Benjamin Boman

Professional Services & eCommerce Marketing

How to stop contact form spam on Shopify

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Contact forms make it easier for people to contact you without opening up Gmail, typing out your email and pressing send. It also helps protect your email from being picked up by spammers and email harvesters.

However, just as contact forms make it easy for customers to contact you, they also make it easier for others to spam you.

Unfortunately, Shopify’s native spam filtering software leaves much to be desired. For one client, we consistently received so much spam that we had to disable the contact form entirely.

However you can stop Shopify form spam by:

  1. Removing the form
  2. Using an externally provided contact form
  3. Installing spam protection plugins

1. Remove the form

If you aren’t looking for much customer contact, you may try removing the contact form entirely and spelling your email out in this fashion:

yourname (at) domainname (dot) com

2. Use a 3rd party form

Forms like Wufoo allow you to collect responses elsewhere, through another company’s email sever and spam filtering system.

3. Install a spam protection plugin (recommended)

Another option is to make use of a form protection plugin such as Shop Protector by HumanPresence.

While there are paid and unpaid versions, Shop Protector allows you to protect forms against spam by using HumanPresence’s AI which distinguishes human behaviour from robotic (read: spam) actions.

How to use Trello to manage multiple marketing projects

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Image source: Trello

With multiple channels and multiple agents or freelancers, managing the chaos of integrated marketing into a smooth, coordinated effort can be challenging.

While there are several techniques and tools to do this, one standout is through the use of project management software.

Trello, in particular, is extremely easy to use and is a fantastic and free (F&F) project management tool. It works like a drag and drop pinboard, with cards, lists and boards and users.

To use Trello to manage your projects:

  1. Create one unified board for your marketing effort, not several
  2. Create lists for backlog, approved, in progress, review/blocked, complete and reference cards
  3. Create one card for each project, or each part of a project if it is large
  4. Make use of checklists for each card to define deliverables
  5. Label cards with colours for better organisation and filtering
  6. Assign users and due dates

Phew, that was a lot of steps. Here is more detail on each below.

Create one board

It is tempting to ‘over-silo’ your project management efforts, by creating a board for each area of marketing or each project. For example, one board for social media and another for blogging.

I advise users to create just one board.

The reason is this. Often, users do not particularly enjoy the slightly additional effort required of maintaining admin work such as providing updates on projects.

With Trello and other project management systems, it is tempting for team members to ignore the movement or procedures of tasks in order to ‘just get on with it’.

However, if you create a single board, the actions of proactive users create an environment where not following the correct procedures is more visible. This can significantly encourage ‘dormant’ users to participate correctly.

Create lists

Once you have a board created, you should create a series of lists.

Strategic use of lists can create a workflow process that makes visualising and coordinating multiple projects and tasks easier to manage.

The set of lists I commonly use are:

  • Backlog: for tasks/projects that are not yet approved
  • Approved: for tasks that are ready to go and delegated
  • In progress: for tasks underway
  • Review/blocked: for tasks that require intervention, more resources, problem-solving or simply approval
  • Complete: for completed projects
  • Reference: for cards where you can enter details of commonly used resources, such as weblinks

The idea here is that project managers create tasks in the backlog and move them to the approved list when delegated.

At that point, team members or freelance agents can then move the tasks from in progress to complete (or blocked) as the work is underway. This gives the project manager the benefit of seeing the progress of a task without interrupting that particular person ‘just to know what’s happening’.

The other benefit here is that the blocked/review list summarises all the tasks that require input and attention for problem-solving or further resourcing.

Create cards

Another common temptation is to then fill these lists with hundreds of microtasks, such as ‘sign up for this product’.

The issue with this is that the board becomes far too long to give you a good visual oversight without heavy filtering.

A better alternative is to chunk up tasks into small projects, such as “March Newsletter” or smaller pieces of a larger project, e.g. “Create Wireframes for XYZ Website”.

Use checklists

While you are creating your tasks, try to take advantage of checklists as much as possible.

Checklists have two benefits.

One benefit is that checklists feel good to complete. And you can see this progress (both the project manager and team member) as work goes on.

The other benefit is that a project manager can ensure that a particular action has been thought of and not overlooked. It is much harder to argue that spell checks were forgotten if the item on the checklist was made clear and ticked off by the responsible person.

This benefit is extremely valuable for delicate tasks or tasks that require specific attention to details.

Add labels

With the board created, list series in place and cards on, you can now make use of labels.

Labels are colour tags that you can use to filter your projects. You could choose to label all tasks with a particular channel in one colour, such as email marketing or SEO.

It is not worth labeling tasks by a particular person and manager responsible, as this can be done through the assignment of users.

Assign users and deadlines

Finally, it is time to assign users and deadlines to your tasks.

To assign users, click on your card and choose the option to add team members from the list of users available.

For deadlines, add the due date to the task.

At this point, you may choose to brief the particular team member or agent on that task so they can begin production- moving that task to the ‘in progress’ column. Or ‘review/blocked’ if they have an issue, of course. 😉

Conclusion

Using this system you will be able to better manage multiple marketing projects under a single Trello board. This board should be:

  • Easy to comprehend
  • Simple to see what is currently in progress
  • Quick to identify blocks and approval items

Trello is free, and you can make an account here.

How SEO works for professional services

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How SEO works for professional service firms

SEO is great method for getting traffic, especially given some of the high cost per click prices for Adwords in certain industries like law.

Do a quick search about it on Google though and you’ll quickly find the information out there, quite indepth and great quality, is often broken up into fragments that make it hard to understand how it works.

In this article I will summarise how SEO works and how it can be put into practice by a professional service firm.

Which stream fits your firm?

SEO for professional services, like law firms, accountants, etc actually come in two streams: Local SEO and Organic SEO.

Each of these are different in their levers and can be applied in different situations at simultaneously. Understanding the scope and purpose of each will help you understand what kind of SEO you should be undertaking and what the moving parts are so that you can choose the service that’s effective for your firm.

Organic SEO

The first stream, is the traditional SEO and it works by investing into and optimising three parts:

  1. Technical setup

Technical setup means the technical foundation of your website. This includes things such as page load speed, site structure, whether you have HTTPs installed, etc.

  1. Onsite content optimisation, following keyword and content quality guidelines

Onsite content refers to the content actually on your website. This should follow some kind of Keyword Strategy (also becoming more of a topic or ‘intent’ strategy), which is brought to life through a content strategy. More than just text itself though, onsite factors include image alt tags, meta titles, and so on.

  1. Offsite factors, such as links, social shares, etc

Offsite factors refer to SEO elements coming from other websites. This includes links, shares and references.

When to use Organic SEO

Organic SEO is focused on the international or domestic market. For example, an national IP law firm would be focused on this type of SEO as they may cover an entire state or country.

This doesn’t mean that local firms can’t apply this type of SEO. It can be narrowed down to a specific area by optimising specific pages with narrow keywords. For example, “best family lawyer in AREA.”

Local SEO

The second stream is Local SEO, which focuses on ranking for a particular, usually small, geographic area.

The moving parts of Local SEO are:

  1. Effective keyword strategies

Keyword strategies in this instance means understanding searches in your area, the competition and creating a strategy that maximises your possibilities for ranking for the most relevant terms against your competition.

  1. Profile creation and optimisation, such as Google My Business

For profiles, here it means mainly Google My Business (A.k.a. GMB) profiles that show up for relevant local search terms. Seen a result in a special section on Google after searching “[service] near me”? This is a GMB listing.

  1. Reviews and Citations, which are listings of your business in relevant local media (See relevant Australian legal directories here)

Citations and reviews work similar to ‘off site’ factors in regular SEO. Citations mean mentions of your business’s name, address and phone number. Reviews are reviews on your profiles such as GMB and Facebook.

These points are the levers driving the results of localised searches on search engines, such as “family lawyer near me”.

When to use local SEO

Local SEO can be used on its own when the firm’s catchment area is local, such as particular suburbs or a particular city.

It would be less suitable for a firm targeting an entire country as the GMB listing would just not effective in influencing results for broad geographies.

This also doesn’t mean that bigger firms can’t use local SEO. Provided that they have enough of a local marketing (city/suburb) it would make sense to take advantage of Local SEO and Organic SEO.

How to put SEO into practice

Having read about the two types of SEO on offer, you will now need to know how best to implement it. Implementation difference between the two streams.

Organic SEO

Typically, Organic SEO follows these steps:

  1. Site audit and technical fixes

First off, you will want to make sure your site has the right foundation for further work. I like to check at least for the following:

  • CMS setup
  • Site and URL structure
  • Loading times
  • Backlink profile (do you have getting spammy or quality links?)
  • Internal link issues
  • Javascript errors
  • Mobile responsiveness
  • Index tags like cannonical and no-index tags
  • Schema markups
  • Penalty checks
  • Sitemap
  • Site security, blacklisting and HTTPs

And many other elements which influence your technical SEO.

You can engage SEO specialists (like an agency) to do this on your behalf or use some SEO tools. Personally, I find SEO tools to often be faulty or overall less thorough that doing an audit by hand. These tools, however, are essential in aiding a manual check.

  1. Keyword strategy

Once an audit has been completed and changes are implemented, you will need to devise a content strategy.

Typically a keyword strategy requires specialist experience and takes into account:

  • Your ranking objectives for certain terms or services
  • The relevant keywords associated to the above and your business
  • The level of competition for these keywords

To create a list of topics which you can create content to attract rankings.

The most basic approach here is to choose to create content for just the most useful phrases (high user intent + traffic). However, these topics will be the most competitive meaning that it will be more difficult for your page to rank for that topic.

Yes, I drew this.

A simple strategy to accommodate this is to then focus on multiple middle and ‘long tail’ articles, which have lower competition.

The goal here is that the culmination of traffic from these keywords will provide a better return on investment than competing for highly sought after terms.

A more advanced strategy still is to tackle both high competition keywords and long tail keywords through the use of Pillar Articles and Supporting Articles.

What are Pillar Articles?

Pillar pages are content heavy pages (4000+ words) with in-depth information and analysis, designed to contest high competition keywords.

These are often on the most valuable topics that multiple organisations are trying to rank for at the same time.

What are Supporting Articles?

Supporting articles are designed to answer long-tail keywords or topics.

These articles give you the benefit of ranking for lower competition keywords. Meanwhile, these articles can also support your pillar articles by linking back to them and driving traffic towards the main topic.

Where to source keywords

Keywords can be sourced from generating your own list of relevant terms, researching competitor’s ranking keywords and analyise their level of competition.

Useful tools:

Using the above, you will be able to devise your keyword strategy with a list of keywords/topics for both pillar and support articles.

Developing your keyword strategy:

Again, the SEO specialist or agency will be able to develop a compelling keyword strategy for you after having completed your site audit and initial optimisations.

  1. Content writing and development

With the topics now selected, you can now begin writing and posting your content. Content creation can be completed in-house or by specialist content writers and SEO agencies.

Content must be SEO optimised, however, and this includes:

  • Page titles
  • Meta descriptions (to increase click throughs)
  • Images with proper descriptions
  • Images with alt tags
  • etc

This element of SEO is relatively straightforward compared to other steps.

  1. Content promotion and link building

Posting content will start to bring some organic traffic over time. However, don’t leave it to chance. Promote your content to your email list and look to build tasteful links back to your pages from quality sites (known as link building) as this has been shown to be a major determining factor for increasing the rankings of your content.

Link building is often a time intensive process and can be outsourced to contractors, however rates for a single quality link start from $150.

Local SEO

This will be added in a future update…

Conclusion

Invest in the right SEO for your situation to make sure your marketing budget is spent most effectively.

Thinking about getting SEO for your firm but not sure about your particular circumstances? Feel free to reach out to talk through your particular situation and I will be happy to share with you some ways you can move forward with an effective SEO solution.