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Google's Rankbrain and the current state of SEO


discxpress

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I was reading an article about Google's ranking factor called Rankbrain. From what I gathered, it uses user intent and artificial intelligence to rank pages. The article demonstrates how simply changing a search can really shift the results. It is suggested that Rankbrain is one of the top 3 ranking factors along with links and content. 

@Jack_mcs your HT SEO module has help us a lot. How can we use your module to achieve better rankings based on Rankbrain? 

Read more here https://neilpatel.com/blog/how-rankbrain-works/?utm_campaign=subscribers-18&utm_medium=subscribers_push_notification&utm_source=subscribers

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I suggest not reading any of those SEO "experts" and just focus on giving your customers a great experience. Repeat business is what you want, not a continual frenetic hunt for new clients through Google.

osCommerce user since 2003! :thumbsup:

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@discxpress

 

8 hours ago, discxpress said:

If you're selling a product, what question are you answering?

This addon for example : Product Questions for oscommerce 2.3 By Surya Praveen

It's developed as an advanced option for Ask a Product Question contribution.
 Customers can ask a question about any product.
Site administrator can answer the question and the published questions along with the answers are displaying in the product info page for that particular product.
When a customer visits any products page he can see the prevoiusly asked questions and the answers for that product.

 

askaquestion.jpg

with OsC 2.2 since 2006 ...

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4 hours ago, frankl said:

I suggest not reading any of those SEO "experts" and just focus on giving your customers a great experience. Repeat business is what you want, not a continual frenetic hunt for new clients through Google.

@discxpress absolutely this, what @frankl says.  

I think I mentioned if before, some years back, but could not find the thread;  

I had a site producing $3/400 a day.  The site dropped out of Google on an update, after which it was producing nothing.

At that point I realised how foolish it is to waste time on getting a site to #1 in google (and others!) when they can knock you out in one punch.

Instead I focused on other things, and have never since even thought about SEO.  

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It's certainly not harmful to be highly ranked in Google and other search engines, and that's useful for helping to pull in fresh eyeballs. However, it's not the be-all and end-all of your site. Once visitors are there, you want something that will engage them, keep them around, buy something (if you're selling), and come back again and again. You don't want to fall into the trap of "teaching to the test", where kids graduate from High School able to breeze through standardized exams, but have otherwise learned absolutely nothing in 13 years of "education". Concentrating too much on SEO and neglecting the rest of the user experience can do this to you. On the other hand, the most fantastic site and user experience won't help you if no one knows about you, so you have to put some effort into SEO! If you are adequately covered with Social Media marketing and other non-search engine related outreach, you can de-emphasize seach engine results (ranking) if the changes to your site they require conflict with your other goals.

P.S. pretty stellar company to be in, in your second post! :)

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21 hours ago, frankl said:

I suggest not reading any of those SEO "experts" and just focus on giving your customers a great experience. Repeat business is what you want, not a continual frenetic hunt for new clients through Google.

@frankl I agree. My focus is to get them there organically at least once. User experience doesn't get them there the first time. It keeps them around. Any suggestions?

17 hours ago, burt said:

@discxpress absolutely this, what @frankl says.  

I think I mentioned if before, some years back, but could not find the thread;  

I had a site producing $3/400 a day.  The site dropped out of Google on an update, after which it was producing nothing.

At that point I realised how foolish it is to waste time on getting a site to #1 in google (and others!) when they can knock you out in one punch.

Instead I focused on other things, and have never since even thought about SEO.  

@burt Great point. What other things you focused on to rebound from the update?

14 hours ago, MrPhil said:

It's certainly not harmful to be highly ranked in Google and other search engines, and that's useful for helping to pull in fresh eyeballs. However, it's not the be-all and end-all of your site. Once visitors are there, you want something that will engage them, keep them around, buy something (if you're selling), and come back again and again. You don't want to fall into the trap of "teaching to the test", where kids graduate from High School able to breeze through standardized exams, but have otherwise learned absolutely nothing in 13 years of "education". Concentrating too much on SEO and neglecting the rest of the user experience can do this to you. On the other hand, the most fantastic site and user experience won't help you if no one knows about you, so you have to put some effort into SEO! If you are adequately covered with Social Media marketing and other non-search engine related outreach, you can de-emphasize seach engine results (ranking) if the changes to your site they require conflict with your other goals.

P.S. pretty stellar company to be in, in your second post! :)

@MrPhil Ranking high in Google has definitely become a science. I think I do focus too much on SEO and not enough on social media marketing. People are sharing my pages but not a huge impact yet. 

I'm focusing on getting them there organically so I can hopefully sell them something. That'll relieve my PPC budget.

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4 hours ago, discxpress said:

What other things you focused on to rebound from the update?

I tend to advise to use Social Marketing as much as possible.

Also to make use or Reviews as much as possible.

In other words, have your customers do all of the work for you.

I also believe that product descriptions should be written for the customer and not for seo purposes.

Having said all of that, I have never performed an A/B test where one site has no SEO and another site has massive SEOptimisation.  I'm not even sure that's a possibility to do...

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37 minutes ago, frankl said:

@discxpress

Refer a friend, Facebook product ads, competitions, discount coupons, the possibilities are endless :smile:

I'll look into Facebook product ads and competitions sound nice. Can you refer me to a great read on contests/competitions as a starting point?

Thanks for your suggestions

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Remember that whatever you eventually end up implementing...

make sure that it is easy for the customer to do.

EG:

If asking for product reviews, don't expect them to visit each individual product page.
Instead make one page on which all the products show and allow them make multiple reviews in one place.

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1 hour ago, burt said:

Remember that whatever you eventually end up implementing...

make sure that it is easy for the customer to do.

EG:

If asking for product reviews, don't expect them to visit each individual product page.
Instead make one page on which all the products show and allow them make multiple reviews in one place.

@burt convenience is the key to user experience. How hard would it be to code a Tell a friend or refer a friend module with SMS capabilities?

Here's a brainstorm:

1. A logged in customer click on tell-a-friend/refer-a-friend button.

2. A pop up with optional email and phone fields appears. 

3. Customer enters either the friend's email or phone number (comma separated if multiple)

4. Account immediately credited with points. Customer uses points toward next order.

 

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9 hours ago, discxpress said:

SMS capabilities

If you have a way to send an SMS via the web...easy enough.  There are companies offering APIs but the last time I looked it was (I thought) super expensive.  The other stuff is relatively simple.

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21 hours ago, discxpress said:

Can you refer me to a great read on contests/competitions as a starting point?

You don't need this company to run your contest (everything they do is DIYable) but their guides are excellent

https://kickofflabs.com/blog/step-by-step-guide-on-runnning-successful-contests/

https://kickofflabs.com/blog/ultimate-guide-to-contest-autoresponders/

https://kickofflabs.com/blog/create-contests-boost-revenues-7-kickofflabs-customer-case-studies/

osCommerce user since 2003! :thumbsup:

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19 hours ago, burt said:

If you have a way to send an SMS via the web...easy enough.  There are companies offering APIs but the last time I looked it was (I thought) super expensive.  The other stuff is relatively simple.

spryng a dutch company has easy Get api costs about 0.1 euro per sms, no fixed fees.

started using it for doctor appointment reminders (from ms access VBA with outlookcalendar integration - not pretty nor high tech, but it gets the job done without hassle and superfast)

KEEP CALM AND CARRY ON

I do not use the responsive bootstrap version since i coded my responsive version earlier, but i have bought every 28d of code package to support burts effort and keep this forum alive (albeit more like on life support).

So if you are still here ? What are you waiting for ?!

 

Find the most frequent unique errors to fix:

grep "PHP" php_error_log.txt | sed "s/^.* PHP/PHP/g" |grep "line" |sort | uniq -c | sort -r > counterrors.txt

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On 11/12/2017 at 0:51 PM, bonbec said:

@discxpress

 

This addon for example : Product Questions for oscommerce 2.3 By Surya Praveen

It's developed as an advanced option for Ask a Product Question contribution.
 Customers can ask a question about any product.
Site administrator can answer the question and the published questions along with the answers are displaying in the product info page for that particular product.
When a customer visits any products page he can see the prevoiusly asked questions and the answers for that product.

 

askaquestion.jpg

Google just love this type of content.

I had it with my older site but not on edge now.

Also I have seen one of our competitors with only meta title tags and was out ranking everyone - wordpress site with shop

Also customers is not willing to write reviews and so, on the other had if they get something back they more than happy to write one.

So if example a coupon code can be made for writing a testimonial or review(review better) it will be great :cool:

 

Getting the Phoenix off the ground

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@Peper Using Mandrill, I send an email 14 days after purchase asking for a review and offer a discount coupon as a thank you. That's been very successful. I also have product questions installed and have a couple of hundred questions on a 4,000 item catalog.

osCommerce user since 2003! :thumbsup:

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@frankl I'm having trouble getting the Facebook product ads to send traffic.

I'm not quite sure I have it set up correctly.

Here's what I've done so far:

1. Business page

2. Set up ads account

3. Uploaded catalog

4. Set up campaign but not sure if I have the dynamic ads set up correctly. I'm confused as to how to set up the deep linking to send visitors directly to product page.

5. Setup budget and payment method and target audience.

I'm out of ideas unless Facebook algorithms it take awhile to start ranking products.

 

Please advise me when you have a chance.  Or if anyone can help it will be greatly appreciated. 

 

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  • 1 month later...
On 11/12/2017 at 11:06 AM, frankl said:

I suggest not reading any of those SEO "experts" and just focus on giving your customers a great experience. Repeat business is what you want, not a continual frenetic hunt for new clients through Google.

Very true, however, these days more and more customers can come to your site and buy your things because your Google score is higher than other companies selling the same thing.

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