• Posted by Melanie
• 21 June 2011
• Giggles, Small Business

This is apparently not new at all... But recently received an email from Google telling me to upgrade an old clients WordPress installation. This email, apparently intended to be a friendly reminder to help webmasters get off of their butts and upgrade their software makes me a bit curious. Does Google monitor software versions it can discover for the sake of additional malware probabilities requiring a manual review or more close watch? Search quality with regard to rank, maintenance and general is anybody home in there questions?

Seems to me that Google is not likely to be just sending a friendly reminder here... Most likely there is a master purpose (certainly for the greater good of mankind) and the reminder is a bonus service. So this benevolent service is in fact helpful to most, but clearly it means Google's watching.

For the record, this is an old, stubborn client that wouldn't upgrade their website unless sales completely stopped.... and then they might even use PPC to get by.

See the friendly email from Google Search Quality Team below... and yes, upon full email trace it is in fact from Google.

Website removed to protect the stubborn! Click to enlarge

• Posted by Melanie
• 16 April 2011
• Ecommerce Marketing, Ecommerce SEO, Small Business

Get one!

Looking  at the changes and trend of Google and the other search engines, I thought it might be a good time to plot a new plan of attack. Sure, many things remain as they were... But there are also many new things we are looking at more deeply, as well as things we no longer concern ourselves with.

In my mind's eye you need to have a plan to accomplish anything well. So I always develop a plan of attack for our shops, every year.  This plan of attack is intended to not only keep me on track and focused... But it helps me muster the desire and dedication needed to be more successful every year.

In this plan, I generally try to prioritize the tasks as well as keeping them simple and targeted. Below is the list we are using in house for 2011 for our own shops. Your own list is likely going to be a bit different, but this may help you develop a customized plan of attack for your store more easily.

1. Speed. We are spending some resources, time and training  to improve the speed at which our shop's pages are being delivered to shoppers and spiders alike.
2. Uniqueness. We have always endeavored to create high quality content on our websites, but this year we are putting a great deal of time in to creating not only high quality content... But high quality 100% unique content.
3. Regularity. All of our shops have adequate opportunity for related content, we are making a huge effort to post fresh, top quality relevant content regularly. Such as once a month or once a week, depending on the size of the site.
4. Usability. We are split testing several different product page layouts, navigation and checkout options to find the best system to improve click through, trust and of course the shop's ability to convert.... by lowering abandonment.
5. Link bait. This is a term you hardly ever hear in ecommerce, but since Google has gone commando on low quality and reciprocal links we will shoot to create content so excellent on our store's content pages that people will naturally share and link to it.
6. Optimizing for feeds. We are working hard to include proper information, killer images and high converting information in our product pages so that our product feeds are bringing in the highest quality clicks possible.
7. Low hanging fruit. We are looking to our deep analytics reports to find high converting, but low traffic searches... We then properly optimize the product for these smaller phrases to reap the better conversions.
8. Content containers. We are working extremely hard to correctly segment our page's content in to proper containers for better snippets, readability and  to answer Google's new patent for analyzing page content.

Hope you find a helpful start to your own 2011 plan of attack!