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Staffing
How to Hire an SEO Pro, for Ecommerce
December 4, 2015 • Jill Kocher Brown
Hiring search engine optimization professionals is tricky. SEO requires a rare combination of business, marketing, creative, and technical skills. For an ecommerce business, where a significant portion of customer acquisition ...
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SEO
SEO: The Value of Deep Integration
November 27, 2015 • Jill Kocher Brown
It’s the season that makes or breaks many retailers’ annual revenue expectations. At the end of November, most sites have frozen their code bases and marketers are watching their digital ...
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Keyword Research
SEO: The Best URLs Contain Keywords
November 20, 2015 • Jill Kocher Brown
Most ecommerce sites that perform well in organic search have jumped on the keyword URL bandwagon. Optimizing URLs to contain keywords is good for search engine optimization and also helps ...
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SEO
SEO: How Google PageRank Works on an Ecommerce Site
November 6, 2015 • Jill Kocher Brown
Larry Page and Sergey Brin revolutionized the web and the ability to drive ecommerce with a citation-based algorithm called PageRank. Based on the concept of scientific citations as a method ...
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Content Marketing
6 SEO Tips for Content Marketing, for Ecommerce
October 30, 2015 • Jill Kocher Brown
Content is king. Search engine optimization professionals have been preaching this for years. However, content needs to be created and integrated carefully to actually drive organic search performance. Stick to Your ...
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Social Media
SEO: YouTube Doubles Down for Search and Content
October 5, 2015 • Jill Kocher Brown
YouTube is more than a venue for cute kittens and dancing children. It’s a powerful social search engine with an engaged audience. Any company, with any size budget, can use ...
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SEO
SEO: New Google My Business App Makes Local Search Easier
September 14, 2015 • Jill Kocher Brown
For companies with physical locations and ecommerce sites, driving customers into physical stores can be just as important as selling online. Organic search can be a powerful channel for both. Google just ...
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Technical SEO
SEO: Metadata Can Optimize Search Results
September 6, 2015 • Jill Kocher Brown
Marketers tend to find metadata annoying, like tiny gnats that you’d rather just swat away. Maybe you don’t know where they come from; maybe you don’t know what purpose they serve. But metadata and structured data
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SEO
SEO: Rankings Don’t Indicate Performance
August 28, 2015 • Jill Kocher Brown
Owners and managers are obsessed with rankings. They search on Google for something, they see an immediate result, and they make assumptions on their search engine optimization program’s performance.
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Technical SEO
SEO: Using Metadata to Drive Traffic
August 23, 2015 • Jill Kocher Brown
Metadata can do amazing things for search engine optimization — from removing duplicate content to promoting your site within the search engines. This is my second post on using metadata to improve your site's search engine ranking.
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Technical SEO
Panda 4.2 Complicates SEO for Ecommerce Sites
August 7, 2015 • Jill Kocher Brown
Google released Panda 4.2, the latest Panda algorithm update, in mid-July. If you didn’t feel an impact on your site’s performance on July 18, you’re not alone. Panda 4.2 is Google’s latest algorithm update
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On-page SEO
SEO Review: Hi-Health’s Local Search Mostly Good
July 31, 2015 • Jill Kocher Brown
Hi-Health is a retailer of nutritional products in Phoenix, Ariz. It operates roughly 40 brick-and-mortar stores and a robust ecommerce site. Hi-Health volunteered for SEO reviews of both: local search and ecommerce.
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On-page SEO
SEO Review: Hi-Health.com Good; Could Be Better
July 24, 2015 • Jill Kocher Brown
Every so often an ecommerce business is brave enough to raise its hand for a public review of its search engine optimization performance. Hi-Health, a retailer of nutritional products, is today’s brave business. Hi-Health is doubly interesting
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Technical SEO
SEO: Header Navigation Critical to Success
July 10, 2015 • Jill Kocher Brown
Search engine optimization relies heavily on site-wide navigational elements to broadcast authority signals to the search engines. Pages linked to in the header, footer, and
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On-page SEO
SEO: For Conversions, Every Page Is a Landing Page
June 15, 2015 • Jill Kocher Brown
Every page on your site is a landing page for organic search. Whether searchers convert — or even make the next click deeper into your site — depends on myriad ...
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SEO
4 Reasons Your Company Ignores SEO (And How to Correct)
June 8, 2015 • Jill Kocher Brown
Search engine optimization has evolved into a pervasive discipline. It must work with every aspect of digital marketing and development to be successful. With this evolution, some of us SEO ...
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SEO
SEO: Google Search Leaning to ‘App First’?
May 31, 2015 • Jill Kocher Brown
Google is moving closer to an app-first mentality with its mobile search experience. This week’s Google I/O conference featured several mobile app announcements that will have ramifications for mobile search. Google ...
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SEO
SEO: Study Shows Incremental Clicks with Branded SEO Plus PPC
May 24, 2015 • Jill Kocher Brown
Bing Ads released more information this week on its study of the additive effect of paid search ads and organic search performance. According to Bing, one plus one really does ...
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SEO
SEO: How to Optimize Knowledge Graph for Your Brand
May 19, 2015 • Jill Kocher Brown
The Knowledge Graph is like a free billboard on Google’s search results. Maximizing the real estate your Knowledge Graph occupies will further dominate search results when customers search for your ...
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On-page SEO
SEO: Mobile Now Drives Majority of Google Searches
May 8, 2015 • Jill Kocher Brown
Google mobile searches surpassed desktop and tablet searches, the company announced this week. Ecommerce sites take notice – Google’s recent changes in mobile search for both websites and mobile apps ...
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Social Media
SEO: Google Plus Twitter Equals Stronger Search?
May 1, 2015 • Jill Kocher Brown
Amid the ruckus of Twitter’s lower-than-expected Q1 earnings and rumors that Google may buy Twitter, search marketers gained a little more insight into this year’s agreements between the two Internet ...
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SEO
SEO: ‘Mobilegeddon’ Is Here, Now What?
April 24, 2015 • Jill Kocher Brown
Google’s “mobile-friendly” algorithm update, dubbed “Mobilegeddon” by the search engine community, began rolling out Tuesday, April 21. Here’s what that means and what to do about it. What Is ‘Mobilegeddon’? The popular ...
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On-page SEO
SEO: Last-minute ‘Mobile-friendly’ Planning
April 17, 2015 • Jill Kocher Brown
After almost seven weeks of hand wringing in the ecommerce world, Google’s “mobile-friendly” algorithm update will go live on Tuesday, April 21. For the first time, Google will use mobile friendliness ...
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Analytics & Data
Essential SEO Data, to Manage Performance
April 12, 2015 • Jill Kocher Brown
It’s impossible to analyze historical data you don’t collect. In search engine optimization, much of the data you need to manage performance over time is only temporarily available. These temporary reports ...
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On-page SEO
SEO: Q&A for Google’s ‘Mobile-friendly’ Algorithm
April 3, 2015 • Jill Kocher Brown
Google’s “mobile friendly” algorithm update, to be released on April 21, has understandably created a major shift in the way ecommerce sites think about their mobile search optimization strategies. Announced over ...
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On-page SEO
SEO: How Google’s ‘Mobile-friendly’ Update Affects Performance
March 27, 2015 • Jill Kocher Brown
Google’s “mobile-friendly” algorithm update is big news. But how will it impact your ecommerce performance? On April 21, Google will begin rolling out a worldwide mobile-friendly algorithm update that will have ...
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Analytics & Data
SEO: Using Data to Drive Performance
March 20, 2015 • Jill Kocher Brown
Two weeks ago, in “SEO: Measuring Key Performance Indicators,” I discussed the importance of goal setting and key performance indicators in search engine optimization. Now it’s time to use the ...
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User Experience
SEO: Google to Make ‘Mobile-friendly’ a Ranking Signal
March 15, 2015 • Jill Kocher Brown
Do you have a mobile or responsive site? If not, on April 21 you may find it harder to rank in Google’s mobile search results. Google announced algorithm updates that will ...
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Analytics & Data
SEO: Measuring Key Performance Indicators
March 6, 2015 • Jill Kocher Brown
One of the most rewarding aspects of improving an ecommerce site is the ability to measure the bottom-line impact of your search engine optimization program. Conversion measurement is theoretically simple with ...
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Technical SEO
SEO: Using Rich Snippets to Increase Clicks
February 27, 2015 • Jill Kocher Brown
If you don’t win the click, you can’t make the sale. But if you don’t get noticed, you can’t win the click. Ecommerce sites need to take advantage of every option ...