April SEO Brunch Audit with The Deck Box

On the last Monday of every month, MacMillan Search hosts SEO Brunch, a virtual meetup for those interested in Search Engine Optimization. Each brunch features a 10-minute SEO Audit, a guest speaker, and a Q&A to help companies grasp concepts around growing organic SEO traffic. Presented in partnership with Digital Nova Scotia, the 10-minute Audit provides the recipient with a website review done by SEO professionals. Each audit results in 3 or more actionable insights to improve visibility and traffic in search results via SEO and PPC (Pay Per Click) strategies. At our SEO Brunch in April, we performed a 10-minute SEO audit for The Deck Box, a Halifax-based business specializing in RPG and fantasy card collecting and gaming, video games, and more. Deck Box not only offers cards for sale in-store and online but holds tournaments and other events for the local community. You can see the results of our audit below.

The Deck Box - 10-Minute Audit

Bring your shop to a subfolder on your main domain

Currently, your shop exists on a subdomain on shoplightspeed.com. Moving the shop to a subfolder on your domain (www.thedeckboxhalifax.com) will build your site’s authority. And, it will be less jarring for customers visiting from the homepage. We recommend setting it up at https://www.thedeckboxhalifax.com/shop/. Not knowing the details of the platform, a subfolder may not be possible. If this is the case, we suggest setting up a subdomain (e.g. https://shop.thedeckboxhalifax.com). If this work is outside of your wheelhouse, we would recommend reaching out to an expert https://www.lightspeedhq.com/experts/. What to consider before moving:

• Set up redirects - The pages on https://the-deck-box.shoplightspeed.com/ are driving nearly 100+ sessions from organic traffic, and we don’t want to lose the traffic, relevance, and authority that you’ve built. To mitigate the damage from a move, we suggest putting a list of each page on the existing site and setting up permanent redirects to the new URL.

For example, https://the-deck-box.shoplightspeed.com/deathrattle-barrow-lords.html ranks 8th for “deathrattle barrow lords” and once moved over should redirect to https://www.thedeckboxhalifax.com/shop/deathrattle-barrow-lords.html (or https://shop.thedeckboxhalifax.com/deathrattle-barrow-lords.html if you go the subdomain route)

Set up Google Analytics

With Google Analytics set up, you can understand your customer’s journey throughout the website from various channels. This kind of information will help inform the best way to focus your marketing spend going forward.

General steps on setting up Google Analytics

https://support.google.com/tagassistant/answer/3059154?ref_topic=2947092#add_ga

Connecting Google Analytics on Lightspeed

• Basic Google Analytics Setup - https://ecom-support.lightspeedhq.com/hc/en-us/articles/220661627-Connecting-Google-Analytics
• Adding custom header code for Google Tag Manager - https://ecom-support.lightspeedhq.com/hc/en-us/articles/360050989513-Adding-custom-header-code

Set up Google Search Console

This information is helpful for determining:

• technical issues with your site that are preventing Google (and other search engines) from indexing your site
• the reasoning behind spikes in organic traffic
• finding opportunities to increase traffic
• determining which keywords are within striking distance

You can learn more at https://www.macmillansearch.com/blog/setting-up-google-search-console-gsc/

Paid Ads

Experiment with objectives and interests on Facebook ads

Facebook ads can be a great way to drive traffic to the web store and foot traffic to the brick-and-mortar location. When you set up a Facebook ad, you can select several different objectives. Facebook will then try to optimize your campaign based on what you choose. Some objectives that I’d recommend are:

• Traffic (clicks to your store page)
• Messages (instant messages to your Facebook page)

Below, I’ll outline some thoughts for each campaign objective on how you might get started.

Traffic

This campaign will try to generate clicks to the pages on your website that you choose. What makes it interesting is the ability to design a campaign based on interests. Because of the niche aspect of your products (in some cases), interest targeting will help you find users excited about what you offer. You can combine product categories to form broader campaigns, or you can get more targeted for your products with broader appeal.

Messages

Message campaigns work similar to traffic campaigns in terms of targeting and design, but the end objective is engagement with your Facebook page rather than traffic to your store. This can be a heavier lift in terms of resources but can lead to better customer engagement and sales. For example, you could target the same audience as above, prompting them to start a conversation with staff about new products, paint supplies, or upcoming events.

Consider a regular e-newsletter

Local retailer (https://bishopscellar.com/) runs an incredibly popular and successful weekly email promotion. Each week, they select a small number of products, discount them, and send the deals via email. The sales are limited time and limited stock. The promotion allows them to clear out old stock, highlight new products, and solidify customer relationships. It has the added benefit of familiarizing customers with the online store. Tools like MailChimp are a great way to manage a newsletter. You can segment customers into categories depending on interest, such as cards, wargaming, miniatures, video games, and more. Did you enjoy learning from MacMillan Search Consulting what SEO opportunities exist for your business at SEO Brunch? It would really help us aid other businesses if you leave us a review on Google My Business and/or write a recommendation on LinkedIn.Want to learn more? Let us know what you would kind of SEO details you would like to dive into at the next SEO Brunch via twitter using #seobrunch. And subscribe to our Youtube. [fusion_youtube id="https://youtu.be/78UblBO4Mp8" alignment="center" width="" height="" autoplay="false" api_params="" hide_on_mobile="small-visibility,medium-visibility,large-visibility" class="" css_id=""][/fusion_youtube]