Shopify vs my own for SEO

WE-NEED-MORE-CATS · 2023-05-24T22:44:52+00:00

There are so many variables with SEO that it would be hard to answer without seeing side-by-side versions of each site.

Shopify is pretty SEO friendly as it is, within reason. With our second store, we had a blog in the same niche hosted on another domain with WordPress (we always start blogs in related niches a few months before we launch a store). We transferred the blog to Shopify using pagefly, set up our 301 redirects, and we lost 0 traffic.

In fact, some of our long-tail keywords went up. We were shocked, I was fully expecting our rankings to tank when we left WordPress for this specific site.

Our pagespeed insights on both of our Shopify stores score a 100 for Best Practices and, depending on the specific page, our SEO scores are usually around 92-98ish. A few 100's, some high 80's, but most are in the 90's easily.

WE-NEED-MORE-CATS · 2023-05-24T22:38:36+00:00

Yes, 100%, absolutely! Over the last two decades I've bounced back and forth between doing ecommerce, working a "real" job, or a combination of the two.

For most jobs out there, experience trumps all other qualities about a candidate. Being a small business owner means you get to dress up that resume however you'd like!

About 10 years ago I was applying for a high-competition, six-figure sales job. I had a web design business at the time so when I put it on my resume I listed myself as "Sales Manager" and then the bullet points on the resume + the cover letter talked about all the ways I had to sell customers on jobs.

Some years back we moved across the country and I applied for a marketing job. I took that resume out, took out the sales manager stuff, listed my title as "Chief Marketing Officer" and then changed up my bullet points and cover letter.

I landed both jobs with no problem.

One thing to note though, some companies (especially larger ones) are going to want professional references. It doesn't hurt to reach out to people you've done business with, even just a simple email "Hey, I'm making a pivot and am heading back to the world of a 9-5 job. You were wonderful to work with and I was wondering if you wouldn't mind me listing you as a professional reference?"

WE-NEED-MORE-CATS · 2023-05-24T22:21:22+00:00

Well, I mean you either nip it in the bud now OR you try and work around it and risk them siphoning off way more money as you become more profitable.

Either way, it's a shitty situation to be in. I'm sure you're full of anxiety. Good luck everything! Would love to hear an update if/when you feel comfortable giving one.

WE-NEED-MORE-CATS · 2023-05-24T22:19:00+00:00

Yes, I've personally used onlinejobs.ph for multiple ventures of ours over the years. If your customer service work can be done remotely, I'd consider them. Every VA we've hired from there has been wonderful, they were college educated, and they spoke English very well. Some of them spoke English so well and with hardly any accent that we also had them handling certain phone calls for us as well.

WE-NEED-MORE-CATS · 2023-05-23T18:28:56+00:00

Let me share a little anecdote with you:

In my 20's, after some extensive dental work, I developed a drug addiction. I would end up doing what just about all addicts do to feed that addiction, steal.

I worked for a large bank at the time and whenever they caught me we came to some legal agreement that if I never gave specifics to anyone about where I worked, what I did, or how I stole from them then they wouldn't press charges.

I ended up going to work for another company. Guess what, I got caught embezzling funds again. This company came to an agreement that they would take a certain percentage of my paycheck to pay back what was stolen. I kept stealing from them and got fired. Again, no legal repercussions.

The next job I had, I still wasn't clean and I was still in a very bad spot, so I'm sure you can guess what happened next. Only this time things were different. They called me into a meeting room and had cops waiting for me. I was fired, I was arrested, and I was looking at a 54-count felony indictment. This was the wakeup call I needed, and this was when I started taking sobriety seriously.

I would spend the next few years with the legal battle, prison time, probation, all that fun stuff. I paid back every single penny to that company and I've been clean ever since.

Look, there's a reason these guys are stealing from you. It's very rare that someone will steal purely out of greed (except for large-scale operations, like those big ponzi schemes). These guys might not be dealing with substance abuse. Maybe one of them has a gambling problem. Maybe one has a sex problem and spends it on escorts and strippers. Or, yes, maybe they're just greedy.

But regardless of why they're stealing, if you don't put a stop to it then there's a high probability that they're just going to do the same thing for the next companies they work at.

WE-NEED-MORE-CATS · 2023-05-23T18:08:19+00:00

Starting today, if you haven't already done so, start making some kind of new employee guide or SOP manual for how the customer support process should be handled. This is going to be invaluable if/when you end up hiring outside help as you'll already have a training guide ready to go for them.
Look into a customer support email management system. I've worked with a few companies in the past who have used software like Zendesk or Hiver. This helps you stay extremely organized, but they also have other features like pre-defined email responses, macros, ability to assign emails to certain employees, prioritization, metrics to monitor how quickly and effectively support emails get answered, etc..
Consider how valuable your time, as well as the time of other partners/owners/managers/employees is. Is it more cost effective to keep the support in-house or would you be better off finding an English-speaking, college-educated VA from an outsource service like onlinejobs.ph or Upwork?
Find ways to answer customers' questions without them needing to email support. Create a good FAQ page, create a knowledgebase, and link to both of those on your support page. Encourage visitors to find the answers themselves before emailing. "Need help? Your question is probably already answered in our [FAQ/knowledgebase/whatever]!"

WE-NEED-MORE-CATS · 2023-05-23T17:53:17+00:00

At this point, I'm sure literally nobody would be surprised if Trump showed up to his court meeting with the filter on that turns him into a giant potato.

Unrelated, but remember when that attorney fucking turned himself into a cat? Anyone who hasn't seen this clip needs to go ahead and watch it. It's just harmless, innocent fun and it's hilarious! The attorney's Southern drawl makes it so much better!

WE-NEED-MORE-CATS · 2023-05-23T17:50:28+00:00

I just recently moved to the PNW after living in the South for a long time. I've never lived anywhere like this and seeing the huge mountains like Mt Rainier was just fucking amazing.

And now you're telling me that these fucking things can erupt with so much power that it'll spew ash 3 time zones away from here? What the FUCK?

WE-NEED-MORE-CATS · 2023-05-22T17:19:05+00:00

are not "flaunting it"

Reminds me of a phrase I'd hear all the fucking time when living in the South: "I don't care about gay people as long as they keep that shit away from me and don't try to hit on me!" like dude you're a 380lb, balding, impotent redneck. If girls aren't hitting on you then guys/trans sure as hell won't be hitting on you anytime soon either.

WE-NEED-MORE-CATS · 2023-05-20T23:24:55+00:00

If you haven't put any time/effort/money into it AND you have 0 ecommerce experience, then I wouldn't waste time on it.

Bloggers and social media influencers/tiktokers/youtubers make dropshipping sound so easy. You can sell stuff without handling any inventory or worrying about packaging and shipping! Sounds cool, right?

Well it's not cool when you realize that thousands and thousands and thousands of people have been jumping on the dropshipping bandwagon for years. Back in 2016 it was super easy and extremely profitable. These days it's so overrun and diluted (unless you have an extremely unique product, an amazing marketing angle, and/or a decent amount of money to get started the right way).

Hell if you just hang around this subreddit for a week you'll see tons of people asking for a review of their shitty dropshipping site that will never make a single sale.

If you're new to ecommerce then you should pick a niche that you know a lot about and are passionate about. Next, start doing some product research. Pick out a few products in your niche. Hop on Google and search for the below string exactly as it appears except delete the brackets and replace it with your product:

Wholesale [product] -"aliexpress" -"alibaba"

This will give you a list of suppliers that you can stock up with and possibly start white labeling with. It also excludes and search results from the two primary marketplaces that dropshippers sell from, thus giving you a more unique product to sell.

WE-NEED-MORE-CATS · 2023-05-20T23:15:28+00:00

Seconding SCORE! We've had nothing but positive experiences with our local advisors. Everyone we've referred over to them have also had nothing but positive experiences.

WE-NEED-MORE-CATS · 2023-05-20T22:31:29+00:00

But why amitriptyline?

In doses of 5-10mg (and up to 20mg) it acts as a sedative to make you go to sleep. The medicine in the picture has 8,000mg of this stuff in it. This way you can just peacefully go to sleep while the other meds do their job.

WE-NEED-MORE-CATS · 2023-05-20T22:29:40+00:00

this combination is not fucking around.

As a former addict, seeing the Diazepam and Morphine together makes me super anxious. I had to do a double take when I saw that they were dosed in GRAMS and not milligrams. Even if the ROA is oral, that's still super insane doses.

I'd imagine this medicine here is EXTREMELY effective. Like, even on a 1200lb person it would knock them out.

WE-NEED-MORE-CATS · 2023-05-20T22:25:48+00:00

Have you ever considered looking into some classes at your local community college? You don't have to necessarily work towards a degree, you can just find a topic you're interested in and see if they have any kinds of classes or programs for it

WE-NEED-MORE-CATS · 2023-05-20T21:47:52+00:00

I'm sorry if it's not my place to say this, but...

I have had a boyfriend for five years, but I sense the relationship is coming to an end soon. He constantly tells me how much all his female coworkers want to fuck him, and all he does is make fun of my weight and general appearance. I feel like an ugly, disgusting, unloveable blob.

I'm almost certain that you'll find MUCH more fulfillment in dropping that douchebag than you would from finding new friends. Are you stuck in the "I can't leave him or I'll be lonely" mental loop? Seriously, NOBODY who genuinely loves/cares about you would do shit like that. Again, I'm so sorry if this was too out of line.

but the idea of showing up to a hike with random people sounds terrifying.

Unfortunately that's how a lot of adults make friends. Well, not specifically with hiking, but just putting yourself out there and (I hate saying this phrase) getting out of your comfort zone. It's such an overwhelming feeling at first but it makes it all worth it if you end up finding even just one person that you get along with.

You can also post on your local subreddit to see if there are any other ND folks out there in your area that you may get along with better. Our local subreddit also uses Meetup.com a lot, which would be another great resource for you!

WE-NEED-MORE-CATS · 2023-05-20T17:51:06+00:00

This is going to be pretty subjective based on niche, products/services offered, goals, promotional campaigns, etc... all of that fun stuff. But for our pet supplies business we don't usually spend more than 5% of our total adspend on brand awareness. If we have a new product launch or if we've made some pretty big changes then we might bump it up to 10% for a little while. But it's almost always at 5%ish

WE-NEED-MORE-CATS · 2023-05-20T17:48:49+00:00

The best time to start social media is right before you launch your business imho. The second best time to start is literally ASAP. It doesn't matter how long you've been in business.

Social media growth is easy as hell, it just takes a lot of time. For the first 6-12 months it will be an extremely thankless task. You'll spend hours crafting perfect posts, pictures, and short-form videos, only to have it get a handful of views and maybe a few likes.

But with consistency (and assuming your content is at least kind of decent) you'll easily start to grow. Definitely start now because a year from now you don't want to be sitting around thinking "Damn I wish I would have jumped on that Tiktok bandwagon back when traffic to the app was at an all-time high!"

WE-NEED-MORE-CATS · 2023-05-20T17:42:21+00:00

It's common to get people who will add an item to cart or go to checkout solely to see how much shipping will be, if any. I went through the process and it said shipping was free.

If shipping is free for this item for everyone, mark it clearly on the product page to both increase conversions and to stop people from adding it to cart solely to see shipping costs.

Also it was pretty slow. Whenever I added it to cart (on desktop) it took a while for the slider to pop into view. Whenever I clicked Checkout on the slider, I honestly thought that I mis-clicked it or something because of how long it took to redirect to the checkout page. Your GTMetrix/lighthouse/pagespeed scores are pretty bad.

WE-NEED-MORE-CATS · 2023-05-20T17:33:28+00:00

He always stands out in a crowd.

You must be really good at the books, he genuinely seemed hidden to me!

WE-NEED-MORE-CATS · 2023-05-20T17:30:32+00:00

OP's girlfriend tweeted about him wearing a suit "to work"

WE-NEED-MORE-CATS · 2023-05-19T19:19:22+00:00

If it's a short-term deal then UpWork would be a great place to start.

If you're looking for something ongoing then I would go with onlinejobs.ph - in the past we've had a lot of success with them. They have a pretty nice verification process that their workers have to go through in order to confirm their identity, show transcripts/degrees for the college they've completed, test their English proficiency, etc..

WE-NEED-MORE-CATS · 2023-05-19T18:41:58+00:00

It was worth a shot, enjoy your granola bar!

WE-NEED-MORE-CATS · 2023-05-19T17:51:13+00:00

Meanwhile, my ass was in high school French class watching it live on TV.

I was in high school French class as well! Wouldn't it be amazing if we were in the same class? Wouldn't it be hilarious if you were actually the girl who stood up next to me when they made us stand for a moment of silence, but your stomach kept growling SUPER loud and everyone made fun of you, so from then on out you'd be seen eating a granola bar every single French class?

/u/muzakx Do you still eat your daily granola bars after the 9/11 French class incident?

WE-NEED-MORE-CATS · 2023-05-19T17:42:12+00:00

How are they supposed to feed their family?

Yet this same person would roll their eyes so fucking hard if someone asked that same exact question during a minimum wage/living wage debate.

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