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Technical SEO
4 SEO Friends: Strategy, UX, Creative, Development
February 20, 2015 • Jill Kocher Brown
Effective search engine optimization requires cross-discipline collaboration. Make friends or forge strong working relationships with these key stakeholders to ensure that SEO needs are met at every stage of site ...
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User Experience
SEO: How Google Decides If Consumers Can Trust You
February 15, 2015 • Jill Kocher Brown
Consumers base purchase decisions in part on trust. Google is working on ways to algorithmically determine trust, in an attempt to send searchers to the best sites. Think about how you ...
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Technical SEO
SEO: Google Improves Crawling for Geotargeted Sites
January 30, 2015 • Jill Kocher Brown
Ecommerce sites that use geotargeting to serve different content to customers in different countries have faced challenges with organic search. On Wednesday, Google announced its efforts to overcome these challenges,
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On-page SEO
SEO: Impact of Words, Fields in a CMS
January 9, 2015 • Jill Kocher Brown
Sometimes the connection between the words pasted into the content management system and the impact they have on search engine optimization isn’t very clear. As a result, writers often aren’t ...
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SEO
SEO: Google Makes Penguin Algorithm More Slippery
December 12, 2014 • Jill Kocher Brown
Diagnosing a site’s Google ranking penalties just became more difficult. Penguin, Google’s link-spam-fighting algorithm, will now be continuously optimized instead of semi-regular with announced update releases. The buzz around Google’s Penguin ...
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Technical SEO
SEO Technical Requirements Checklist, for Ecommerce
December 5, 2014 • Jill Kocher Brown
In “SEO 201, Part 5: Evaluating Ecommerce Platforms,” I listed basic SEO needs to assist in the selection of an ecommerce platform. This article will go further, listing technical requirements ...
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Amazon & Marketplaces
SEO: Optimizing Product Content on Amazon
November 14, 2014 • Jill Kocher Brown
In “SEO: The Case for Optimizing Amazon,” my article last week, I reviewed the growing importance of optimizing products for Amazon’s massive internal search engine. In this article, I’ll describe ...
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Amazon & Marketplaces
SEO: The Case for Optimizing Amazon
November 7, 2014 • Jill Kocher Brown
Some ecommerce businesses, especially those that manufacture the products they sell online or acquire their products at a deep discount, are experimenting with optimizing on Amazon alongside their existing websites.
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Keyword Research
SEO: Prioritizing Keywords and Content
November 2, 2014 • Jill Kocher Brown
With limited resources and a vast sea of keywords and content that need optimization, some marketers need to prioritize the search engine optimization work they do to focus solely on ...
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Keyword Research
SEO 201, Part 7: Using Structured Data
October 24, 2014 • Jill Kocher Brown
This is the seventh, and final, installment of my “SEO 201″ series, following: “Part 1: Technical Rules”; “Part 2: Crawling and Indexing Barriers”; “Part 3: Enabling Search-engine Spiders”; “Part 4: Architecture Is Key”; “Part 5:
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Technical SEO
SEO 201, Part 6: Redesigns Impact Search Traffic
October 17, 2014 • Jill Kocher Brown
This is the sixth installment of my “SEO 201″ series, following: “Part 1: Technical Rules”; “Part 2: Crawling and Indexing Barriers”; “Part 3: Enabling Search-engine Spiders”; “Part 4: Architecture Is Key”; “Part 5: Evaluating Ecommerce ...
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Platforms & Apps
SEO 201, Part 5: Evaluating Ecommerce Platforms
October 10, 2014 • Jill Kocher Brown
This is the fifth installment of my “SEO 201″ series, following: “Part 1: Technical Rules”; “Part 2: Crawling and Indexing Barriers”; “Part 3: Enabling Search-engine Spiders”; “Part 4: Architecture Is Key.” All ecommerce platforms claim ...
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Technical SEO
SEO 201, Part 4: Architecture Is Key
October 3, 2014 • Jill Kocher Brown
This is the fourth installment of my “SEO 201” series, following: “Part 1: Technical Rules”; “Part 2: Crawling and Indexing Barriers”; “Part 3: Enabling Search-engine Spiders.” No matter which aspect of search engine optimization ...
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Link Building
SEO: How to Identify Low Quality Links
September 26, 2014 • Jill Kocher Brown
Links are the lifeblood of organic search. But the quality of those links can boost or kill a site’s rankings. This article suggests methods to determine the quality of in-bound ...
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Technical SEO
SEO 201, Part 3: Enabling Search-engine Crawlers
September 19, 2014 • Jill Kocher Brown
This is the third installment of my “SEO 201″ series, following: “Part 1: Technical Rules”; “Part 2: Crawling and Indexing Barriers.“ “SEO 201″ addresses technical, backend aspects of site architecture and organization. My ...
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Technical SEO
SEO 201, Part 2: Crawling and Indexing Barriers
September 12, 2014 • Jill Kocher Brown
In “SEO 201, Part 1: Technical Rules,” my article last week, I posited three technical rules that are critical to tapping into Google’s ultimate power as an influencer of your ...
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Technical SEO
SEO 201, Part 1: Technical Rules
September 5, 2014 • Jill Kocher Brown
In my 8-part “SEO 101” series, I addressed the basics of utilizing content on a website for search engines, including keyword research and optimization. With this article, I’ll start a ...
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User Experience
SEO: Mobile Devices Drive Future of Search
August 29, 2014 • Jill Kocher Brown
Smartphones and tablets are changing the way consumers search and purchase. With mobile device use catching up to and surpassing traditional computer use, organic search trends are rapidly changing as ...
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SEO
SEO: Google’s ‘Pigeon’ Update Impacts Local Businesses
August 15, 2014 • Jill Kocher Brown
Google released an algorithm update at the end of July intended to improve the relevance and accuracy of local search results. The update, dubbed Pigeon by search industry news publisher ...
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Technical SEO
SEO: Google Adds HTTPS Signals to Ranking Algorithm
August 8, 2014 • Jill Kocher Brown
Google has taken its obsession with security to a new level by including a preference for sites running SSL in its ranking algorithm. Starting slowly with less than one percent ...
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SEO
Google’s Mobile Search Warning Could Decrease Site Traffic
June 6, 2014 • Jill Kocher Brown
In its ongoing crusade to deliver the most beneficial search results, Google announced this week that it will warn searchers when a mobile URL redirects to the home page. Will ...
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Social Media
How Social Media Benefits SEO
May 30, 2014 • Jill Kocher Brown
Ten years ago, search engine optimization was fairly straightforward: Make sure the search engines can crawl your site, use the right keywords, and get lots of links. As the engines ...
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Technical SEO
Panda 4.0 Algorithm Update Rocks Google Search Results
May 23, 2014 • Jill Kocher Brown
Google released two algorithm updates this week targeted at removing low quality sites from its search results. Payday Loans and Panda both received major updates, with upwards of seven percent ...
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On-page SEO
SEO Depends on Page Names
May 16, 2014 • Jill Kocher Brown
Something as simple as the name of a page has an incredible impact on the optimization of that page in organic search. Platforms use page name data in so many ...
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SEO
SEO: Leverage Expert Authors for Ecommerce
May 9, 2014 • Jill Kocher Brown
Google is actively working on ways to decrease its reliance on links by its algorithms, including identifying and promoting content written by expert authors. While content sites are obvious beneficiaries of ...
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Social Media
Google+ Shake Up Doesn’t Kill SEO Benefit
May 2, 2014 • Jill Kocher Brown
With last week’s departure of Vic Gundotra, Google’s senior vice president of social, rumors are swirling about the demise of Google+. What does this mean to search marketers who have ...
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Keyword Research
Google Updates Keyword Planner with Dates, Devices
April 25, 2014 • Jill Kocher Brown
The depth of keyword data available to search marketers has varied widely over the last couple of years. This week, Google AdWords made several enhancements to its Keyword Planner tool ...
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On-page SEO
Mining Reviews for SEO Benefit
April 17, 2014 • Jill Kocher Brown
Customer reviews are an excellent way to inject unique content into your site to benefit search engine optimization while boosting shopper confidence at the same time. For SEO, reviews fall under ...
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Amazon & Marketplaces
SEO: Why Amazon’s Navigation Works So Well
April 11, 2014 • Jill Kocher Brown
Judging by the number of Google searches for which Amazon ranks, it’s easy to see that Amazon is doing a lot right when it comes to search engine optimization. It’s ...
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On-page SEO
Fixing SEO Conversion Woes on your Ecommerce Site
March 28, 2014 • Jill Kocher Brown
Does your natural search traffic convert poorly? There’s a reason, and you can do something about it. Searchers vs. Direct Visitors Direct visitors are different than searchers. Direct visitors type in your ...