Welcome to WebmasterWorld Stefany

I want to make sure my strategy is effective without getting caught up in any unnecessary upsells.

Can I ask more simply?

Do you require someone to check your coding methodology and strategy is correct and if so that is how you intend SEOing the entire siite?

In that case is it for a WordPress site, a popular template site or a hand coded site?

In my experience each requires a different skill to achieve the required effect.

This is solely for clarification purposes not an application!

it's just a simple Shopify store using the Dawn 13.0 theme. It's a personal project I decided to tackle myself to show my wife I could do it for her little store :) Although I'm far from being an SEO specialist, I've learned quite a bit over the past 4-5 months. Plus, having some coding and developer background from 20+ years ago definitely helps!

Ok, assuming you do already know some SEO terminology and requirements I did a simple search using DDG with "shopify seo" and was very impressed with all the results from Shopify itself plus several other well-known sites with recommendations, checklists and guides.

Hopefully someone else may be able to assist more than this, good luck.

I’ve been diligently following SEO best practices, yet I’ve noticed a decline in traffic recently. Initially, I didn’t have substantial traffic, but the decrease became noticeable after I made several changes over the past 3-5 weeks. Now, I’m trying to determine whether the drop is due to my modifications, a shift in Google’s algorithms, or perhaps factors I haven’t yet considered that might be affecting my visibility

If you read through the posts here:

[webmasterworld.com...]

You will very quickly learn that almost everyone is reporting reduced traffic levels varying from 10% up to 50% across all types of sites, ecom, blogs, info, generic, many small news sites have been decimated. It would seem that G's recent HCU (helpful content update) supposedly has affected many sites globally meanwhile major branded sites seem to have been mostly unaffected.

On your wife's site are you using your manufacturers descriptions and descriptive / promotional text / images? If so many of these type of sites have been badly affecte and I am not solely referring to mom and pop sites!

No, it’s one of a kind vintage designer items with her own pictures and custom descriptions for each item





[edited by: not2easy at 3:07 pm (utc) on Apr 23, 2024]

[edited by: StefanyB at 3:18 pm (utc) on Apr 23, 2024]

Hi StefanyB and welcome to WebmasterWorld [webmasterworld.com] I apologize for the edit but we don't discuss specific products. For your benefit, that welcome link above offers tips on using the forums' features and settings. ;)

No, it’s one of a kind vintage designer items with her own pictures and custom descriptions for each item

Ah, now is this a Catch 22 situation?

Whilst unique images and descriptions are very good are they what people use and searching for?

Is there already a market demand for these products locally, nationally and internationally?

Is it a unique new market? I know nothing about fashion stuff but have witnessed quite a few people turn small fortunes into even smaller ones, likewise with restaurants.

I would have thought that all magazines / fashion sites are desperate for this kind of product to feature? Or am I barking-up the wrong tree altogether?

its not unique market for sure and defiantly a lot of competition from many smaller and much bigger x10000 online stores :)

Oh right therefore there is already plenty of competition / alternative suppliers? Is this for the USA?

How does the site perform at the moment on a local / county / state / national search?

Yes, my store primarily serves the USA, but a few months ago, I enabled an international shipping module, which created triple the URLs within my domain. I'm concerned this might affect the site due to crawl budget limitations, and perhaps Google perceives it as spamming because of the sudden influx of new URLs. Although the website is just five months old, I've observed some irregular spikes in traffic—increasing by five to ten times on certain days a couple of months back, before stabilizing and now gradually decreasing below the norm. Just yesterday, I checked my Google Search Console and it indicated that "24% of my traffic from Google resulted from content that garnered initial clicks. This highlights that websites publishing consistent, high-quality content tend to see growth in their traffic

I saw mention of Bing's site scan to get an appraisal of SEO so I tried it. But while it seems useful for finding pages with missing H1 tags and images that are missing ALT tags, it is far from perfect.

For example if a web page has a NOFOLLOW tag then why should not having a Meta Description tag be an issue worth reporting as an ERROR and not just a Warning?

One site I scanned was set to a depth of 400 pages. From that I received 115 warnings about the Title being too long (longer than 70 characters). But when I checked that list I found that only half needed to be corrected... a lot of duplication. Also, it would be nice if they provided an organised list. Alphabetical order would be nice.

But all-in-all, Bing site scan is still a good way to find a needle in a haystack.

You will very quickly learn that almost everyone is reporting reduced traffic levels varying from 10% up to 50% across all types of sites, ecom, blogs, info, generic, many small news sites have been decimated

My sites that have been consistently creating user generated content for over 20 years are doing MUCH better now. Sometimes you don't necessarily need to hire an "SEO" person. You just need to build a site with lots of good content, and regularly update. Everybody wants to automate everything, and many are automating their way into penalties.

Everybody wants to automate everything, and many are automating their way into penalties.

Absolutely and in my widget industry in the USA I see one specific product line that the largest importer ranks #1, at #2 is an exact copy including the images from Home Depot and then an entrie slew of other US wholesalers and retailers ALL doing the same. No one else gets a look in yet somehow G cannot identify all these clones.

In my niche, link directories make up half of the top 10. I thought link directories didn't matter anymore, but seems they do for some.

Going back to the original post, I hired a poor indian guy 19 years ago, and taught him how to get links, and he made a a huge company with multiple buildings, hundreds of employees, etc. They have 19 years of experience, and they know what they are doing. But so many are just looking for an opportunity, and they sell backlinks, or have some kind of really good sounding offer that makes them seem knowledgeable. I think referrals are a good way to go. Ask people who helped them.