289. How to Optimize Your Online Presence – for eCommerce and Brick & Mortar

In the spirit of working on your business this summer + setting yourself up for success for the last half of the year, I wanted to make sure you’ve done everything you can to optimize your online presence, even off of your website. 

My goal today is to give you a checklist of things you can prioritize to get set up in your business. We’re not going to go too deep into any one of them, they all have plenty of documentation you can use to implement them – see links at the bottom of this post – but I do see that a lot of eCommerce businesses aren’t taking advantage of these platforms at all – so let’s talk about it. 

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The Must-Haves

Google Shopping

Google Shopping is an absolute must-have if you sell a product that people are searching for. While you can certainly boost listings through paid means, it’s 100% free to list your products on Google Shopping. 

Google has been doing a lot of their own testing and improvement in terms of Google Shopping listings, this isn’t going away anytime soon, and it’s an important step in eCommerce SEO. 

Facebook & Instagram

The other must-have is your Facebook & Instagram shop. Even if you don’t spend a ton of time on one or either platform, you’ll want to connect your eCommerce store to Meta’s commerce manager and bring over your product feed. 

Note: if you do already have your Facebook Shop set up, but haven’t updated your settings to allow checkout on the actual Facebook + Instagram platforms, your Shop is no longer supported as of April 2024, so if you haven’t checked on it in a bit – make sure you get that change set up. 

While initially this sounds like a greedy move by Meta, it’s actually not. Shops on Facebook that are connected through Shopify do not pay any processing fees. You’ll get charged the same way as if that customer placed the order on your website. 

If you connected directly through commerce manager by manually uploading your products or through another 3rd party platform, these purchases are happening on Meta, with Meta as the merchant of record, and the fees are the same as they would be through most payment processing. For example 2.9%. 

Having your shop set up on these platforms is especially important if you’re running ads. Not only does this let you run catalog ads, but studies have shown that ads that allows customers to check out on Meta properties show increased conversion; which makes perfect sense. 

Additionally, on Instagram. Don’t forget you have the ability to tag your products in posts and in stories

Additional Facebook & Instagram Optimizations

Before we move onto some of the other platforms you’ll want to get set up on, I want to chat a few small optimizations you can make on Facebook & Instagram. 

First things first, on Instagram if you have your brand name as your handle, please do not repeat it as your name on your Instagram profile. That’s the part that shows up in bold at the top of your profile. This line is searchable and should be keyword rich, so please make it descriptive to what you sell and what your perfect customer would be searching for. 

I also recommend you ditch the 3rd party link in bio tools and just create a mobile optimized landing page on your own website. I believe with the paid version of these tools you can add your pixels, and tracking, etc. But why bother paying the extra fee when you can just send them direct to your website. 

Also on Facebook. If you use your personal profile to interact in business Facebook groups. Please make sure your business is listed on your personal profile. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve tried to connect with someone through one of those and I go to their profile and can’t find any information about their business. 

I understand if this is a side hustle, maybe you don’t want to people to see that you have a business. That’s different and understandable, but otherwise, make sure it’s easy for people to look up your business. 

Other Platforms to List Your Products

In addition to those must-haves, there are other platforms that you can connect your product catalog to. 

YouTube

If you have a presence on YouTube, you can also connect your product feed to the platform and feature items in your videos. This can be especially powerful since YouTube is a search engine and the content there is more evergreen. 

I get videos from 5 years ago in my YouTube feed all the time. 

TikTok

Then of course there is TikTok. This one isn’t quite as important if you’re not actually active on the platform or running ads, but even if you have an inactive profile, I’d get your products connected. 

Pinterest

Now, I’m no fan of Pinterest for eCommerce stores. I honestly haven’t seen one business show a ton of success from the platform. But you can add your products to the platform, so it doesn’t hurt to have a profile there with your product assortment. Plus, it’s technically a search engine like YouTube so the content is a bit more evergreen. 

Snapchat

Even Snapchat is rolling out the ability to connect your Shopify store to a Snapchat Public Business Profile. I’ve have legit never used Snapchat for business + have no idea the value of it – but hey if your audience uses it – can’t hurt to set your profile up there. 

Creating a Static Presence on Social Media

Now you might be wondering why you should set up all this shit even if you’re not active on the platform. Well the truth is, even if you’re not active, it’s possible your potential customers are and it’s likely they’ll be looking for your social profiles to decide if you’re a legit company they want to buy from. 

While you don’t have to be consistently active on every platform, I recommend you create a profile there to save your handle and protect your brand, and then optimize your profile with the necessary information so that if people do search for you you’ll be found. 

You can set up a handful of static posts that introduce them to you, your brand, feature your best sellers, and call it a day. This is especially true on Instagram + TikTok as they are the go-to platforms for most people. 

Local SEO Listings for In-Person Stores

If you have a permanent in-person presence, whether it’s a brick-and-mortar retail store or a weekly pop-up, then you’ll want to make sure you’ve got all your local citations dialed in. Local citations is just a fancy SEO term for being listed on local business directories. For example Google My Business and Yelp. 

But those are not the only places you can list your business. You’ll also want to add your business to Bing Places, Apple Maps, and even Trip Advisor if you’re in a highly touristy area.  

One of the most important aspects of optimizing your local listings is having a consistent NAP – N A P, Name, Address, and Phone Number. 

What is NAP is Local SEO

If your NAP is inconsistent across the Internet, this is a signal to the search engines that you might not be legit or trustworthy. These are important signals not only to search engines but also to consumers. We already know many customers will search the web looking for reviews and store information before they get their butts off the couch and into a store. So you’ll want to make sure you’re managing how your store appears on these sites. 

When you’re first setting these up, make sure you search these sites for existing listings that may have been created by users or the sites themselves and claim them so you have full ownership. 

What Sites to Create Local SEO Citations

Okay, so where should you set these up? At a minimum you’ll want to do Yelp, Google My Business, Bing Places, Apple Maps, and Facebook. Again, we’re not going to get into the nitty-gritty of all the features and functionality of the individual sites, please check the links at the bottom of this post to learn more.

I do want to touch on a few of the top ones so you get a sense of their features.

Yelp

Yelp has a number of paid features you can add to your listing such as preventing industry competitor’s ads from showing up on your page, adding additional business attributes, and even boosting your listings. 

Google My Business

Your Google My Business listing is important for showing up in local results and through Google Maps. In addition to standard info like business category, store location, and hours – It also gives you the ability to add business attributes, add virtual tours by approved Google photographers, and posts. While posts aren’t necessarily going to revolutionize your business, they’re a great way to show the search engine that you are active and relevant. 

Facebook

If you have multiple store locations you can also set up location pages on Facebook. This lets you maintain separate hours and events per location. In order to keep the pages active, you can set any posts on your main page to automatically feed to those individual location pages as well. This way you don’t have to worry about posting to more than one. 

Maintaining Your Local SEO Citations

If this sounds like a lot of work, it kind of is. At my previous day job I had the pleasure of managing our local listings for 25 stores across 5 or so platforms during the pandemic when closures and hours were changing multiple times a week. It was insane. 

Why we didn’t invest in one of the many platforms that allow you to manage these in a single dashboard, I don’t know. We talked about it, but I think it was just one of those things that kinda fell through the cracks and wasn’t a big deal until it was a big deal. 

How to Set Up Your Local SEO Citations

I will say, if you only have one or two stores, it’s probably not a big deal to manage them individually. It’s a bit of work to set up initially, but unless you’re changing your phone number or hours a lot there isn’t much in the way of maintenance. 

There are definitely platforms out there that can help with this, but I’m not well-versed in any of them to make a recommendation.

The most popular one by far is Yext, but from what I understand when you stop paying you lose your citations which is totally bonkers. Not sure if that’s only ones that were created directly through Yext, or what. 

Again. You’ll have to do your own research, check links below, but honestly, if you only have a handful of locations, I would do it manually. 

Marketplaces

Then of course you have your marketplace options. Most of these aren’t going to generate a whole ton of revenue unless you really work the platforms, so I wouldn’t necessarily go out of my way to add my products to them unless you intend to optimize them – but they’re worth an honorable mention. 

Marketplaces like Amazon, Etsy, Target, Walmart & eBay. These can all be added through the Shopify Marketplace Connect app. 

There is also Houzz, which is specific for home goods & furniture. 

Again, these likely won’t revolutionize your business unless you truly work the platforms and invest in their internal ad platforms, but it likely doesn’t hurt to be found there either. 

Recap

Make sure you check the show notes for links to the documentation on how to set up all these platforms and pencil in some time to get these profiles set up and optimized over the next 30-60 days. This is something you can certainly give to a team member or virtual assistant. Just make sure you’re using a company email to set them up so you don’t have any access issues. 

Listen to the Episode

Resources

Set Up Facebook & Instagram Shop

Facebook Commerce Fees & Pricing 

Set Up Facebook Store Location Pages

Set up Google My Business

Set Up Yelp Listings

Add Business to Apple Maps

Set Up Bing Places

Set Up Products on Pinterest

Add Products to YouTube

Snapchat Public Business Profiles

Shopify Marketplace Connect

Sell Products on Houzz

Social Commerce Statistics

Local Citation Management Platforms

Bright Local

Moz Local

Yext