IndieCommunication: New Team Member, SEO Tips, and Password Security

Here’s the IndieCommunication e-newsletter for Friday, February 14:

A Big Welcome to IndieCommerce Specialist Courtney Karecki!

Courtney just joined the IndieCommerce team as our newest IndieCommerce Specialist. She’s currently in training but will be transitioning into customer support emails and phone calls over the coming weeks as she familiarizes herself with the IndieCommerce system. If you hear from Courtney, be sure to introduce yourself and tell her about your store.

Boosting the Visibility of Your Website in Google Search

It took just 60 days for sales and traffic to increase when two IndieCommerce bookstores applied search engine optimization (SEO) best practices to their websites. We’ve got a video, slides, an instruction booklet, and even consultants to help your store achieve similar results.

For those of you who were not able to attend the live Winter Institute Marketing Meetup on “Why SEO Matters to Your Marketing Plan,” the video recording is available in our Education Resources along with the PowerPoint presentation displayed during the session and the mentioned SEO checklist.

A written recap of the session is available via Bookselling This Week.

The session panelists were Ryan Quinn, ABA (White Plains, New York); Eileen McGervey, One More Page Books (Arlington, Virginia); Cassie Clemans, Roundabout Books (Bend, Oregon); and search engine optimization specialists Jordan Brannon and Cassandra Cross of Coalition Technologies (Culver City, California).

Coalition Technologies is offering to provide booksellers with a free audit and consultation, similar to the ones that were provided to the participating booksellers, and they are also available to field questions about most e-commerce platforms, email marketing, pay-per-click advertising, paid social media, and marketplaces. They can be reached at [email protected]; tell them you are an ABA member.

Password Policy Rollout Underway

As we mentioned in August, the IndieCommerce team has seen a sharp increase in attempted hacking activities directed specifically at store administrator accounts. The consequences of a hacker logging into an administrator account on your IndieCommerce or IndieLite site can be dire. To address this threat, on February 18, we will start implementing mandatory password changes and a number of character requirements for all store administrators. Over the next few months, we will be notifying stores that they need to make the required changes to their passwords; all administrators will need to change their password.

Booksellers are encouraged to send their thoughts, questions, or suggestions via e-mail to IndieCommerce staff at any time.

Past editions of IndieCommunication are available on the IndieCommerce Updates page on BookWeb.org.