All Rights Reserved. © 2019 Karma Creative LLC Created for Solidus Conf 2019: Salt Lake City October 21st, 2019
101 Solidus SEO Tips:
The Ultimate Guide
Planning, Technical SEO, Original Content, and Off-Site Promotion

All Rights Reserved. © 2019 Karma Creative LLC Created for Solidus Conf 2019: Salt Lake City October 21st, 2019
Table of Contents
Planning:
Keyword Generation Tools
Voice Search
EAT
Technical SEO:
Site-wide Optimizations
Metadata
Structured Data
Optimizing for Speed
Original Content:
SEO Content Guidelines: Keyword Tips and
Quality of Content
SEO Writing Tips
Off-Site Promotion:
Link Acquisition
Ranking in Local Search
Social Media

Thank you to our conference sponsors.
Thank you to the core team for getting us here.
And most of all,
Thank you to the community who have stuck
together.
Thank You & Hot Sauce

About Me
● Love music, singing, and playing guitar
● Passionate about Solidus and giving back
● Bottle my own hot sauce (wings to try!)
● Also: snowboarding, yoga, hiking, golf,
chopping wood, and working out

About Karma Creative A new breed of digital agency
1
Karma means paying developers fairly for
their time, regardless of where they live.
2
3
It also means helping clients succeed in
their business, rather than simple making
them a website.
Living with Karma means giving back to the
community and trusting in Open-Source.
4
Karma means long term client relationships,
built on trust, mutual respect, and holistic
digital services.
Services: Web Development, PM, QA, Graphic Design, SEO, and Digital Marketing & Social Media

Planning
Keyword Generation Tools
Voice Search
EAT

Start Early On SEO
● Tip #1 SEO planning should
be done from the very
beginning of your project

Keywords are Key

Useful Keyword Generation Tools
● Tip #2 Use
AnswerThePublic.com to
generate a huge list of
awesome keywords and
topic ideas

Useful Keyword Generation Tools Cont.
● Tip #3 Buzzsumo’s
question analyzer
● Tip #4 Ahrefs
● Tip #5 LSI Graph - for
latent semantic keywords
● Tip #6 Search in forums
for non-exact match
keywords to use
● Tip #7
5MinuteSite.com -
Local Keywords
generator tool (good
for adding cities, etc)
● Tip #8 KeywordTool.io
● Tip #9 Amazon autofill

Useful Keyword Generation Tools Cont.
● Tip #11 Google's “People Also Ask”
● Tip #10 Google & Apple Autocomplete

Useful Keyword Generation Tools Cont.
● Tip #13 Google “Searches
Related To”
● Tip #12 Google Ads: Keyword Planner Tool

Voice Search: Why should you care?
● 60% of searches from
mobile are voice searches
● 52% of global internet traffic
comes from mobile devices

Voice Search: Keyword Tips
● Tip #14 Use Long-Tail Keywords (5+ words)
● Tip #15 Switch from Generic Keywords to Question
Keywords: How does... How do... What is... How to...
● Tip #16 Use question search engines like Quora, Yahoo
Answers, and AskJeeves to stem your query into additional
related questions

Voice Search:
Keyword Tips Cont.
Tip #17 Create a FAQ
page so that you can
easily target LTK in
question formats

Voice Search: Keyword Tips Cont.
● Tip #18 Use local intent
keywords including
neighborhood, city, state and
regional names.
● Tip #19 Use Google Listings to
enter in opening times, street
names, contact details, etc or
keep an up to date, easily
accessible web page with useful
info

EAT:
Expertise
Authoritativeness
Trust

EAT: Expertise
● Tip #20 Generate well-written content that uses
relevant examples, citations, and media
● Tip #21 Keep content up to date by correcting
any information or statistics that go stale
● Tip #22 Provide relevant updates or
new/additional information to the original
content.
● Tip #23 Add a Trusted Badge to the footer of your
page

EAT: Authoritativeness
● Tip #24 Get links from websites who have
gained authority in the space already -links
are recommendations
● Tip #25 Get mentioned in the news or on
credible media websites
● Tip #26 Get Wikipedia
mentions, or better yet,
your own page

EAT: Trust
● Tip #27 Add a Contact Us Page. Make
sure that your contact information
matches your whois info
● Tip #28 Have a clear refund/return policy
if accepting any transactions
● Tip #29 Have comprehensive specifications of the product if
products are sold
● Tip #30 Add Testimonials from customers

EAT: Trust Cont.
● Tip #31 Add Outbound links (ideally within
the body) to other pages and content on a
similar topic
● Tip #32 Add a Terms of Service and Privacy
Pages: These two pages help tell Google
that a site is a trustworthy member of the
internet
● Tip #33 Provide Helpful “Supplementary
Content” Examples include currency
converters, loan interest calculators and
interactive recipes

EAT: Trust Cont.
Tip #34 You should be encouraging good reviews on
bbb.org, Yelp, Amazon and Google Shopping. -The
quality raters are trying to determine what the overall
public sentiment is for your business. If you have the
odd bad review, that is not likely to hurt

Phew! Take
a break

Technical SEO:
Site-Wide Optimizations
Metadata
Structured Data
Optimizing for Speed

Site-Wide Optimizations: URL Structure
● Tip #35 Keep URL as simple and as short as possible
● Tip #36 Make sure to have your keywords in URLs across
various pages
● Tip #37 Use hyphens (-) instead of underscores
● Tip #38 Reduce or ideally eliminate parameters in URL
● Tip #39 Use SSL to provide a slight boost to SERP ratings.
○ Free certificate from Let’s Encrypt

Site-Wide Optimizations: URL Structure Cont.
● Tip #40 Check to make sure only one version of your site is
browseable since there are typically 4 possibilities of the URL
someone will request when they visit your site. Make sure the others
properly 301 redirect to the single Canonical URL:
○ http://example.com
○ http://www.example.com
○ https://example.com
○ https://www.example.com

● Tip #41 Use Ahrefs or
Screaming Frog to crawl and
audit your website: find broken
links, missing alt text &
metadata and look for poor
quality or duplicate content
Site-Wide Optimizations: Audit Your Website

● Tip #42 Use Google Search Console to check the number of indexed
pages and crawl errors; Google will actually tell you what’s wrong.
Site-Wide Optimizations: Audit Your Website

Tip #43 Make sure that your mobile site is providing the same
content as your desktop site: factors such as text, images, videos,
links, structured data, titles and descriptions all matter when
considering mobile-first indexing.
Site-Wide Optimizations: Mobile First Indexing

● Tip #44 Make sure every page on your site has a title
specified in the <title> tag. - This is the most important SEO element.
● Tip #45 Place your keyword at the beginning of your title
● Tip #46 Image file names and alt tags should ideally include your
target keywords but most importantly make sense
● Tip #47 Make sure you final result looks good -test with SERPsim or
Pixel Width Checker
Metadata: Do’s:

● Tip #48 Don’t use “Home” or “Profile” or
any other generic words
● Tip #49 Don’t spend any time on Meta
Keywords - They don’t matter at all.
Metadata: Don’ts:

● Tip #50 Ensure every page on your site has a
meta description.
● Tip #51 Don’t use the same or a very similar meta description for
all your pages; Google will penalize you for this. If you have the
same meta description set on lots of your pages, for example
product pages, Google may decide this default description is
completely irrelevant and/or entirely unhelpful, Which may
then result in Google scraping random text (such as your nav
header links) to use as your description instead.
Metadata: Description

● Tip #52 JSON-LD snippets are the new standard according to
Google; Use JSON-LD to implement structured data on your
website in order to be featured in rich snippets in google, and to get
a boost to your SERPs.
● Tip #53 Utilize Search Console’s new feature to check your product
schema data and other enhancements
● Tip #54 Use Google’s Structured Data Testing Tool to immediately
see if you have any warnings or errors
● Tip #55 Use Karma Creative’s solidus_seo gem (more on that later)
Structured Data

Optimizing for Speed
● Tip #56 Test for speed using: WebPageTest.org, Pingdom
Website Speed Test, Ahrefs, Yslow
● Tip #57 Remove and reduce redirects as much as possible

Optimizing for Speed
● Tip #58 Minify CSS, HTML and Javascript
● Tip #59 Gzip CSS, HTML, and Javascript files larger than 150 bytes
● Tip #60 Configure paperclip to optimize all your images by default
- solidus_seo does this for you

Optimizing for Speed: Cache
● Tip #61 Use consistent URLs
● Tip #62 Identify which resources can
be cached by intermediaries such as a
CDN. Use a CDN to reduce the load
on the server and ensure the shortest
distance for the data to travel from site
visitor to content provider and back

Optimizing for Speed: Cache
● Tip #63 Minimize churn by
separating out frequently
changes resources into
separate files.

Optimizing for Speed: Load Time
● Tip #64 Check for bottlenecks to
improve performance, such as:
○ n+1 queries and other database
query issues (check with the bullet
gem)
○ Slow routing
○ Lack of memory
○ Ideal performance should be a
server response of 200 ms or less

Optimizing for Speed: Load Time
● Tip #65 Reduce your DNS
lookups
● Tip #66 Define a critical-load
path in your application and
take steps to reduce the load
time of the slowest
components: remove any
blocking javascript, etc,

Original Content
SEO Content Guidelines: Keyword
Tips and Quality of Content
SEO Writing Tips

SEO Content Guidelines: Keyword Tips
● Tip #67 Avoid Keyword Cannibalization: Make sure there
are not multiple pages focusing on the same keywords
● Tip #68 Keyword Frequency: Make sure your keyword
appears within the first 100 words of your content, and
2-3 times within the first 300 words
● Tip #69 Do NOT stuff your keywords, again, that is a
tactic that will now get you penalized.

SEO Content Guidelines: Keyword Tips Cont.
● Tip #70 Add modifiers like “2019”, “best”,
or “review” to your title to help rank for
long tail keywords
● Tip #71 Predict the next searches of your
users and have content prepared to meet
their possible queries
● Tip #72 Use targeted keyword lists to
generate topic ideas, perhaps even video

SEO Content Guidelines: Keyword Tips Cont.
● Tip #73 Mind map search intent associated with your keywords
across the buying cycle - these stage-based search intents can help
you form content pillars as part of a broader content strategy. Maybe
each of these search intents is literally a separate category of articles
on your website. Stages:
○ Attraction: meeting intentions triggered by life events
○ Consideration: learning about solutions and benefits
○ Preference: why should they trust you and how are you different?
○ Conversion: why buy from you now?

SEO Content Guidelines: Quality of Content
● Tip #74 Format your text so it’s
digestible
● Tip #75 Add media like video or audio.
● Tip # 76 Use Visual Assets such as
images, diagrams, infographics, charts,
etc to make content more appealing
and keep interest of the reader
● Tip #77 Avoid Duplicate Content: Use a
tool such as copyscape to seek any out
on your site and improve or remove it.

SEO Content Guidelines: Quality of Content Cont.
● Tip #78 Post Long
Content - Think: 9000
words. Use it as a
target and see how
many you end up with.
This greatly impacts
Dwell Time. For PDPs,
shoot for 2000.

SEO Content Guidelines: Quality of Content Cont.
● Tip #79 Avoid using generic phrases for subheaders such as “more
information”, “details”, etc
● Tip #80 Consider removing pages from your site with less than 200
words and almost no organic traffic
● Tip #81 Choose “List” Posts (or “Why” Posts): A numbered list of tips,
techniques, reasons, myths, etc [list posts have 6.19 referring domain
links on average, and outperform Quiz, How to, Video, and Infographic
post types]

SEO Content Guidelines: Quality of Content Cont.
● Tip #82 Regularly update your pages
with new information. The frequency
of page updates play a role in
freshness.
● Tip #83 When updating pages,
change more than just the date or
one typo. The significance of edits
and changes serves as a freshness
factor.

○ 25% of listeners
have bought
product after
listening to a
Podcast
○ 60% increase in
mobile listening
in the last year
○ Podcasts are
now indexed
directly
Tip #84
Create a
Podcast
SEO Content
Guidelines:
Quality of
Content Cont.

SEO Content: Writing Tips
● Tip #85 Plan a piece that does everything the top 5 pieces do:
○ Meet search intentions faster and more concisely than your competitors
○ Tell readers exactly what you’ll cover
○ Write for a lower reading age than your competitors
○ Use an even clearer structure and formatting than your competitors
○ Give clear definitions of any key terms and concepts
○ Expand on the topic as you progress through the piece
○ Have some personality in your writing
○ Find and use primary sources, one example is soliciting experts in the topic -
this is truly original content
○ Quote experts and include social proof
○ Tell readers what to do next: leave them with a strong CTA at the end

SEO Content: Writing Tips Cont.
● Tip #86 When writing a new
article to target replacing an
existing piece of content, add
more on-topic congruent
copywriting: If the original content
has 10 ideas, make 100 ideas
● Tip #87 Sprinkle long-tail versions of your target
keywords throughout your content

SEO Content: Writing Tips Cont.
● Tip #88 Add transcription of any audio or video on your site.
● Tip #89 Include a Sitemap. Presence of a Sitemap helps search
engines index your pages easier and more thoroughly, improving
visibility.
● Tip #90 Include a linked table of contents. This will help Google
better understand your page’s content. It can also result in
sitelinks
● Tip #91 Add Internal Links to your page - at least 2-3, but a few
more is even better. Internal linking is important because it
affects Domain Authority, an important factor in SERP rankings.

SEO Content: Writing Tips Cont.
● Tip #92 Put quotes in rich quote boxes to make
your content more visually engaging
● Tip #93 Use an <h1> tag for the title of your page
within the body
● Tip #94 Use <h2> tags for the subheadings of your
page

Off-Site Promotion
Link Acquisition
Ranking in Local Search
Social Media

Link Acquisition: Link Building
● Tip #95 Generate links from other websites with the aim of
increasing rankings on SERPs, thus driving more organic traffic
from your target audience and helping to build brand authority.
○ Generally, a link embedded in a page’s content is more
powerful than a link in the footer or sidebar area
○ Links in the beginning of a piece of content usually carry
slightly more weight than links placed at the end of the
content
● Tip #96 Links from diverse sources are a sign of a natural link
profile.

Link Acquisition: Link Building Cont.
● Tip #97 Make sure that all your links are properly attributed.
If you are using sponsored links or link resulting from user
generated content then they should use the new link
attributes: rel=sponsored and rel=ugc
● Tip #98 Do not buy links, spam content boxes, and or
heavily stuff your keyword stuffing, these are all ineffective.
● Tip #99 Use Majestic Citation Flow to rank the quality of
your backlinks (instead of Domain Authority)

Link Acquisition: Link Building Cont.
● Tip #100 HARO. Go to www.helpareporter.com and
sign up for an account as a source. You will receive
daily emails from reporters. The best way to get your
answers successfully published is to be one of the first
to respond.

Link Acquisition: Link Building Cont.
● Tip #101 Find out who is linking to your competitors and
which pages they are linking to.
○ Use a tool like Ahrefs to find all the backlinks, filter out
spam - who are the high quality domains that are linking
to the competitors?
○ Then, look at which pages the competitors are linking to.
How do these pages compare to yours? Is there an
opportunity to improve/change your page? Are there
topics you could target in your own content?

Link Acquisition: Link Reclamation
● Tip #102 Use BuzzSumo to find places on the web where your site or
article is mentioned but no link.
○ Email the author or maintainer asking for a link
● Tip #103 Use a tool like LinkMiner to check for broken links
○ Make a connection with the owner of the page through email
outreach, and promote your content in place of the broken content
● Tip #104 Use Google’s reverse image search to look for places on the
web where your graphics are being used without attribution or a link

Ranking in Local Searches
● Tip #105 Execute an outreach campaign to try and get your site linked from
other local businesses
● Tip #106 Build citations on business directories -Make sure your information
is accurate. It needs to be EXACTLY the same everywhere it’s listed on the
web.

Ranking in Local Searches
Tip #107 Claim your
business profile on your
Google My Business and fill
in all applicable
information.

Social Media ● Tip #109 Create an
Official Linkedin
Company Page● Tip #108 Create a
Facebook, Twitter and
Instagram account to
build your brand.
Accounts with a lot of
followers/likes signals
a popular brand and
helps ranking.

Social Media
.
● Tip #110 Add prominent social
media buttons to your website
because they can increase
sharing by 700%
● Tip #111 Add CTA Buttons to
tweet or share from directly
within your content.

Social Media
Tip #112 Focus your time on Facebook and Twitter. Traffic
on these sites gets your webpage indexed quicker as
long as your posts are relevant to what is being
searched. i.e. posts about king sized mattress will help
when users search ‘king sized mattress’

Social Media: How To Build A
Following
● Tip #113 Keep all your profiles up to
date and put out consistent content to
indicate a strong online presence,
resulting in valuable mentions and
even partnership opportunities.
● Tip #114 Seek out and collaborate
with organic influencers. Organic
influencers are social media
accounts that have influence
relevant to your brand, earned
because of genuine expertise,
authority, and trustworthiness. Tell
them about your brand and
company and make a lasting
connection.

Closing Slides
Hiring an SEO
solidus_seo
Tools & Sources

Hiring an SEO
The one thing that can't be faked is
long term success.
Tip #115 Some Questions you can ask:
● Do they guarantee results?
● Are they transparent about the
strategies they will be using?
● Do they use PBNs (Private Blog
Networks)?
● Have they ever attended or
participated in any conferences?

We’re proud to release
solidus_seo
https://github.com/karmakatahdin/solidus_seo
● Default Image Optimization with paperclip, with sensible defaults
● Better Metadata defaults and to_seo interface
● Adds JSON-LD structured data for Products, Product Listing Page,
Breadcrumbs, and Store

Isn’t it great when you get FREE work from
our community instead of having to do it
all yourself?
This is the power of open-source.
Solidus is open-source.

So what does Solidus give you?
● Complete control over your store
● No licensing fee
● Strong community and a strong core team
● Support for high-volume stores with varied and
complex needs; in fact, many outlying use cases
and specific features have already been included
in our platform.

Wouldn’t it be great to leverage even more
community supported work?
How?

Use Open Collective funding to
hire a full-time open-source maintainer,
who would work with,
and at the direction of,
the core team and the Ambassadors to
implement our new project roadmap.

So what would a full-time open-source
maintainer give to you?
● Finally, set a new roadmap
for the project
● Keep the platform current, allowing us all to save
money by cutting down on development time
and costs
● Help deliver projects in a shorter period of time

Not convinced?
What ELSE would a full-time open-source
maintainer give to you?
● Make customers happier with the finished
products by providing more features and better
UX - ultimately making more money
● Help attract new users to Solidus so it will
continue to grow
● Help keep the Solidus community vibrant

Make your business more profitable
with less effort.
(How?)

COMMUNITY
1 event/quarter
https://hacktoberfest.digitalocean.com/eventkit
CODE
Open-Source
Friday
https://opensourcefriday.com/
https://opensource.guide/
MONEY
$750/month
https://opencollective.com/solidus/contribute

WE NEED 9 MORE SOLIDUS AMBASSADORS
CONTRIBUTING $750 PER MONTH
AND A BIG THANK YOU TO ALL THE REST OF THE
RECURRING MONTHLY DONORS

Ambassador Benefits:
● You actively shape the direction and strategy of Solidus.
● You'll appear in the Community section of our website
● You'll get your logo on any conference material
● You'll be recognized in our readme and mentioned
during conferences.
● You also have the option to join our partnership program
as a Gold partner.

Going Further Together
● solidus_stakeholders slack channel
● Bi-weekly organizational meetings
● Funding through recurring donations
● SolidusConf 2019 organization & speakers
● Trust and personal relationships

Thank You. Work With Us, We Love New Clients! (Also, We’re Hiring!) thomas@karmacreative.io

Tools
● BuzzSumo: https://buzzsumo.com/
● Amazon Keyword Tool:
https://www.keywordtooldominator.com/k/amazon-keyword-tool
● Ahrefs: https://ahrefs.com/
● LSIGraph: https://lsigraph.com/analysis/
● 5MinuteSite: http://5minutesite.com/
● Answer the Public: https://answerthepublic.com/
● Let’s Encrypt: https://letsencrypt.org/
● Search Console: https://www.google.com/webmasters/tools
● Screaming Frog: https://www.screamingfrog.co.uk/seo-spider/
● Copyscape: https://www.copyscape.com/
● SERPsim: https://serpsim.com/
● Norbert: https://www.voilanorbert.com/
● Link Miner: https://linkminer.com/

Tools Cont.
● KeywordTool.io: https://keywordtool.io/
● Web Page Word Counter: https://wordcounter.net/website-word-count
● Pixel Width Checker: https://searchwilderness.com/tools/pixel-length/
● WebPageTest.org: https://www.webpagetest.org
● Varvy Page Speed: https://varvy.com/pagespeed/
● YSlow: http://yslow.org/
● Pingdom Website Speed Test: https://tools.pingdom.com/
● Google PageSpeed Insights:
https://developers.google.com/speed/pagespeed/insights/
● Boomerang: https://www.boomeranggmail.com/
● Hunter: https://hunter.io/
● Webris GA SEO Dashboard:
https://webris.org/seo-dashboard-for-google-analytics-ga/

Sources
● https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/139066
● https://backlinko.com/google-ranking-factors
● http://www.5minutesite.com/local_keywords.php
● https://neilpatel.com/blog/gender-and-color
● https://www.mailjet.com/blog/news/psychology-of-colors-in-ema
il-marketing/
● https://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/11/27/how-color-affects-our
-moo_n_1114790.html
● https://www.onimodglobal.com/which-digital-marketing-strategies
-produce-the-best-roi/
● https://www.keywordtooldominator.com/k/amazon-keyword-tool
● https://www.searchenginejournal.com/how-to-get-featured-snippe
ts-google/233743/
● https://blog.hubspot.com/blog/tabid/6307/bid/24994/using-soci
al-sharing-buttons-leads-to-7x-more-mentions-data.aspx)
● https://tractiondigital.com/making-marketing-email-that-gets-open
ed/
● http://www.twistconsultancy.co.uk/#approach
● https://leadsurance.com/126-best-life-insurance
-keywords-for-marketing-free-download/
● https://medium.com/@vikigreen/impact-of-slow
-page-load-time-on-website-performance-40d5c
9ce568a
● https://backlinko.com/link-building
● https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer
/76329
● https://webmasters.googleblog.com/2014/08/ht
tps-as-ranking-signal.html
● https://ahrefs.com/blog/seo-audit/
● https://www.ampproject.org/docs/
● https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer
/139066
● https://github.com/mtrudel/pragmatic_context
● https://www.w3.org/TR/json-ld/#basic-concepts
● https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L9BqE01SLeE
● https://webmasters.googleblog.com/2019/08/c
ore-updates.html
● https://www.mailjet.com/blog/news/psycholog
y-of-colors-in-email-marketing/

Sources Con’t
● https://www.searchenginejournal.com/social-media
-strategies-seo/277839/#close
● https://www.searchenginejournal.com/social-media
-seo/196185/
● https://www.wordtracker.com/academy/keyword-r
esearch/guides/the-essential-guide-to-researching-
keywords-for-voice-search-optimization
● https://www.searchenginewatch.com/2018/10/18/t
he-comprehensive-guide-to-voice-search-keyword-r
esearch/
● https://backlinko.com/optimize-for-voice-search
● https://neilpatel.com/blog/long-tail-keywords-seo/
● https://backlinko.com/long-tail-keywords
● https://neilpatel.com/blog/seo-is-content-marketin
g/
● https://www.lyfemarketing.com/blog/seo-content-mar
keting/
● timization-2/what-will-the-new-rules-of-google-seo-be
-in-2020/
● https://cognitiveseo.com/blog/22673/future-of-seo/
● elines/156806
● https://www.mariehaynes.com/eat/
● https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/101-internal-li
nks-content-marketing-aso-w-jackie-chu/id1093560792
?i=1000423786370
● https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/097-using-ke
yword-psychographics-to-improve-your-seo/id1093560
792?i=1000415889767
● https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/111-how-to-ta
ckle-advanced-ecommerce-technical-seo/id109356079
2?i=1000448497484
● https://www.searchenginejournal.com/5-strategies-unl
ocked-googles-quality-rating-guid
● https://carminemastropierro.com/haro-backlinks/
● https://www.distilled.net/resources/da-is-the-wrong-
metric-for-reporting-on-link-building/