Jill Kocher Brown

Articles by: Jill Kocher Brown

Jill Kocher Brown

Jill Kocher Brown is a writer and search engine optimization expert in Chicago. She has been living and breathing search engine optimization since 2005, and has been in digital marketing since 1996.

Jill cut her digital teeth at Intel, managing the home page and corporate sections of Intel.com. After that, Jill managed and developed ecommerce SEO consulting practices at Netconcepts and Covario, served as Groupon’s first in-house SEO director, and pioneered IBM's SEO consulting practice.

She now heads up the SEO practice at JumpFly, a marketing agency.

Jill holds a B.A. in Communications and American Studies from Stanford University. Email JIll.

SEO
SEO: 10 FAQs for Internal Links

March 9, 2021 • Jill Kocher Brown

Internal links benefit search engine optimization. But knowing how to use them and understanding their value is not always clear. What follows are 10 frequently asked questions for internal-link management for SEO.
SEO
10 SEO Tips for Podcasts

February 23, 2021 • Jill Kocher Brown

Podcasts have gone mainstream — 37 percent of Americans over the age of 12 listen to at least one podcast per month. But podcasts are often poorly optimized for search engines. Drive more organic search traffic to your podcast with these 10 tips.
SEO
SEO: Common Fixes to Core Web Vitals

February 9, 2021 • Jill Kocher Brown

Google stated in November that Core Web Vitals would become a ranking signal in May 2021. When Google announces such a change, heed the warning. The sooner you prepare, the better the chance of preserving or improving your organic search traffic.
SEO
SEO: Excellent Content Moves Shoppers through the Funnel

November 16, 2020 • Jill Kocher Brown

Informational content such as buyers’ guides and how-to instructions can lure shoppers to your site while they’re in research mode. There, they could complete an action that delivers immediate or future value to your business. Examples include signing up for a newsletter, requesting more info, or the ultimate goal: purchasing a product.
SEO
SEO: Google’s Product Knowledge Panels Drive Impressions (but Not for Amazon)

November 9, 2020 • Jill Kocher Brown

Every merchant wants to beat Amazon in Google's organic search listings. The easiest way? Upload data for placement in Google’s product knowledge panel. Product knowledge panels contain information you’d typically find on a product detail page, such as a product description, images, and reviews.
SEO
SEO: What Google’s New Passage Indexing Means for Ecommerce

November 5, 2020 • Jill Kocher Brown

In its never-ending quest to improve search results, Google is extending natural language processing to "passage indexing," ranking individual sentences or phrases within a page. Google addressed this latest update in an October 15 blog post. The update will impact an estimated 7 percent of its search queries worldwide.
SEO
Mobile Site Design Impacts Organic Search Rankings

October 26, 2020 • Jill Kocher Brown

The design of a mobile website impacts its ability to rank in organic search results. Mobile design controls the availability and readability of text, the usability of navigational elements, and even access to entire pages that are critical to organic performance.
SEO
SEO: How to Move Skydivers through the Funnel

October 20, 2020 • Jill Kocher Brown

What happens when consumers parachute from organic search results and land on the page Google thinks is the most personally relevant? They skip as much as 95 percent of your prepared journey.
SEO
SEO: 5 Tips to Convert Visitors to Buyers

October 13, 2020 • Jill Kocher Brown

Search engine optimization focuses on driving consumers to your site. But traffic alone doesn't pay the bills. Success depends on converting those visitors to customers. Use these five tips to convert more searchers into buyers.
SEO
‘Domain Age Impacts Rankings’ (and 8 Other SEO Myths)

October 5, 2020 • Jill Kocher Brown

Many myths surround the complex signals that search engines use to determine organic rankings. In this post, I'll debunk nine such myths and share the four factors that matter.
Keyword Research
SEO: How to Target High-demand Keywords (or Not)

September 28, 2020 • Jill Kocher Brown

Search engine optimization often has lofty goals, such as ranking on page one for a high-demand phrase. How can you reach a seemingly impossible objective? The sites that rank on the first page of the search results are Google's assessment of the best options.
SEO
7 Google Analytics Tips for Measuring Organic Search

September 23, 2020 • Jill Kocher Brown

Search engine optimization relies on the ability to measure performance. Google Analytics can make the task easier. What follows are seven tips to help.
SEO
SEO: 9 Tips for Brand-friendly Content

September 8, 2020 • Jill Kocher Brown

Branded marketing content and excellent organic search rankings are not mutually exclusive. Content is among the most subjective aspects of search engine optimization. It has also become the most important. And the best content is unique, well-written, and relevant. Here are nine tips to get started.
On-page SEO
SEO: 7 Ways to Optimize Category Pages

September 2, 2020 • Jill Kocher Brown

Category pages target the keywords that consumers search for most frequently. But optimizing category pages for organic search rankings can be difficult, as default category templates on ecommerce platforms tend to hold less text than other pages. What follows are seven category-page elements that improve rankings on highly competitive keywords.
SEO
SEO: Where to Start When You Need to Fix Everything

August 25, 2020 • Jill Kocher Brown

Optimizing a site for organic search can be overwhelming when you’re staring at a blank slate. Where do you start? The good news is that there are three definitive steps when you're getting started.
SEO Tools
SEO How-to, Part 12: Technical Tools

August 18, 2020 • Jill Kocher Brown

Implementing a search engine optimization strategy typically requires tools that can be dangerous when mishandled. Knowing those tools — when to use them and how — can make all the difference. This is the 12th and last post in my “SEO How-to” series.
Technical SEO
SEO How-to, Part 11: Mitigating Risk

August 10, 2020 • Jill Kocher Brown

The risk to organic search performance from altering a website usually comes from changes to content, linking structures, or underlying technology. With careful planning and execution, however, you can mitigate the risk from those changes and increase the likelihood of better rankings. This is the 11th installment in my "SEO How-to" series
Technical SEO
SEO How-to, Part 10: Redesigns, Migrations, URL Changes

August 4, 2020 • Jill Kocher Brown

Changes in content, linking, and URL structure can dramatically impact organic search performance. Thus it's critical to understand the search engine risks and rewards from a new design before you start developing it. This is the 10th installment in my "SEO How-to" series.
SEO
SEO How-to, Part 9: Diagnosing Crawler Issues

July 27, 2020 • Jill Kocher Brown

Search engines must crawl and index your site before it can rank in organic search. Thus optimizing your content is pointless if search engines cannot access it. This is the ninth installment in my “SEO How-to” series.
SEO
SEO How-to, Part 8: Architecture and Internal Linking

July 20, 2020 • Jill Kocher Brown

The structure of your ecommerce site — categories, subcategories, attributes — heavily impacts search engine optimization. This is the eighth installment in my “SEO How-to” series.
Keyword Research
SEO How-to, Part 7: Mapping Keywords to Content

July 13, 2020 • Jill Kocher Brown

Keyword research is the process of identifying the words that consumers use to search for your products on Google and other search engines. Keyword mapping assigns those terms to pages on your site. This is the seventh installment in my "SEO How-to" series.
On-page SEO
SEO How-to, Part 6: Optimizing On-page Elements

July 3, 2020 • Jill Kocher Brown

Keyword research can help improve your organic search performance. Search engines attempt to sync the words and intent of consumers' queries with web pages. Ecommerce merchants should therefore align their pages using the right keywords to convey the proper intent.
Keyword Research
SEO How-to, Part 5: Analyzing Keyword Data

June 19, 2020 • Jill Kocher Brown

Keyword research is a search engine optimization tactic to identify the words and phrases of consumers who are looking for the types of products and services that your company sells. In this post, I'll cover four steps: seeding keyword research, collecting the data, organizing it in my free keyword analysis template in Google Sheets, and analyzing it to understand intent and demand.
Keyword Research
SEO How-to, Part 4: Keyword Research Concepts

June 3, 2020 • Jill Kocher Brown

Keyword research is the process of analyzing the search-engine queries of real people. That data — a window into the desires of searchers — is a gold mine for search engine optimization.
SEO
SEO How-to, Part 3: Strategy and Planning

May 29, 2020 • Jill Kocher Brown

The planning phase of search engine optimization involves identifying a strategy and roadmap to reach your goals. The process can be daunting. This post is the third installment in my “SEO How-to” series.
Technical SEO
SEO How-to, Part 2: Understanding Search Engines

May 21, 2020 • Jill Kocher Brown

Nearly half of shoppers turn to Google before deciding what to buy and where to buy it. Understanding how Google and other search engines work can help you choose which optimization strategies to apply. This post is the second installment in my "SEO How-to" series.
SEO
SEO How-to, Part 1: Why Use It?

May 13, 2020 • Jill Kocher Brown

This post begins a weekly primer in SEO, with the goal of addressing all foundational aspects. In the end, you’ll be able to practice SEO more confidently and converse with others regarding important SEO challenges and opportunities.
Google Ads
Google Brings Back Free Shopping Listings

April 30, 2020 • Jill Kocher Brown

This week, after a 12-year hiatus, Google reintroduced free listings to the shopping tab of search result pages. These free listings potentially fill a need that has been festering for years, enabling more ecommerce sites to compete in shopping searches.
SEO
SEO: Target Informational Rankings with Pillars and Clusters

April 21, 2020 • Jill Kocher Brown

Unless it's a major brand, an ecommerce site’s category and product pages may not rank organically for informational search queries. Creating pillar and cluster pages can help.
SEO
SEO: Auditing Backlinks with Google Search Console

April 12, 2020 • Jill Kocher Brown

The best backlinks are the ones search engines know about. Four reports in Google Search Console help analyze the strength of your backlink portfolio. Search engines use backlinks — the links from other sites to yours — in their algorithms as measures of value and authority.