Optimizing your site to show up in search engines is a critical part of growing your business. If done right, it can result in thousands of people visiting your site each month, bringing in sales that are not dependent on advertising dollars.

SEO is complicated. It also takes time—it won’t result in overnight traffic to your site, but it’s important to build the foundation for your site’s success and then work a little bit each week and each month to make improvements.

This guide has been especially written for online stores using Shopify. However, the principles apply no matter what platform you’re using.

There are two parts to SEO—onsite and offsite SEO.

This article will explain the basics of both onsite and offsite SEO, and I'll show you the exact strategies and tools I use to increase organic traffic to my sites and my clients' sites.

One of my most popular posts of all time is 11 top blogs you should follow as an ecommerce entrepreneur. That list was written back in 2013, and it's currently result #2 in Google when you search for "ecommerce blog," so I figured it's time for an update!

Here are the top ecommerce blogs I recommend you follow to stay on top of what's going on in the world of ecommerce. The blogs listed below will teach you loads of invaluable info about choosing an ecommerce niche,, conversion rate optimization, SEO, the latest tips and tricks for marketing your products, and lots more.

Podcasts are the most intimate and powerful form of media, in my opinion. Video is up there too, but one reason podcasts are so wonderful is that you don’t have to be sitting in one place, staring at a screen—you can be exercising, cleaning your house, driving, shopping, working, or whatever you normally do, and podcasts will be changing your life in the background.

The single habit that has had the greatest impact on who I am as a person, my income and career, and my mindset is listening to podcasts. 

If you want to take your business to the next level, learn a new language, study philosophy, or just become a more well-rounded and interesting person, you should be listening to podcasts on a daily basis.

I’ve listed to podcasts almost every day for the past 5 years, and they have absolutely changed my life for the better. Let me tell you how.

You're an Entrepreneur. A Freelancer. A Solopreneur. A general Badass. 

You're hungry and you've been chasing the dream: a thriving business that affords you the lifestyle some people have only dreamt about. 

With such ambitious dreams, it can be easy to become immersed in your business at the expense of your mental and physical health. 

The best entrepreneurs are the ones that recognize that their business is an extensions of themselves and that striving to be the best version of themselves is critical to their success. 

These four habits will ensure you never lose sight of what's most important to realizing your dreams: YOU.

You've launched your ecommerce site. Now what?

You've picked a niche, found suppliers, set up a website, and celebrated the opening of your new online store. Your hopes are high, and your excitement is through the roof. You are now officially an ecommerce entrepreneur!

But as you stare at your computer screen, waiting for orders to come rolling in, a question floats to the surface of your mind: How can I make my first sale? And my second? And how can I continue building my business into a thriving shop? What's next?

Lifestyle entrepreneur. Solopreneur. Digital nomad. Location-independent entrepreneur. Wantrepreneur?

My wife Ryan and I were laughing the other day at some of the buzzwords and made-up words that we see going around the interwebs these days. Whatever you call yourself, there's a growing community of people who have left the 9-5, started their own thing, and are now location-independent (or are working towards it). 

For the past few months, I've been saying that I would not use advertising (like PPC) as a primary method of driving traffic to my ecommerce site. I've been told by other ecommerce pros that as a dropshipper with relatively low margins, it would be difficult to spend money on advertising and still make a profit.

However, I've been experimenting with Facebook ads and Google PLAs, and I've made some surprising discoveries that I'm going to share with you as I continue to experiment and learn. Today I'll share some basic PPC principles and what I've learned through using Facebook ads, and then I'll update you in a future post on how the Google PLAs are going.

Who has time to read more blogs, right? With all of the blogs, podcasts, and books being thrown your way, you might not even feel like trying to fit more consumption into your life.

I feel the same way, but one thing I've learned over the past year or so is the importance of flooding my mind with the thoughts of people who I want to be like. There's a quote you've probably heard before by Charlie "Tremendous" Jones: “You will be the same person in five years as you are today except for the people you meet and the books you read.”

By carefully choosing blogs to read by great thinkers and inspirational writers, you have the chance to "meet" and be influenced by people in a way that will powerfully shape your growth as an entrepreneur.

Entrepreneurs are a different kind of people. They are never completely satisfied with the normal, acceptable lifestyle commonly called "successful" by the rest of society. This traditional "success" often includes a good job, a nice house with a 30-year mortgage, a couple of nice cars (on which it's considered OK to owe a lot of money), a few weeks of vacation every year from the job you don't really enjoy, etc.