Google have announced that penguin 2.0, another big update to Google's algorithm, is just around the corner. In fact, it is a matter of weeks away! So, I have put together a quick checklist to use against your sites to make sure they are are Penguin ready!

First of all, what is happening in this update exactly? Well, for once Google has been very forthcoming and shared some fantastic insights. Matt Cutts (head of web spam @ Google) posted this video: <http://www.mattcutts.com/blog/what-to-expect-in-seo-in-the-coming-months/> which I highly recommend you watch!

Here's a quick list of what is changing:

*   Advertorial Link Spam (paid advert links)
*   Monitoring spammy queries
*   Link spamming will be hit hard
*   Even better Link Analysis
*   Improvements to hacked sites
*   Authority boost
*   Moderating the Panda impact
*   Multiple listings of same domain in SERPS will be reduced.
*   Better communication in WMT

With these things in mind, here is a short checklist for your sites to make sure you don't get hit by Penguin 2.0.

*   If you pay for links, make sure they don't pass pagerank (rel=nofollow on links!)
*   Don't use link networks, Google is working hard to hit these people hard
*   Moderate spam on your site. Don't let it get in!
*   You can benefit from the Authority Boost, by presenting yourself as an authoritative voice in your market you'll rank better.

As long as you follow what is considered white-hat SEO techniques you'll come out the other end of Penguin 2.0 just fine. Remember to write all of your content for the user, build a solid presence on social media and to find high quality links.

My hope is a lot of bad competitors in the various e-commerce niches will get hit hard, allowing sites (like some of the ones I work on) who practice good SEO techniques will rise back to their former glory.

Is there anything missing, do you think I overlooked anything? Let me know in the comments or on [twitter][1] (use #mPenguin2 on twitter)

 [1]: http://www.twitter.com/Meteorify


Meteorifys Penguin 2.0 Checklist!

We all love to stay as up to date and relevant as we possibly can. Sometimes this incredibly hard because of the shear amount of information there is to learn! However, these 11 blogs come from me and I swear by them and their content. They are fantastic resources for learning the latest trends in marketing & SEO, and E-commerce! So, prioritise these!

### 1) [Econsultancy][1]

Econsultancy is an amazing resource and seals the number one spot on my list. I read this blog daily, the information the authors share is invaluable and you can often get an insight as to how the big brands do their marketing campaigns.

### 2) [Shopify Blog][2]

Shopify write regularly about everything surrounding selling online, and that makes them great in so many ways. Not only is Shopify a fantastic hosted e-commerce CMS, they know what they're talking about!

### 3) [SEOmoz][3]

SEOmoz isn't just about SEO as you might think. They cover a wide range of topics, the main message is about making a usable and loveable website that gets you high in the search engines!

### And the rest!

*   <http://www.practicalecommerce.com/>
*   <http://www.getelastic.com/>
*   <http://www.theonlineseller.com/>
*   <http://blog.kissmetrics.com/>
*   <http://unbounce.com/blog/>
*   <http://searchengineland.com/>
*   <http://marketingland.com/>
*   <http://searchenginewatch.com>

### What are your favourite e-commerce/marketing blogs?

Do you have a favourite e-commerce or marketing blog that isn't on this list? Think it deserves to be? Let me know in the comments!

 [1]: http://econsultancy.com/uk/blog
 [2]: http://www.shopify.com/blog
 [3]: http://www.seomoz.org/blog


11 must read e-commerce blogs

Today we're going to cover some basic stock reporting. If your business doesn't have basic stock reports in place, this guide is for you. I will tell you the three basic reports you need in place. We will be looking at a stock take report, a stock consumption report, and finally a run rate report on your stock.

First of all, you might wonder why we need these reports in place. Well, it's simple, if you run out of stock, you can't deliver those items to your customers in a timely manner, and you will lose sales. It's as simple as that. With these reports in place you will know what is out of stock, how quickly you sell items, and how often you need to re-order you items. Let's get stuck in shall we.

## 1) Stock Taking

If you use a fulfilment warehouse, they'll often let you know how much of each item you have in stock with them. However, if they don't, one way of figuring this number of is subtracting the stock you have sold and the stock you originally had.

If you have your own warehouse, or are running the business out of your home, a stock take is in order. You'll need to manually count exactly how much of everything you have. If you are a small business and don't have a large stock range, don't bother with fancy stock control systems as they can over-complicate a simple task. Simply open a spreadsheet and log everything. If you are running a larger warehouse, stock control systems will save you a lot of time. We'll cover stock control systems another time though.

After you have done your basic stock take, we now know how much of each item we have in stock. Awesome! Now let's go ahead and find out how much we've sold!

## 2) Stock Consumption

[Products Ordered Report Path](./products-ordered-path.png)

You absolutely must know how much you're selling, and over what time period. Without this you will hit stock shortages on a regular basis, which is a nightmare if your priority is bringing in sales.  
Magento has an in-built report which can tell you how many of each item you have sold, it's called the Products Ordered report. This is located here: `Reports > Products > Products Ordered`

Below you can see the response from running the report over a 1 month period

[Products Ordered Report](./products-ordered-report.png)

## 3) Stock Run Rate

This report is known as a run rate report, it's important this report is by no means accurate, it is a predication on how much you sell. I have created a demo run rate using Google Drive Spreadsheets, you can view it here [Run Rate Report Example (Google Doc)][1]

The run rate report below is a very simple one, and not all that intelligent but it gets the point across. It is based on how much stock you consume for each item over six month, it then turns that value into the number of weeks before you will run out. By adding basis formatting rules we can see when we're in the clear with our stock (in green), when we're running close to needing to reorder (in amber), and finally when we're close to running out (in red).

We don't take seasonal variation into account, however if we have last years data, we could use that instead of the past six months.

[Run Rate Report Example](./run-rate-report-example.png)

## Finishing up on stock reporting

Great! Now we have complete control of our stock. It's always possible you will run out of stock, but with these basic reports in place we can minimise that period of time, and maximise sales and it's now one less thing to lose sleep over!

I'd advise doing regular stock takes, as with everything, stock does get damaged or goes missing. By running regular stock takes you can see when this happens.

It's worth mentioning there are more stock reports, such as best selling products, or broken / returned products. These will only further improve your stock management and I'd advise to get the basics down first, then move onto these more advanced reports.

If you liked this article, please share it, or if you have any thoughts or ideas please don't hesitate to post a comment or mention me on Twitter, I'm [@ashsmithco][2] or you can catch me on [@Meteorify][3]

 [1]: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc?key=0Avfse7QA0hDtdHdZbHZkQURlTTFmUmdZRms3QU42THc&usp=sharing
 [2]: http://www.twitter.com/
 [3]: http://twitter.com/Meteorify


Stock reporting 101

Finding the right UK payment provider is tricky business. You need to way up the options, you'll want one that is easy to integrate  but also has the best pricing, plus other features such as reporting, ability to take telephone or mail order payments. In this article I'll go over the top providers in the UK.

I have written up about a number of services, and will continue to add to this list as new ones emerge.

### Here is my list as of 12/12 of UK Payment Providers:

*   [Paypal][1]
*   [GoCardless][2]
*   [Paymill][3]
*   [&#8220;Traditional&#8221; payment providers][4]
    *   [Sage Pay][5]
    *   [World Pay][6]
    *   [Authorize.net][7]

## <a name="paypal"></a>Paypal

Let's kick the list of with the provider everyone knows, and a growing number of people are coming to dislike. Yes, it's Paypal!

Paypal allows you to create an account, which stores your payment details and bank information, and then allows you pay for pretty much anything. It's ease of use is why so many customers love PayPal. In fact, just offering Paypal as an option will increase your stores conversion rates.

#### Fees:

Paypal's fees are per transaction and for businesses it is based on your monthly sales. Here's the rates as of 12/12:

**up to**** £1,500**  
3.4% + £0.40

**£1,500 &#8211; £6,000**  
2.9% + £0.20

**£6,000 &#8211; £15,000**  
2.4% + £0.20

**£15,000 &#8211; £55,000**  
1.9% + £0.20

#### Why do a lot of people hate Paypal?

Paypal has hurt a lot of people. There are countless reports of people's accounts being blocked and to make things worse Paypal have a record for poor customer service.

For example, within the conference/show industry a huge number of show organisers sell their tickets via Paypal, to only get their entire account blocked without access to their funds. Sadly, this can lead to no money there to actually put the show on. The reasoning Paypal give, is to protect their customers, and/or because they noticed are large increase in sales, which marks their activity as suspicious.

#### So should I use Paypal?

Absolutely. Paypal is a service a huge number of your potential customers will use. It's dead simple to get started, and there is a huge amount of documentation, plugins and extensions for most e-commerce stores CMS's. For example, Magento comes with Paypal integration, enter your account details and you're done.

I only wouldn't use Paypal if you are providing a pre-sale (tickets, pre-ordering of products and/or services), typically this is where a large number of problems come to light.

## <a name="gocardless"></a>Go Cardless

GoCardless is a new and upcoming payment provider, but with a twist. They use Direct Debit to make payments. Meaning you can also use GoCardless for recurring payments.

However, the service has it's drawbacks. It's not called GoCardless for no reason, it's relies on the customer entering their bank details. Now, entering your card details is easy, you often have your wallet/purse on you, but your bank details, that requires either grabbing a bank statement, your cheque book/paying in book, or logging in to your online banking. That's a lot of effort.

#### Fees

GoCardless' fees are incredibly simple. It's 2% per transaction up to a maximum of £2.00. So why can they go this low? Because authorising Direct Debit requests is completely different to processing credit cards, and has much lower charges involved, a saving they pass onto you.

#### Where to use GoCardless?

I personally believe services like GoCardless are best suited for recurring services, such as subscription based services like web hosting, magazines, subscription based web apps and gym memberships.

Outside of this, asking a potential customer to enter their bank details instead of their credit/debit card details maybe a bit disorientating for them. It could result in loss of sales.

## <a name="paymill"></a>Paymill

Paymill is a new up and coming payment provider different to that of those that are to follow. With a developer focus, Paymill has perhaps the easiest system for processing payments I have seen, that is available in the UK.

You know they're developer focused by offering an example of how simple it is to create a payment directly on the homepage! Here is the PHP example:

```php
<?php
$params = array(
    'amount'      => '4200',  // e.g. "4200" for 42.00 EUR
    'currency'    => 'EUR',   // ISO 4217
    'token'       => '098f6bcd4621d373cade4e832627b4f6',
    'description' => 'Test Transaction'
);
$apiKey             = 'YOUR_PRIVATE_KEY';
$apiEndpoint        = 'https://api.paymill.de/v2/';
$transactionsObject = new Services_Paymill_Transactions(
    $apiKey, $apiEndpoint
);
$transaction        = $transactionsObject->create($params);
?>
```

It's as simple as that.

One line that might rise a few eyebrows is the token. Where does it come from? Well, the token is created based on the customers credit card information. It can be created with a mere few lines of Javascript. You never need to store sensitive card information on your servers! You could store this token (valid for one year) so you can take payments again, should the customer log back into their account! Making it incredibly easy for your customers to buy again.

Further more, they also can process Direct Debits too. Which, means you can offer your customer a choice of how they'd like to pay. This is particularly useful for subscription based services.

#### Pricing

Pricing is competitive with other provided @ 2.95% + 0.28€ per transaction. The advantage here, there

## <a name="traditional"></a>Traditional payment providers

Next up are the more traditional providers, these are the services that have monthly fees, require a merchant account, they typically have higher transaction costs too. Furthermore integration can be even more difficult. Which is why they are at the bottom of my list.

### <a name="sagepay"></a>Sage Pay

Sagepay, previously known as Protx are well known and established in the UK for their merchant services. They accept all major credit cards, they allow you to integrate their services into your website. They have their own MOTO (Mail order telephone order) platform, which can be used to search for transactions and get reporting data. Sage Pay can also be integrated with Card machines, or terminals.

That is one of the biggest benefits of using SagePay is for the ability to integrate with card machines, like those you get in shops. A service, none of the above actually offer. However this comes at an additional cost.

Sagepay also offer different integration levels. One of which redirects the user to their site to process the payment. Taking that stress off your shoulders.

As of currently, their form solution (where the user gets sent to their site) doesn't have a mobile site, making it incredibly difficult to use for the user.

#### Pricing

Sagepay's pricing is relatively straightforward. for £25p/m you can get your payment gateway set up relatively easily. This also gives you access to their MOTO screen for management, reporting and taking telephone/mail order payments.

However, if you want fraud prevention you'll need to pay an additional £10 per month. Card terminals also cost additional, there is a one-off fee + a monthly rental fee, plus transaction fees change.

Services like Sagepay are incredibly handy if you have a large range of requirements for processing payments, such as off-line processing. They also require you to have a merchant account to be setup with your bank. It's a painful process, and if you're building a simple web-app, or e-commerce store where none of the above is applicable. Stick to a simpler solution.

### <a name="worldpay"></a>World Pay

WorldPay is very similar to Sagepay in many ways. The core differences comes in their pricing. They also require a merchant account, but they offer services to get you a merchant account if you don't currently have one. This can make the entire process less daunting.

#### Pricing

Pricing for Worldpay is £19.95 a month, first 350 transaction each month are free, and then 10p per transaction thereafter. This assumes you already have a merchant account.

If you don't own a merchant account, for £75 one-off setup fee you can get one from Worldpay. Then after that it's £15 per month, plus 1.9% + 10p per transaction.

### <a name="authorize"></a>Authorize.net

Authorize.net are the final provider in my list of traditional payment providers. They accept all major credit cards, great fraud prevention built in. With the ability to access all of your data from your online account. All with fantastic support too.

#### Pricing

Assuming you only want to process payments online, there is a one off setup fee of $99, a monthly fee of $20, a transaction fee of $0.10, and a Batch fee of $0.25.

What is a batch fee I hear you ask? Well, according to their website it's &#8220;The fee assessed per batch of settled credit card transaction&#8221;. Yeah. Not sure why that pricing exists. Or why at the very least it's not accounted for in the transaction fee.

## Do you know any? Did I miss one?

If I've missed out a UK payment provider that you believe deserves recognition by being on this list, just let me know in the comments. Perhaps, it's a new service that has emerged and needs to be shouted about, I'd love to hear about it.

 [1]: #paypal
 [2]: #gocardless
 [3]: #paymill
 [4]: #traditional
 [5]: #sagepay
 [6]: #worldpay
 [7]: #authorize


A look at UK online payment providers

Search engine traffic is often a vital lifeline for the large majority of e-commerce stores on the web, and with algorithms changing all the time it's a forever changing game. I've pulled together six simple steps you can apply to your stores today to improve your search engine optimisation and these tips will potentially last a lifetime.

### Step One: Lower your keyword density

Seriously. Look at your sites, read your content out loud. If you've been optimising your content a lot, there is a strong possibility you have over-optimised. Read it out loud, if it sounds unnatural fix it. Getting your keyword density lower on all pages will be beneficial.

### Step Two: Don't use rel=connanical because it's easier

I see people use rel=cannonical on all pages because it's a easy fix. Well, IMO it doesn't fix the issue. It's not an instruction in my mind, its a mere guideline. Remove the page if possible, 99% of the time it's possible. I promise you.

### Step Three: Build quality product descriptions

I can promise you by improving the quality of your product descriptions you will pick up more long tail traffic, and more importantly you can answer questions your customers have and increase conversion rates. You should be serving your customer at all times.

### Step Four: Catch errors & fix them immediately

Lot's of 404s? Fix them for crying out loud. By simply redirecting non-existing pages customers who are landing there will then land in a more optimised area the site, a more relevant one that will retain them and increase the chances of them purchasing.

### Step Five: Test the usual bits

Test optimising those titles & meta descriptions, optimise your site for accessibility and usability, resubmit your site maps. Blog, and market yourself in a genuine manner, posting links randomly looks spammy and is spammy.

### Step Six: Sit back and wait

Although the internet is a fast moving game, it is still a waiting game with the search engine they may spot your changes but not reward (or punish) for a few days or even a week. Patients as they say is a virtue.

### Bonus Tips:

Optimise for your user. Think what they might want, ask them what they would want and need to know. Ask your sales team what questions are asked the most often. This can guide your content strategy and improve the quality of information your store offers your customer.

Furthermore by optimising for your users, such as making the site more accessible for the disabled you will improve the crawlability of your site AND increase conversions! That's what I call a win win situation.

### Best SEO = No SEO?

Nearly. Not quite, but nearly. I do believe the SEO game is changing for the better, in a lot of ways it already is irrelevant. You build a quality site your customers adore, you will build links back to your site naturally. You think smart link opportunities that can also drive traffic increase of increase SEO, you will see much higher quality traffic, and convert more, which means making more money and that is why we are in business anyway right?

What do you think? What are your tips and tricks for ranking well within the major search engines?


Ash Smith

Cloud & Serverless Developer

Ecommerce Posts

Meteorifys Penguin 2.0 Checklist!

11 must read e-commerce blogs

Stock reporting 101

A look at UK online payment providers

Improve your ecommerce SEO with 6 simple tips