linking related articles, product pages, and categories can help users find the information they need and encourage them to stay on your site longer.

** For example, if you write an article on "The Best Educational Toys for Toddlers," you can link to product pages within your article. This helps users easily navigate to the relevant products and increases the likelihood of purchases. Linking categories and tags also helps users find related products and articles on your site. For example, if you have a category for "educational toys," you can link it in relevant articles and product descriptions.

Successful promotion of an online store for children’s products requires a comprehensive approach. This includes creating valuable content, optimizing the site for search engines, regularly updating it, and analyzing the results.

** Regularly check your website for technical errors and correct them. Conduct usability, competitor, and commercial ranking factor analyses every six months. Work on semantics and create landing pages for low-frequency queries. However, it's best to trust a team of professionals who can responsibly manage your project, optimize and analyze the site in all aspects, and implement necessary changes. Allocate time for your business and interaction with the team.

Contact our team for professional assistance in promoting and SEO optimizing your online store for children’s products. We are ready not only to develop effective strategies but also to conduct a comprehensive analysis of your site, improve its usability, and speed. Trust the experience of our specialists in SEO, development, design, and analytics to ensure successful growth of your business.

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The post How to Boost Sales in Your Online Children’s Store: A Comprehensive SEO Guide first appeared on Cart-Power.

Boosting Sales on Multi-Vendor Marketplace: Effective Strategies for Off-Season Success

Cart-Power Team — Thu, 21 Sep 2023 11:31:18 +0000

The off-season can be a tough time for multi-vendor marketplaces. With fewer buyers and lower sales, it’s important to come up with effective strategies to boost your sales during this downtime. In this blog, I’ll share some clever strategies to help your marketplace thrive even when the season is slow. So, let’s dive in!

Understanding the Off-Season

The off-season poses challenges for business owners on multi-vendor marketplaces. Sales decline, customer interest vanishes, and competition becomes more intense. Despite these obstacles, there are effective strategies to overcome them and bolster sales during this otherwise slow period. Let’s delve into these strategies in detail.

First and foremost, businesses should focus on marketing initiatives tailored specifically for the off-season. Crafting compelling promotional campaigns, offering exclusive discounts, or running limited-time sales can help attract customers and create a sense of urgency. Additionally, leveraging social media platforms to engage with customers and generate buzz is crucial during this time. Engaging content, giveaways, and contests can all play a significant role in driving traffic and sales.

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Moreover, optimizing product listings and ensuring they are visually appealing and informative is essential. Investing time in high-quality product descriptions, professional product images, and customer reviews can instill confidence in potential buyers, ultimately boosting sales. In addition, improving search engine optimization (SEO) for product listings will increase visibility and attract organic traffic.

Customer retention should not be overlooked either. Offering incentives for repeat purchases, such as loyalty programs or special promotions for returning customers, can help maintain customer loyalty even during the off-season. Providing exceptional customer service and personalized communication can also differentiate a business from its competitors and cultivate long-term customer relationships.

Collaboration with other businesses or influencers within the same industry can be mutually beneficial. By partnering up, businesses can expand their reach, tap into new customer segments, and collaborate on cross-promotions to increase sales collectively. With joint efforts, brands can generate more buzz, gain credibility, and drive traffic to their marketplaces.

Furthermore, taking advantage of the off-season to improve operations and streamline processes is crucial. This includes optimizing inventory management systems, enhancing delivery logistics, and refining customer support mechanisms. By doing so, businesses can ensure a seamless customer experience and position themselves as reliable and efficient sellers.

Although the off-season may present challenges, business owners on multi-vendor marketplaces can employ effective strategies to boost sales during this period. Through targeted marketing campaigns, optimized product listings, customer retention efforts, collaborations, and operational improvements, businesses can navigate the lulls and achieve success even in the face of competition and decreased customer interest.

Tips and Strategies

Breaks in the action can be beneficial. You can utilize the off-season for personal growth rather than holding back. A change in mindset can transform slow periods into exciting opportunities to prepare for the future. Embracing a different perspective that acknowledges the value of quiet moments can be valuable. Here are examples to inspire you:

Offer Seasonal Discounts

During the off-season, customers may be hesitant to spend money. By offering attractive seasonal discounts, you can incentivize them to make purchases. This strategy can help you stand out from competitors and increase sales volume.

Cross-Promote Products

Collaborating with other vendors on the marketplace can be mutually beneficial. By cross-promoting each other’s products, you can reach a wider audience and potentially attract new customers. This strategy also creates a sense of community among vendors, fostering a positive and supportive environment.

Implement a Referral Program

Word-of-mouth referrals can be potent for growing your customer base. By implementing a referral program, you encourage existing customers to refer new customers by offering them discounts, rewards, or other incentives. This strategy can amplify the reach of your marketing efforts and generate new sales leads.

Improve Product Descriptions

Product descriptions play a crucial role in enticing customers to make a purchase. Enhance your product descriptions by including high-quality images, detailed specifications, and customer reviews. Providing comprehensive and accurate information helps build trust with potential customers and increases the likelihood of a successful sale.

Optimize Search Results

When customers search for products on the marketplace, it’s essential to ensure your offerings appear in relevant search results. Use relevant keywords in your product titles and descriptions to improve your visibility. This optimization increases the chances of potential customers discovering your products and boosts the possibility of sales.

Run Email and Social Media Campaigns

Staying connected with your customer base is crucial, particularly during the off-season. Utilize targeted email and social media campaigns to share updates, promotions, and new products. By engaging with your customers digitally, you can remind them of your presence, provide value, and encourage them to make purchases.

Provide Excellent Customer Service

Exceptional customer service is a cornerstone of any successful business. During the off-season, go the extra mile to provide outstanding service. Address customer issues promptly, offer easy return and refund policies, and ensure a seamless shopping experience. Satisfied customers are more likely to become repeat customers and recommend your marketplace to others.

Offer Free Shipping or Discounted Rates

Shipping costs can be a deterrent for customers, especially during the off-season when budgetary concerns may be more prominent. By offering your customers the convenience of delivering their preferred items to their doorsteps without any additional cost, you can attract more attention to your store during the off-season.

Collaborate with Influencers

Partner with social media influencers or bloggers who have a significant following in your niche to showcase your products and attract more customers. Collaborate with other brands, create helpful content will attract and engage people on your website.

Encouraging User Reviews and Testimonials

Reviews and testimonials are the lifeblood of a multi-vendor marketplace. They not only provide valuable insights for potential buyers but also generate a sense of community and trust. Incentivize those reviews, showcase the positive ones, and address the negative ones with care. Your customers will thank you, and your sales will soar.

Analyzing Data and Making Data-Driven Decisions

In the ever-evolving world of e-commerce, staying ahead of the curve is not just important, it’s essential. And how can you possibly do that without diving into the world of data analysis? You can’t just rely on guesswork and wishful thinking. You need cold, hard numbers to guide your decisions.
Monitoring sales and customer behavior is your first step towards success. Keep a close eye on your sales figures. Are there any dips or spikes? Is there a specific product that is gaining popularity? Understanding these patterns will enable you to tailor your strategies accordingly. Maybe it’s time to revise your product offerings or invest more in advertising those popular items.

Final Words

Implementing above-mentioned strategies will undoubtedly increase your chances of succeeding during the off-season and beyond. However, if you’re looking to take things to the next level and customize your marketplace for even better results, don’t hesitate to reach out to our team. We have the expertise to tailor a solution that precisely fits your business needs.

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The post Boosting Sales on Multi-Vendor Marketplace: Effective Strategies for Off-Season Success first appeared on Cart-Power.

Checking Site Performance. What Is A Technical Audit For?

Cart-Power Team — Fri, 19 May 2023 10:47:29 +0000

A technical audit is the process of analyzing and evaluating various technical factors that may affect the functionality and performance of a website. These factors may include site loading speed, content optimization, HTML tags, links, and other technical characteristics that affect user experience or search engine rankings.

A thorough technical audit helps identify problems with a website that reduce its effectiveness. It also gives recommendations and insights on how to improve it. Typically, an audit includes a page-by-page site analysis that checks key performance indicators such as page load time, response codes, and other technical elements on each page of the resource. Based on the results of the audit, significant improvements can be made to increase its visibility in search engines, improve its position in SERPs, and improve the user experience.

Modifications after a technical audit improve the visibility of the site in search engines, increase user friendliness. A technical audit is an important part of a long-term website performance strategy, so it’s worth doing it regularly and not putting it off.

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When Do You Need Performance Audit?

During a technical audit, various aspects of the overall condition of the site are carefully checked. The audit includes checking for broken links, identifying duplicate content, analyzing site architecture and page speed, reviewing meta descriptions, and ensuring that the site follows to SEO best practices.

Is the site loading slowly? The problem may lie in a large number of heavy files, images, or lack of caching.

Is your site not ranking in search results? There may be problems with page indexing, page metadata.

In addition to the fact that the audit must be carried out regularly, consider situations when it is definitely necessary.

5 Situations After Which a Technical Audit is Required

1. The site has just been developed and launched.

Ypu may have a question: why does a site need an audit if it has just been launched? Technical audits are critical to the long-term success of a website. According to the results, it will show errors, the correction of which will allow you to index the site faster and simplify the future SEO optimization process. A technical audit early in the life of a site will help identify any potential issues before they become serious.

2. The site moves to another CMS, platform.

In order for the site not to lose positions in the search, it is necessary to audit for the presence of problems that should not be transferred to a new site. It will help you find out if page redirects are configured correctly, if directives for indexing pages are written, if sitemap.xml is generated correctly, if there are broken links, if meta tags are transferred, if canonical pages are configured to eliminate duplicates. Site migration is a global process in which technical audit is only one stage. For more information on what to do in terms of SEO during the transfer, read the article “How to Migrate a Site to CS-Cart And Save Positions in Search“

3. Expansion and scaling of the site.

The more pages that are added to the site, the greater the chance of errors. And if they are added in bulk, as in the case of expanding the site to several domain zones, then errors can grow with the same progression as the number of pages. An abundance of technical errors can affect search engine visibility and traffic. Conducting a technical audit before scaling a website across multiple domains will help ensure that each domain is stable, secure, and consistent.

4. Planned increase in the load on the site.

A sharp increase in traffic to the site may be due to seasons, sales, or other reasons. A technical audit involves reviewing a site’s back-end infrastructure, including its servers, network components, and codebase, to make sure they can handle the expected spike in traffic. We also analyze the front-end of the site to identify issues related to usability, accessibility or performance that may affect the user experience.

5. A complete redesign of the site.

Global changes in the site interface may affect the availability of pages and their performance on different devices. The abundance of heavy images, new elements, unoptimized code on the page can slow down page loading or not be displayed at all on mobile devices.

What is Included in a Technical Performance Review?

The verification of all components of a technical audit can be divided into groups. The verification includes an audit of the following items:

1. Load speed audit

This checks the current performance of the site and the components that affect it. This includes the current page loading speed, server-side and host-side checks, server-side and client-side code checks.

2. Site structure analysis

Here, the correctness of the settings of the robots.txt and the sitemap.xml, the security of the resource, the URL of the pages, the presence of mixed content, duplicate pages, the availability of internal links and link nesting are checked.

3. Assessment of external technical components

Checking the indexing of pages in Google and other search engines, setting up outgoing links and the presence of broken links.

4. Internal technical components

The presence of micromarking and assessment of its filling, the presence of redirects and the correctness of their settings, the presence and absence of meta tags on pages, the presence of duplicate pages, the evaluation of canonical pages are checked.

Checklist for Technical SEO Audit

Below we have prepared a brief checklist for the technical SEO audit of the site. This is a minimum of work that will allow you to successfully launch the site, as well as check the basic SEO optimization of already working resources.

1. Robots.txt

Search engines have a negative attitude towards sites containing a large number of “technical” pages. Such pages include: feedback forms, user’s personal account, pages for official use, user’s personal data, pages with search results, sorting pages, etc. Such pages must be closed from indexing so that the site does not fall under sanctions and filters. For this, the Disallow directive is used. This directive is written in the robots.txt file with a list of all pages that need to be closed.

2. Sitemap.xml

A sitemap is a file with links to the pages of a site that tells search engines about the actual structure of the site. Here you can specify the most important sections of the site and additional information about them (for example, versions in other languages or when the page was last updated). This allows search engines to more accurately index content on your site.

3. Using metatags and titles

Title is one of the main elements of internal optimization. It displays the main page title. Avoid keyword spamming. Use only the most basic keyword phrases that will capture the essence of the page. The more interesting and meaningful the title of the page, the more clicks on it. The Description metatag is designed to display a brief description of the page content. If you do not fill in this tag, the search engine will take a section from its text to describe the content of the page, which may be undesirable. H1 headings should be unique for each page.

4. URL optimization

Duplicates are pages on the same domain with identical or very similar content. Most often they appear due to the peculiarities of the CMS, errors in the robots.txt directives, or in the wrong setting of 301 redirects.

The lower the page nesting level, the more:

The landing page will be indexed faster.
The page will get more weight.
Less chance that the page will fall out of the index.
The visitor will reach the goal faster.

5. Image optimization

The lighter the picture, the faster it will load, the lower the bounce rate on the site. In addition, the small size of the images saves hosting space. The Alt attribute adds a text description to the picture. Title describes the image when hovering over it. They should be different to avoid duplication, describe the image and not contain common words.

6. Micromarking

The micromarking briefly conveys the content of the desired page. Most often they are used to unambiguously distinguish certain types of content from the crowd. Search robots better understand the content of the page. Also, the use of micromarking helps to increase transitions to the site.

7. Site usability

To collect traffic from all possible sources, you need to configure it to display correctly on various devices and in various browsers.
If the site does not display correctly in some browser or on some device, you lose visitors. Search robots prefer sites with correct (valid) HTML code. Search engines are guided by the W3C (World Wide Web Consortium) standard. You can check your site for validity using online tools and services. They will find errors in the HTML code and display them on the screen with the necessary recommendations.

How to Check the Site On Your Own

You can find both paid tools for complex SEO audit and free services for dedicated tasks.
Semrush, SE Ranking, Rush Analytics are popular among paid services. Benefits of paid services in a variety of tools. In one service, you can find insights for a marketing strategy in terms of SEO promotion. On the other hand, a set of tools does not mean that all of them will be useful to you or that the most necessary one will be absent among them.

We have made a selection of free services to check the technical components of the site:

PageSpeed Insights – allows you to find out how quickly the pages of the site load, gives an estimate of the speed of loading pages on PC and mobile devices. As well as recommendations for improvement.

W3C validator – checks the website layout for validity. The service will find all the errors in the HTML code and display them on the screen with the necessary recommendations.

A tool from Yandex – Analysis of the XML sitemap checks the correctness of the compilation of the Sitemap file, finds errors.

Mobile Friendly Test – allows you to find out how the pages of the site are optimized for mobile devices. It does not analyze the entire site, but individual pages.

Browserling – checks the site for cross-browser compatibility. To do this, you need to select the appropriate operating system and the desired browser.

Schema.org Markup Validator – does a general check of all types of schema.org markup without regard to Google rules. And to see what rich results might be for your structured data pages, you can use the Rich Results Tester.

What to Do With the Results

Diagnostics of the technical part of the site, error detection is the first step to the effective functioning of the site. The task of the audit is only to identify errors that, in order of priority, need to be corrected. This will serve as a good foundation for the site for further search promotion.

One of the most frequently asked questions is: Is fixing technical errors enough to improve search rankings? Search promotion involves not only technical factors. Search engines evaluate hundreds of factors to generate search results. It is not known how much weight each factor has in order to say for sure: “correcting a technical error will raise the site 2 positions up”. In addition, search engine algorithms are constantly changing and updating to ensure that users actually get the right content for their search results.

Just improving the download speed and getting to the top of the search results will not work. This requires a set of measures for search promotion. SEO audits are like a check of the health of your site, which must be carried out regularly, from launch to development.

In Cart-Power, following the results of the Technical Audit service, you will receive a detailed report with a description of the problems, their prioritization, an explanation of the significance for the site, as well as ready-made tips for correcting. You can fix the errors yourself or entrust it to us.

Useful Tools If Your Site is Made on CS-Cart

HTTPS Switcher. This add-on allows you to automatically transfer all pages of your site to the “Safe” status and make your site reliable for your customers.

SEO-names Editor. For easy management of SEO names of any objects: products, categories, characteristics, tags, pages, blog articles, etc. Sometimes when objects (products, pages, etc.) are deleted, records about this object remain in the seo_names table, thereby blocking the use of this SEO name for other objects. This add-on will help you easily find, change or delete unwanted entries.

Lazy Load for Images and Blocks. Loads images not immediately when the page is opened, but as it scrolls. This helps improve performance and conserve device resources. According to our data, the loading speed of pages with more than 50 products doubles.

WebP Images. The add-on automatically converts images to modern WebP format without quality loss. As a result, images weigh on average a quarter less than their PNG and JPG sources. As a result, page loading times are reduced.

JSON-LD Markup. The JSON-LD Markup add-on automatically marks up data on site pages to generate structured data for search engines.

SEO For Images. It adds alt and title texts to all images. You can also change the names of image files. It is enough for the administrator to set up a couple of templates, and the texts for them will be generated.

SEO For Filters. The add-on creates SEO-optimized landing pages for search queries like “Category + filter combination”. Not all filter pages need to be turned into landing pages, but they can be optimized by creating SEO names for them. The module allows you to set SEO names for feature variants used in the filter.

SEO Optimization. This is a package of solutions for SEO promotion of your store: flexible management of the indexing of site pages will allow you to exclude pages that should not be in the index, minification of the page’s HTML code, export / import of 301 redirects, working out extra slashes in the URL, managing the canonicity of various pages store and the Last-Modified HTTP header, and even an SEO name editor to edit the SEO name table right from the admin panel.

Extended Sitemap XML. It allows you to generate an advanced XML sitemap that meets all the requirements of search engines. Exclude missing products, products without prices, categories and brands without products from the sitemap. Add additional custom links and a separate XML image map.

All-in-One SEO Pack. It already includes 9 most needed modules. As a result, you get the maximum effect from their joint use.

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What Is Pagination In An Online Store And How To Optimize It

Cart-Power Team — Mon, 30 Jan 2023 07:48:47 +0000

There are many sections and a wide range of products on marketplaces and online stores. To structure this information, there is pagination, the navigation element of the site. It is found in directories, blogs and divides, organizes information into pages. We will tell you more about pagination pages, share recommendations on what to do with them and how to optimize them.

What is pagination

When you enter a marketplace or an online store, you are offered a huge number of products. It is sometimes impossible to fit all products even in one category on one page. In this regard, the second, third, … n pages appear.

Dividing a large amount of data into pages is pagination. The term pagination comes from two words “page” and “navigation” .
Thanks to it, pages load faster, and it becomes easier to work with information. For example, if there are a lot of products on the page, then it turns out to be heavy and takes a very long time to load. This has a negative impact on search engine rankings. And buyers will simply leave without waiting for the page to load. Too heavy pages may not be indexed at all and therefore will not appear in search results.

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Pagination can be of various types:

Numeric pagination. The most common, online stores and marketplaces in most cases use it.

Through the “Show more” button. In this format, there is no way to go through several sections, the products will be loaded sequentially by clicking on the button.

Endless tape. Products will automatically load in real time when the user reaches the end of the page. It is believed that infinite scrolling allows you to keep the attention of visitors longer.

Often you can find combined approaches to pagination. For example, a numbered list and an endless tape. In this case, the visitor can choose how it is more convenient for him to view the goods.

Why pagination needs to be optimized

Optimized pagination affects the ranking factors of a site in search engines and can increase positions in search results. In order for a product from the 10th page to get into the search results, it is important that search robots do not perceive all ten pages of one product section as the same.

What can happen if pagination pages are not optimized or optimized incorrectly?

Pages will not appear in search results. Reason: appearance of duplicate pages. If the content on the pages starts to match (including meta tags, headings), then search engines will perceive such pages as duplicates and simply throw them out of indexing.
Users will not be taken to the main page, but to a random one from the list. Reason: misconfigured relevant page or rel canonical. Users will not get to the main page from the search, but to the 4th or any other.
You publish new pages, but they all do not appear in the search. Reason: The crawl budget has been used up. A search engine can crawl a certain number of pages at a time. And in order to bypass all the pages of the site, she needs more time, as a result, the necessary pages will be slower to get into the search results.
Pages do not appear or are poorly indexed. Reason: all pagination pages are closed from indexing in robots.txt. Robots do not visit these pages and do not display them in search results.

To avoid all these problems, it is important to optimize each pagination page. We share our recommendations below.

How to optimize pagination pages for stores

1. Each page must be indexed.

They cannot be closed from indexing in robots.txt. If it will be closed, the robot will not index products from these pages. Consequently, the site owner loses product traffic when the buyer is looking for a specific product model.

2. Set up a relevant page.

So that a relevant page is displayed in search engines, i.e. main for a section or directory, you need to set up a tag with the rel=”canonical” attribute.
There are differences here, depending on the search engine.

Google requires you to specify the current page in canonical. In the Cart-Power blog example, the Canonical tag should contain the page https://cart-power.ru/blog/page/4/

Yandex – the 1st page of the section should be indicated in the Canonical tag of all pagination pages, as it is implemented in the Cart-Power.ru blog

3. Individual meta tags and titles for each pagination page.

Meta tags and H1 headers should not be duplicated throughout the site. Pagination pages are no exception.
To avoid duplication, in the formulas for generating Title, Description and H1, on pagination pages, add the number of the current page to the very end.

For example:
Buy Jackets for Kids: at {Store Name} — Page 2
Buy Jackets for Kids at {Store Name} with free worldwide shipping. Call {phone number} – Page 2

In the case when the current h1 is used in the generation of the title and description, then the page number does not need to be additionally put down, because page number will be taken from h1.

For example:
Section “Jackets for children”. The heading h1 of the first page of the section is “Jackets for children”. Next, we add a page, we get: “Jackets for children – Page 2”.
Thus, substituting the title h1 in the title, we get:
Jackets for children – Page 2: in the store {Shop name}

How else to optimize the same type of pages

There can be a lot of pagination pages on marketplaces, they all look the same. There can be many similar pages of the same type on the site. Optimizing them requires a lot of effort and monotonous work. Below are life hacks on how to optimize such pages so as not to waste a lot of time:

1. Individual meta tags and titles for the product pages.

Each product page must have unique meta tags: title, description, h1 to avoid duplication. Even if you have two similar products, with a slight difference, such as color or equipment. These differences should be specified in the meta tags.

Example:
Iphone 14 512GB black
Iphone 14 512GB white

More details about meta tags and how to make attractive product pages for search engines are described in the article “Perfect Product Page: SEO”

2. Micro-markup for product pages.

In the search results, the page is displayed as a snippet, a small announcement of what is on the page. The attractiveness of the snippet directly affects page traffic.

The announcement may include:

Image;
Rating;
Price, etc.

Snippets are generated by the search robot based on what is posted on the page. In order for robots to take the necessary information for product cards, use the Product markup of the Schema.org standard. It will help you create compelling snippets.

For CS-Cart, Shema.org markup is implemented for product cards by default.

3. Universal formulas for basic optimization.

The formulas for generating titles and meta tags for sites are all unique and are formed taking into account some features of the store. But you can create universal formulas that are suitable for basic website optimization before starting SEO work.

For example:
Listing of goods
Title: {H1} buy in an online store at a price of {min. price in category} with delivery | {Store name}
Description: {category name} buy from {store name} online store at a bargain price from {minimum price in category}. Large selection of goods. Delivery nationwide. {phone number}

Product page
Title: {Product name} buy at the price {product price} {currency} in the online store with delivery | {Store name}
Description: {Product name} buy at the price {product price} {currency} Delivery throughout the United States. Favorable conditions. {phone number}

4. Breadcrumbs

All pages on the site, except for the main page, must contain breadcrumbs. The last paragraph of the breadcrumbs should repeat the h1 of the current page and be non-clickable.

Breadcrumbs must contain the full path from the main page to the current page. They also need to be structured with Shema.org markup.

Conclusions

Pagination is a site navigation element for structuring and organizing products by pages. It makes pages load faster.
Pagination pages are pages of the same type that must be open for indexing and be with unique meta tags. So products from all pages will fall into the search results.
Optimizing such pages is a monotonous but rewarding task. To optimize pages of the same type, use formulas and templates to reduce labor costs.

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The post What Is Pagination In An Online Store And How To Optimize It first appeared on Cart-Power.

How And Why To Install GA4 On Your Online Store

Cart-Power Team — Sat, 06 Aug 2022 11:39:00 +0000

Your online store is a platform where potential buyers come. How to find out whether it is convenient for visitors to use your site, whether they can easily find the products they need, how many of them reach the checkout? After all, all these actions directly affect your income.

To answer these questions, you need to collect and analyze traffic data. Having information about the behavior of the buyer, where visitors come from, what they do on the site, you can find out how they react to new products or promotions in your store. You can check if your ad is working and which audience is ready to make a purchase in the next 7 days.

Having the right data analysis tools ensures that you get the expected results from your investments.

Everyone who uses Google Analytics knows that as of July 1, 2023, Universal Analytics will stop working. Instead, you will have to get acquainted with the new version – Google Analytics 4. In the article we will tell you how to upgrade to the new version and what is useful in it.

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What are the benefits of using GA4

Google Analytics 4 is a completely new version of GA and is based on technologies that Google has been developing over the past few years. The main difference is that in the new version, all analytics is built around user actions, that is, events. In previous versions, page views, that is, sessions, were analyzed. The new approach allows you to better understand and measure customer behavior.

For example, if you have a running app running in the background on your phone. You want to unlock your screen and test your speed. Will it count as a pageview every time you unlock the screen? To correctly describe the user interaction with the application, you can name each event “page view” and “screen view”.

As a result, it is still possible to analyze page views, but this is not the foundation for building all your analytics. Due to this difference, the activity on your site will be analyzed more accurately.

What other advantages are there in the new version of GA4:

Cross-platform tracking. The new version allows you to track and analyze data from both Android / iOS mobile devices and the desktop version at the same time.
Identification of users from different platforms. Previously, when accessing from a different browser, the user was considered new. The new system has 3-level identification, which will allow you to recognize the same user on different devices.
Deep statistics. You can view data on scroll depth, clicks on outgoing links, interaction with site search.
Purchase forecast analysis. By analyzing customer purchase data, the system predicts the likelihood of a purchase and the likelihood of bounces over the next week.
Research. Here you can create any reports by adding the necessary metrics. And the construction of these reports has become easier and more intuitive, thanks to ready-made templates.
Integration with BigQuery. Integration has become free, analytics data is stored for only 14 months. Further, it is better to upload them to the cloud database – BigQuery.

How to connect GA4?

So, to use the GA4 tools, there are two ways:

Set up a new account in GA4.

We go or create a mailbox on Google here.
Create an account and resource in GA. The system immediately offers GA4.
Next, fill in the information about the company and set up the data collection flow: web, Android, iOS.
For a web stream, the system will give us a piece of code with a tag that needs to be inserted into the site.
For streams from Android, iOS, please contact Cart-Power support. They will help you with the mobile application of your site.

2. Add GA4 to a site that already has Analytics.

To migrate from Universal Analytics, use the Setup Assistant on the Admin tab. In this case, the collected data will be lost and the analytics will be collected from scratch.
To use both Universal Analytics and GA4, create another resource. The data will also be analyzed from scratch, but stored in Universal Analytics.

Important settings and work with the GA4 interface

It is very important to set up the correct data collection before working in GA4 so that some reports do not become useless. All basic and important settings before work are done in the tab Administrator.

In the Data storage tab, by default, the data storage period is 2 months, do not forget to rearrange it to 14, or better, link the data to cloud storage (BigQuery).
In order for Analytics to receive all the necessary information, including from different devices, check whether Data collection for Google signals is enabled in Settings – Data collection.
In advanced settings for ad personalization, check which countries you need to enable to work with ads.
Be sure to click on the “I agree” button in Agree to the terms of collecting user data. You will warn the audience that visits your site that you are collecting and processing personal data. The appropriate warning should be on your site, Google can check it.
Check that you have Enhanced Statistics enabled in Data Streams in the selected stream. Here, as a bonus, information is collected on page scrolling, site search, outgoing clicks, video interactions, file downloads.
In order for the statistics to be more accurate, you should check whether internal traffic is disabled. This is especially true if your store still has a small number of visits per month. You can check this in the Data Filter: Internal traffic Excluded. In addition, in the advanced settings of the tag in Dataflow, select “Define internal tag” and create a rule in which your IP address will be defined as internal data and will be excluded from analytics.

After you have created the rule, go back to Data Filters. We create a filter, select internal traffic with the exclude operation, the parameter value is the name that we wrote in the rule. Filter state, for starters, select “Testing”, so the traffic will be marked, but not excluded. If everything works correctly, you can return here and set the status to “Active”.

What and where to look in the interface

Now let’s see what the interface is.

1.Reports

Summary of reports. All overview information is presented here in the form of dashboards: site visits, number of new users, time of interaction, where new users came from, user retention, the most effective pages, what events occurred during the selected period, etc. It’s like a desktop, each report you can open and fall into its details. In addition, there is an interesting Hint tool. They track deviations in statistics and help you come up with new reporting ideas.
Real time report. It displays information about the actions that are taking place right now. You can see where the path in the user’s conversion begins, what attracts more, what they begin to interact with.
Life cycle. It collects data on traffic sources (all information about user sessions), interactions (conversions, events), monetization (data on revenue and purchases made) and retention.
User. It collects information about demographic data (country, city, gender, age, etc.) and technical data (from which device, browser, platform, screen resolution, application version visitors enter and interact).

2. Research

Here are ready-made templates and useful reports, which we will discuss below. But other than that, you can customize and do your own research.

3. Advertising

Here you will see traffic reports from the Google Ads network. You can see how advertising works: the path through which the buyer came and made a purchase or conversion, etc.
Configuration. Events, conversions that you can customize and import are collected here. The DebugView tab shows user activity on the site over time. It will help you determine if the settings and changes you made recently are working correctly.

It should be remembered that the reporting logic differs from the previous version, because. analytics is based on user behavior, not sessions.

Useful reports and tools for online store

If you used a previous version of GA, you will notice that some reports are not in the current version. But the advantage of GA4 is that it gives you complete freedom to create your own reports in the Research tab. And to save time, there are a large number of ready-made templates.

Next, we will talk about the most useful reports for an online store.

How to find out the source of the main traffic and conversions?

Open the template gallery in the Research tab and select the Ecommerce industry.

Next, you can set the target values that you want to know for each source. For any online store, the most important metrics will be: transactions, conversions, and total revenue.

That is, thanks to this report, you can find out that, for example, more customers click on the link on Instagram and buy, but the total income it brings is less than from the Google website. Conclusion: You might want to invest in advertising on Google to attract more buyers and increase sales.

How to find the bounce rate?

To do this, go to the “Funnel Research”. But before you study the data on the sales funnel, set up its stages. That is, what actions the buyer should take in your sales funnel. It could be:

view the product page;
adding to cart;
placing an order;
purchase.

Here you can add the “Time between steps” indicator, so you can understand how much time the buyer spends at each stage. If the buyer spends a lot of time on the checkout page, then he may not understand all the fields that he must fill out.

This report will show failure data at each stage.
For example, a product page or product card has a high page exit rate. This is a reason to think about what on this page repels buyers? Possibly insufficient product description or unattractive photographs.
Here you will also see information about abandoned carts. This is a field for thought on how to re-engage these users.
Sales funnel data can be analyzed by geography, gender, age, device type. All this will give you a better understanding of whether it is convenient to make purchases in your store for different categories of people, with different devices.

How to identify potential buyers?

Google Analytics 4 introduces predictive analytics that rely on more than just past data or demographics. In this version of Google, using machine learning, it assumes what the user’s behavior will be. It is based on indicators:

Buying probability. The probability that a user active in the last 28 days will make a purchase within the next 7 days;
Loss probability. The probability that a user who has been active on the site for 7 days will not be active for the next 7;
Income forecast. Expected revenue from all user purchases over the next 28 days that have been active in the last 28 days.

Based on this data, you can understand how users will behave and build the right marketing strategy. These can be, for example, such predictive audiences:

Users with predicted high spending within 28 days – Predicted 28-day top spenders;
Users who can make a purchase within 7 days – Likely 7-day purchasers;
Users who can stop being active within 7 days – Likely 7-day churning users;
Users who can make their first purchase within 7 days are Likely first-time 7-day purchasers.

With this data in place, you can fine-tune ads with a specific offer to target visitors who are most likely not to visit your site. The same targeting of visitors who can make a first purchase will further push them to take action.
To create the predictive audience you want, go to Configuration – Audiences and create a new audience.

Of course, in order to create predictive reports, Google needs data for a certain period. It is not yet known exactly what period is required, but it is possible that data collection will take up to 6 months. You also need to link your Google Ads ad account to GA4.

Conclusion and recommendation

Thanks to machine learning, the new GA4 has become a smarter and more flexible tool for analyzing the effectiveness of sales channels. It differs significantly from the previous version in its interface and approach to data analysis and interpretation. The undoubted advantage is the accuracy in the separation of traffic channels: the application or the web version of the store.

Users of the previous version will need time to get used to the new data collection systems and reports. But you don’t have to uninstall the previous version to do this. You can analyze data in two systems at once. So you will gradually get used to the new version of GA and, perhaps, get unexpected insights to increase sales in the online store.

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The post How And Why To Install GA4 On Your Online Store first appeared on Cart-Power.