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Analytics & Data
Measuring SEO Success: Challenging, but Necessary
July 21, 2009 • Jill Kocher Brown
Measuring the increased traffic and sales from a search-engine-optimization initiative is among the most challenging issues site owners face. Frequently, when I’m starting a new SEO program with a client, the seemingly simple question of “What’s your goal?” is met with a pause. It’s not...
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SEO Tools
SEO: Where Is Blended Search for Ecommerce Queries?
June 17, 2009 • Jill Kocher Brown
When the concept of blended search was introduced, the search engine optimization (SEO) industry and ecommerce retailers got very excited. By optimizing the images and video content that many sites already produce, search engines were adding visually appealing content to the standard 10...
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SEO Tools
SEO: “Speak” to the Search Engine Spiders
May 19, 2009 • Jill Kocher Brown
Search engines are like translators. With no more than a couple of words entered into the search box, they attempt to translate a word or phrase into the searcher’s meaning or intent and compare it to the millions of potential matches in their indices. But the less understood and even...
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SEO Tools
SEO: Try Surfing Like a Search Engine Spider
April 15, 2009 • Jill Kocher Brown
I’m a visual learner. I need to see and interact with things to understand them. It therefore helps me to mimic the behavior of search engine spiders when I’m digging into a site for the first time to review its search engine optimization issues. I like to think of it as “being the bot....
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SEO Tools
Measuring SEO Performance
March 17, 2009 • Jill Kocher Brown
Measuring success in search engine optimization can typically be done in four ways. “Indexation” measurements will determine if a search engine has properly identified all of your site’s pages. “Backlink” measurements will show the number of internal and external links that point to you...
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Keyword Research
SEO: Estimating Sales Potential from Keywords and Phrases
February 19, 2009 • Jill Kocher Brown
The perception that search engine optimization is a limitless source of free traffic and sales is one reason that SEO campaigns sometimes fail to live up to expectations. Yes, SEO efforts can deliver excellent returns on investment. But how much expected return is realistic? This articl...