All Script And Tols For Free: 🔍 Brand new Shopify SEO Guide

May 22, 2020

Good morning Search Marketer, yes, it's Friday!

Shopify is on a roll with more new businesses and retailers adopting the e-commerce platform during the coronavirus pandemic. Earlier this month, the company said the number of new stores created on the platform grew a whopping 62% between March 13 and April 24, compared to the prior six weeks. That's a lot of new stores that will need SEO — and you may find new competitors cropping up in the search results pages.

To help, we've published a brand new Shopify SEO Guide that covers the fundamentals and the tricks involved in getting a Shopify site fully optimized for search. We'll continue to add to this resource and will be publishing a deeper dive into technical SEO for Shopify soon. If you've got a great Shopify SEO tip to share, let us know at editors@thirddoormedia.com. Your #protip could be featured!

I'll be talking Google Shopping with Kirk Williams of ZATO and Mike Ryan of Smarter Ecommerce on Live with Search Engine Land today. From the new free Google Shopping listings to Smart Shopping Campaign tricks, we've got a whole lot to talk about. The live audience registrations filled up fast, but we'll have the full replay available early next week. Subscribe to our YouTube channel to stay in the loop.

Read on for a look at content trends (and ideas) from LinkedIn and more. To our U.S. readers, have a safe and happy Memorial Day weekend.

Take care,

Ginny Marvin,
Editor-In-Chief

Indicators

Coronavirus continues to dominate B2B content

A new guide from LinkedIn highlighting content trends on the platform during COVID-19 includes a snapshot of top trending hashtags that illustrates just how sharply coronavirus dominated content and engagement on LinkedIn as it reached pandemic status.

The comparison between February and March is striking. Taken together, #coronavirus and #covid19, completely overshadowed other popular hashtags in March. Tellingly, #hiring fell from 6th place to 9th and #recruitment didn't make the top ten list at all in March.

LinkedIn also said #remotework started trending on March 1, and "remote working" searches have tripled on LinkedIn Learning. The initial shock may be over, but the company says engagement on coronavirus-related topics continues to increase across regions and industries.

How to succeed in a "Zero-Click Google World"

In 2019, companies dependent on search traffic found out that, for 51% of all searches performed, Google fails to deliver a click to any external website. The data behind the growing number of these "Zero-Click Searches" prompted preeminent search expert Rand Fishkin to proclaim that Google is now undeniably "everyone's competitor" in search. This white paper from LongtailUX demonstrates the solution is to beat Google to the punch — creating landing pages that serve longtail search better than Google can.

Learn more »

Search Shorts

Maps filters, unlinked citations, and Google rankings

New Google Maps filters for first responder hotels and wheelchair accessibility. Google has added a filter on Maps, Travel and Search that allows first responders to find hotels offering free or discounted rooms, called "COVID-19 responder rooms." There's also a new filter now available for wheelchair accessible places. Interested users can go to Settings—>Accessibility and turn on "Accessible Places" to make accessibility information more visible in Google Maps. Google is crowdsourcing the data and offers a guide on how to determine and rate accessibility.

Unlinked citations and Google. John Mueller of Google was asked if unlinked citations can help at all with Google rankings. He said, "usually not," but added that the answer is a bit more complicated than just that. See his full response on Twitter.

Noindex with a memory. Let's say you post a noindex on your site, can that hurt you in the long run, even after you remove the noindex? Mueller said no.

JavaScript links. He also said that if you want to test whether search engines can discover your links in your JavaScript, try opening those links in a new window on your web browser.

Google webmaster podcast. Google has announced a new podcast named Search Off The Record, and it sounds like it is going to be a fun listen.

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