They help users find key information about local businesses such as their address, phone number, hours of operation, reviews and more. Having a local Knowledge Panel means you can better assist users in getting this information. They take up more screen real estate for branded queries, too. Similar to featured snippets, Local Knowledge Panels can take up a lot of real estate in the SERPs.

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There are a few common questions people will ask us at Go Fish Digital about this.  They want to know “how can I get my business to appear in Google’s local Knowledge Panel?” We’re also often asked “if a local Knowledge Panel contains incorrect information, how can I get Google to change this?”

While we’ve covered the topic of Knowledge Panels in the past, local Knowledge Panels are influenced by different factors than brand ones. Local Knowledge Panels don’t require properties like a Wikipedia page. Good news for those of you whose brand doesn’t have one yet! In other words, you have a greater chance to achieve one as these factors are much easier to control.

Use these four steps to get a local Knowledge Panel for your business.

1. Create & Optimize A Google My Business Listing 

This is your first step if you don’t have one set up already. By creating a Google My Business account, you will submit key information such as your name, address, phone number and hours of operation to Google. When displaying local Knowledge Panels, Google pulls in the information directly from your Google My Business listing.

If you have already created a Google My Business listing, that’s great! You should still take the time to log in and review all of the information that’s in there to be sure it’s as accurate as possible. Data accuracy is key to getting a local Knowledge Panel. Businesses that have recently changed locations are more susceptible to inaccurate information in Google My Business.

2. Website Schema

Structured data has many different uses for SEO. While Google’s algorithm is already fantastic at parsing and organizing data, sometimes it needs a little help. This is where structured data comes into play. Structured data allows you to present your business’ information to Google in a a way the algorithm will understand easier. For local businesses that aren’t getting a Local Knowledge Panel, this is where I recommend starting.

One of the issues that might be occurring is that all of the information about your business (such as the name, address and phone number) may be inconsistent or even inaccurate in the directories where Google usually discovers this information. By utilizing structured data, you can give Google this information directly from your own website. Google will most likely take this data into consideration because it is coming from the business itself.

So, how should this structured data look on your site?

To start, search “[Your Industry] schema” on Google and see what results from schema.org come up. There are all types of industries where you can use schema to better define your business (AutoDealer, Chiropractor, Physician etc.).  That is to say, you should be using whatever the most specific schema is that accurately describes your industry. However, if nothing seems to fit quite right, you can always use an “Organization” schema type.

Determine the Properties to Describe the Entity

Now that you’ve found the type of schema you should be using, you need to determine the properties you’ll use to describe that entity. Here are some I find myself using over and over again:

• Name
• Address
• Phone
• SameAs (to define your social profiles and most importantly, your Google+ profile)
• Maps
• Geo

If your business has multiple locations, I highly recommend writing a set of structured data for each location complete with these properties. How can you do this? By using the “Department” property.

Businesses with multiple locations are susceptible to inaccurate citations. It’s common to see addresses, phone numbers and even names of other locations tangled up across different directories. By defining each location’s information as specifically as possible, you’ll increase Google’s confidence that it knows the correct information. For this reason, Google is more likely to display a local Knowledge Panel.

To get started with schema, I recommend the JSON-LD Schema Markup Generator. 

3. Citation Submissions

After taking care of schema, it’s time to take a look at the data Google finds on other websites. It’s extremely important that your business’s information is as consistent as possible on other directories Google pulls local data from. Examples of directories Google pulls from include:

• Facebook
• Foursquare
• Acxiom
• Best Web
• Neustar Localeze
• Yelp

While these are some good directories to get you going, there’s likely hundreds of directories out there containing your business’s information. Correcting your business information across all of these directories can be quite time consuming, so I recommend looking into both of these options:

• Use a Local SEO service such as Moz Local or Yext to scale this effort. This software will automatically submit your business’s information to directories across the Web. Using this software will help make your data more consistent when Google finds it.
• Manually correct the most important directories. Simply perform a branded search and see which directories show up. Next, repeat this process for your competitors. Take note of which directories are consistently ranking on the first page and which ones are being pulled into other Local Knowledge Panels. Manual review and updates are necessary in high priority directories like these.

4. Adjusting Website Copy

Finally, I recommend a review of your on-page content.  Take a step further and see if there are opportunities to better optimize the content for a local Knowledge Panel. How do you find this content?

Start by using the following search operator: site: yourdomain.com “[Address]”

This should uncover instances where the mention of the address is in the actual copy of your website. Take the time to evaluate how your address is mentioned. Are you using instances of old addresses? Are right naming conventions associated with each address and phone number? If it seems like the text could potentially confuse Google, correct it! You want to ensure that you’re relaying information as accurately as possible and correcting or removing text where that isn’t the case.

Case Study: Yonkers Honda

Yonkers Honda is a new and used car dealership in New York City. They came to us because they were having trouble with their local Knowledge Panel.

When searching for “yonkers honda” in their locality, no local Knowledge Panel was appearing. Google also displayed the map listing for their “Service Center” over their main car dealership. This was a problem because their main dealership was the location they wanted most searchers to find, and that location had over 100 positive reviews.

To us, it appeared that Google was having a hard time in particular differentiating between the entities of “Yonkers Honda” and “Yonkers Honda Service Center”. In order to fix this, we used a combination of the tactics mentioned above:

• Google My Business Audit: We reviewed all of their Google My Business properties to ensure all of the information was accurate and up to date. We also ensured that the main dealership was the only one with the name “Yonkers Honda” and any other property had a different name (“Yonkers Honda Service Center”, “Yonkers Honda Pre-Owned Dealership”)
• Website Schema: We wrote a detailed AutoDealer schema that defined each locations’ name, address, phone number, maps listing, Google+ profile and other key information. This helped reinforce to Google that the information in Google My Business was correct and that these were all separate entities from each other.
• Local Listings: We ran local listing submissions for each location. The purpose here was to correct data inconsistencies on other websites Google might be pulling from. We found which directories were scraped into local Knowledge Panels for competitors, and corrected this manually.
• Website Copy: Finally, we reviewed the website copy to find instances of incorrect entity usage. We found a few pages where the keyword “yonkers honda” was associated with the address of another department and fixed these.

After only a few months, we were able to do enough to get Google to display the correct local Knowledge Panel!

One of the keys to getting local Knowledge Panels is increasing Google’s confidence about the quality of data it receives about your business. Improving and reinforcing your information to Google through these four points increases your chances of receiving Local Knowledge Panels.

4 Steps to Get a Local Knowledge Panel (plus a case study) is an original blog post first published on Go Fish Digital.

Transcript on App Store Optimization – increase mobile app downloads with these 4 easy steps

Hi, my name is Daniel Russell and welcome to another tech talk. Today I’ll be going through App Store Optimization.

Just like any search engine, app stores have a search algorithm that determines which apps show up first and which ones show up last. As I’m sure you can imagine, the apps that show up first get a whole lot more downloads than the apps that show up last. If you want to get more downloads, there’s a couple of things that you can do to improve your app’s rankings in the app store. These include modifying your title, the app’s description, improving your app’s reviews and ratings, and increasing your app’s download rate. Now the title and description are fairly similar – it all comes down to keywords and keyword research.

Title

For the title we recommend including your app’s name as well as two or three carefully chosen keywords. These keywords are typically higher in search volume and very accurately describe your app. For example let’s say I have an app called “Pulse” and monitors people’s heart rates. After doing some keyword research, I find that heart rate and heart rate monitor are very frequently searched terms. They also happen to accurately describe my app. So, in the app store, it would make sense to make my title “Pulse”, maybe with a dash after it, heart rate monitor or even heart rate monitor app.

Description

Next up is the description. The description gives you a lot more room for keywords than in the title, but it’s still good to be fairly judicious with your keyword selection in your description as well. Make sure that your app is accurately described. But then also make sure you do a good job selling why people should download it because again download rates will impact the ranking of your app.

Reviews & Ratings

Next up is reviews and ratings, and unfortunately this is an area where you don’t have a ton of control. Apps with higher star ratings and more reviews typically rank better in the app store. One of the best ways to increase the number of reviews for your app is to ask for reviews inside the app. Something that’s a little more difficult is improving the rating. Now besides just improving your app and making it a better user experience, we also recommend making sure that your customer service is properly set up so that if people have issues with your app they can contact you and report a problem rather than going on the app store and writing a long review about the problem and giving you a low star rating.

Download Rate

Finally, the download rate. If an app store sees that almost every person that comes to your app’s page is downloading your app, chances are you’re going to go up in the rankings. Now again besides just making a killer app it can be difficult to increase these download rates on the app store. But there are a few things that you can do to improve your chances. We recommend doing some A/B testing with a couple of different items. These include the app icon, the screenshots of the app that you include, the description, and of course the price. By tracking your ranking in the app store and the number of downloads that you receive over time, you can start to get a pretty good idea of which of these items has the most impact for your app.

I hope this has been helpful and again if you have any questions please feel free to contact us. We’re happy to describe it in detail. Thanks, have a great day!

How to Increase Your App Store Ranking in 4 Easy Steps is an original blog post first published on Go Fish Digital.

Web Designers like to experiment with new graphics, new features, and new capabilities, many of which are not consistent with the guidelines Google puts in place for websites to rank. In turn, SEOs try to keep websites built within Google’s guidelines, which often leads to less exciting and eye-catching sites.

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One of the clearest examples of this is in Single Page Applications, particularly of the AngularJS sort. Single Page Apps are one of the coolest new technologies for web developers to play with, and they have some very dynamic and exciting uses. However, they are an SEO’s worst nightmare because they make it almost impossible for Google to index the pages on the site. Though SEO for Single Page Apps and AngularJS is a difficult and complicated process, we have developed our own solution approach that’s produced strong SEO wins for our clients.

What is a Single Page Application?

According to Microsoft, a Single Page Application (SPA) is a web app that loads a single HTML page and dynamically updates that page as the user interacts with the app. This means all pictures, files, javascript, and external resources on the site are loaded when the user navigates to the first page on the site. These sites are most often built using applications like AngularJS or ReactJS, which use advanced javascript templates to render the entire site.

As with most frameworks, there are distinct benefits and drawbacks to this type of site design. One of the clearest benefits is the ease of navigation. Once a user enters the site, the user has a seamless experience navigating between pages and throughout the site. Since an SPA doesn’t require constant calls to the server, pages load quickly and efficiently for users, leading to a much better user experience.

However, there are definite drawbacks to SPAs as well. One noticeable drawback is the initial page-load time. Since the site loads all resources at once, the very first pageview for a user can take a long time to load, possibly driving people away from the site. However, the other major drawback is the one I’d like to focus on here: an inability for search engines to index site content for SEO.

Problems with SEO for Single Page Apps

SEO for Angular sites is quickly becoming a major issue. Many people are surfacing the issue; for example, here is a slide from Pat Reinhart’s Conductor 30|30 Webinar:

One of the first problems you’ll encounter when crawling an Angular site is getting all your pages crawled and indexed. For one of our clients, when we first crawled their site, this is the result we got from ScreamingFrog:

All the crawlers were able to detect were the javascript templates. No HTML, no images, nothing. Without any actual web pages to be indexed, it was impossible for this site to generate any organic traffic or keyword rankings.

After experimenting with many different configurations, we thought we were making progress, when all of a sudden we hit a spider trap:

where crawling the site crashed ScreamingFrog. That crawl looked something like this:

It was a recursive crawling issue that was leading the same content being crawled over and over and over again.

What’s remarkable about all this is that as recently as last year, Google claimed (and Search Engine Land “confirmed”) that they can execute Javascript applications. This includes following Javascript redirects, indexing and crawling Javascript links and technical elements, and rendering all elements on the page. However, as we can see from this real-world experience, these capabilities are still flawed.

The issues we encountered with our client are just the tip of the iceberg for SEO problems with Angular SPAs. People have reported numerous other issues with SPAs, from improper Analytics data to only parts of a page being crawled and indexed. Luckily, through several months of work with our clients, we have seen some very positive SEO gains for sites like this. Here’s our step-by-step solution to SEO for Angular SPAs.

The Solution

1) Create a list of all content you want indexed on the site.

This may sound somewhat tedious, and for larger sites, probably quite time-consuming as well. However, I cannot emphasize how helpful this has been for us. Having full lists of pages, or at least URL patterns and templates, of  content that we want indexed has been invaluable as we perform tests and iterations for our clients.

2) Install Prerender.io.

We didn’t start to see notable SEO gains until installing Prerender. Prerender will serve up a cached version of the website to crawlers complete with all the standard HTML elements, while still allowing the website to function normally for end-users. It also offers you the ability to customize what pages are served to crawlers, through either blacklisting pages you don’t want to appear, or whitelisting the pages you do. This is an SEO lifesaver, as it allows Google and other crawlers to serve the website in search results like a traditional website while still allowing users to experience the Angular SPA setup.

3) Confirm that Google is indexing the Prerendered content.

As we quickly discovered, not all crawlers respond to Prerender in the same way. Go into Google Search Console, or even perform a manual site search in Google, to confirm that your website is being crawled and indexed correctly. Double check that the list you created in step 1 is all being displayed in Google. You may encounter some inconsistencies between ScreamingFrog and Google, or between DeepCrawl and Google, that can alert you to other issues on the site.

4) Constantly monitor and track performance.

Though this should be a staple for any SEO operation, it is doubly important for an Angular client. In our time working with this client, we have had pages suddenly stop being crawled, we’ve had all traffic from Safari disappear overnight, we’ve had infinite recursive loops, and more. Always, always, always track the organic traffic to the site, the keyword rankings, and any other relevant metrics that would alert you to a problem. These problems will come up suddenly and unexpectedly, and not addressing them quickly can lead to a major loss of traffic.

Results

Over the course of our engagement with this client, we have seen some tremendous SEO gains. The chart below shows Organic Traffic growth from last year until this year:

We’ve also seen some strong keyword ranking gains over the course of our engagement as well:

SEO for Angular is not impossible. Don’t believe Google when they tell you they know what they’re doing, and be prepared to employ some non-traditional SEO techniques. However, if you follow our guide from above, you have every reason to believe you can be successful here too.

SEO How-To for AngularJS Websites and Apps is an original blog post first published on Go Fish Digital.

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Well, truth be told, no one knows for sure.  Google (in typical fashion) hasn’t shared the details.  But we here at Go Fish Digital have done a lot of research and experimentation, and we have a pretty good idea of where, how and why Google creates KPs.  Here’s what we know.

There are 2 main KP types

There are two types of knowledge panels: brand and local.  Brand panels contain general entity information including social profiles, product descriptions, and the entity’s creation date, among others.  Local panels contain locally focused details including locations, building addresses, Yelp pages and reviews.

Here’s an example of a real estate company’s local KP.  You’ll notice it shows photos, contact info, reviews and a “People also searched for” section.

It’s generally easier to prompt Google to display a local panel for your business rather than a brand panel.  In fact, if you have a verified company Google+ page and your website is old enough, you may already see a local KP when you search for your company name.

Here’s an example of a brand KP from a company in the same industry.  Unlike the local KP, the brand KP includes a logo, a Wikipedia summary, key organizational information, and interestingly enough, no reviews.

Google usually requires a few more verification signs and trust signals before it decides to display a brand KP.  A few of the trust signals that Google most frequently relies upon are outlined below.

Sometimes, Google will display a brand KP or a local KP depending on what was searched.  For example, typing in “Verizon Laurel, MD” yields the local KP on the left, but typing in “Verizon” only yields the brand KP on the right.

As you can see, the more localized your search gets, the more likely it is that Google (understandably) will serve up a local KP.  So, keep in mind that it’s unlikely that you’ll be able to replace your local KPs with brand KPs for all searches.  But “Verizon” gets far more searches than “Verizon Laurel, MD” so the KPs visibility in those localized searches

Many data sources are scraped, but not all information is displayed

Google frequently scrapes information from online databases, social profiles, and other websites when creating its knowledge panels.  Here are 5 databases we’ve identified that Google relies on to populate KPs:

• Wikipedia – Wikipedia is an online encyclopedia.  Google frequently scrapes Wikipedia entries when building the KP.
• Structured Data – Schema markup on a website that gives Google instructions on what the date and text on a page mean.
• G+ Page – Google+ is Google’s social media platform and is used by Google when forming both brand and local KPs.
• Freebase – Freebase is an online database.  It is not as large as Wikipedia, but it is still a large source of structured data.  Freebase entered read-only mode in early 2015, so the database is no longer editable.
• Wikidata – Wikidata is a structured database that is maintained by Wikimedia, the same company that runs Wikipedia.

KPs have a lot of positive side effects

Adding a knowledge panel for branded searches helps bury the ads on the right side of the search result.  These AdWords ads are typically from your competitors, and generating a KP for your brand pushes these down below the fold, and in many cases Google ceases to include the sidebar ads altogether.

Additionally, one of the most effective ways to reduce the visibility of negative Google+ reviews in branded search results is to switch Google from showing a local knowledge panel to a brand panel. A brand knowledge panel does not focus on the local aspects of a business (their address, phone number, hours, and reviews), but rather focuses on more important things for a brand – what they do, who their leadership is, what their social profiles are, etc.  You’ll note that the panel for Century 21 shown above does not display any reviews or star ratings.  This is a big win if you’re company is combating negative Google+ reviews.

KPs also come with risk

Making sure your organization is listed in the KP data sources above has the potential to create some negative side effects.  For example, creating a Wikidata profile will be very simple as long as you have the reliable sources, but creating a Wikipedia page could potentially be far more complex.  Because Wikipedia can be edited by anyone, including detractors with their own agendas, setting up a Wikipedia page could do some harm. Editors frequently add negative elements to company Wikipedia pages and sometimes add entire “Controversy” sections.  Here is an example of such a section from Susan G. Komen Foundation’s Wikipedia page:

Take a moment and evaluate whether the upside of pursuing a brand KP outweighs the potential downside before you start building out your company profiles. You can do this by assessing all of the reliable sources that exist for your brand, determining the weight of any negative content they contain, and deciding if the potential for that information to be included in Wikipedia is worth the risk when weighed against the upside of generating a KP.

We created the following flow chart, which contains a likelihood percentage for each option, to help our clients with that deliberation process:

How do I get a brand KP?

So, what should you do to get a brand KP created for your organization?  We recommend following these steps:

1. Find someone to create your Wikipedia page or learn about the Wikipedia ecosystem and create it yourself
2. Find someone to add your organization’s info to Wikidata or learn about the Wikidata ecosystem (which is very similar to Wikipedia’s) and create it yourself
3. Create a Google My Business page for your organization and verify it
4. Add structured data to your website
5. Take stock of your competitors to see which ones have brand KPs vs. local KPs and which ones have neither.  We use a spreadsheet to see where there’s overlap between competitors with brand KPs (e.g. they all have a Wikipedia page, Google+, and Twitter profiles) and where there are holes.  You can then try to copy everything that your brand KP competitor has done.  Here’s a template we created that you’re free to use: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1bJLY4AxRylA_waDVvyCgPxS2yxH7DHyZx1w7uJxFflU/edit?usp=sharing
6. Generate online reviews on sites like Yelp, Google My Business, or industry specific sites reviewcounsel.org.

Google has its own schedule, so don’t be disheartened if your changes don’t make a difference overnight.  In our experience, KPs can take weeks to months to show up.  Sometimes they don’t show up at all, especially if the website isn’t old enough or there’s not enough signals to tell Google your organization is important.

How to Create a Knowledge Panel for Your Organization is an original blog post first published on Go Fish Digital.

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Despite these challenges, our marketing campaigns for Attentiv were successful.  So successful in fact, that I’ve now been invited to speak about the Attentiv marketing campaign several times just in the last couple months.  Now I’m putting my strategy out there as a resource.  Hopefully you’ll find it useful!

My strategy can be broken down into 3 main parts.

1. Testing Channels.  
2. Focusing on High-Value Content.  
3. Amplifying Opportunities.

When you put everything together, the goal is to test your potential marketing channels to find the most effective channel for your campaign, create some high-value content for that channel, and then amplify the heck out of any opportunities that arise from the content you create.

(1) Test Channels

Marketing experiments have been invaluable for me.  Because every situation, every company, every news cycle is different, I have to test things out before I invest time and resources.  So, before I start a marketing campaign, I test out each of the channels I could potentially use to promote my campaign.  For me, most of these channels have been internet-based – like social media, online forums, or web publications – but print and other media could be good options as well.

As part of my channel tests, I also cycle through different genres of content to make sure I have data on what types of content do best.  For Attentiv, I started with funny content, posting jokes about meetings, making fun of bosses, etc., and I saw a decent response.  I tested “How To” guides next, and then news items after that.  But, it wasn’t until I started posting statistics as my content that I saw a really strong response.  Because I had run these tests, I figured out that our best channel was online forums and our best content was statistics that fit our brand message.

(2) High-Value Content

Now that my experiments were finished,  it was time to start building my content.  Luckily, I knew right where to focus because I had tested my channels earlier.  All of our content was focused towards our most successful channels, in this case, statistics and online forums.  I did some research, looking into census data and business studies done by psychology professors and business schools.  I found some amazing statistics on meetings that aligned incredibly well with Attentiv’s brand message.

Next, I had to make the statistics I had found viral-ready.  I’ve found that viral-readiness is incredibly key for most marketing.  Lots of content gets the opportunity to go viral, it just isn’t shareable enough.  Having small, interesting snippets of information that can appeal to different personality types and backgrounds leads to far more shares and a much higher likelihood for a viral hit.

So, I took these stats and packaged them together into small, ultra-shareable snippets.  I wanted the content to be “snackable” – where people could browse through and share the parts of my content that they found most interesting.  To accomplish this, I created several small images instead of one large infographic.  One image said “63% of meetings are conducted without a pre-planned agenda” and another “$338 – the average cost of a meeting”.  By breaking what could have been a lengthy image into bite-size pieces, I made it much more likely that my content would go viral if it was given the opportunity.

The success of the Attentiv campaign also came down to the fact that the content was high in value.  I couldn’t cheat my way to massive marketing success.  I might fool 10 people or maybe even 100, but there was no way I could convince 100,000 people to share my content unless it was actually good stuff.  So, we painstakingly made the piece something worthwhile, that people would revisit and other writers would link to.  Something high enough in value that people would want to share it, just to make themselves look smart.

The next goal was to cultivate what I like to call a “get the ball rolling” base.  I like to compare marketing to rolling a snowball down a hill.  If your campaign can gain momentum, it can build bigger and bigger as it rolls forward just like a snowball.  But someone has to make the small ball of snow and push it down the hill to get it started.  

This is where the “get the ball rolling” base comes in.  Every campaign needs an initial push, and for us that came from coworkers, friends and family.  We gathered about 30 contacts who could retweet, like and upvote the content we sent them.  These people were critical to getting our campaign going, and I’ll never do another campaign again without some base to build from.

(3) Amplify Opportunities

If things go well at all after you start promoting your content, additional marketing opportunities will crop up.  These can take the form of a news outlet picking up your content, a blogger using one of your images, or even a tweet from someone with a lot of followers.  The key is to be aware of when these opportunities arise and take advantage of them as soon as you can.  One of the best ways to I found to track potential opportunities is web analytics (I use Google Analytics).  If a big spike of visitors starts coming from Twitter, it’s likely an influencer tweeted out your content.  If visitors start rolling in from the Washington Post, it’s likely they picked up your campaign.

It’s tempting to sit back and high five when your content gets picked up, your snowball is getting bigger after all.  But the ball could really get going if you start promoting these new opportunities.  I always assume that people are terrible at promoting their own content (the truth is they often are.  Maybe they’ll tweet it, but that’s it).  So, apply the same channel strategies that made your content a success to this outside content.

This means that sometimes you have to make their message more shareable.  Attentiv was once covered by a news outlet whose article tagline stated “New startup comes out of DC”.  Completely true, but completely boring.  So we dug through the article and found a line that stated “This software enables introverts in the workplace”.  Introverts were a hot topic at the time because of the success of Susan Cain’s book Quiet – much more interesting, much more shareable.  So when we started promoting the article on social forums, we titled our posts “This software enables introverts in the workplace” and it led to some strong engagement.  In fact, the author of the piece contacted me afterwards and asked that I keep in touch because she wanted to write about us again.  I’m sure she saw the shares and visit count climbing as we were promoting it.

Conclusion

This type of approach probably doesn’t fit every campaign.  If you’re Nike or Toyota or if you have $1 billion dollars in ad spend, there’s likely a better strategy for you.  But, if you’re planning on creating interest in a new or low-profile business, you can’t go wrong with these 3 steps.  Remember to (1) test your potential marketing channels to find the most effective channel for your campaign, (2) create some high-value content for that channel, and then (3) amplify any opportunities that arise from the content you create.

Have you had something go viral?  What makes your content more shareable?  Let me know in the comments below.

How to Build your Digital Presence from Scratch is an original blog post first published on Go Fish Digital.

One of the requirements for the website was that it must be PCI compliant.  PCI is short for Payment Card Industry, and specifically the PCI Data Security Standard.  It is a set of server, website, and business requirements to ensure that the website and credit card data are secure from hackers.  The major merchant account websites that businesses use to process credit card payments require their customers have PCI compliant websites.

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We did a lot of searching for information on PCI compliance for WP E-commerce, but there wasn’t a whole lot out there to find.  So, I thought I’d document some of the things that helped us pass the client’s SecurityMetrics automated scan.

Website Architecture

Here are a few particulars you should know about our website architecture:

• Server: Hosting was on a VPS from a well-known VPS hosting company. It is the only website hosted on this particular virtual machine.
• Operating System: We are running the latest version of a well known Linux OS.  For security reasons, I won’t give it here, but its a popular one.
• WordPress: We are running the later version of WordPress – (at this time, WP 3.2.1, although we’ll continually upgrade as new versions are released)
• WP e-Commerce Plug-in: For security reasons, I don’t want to give the WP E-commerce version we are using (but its inconsequential for gaining PCI compliance anyway)
• WP Plugins: We run a couple of popular WP plug-ins, but not a ton.

Selective SSL

We used the WordPress plug-in HTTPS for WordPress to put SSL on specific pages.  This meant that the site was simply in ‘HTTP’ most of the time your were browsing, but as soon as you viewed your cart or hit a login page, it switched to ‘HTTPS’ and stayed that way.  We found this met our needs nicely as we didn’t really feel it was necessary to put the whole site under ‘HTTPS’. Configuring it this way was PCI compliant, and didn’t add the extra weight of being a completely ‘HTTPS’ website.

Automated PCI Compliance Scan

Our client hired SecurityMetrics to review their PCI compliance.  The client fell into ‘PCI Compliance Level 4’, which basically meant that they had to pass the automated security scan and a business assessment test to be deemed compliant.  The first time the site was run through the scan it failed – but none of the flagged issues had anything to do with the website software; all issues were server setting and versioning related.  We were able to fix most of the issues pretty quickly by hand.  Again, we didn’t have to change anything on WordPress or WP e-commerce.

There were two issues that we couldn’t resolve.  The scan didn’t like the versions of SSH and SSL that we were running, and because it wasn’t a straightforward upgrade for this OS, we filed a request to SecurityMetrics for them to manually approve our versions.  We were using an up-to-date OS, and the vulnerabilities they associated with the versions of SSH and SSL we were using had been fixed via backports in the OS.  To appeal, we simply wrote up a 3 page document with some supporting information and screenshots.  After exchanging a couple of emails with them (they were very slow to respond… about once every 7 days), they manually lowered the remaining issues and it passed!

Getting Your Site PCI Compliant

What we learned is that getting a WP e-commerce site PCI compliant is much more about your server settings than it is about the software.  I will say that you won’t get your site certified if you are using cheap or shared hosting.  You are really going to need root access (full control) over your box to adjust any settings that the scan takes issue with.  Assume that it will take you around 3-10 hours to get your site tweaked just right for the automated scan.  Good luck, and let us know if you have any experiences with WP e-commerce to share!

If you are having trouble getting your website PCI compliant, we can help.  Shoot a note to info@gofishdigital.com.

PCI Compliance for WP-Ecommerce is an original blog post first published on Go Fish Digital.

Think of it this way…

If you were opening up a little shop or store, would you choose to open it up on prime real estate with lots of foot traffic walking by?  Or would you choose to build it in the mountains, hidden in a forest?  SEO is what puts you on the busy corner. SEO puts you in front of the people ready to buy your product and look at your advertising.  It plucks you from obscurity.

A recent project we undertook was to increase the traffic of a blog that has been around for about a year and a half.  The site is Maciverse.com and they are a blog that covers information, tips, tricks, and how-to’s for Apple products. From ipods to mac laptops and desktops, they cover a wide range of topics relating to Apple.

The site has a massive amount of content and receives most of its traffic through the search engines.  Our goal was to develop ways to increase the amount of traffic it receives and to look for opportunities to increase the site’s monetization strategies.

We began with our “Must Have” SEO package where we do in-depth research to uncover opportunities for quick-wins and important keywords that can quickly drive large amounts of traffic to the site.  Once these words and phrases were identified, we worked on special content that targeted these words and then pushed the posts onto the site.  We developed a strategy for long-term success for sustained growth and built out a monetization plan to ensure that traffic and revenue will continue to grow well into 2010.

Related Content:

• Shopify SEO Services
• Franchise SEO Agency
• WordPress SEO Services

Some quick numbers:

We began our work with Maciverse around the middle of July.  Here are the traffic stats over the past 2 months:

Unique Visitors

July – 31K
August – 45K

This was an improvement of over 50% in just one month.   Month-over-month numbers for the past year have demonstrated an average increase of 7%, so the large jump was directly attributable to the SEO work provided by Go Fish Digital.

Revenue

While we need to hold the exact revenue numbers close to the chest, income at the site increased 77%.  This is due to the increase in traffic as well as an improvement in monetization based on our recommendations.

This project was, overall, very successful.  The guys at Maciverse are great and we had a good time doing the work and research to expose their blog to the masses.  The quality content was always there… we’re glad that now a large number of visitors are, too.

SEO Effectiveness – Research and ROI is an original blog post first published on Go Fish Digital.