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Content Marketing
10 SEO Rules for Ecommerce Content Marketing
October 7, 2016 • Jill Kocher Brown
Content marketing and search engine optimization are interdependent. When planned and executed properly, content can greatly improve your natural search performance. Follow these 10 rules to successfully blend SEO needs ...
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Technical SEO
SEO: Reclaiming Links to Deleted Pages
October 2, 2016 • Jill Kocher Brown
When pages on your site go away, their link authority is wasted. But you can harvest that precious link authority and redirect it to other pages on your site, those ...
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SEO
SEO: Google’s Algorithm Hasn’t Changed, or Has It?
September 23, 2016 • Jill Kocher Brown
September has been a big month for unofficial Google algorithm changes. Business owners are seeing significant movement in both Google’s core search results and “local pack” search results, though Google ...
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Keyword Research
SEO: Google Limits Keyword Data to Advertisers Only
September 16, 2016 • Jill Kocher Brown
Keywords and topics are central to contextual relevance, a primary ranking factor for search engines. In the wake of the changes to Google’s Keyword Planner, the natural search industry’s go-to ...
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Technical SEO
SEO: Simplifying Navigation Cuts Performance
September 9, 2016 • Jill Kocher Brown
The trend toward simplicity in web design is affecting navigation. The impact on search engine optimization of navigation changes can be staggering. Navigation isn’t just a way for shoppers to navigate.
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On-page SEO
SEO: Google’s Mobile Update to Impact Interstitials, Pop-ups
September 2, 2016 • Jill Kocher Brown
Google will update its mobile-friendly search algorithm in January 2017 to make smartphone content visibility a ranking signal. Sites that display “intrusive interstitials” — pop-up boxes, mainly — that impact ...
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Analytics & Data
SEO: Measuring Performance of the Long Tail
August 26, 2016 • Jill Kocher Brown
The long tail should drive most of the natural search performance for ecommerce companies. But whether it actually does is another matter. Don’t assume that the long tail is working for you ...
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SEO
SEO: Why Your Long Tail Isn’t Long
August 19, 2016 • Jill Kocher Brown
The long tail of natural search should drive more traffic and sales than the head. Unfortunately, a site’s strategy, architecture, and implementation often cut the long tail short of its full ...
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Keyword Research
SEO: How to Maximize the Long Tail
August 12, 2016 • Jill Kocher Brown
Ecommerce sites are naturally suited to target the long tail of organic search performance. How you optimize your site determines how long its tail could be. The long tail of search ...
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On-page SEO
SEO: Every Page Is an Entry Page
August 5, 2016 • Jill Kocher Brown
Every page of your site is an entry page for natural search. Are all of your pages ready to welcome searchers? All shoppers want something. They may not want to buy ...
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Content Marketing
SEO: Creating Great Content for Ecommerce
July 29, 2016 • Jill Kocher Brown
Creating great content is hard. Creating it so that it also benefits search engine optimization isn’t that much more difficult. My last two articles, “To Improve SEO, Understand How It ...
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Link Building
SEO: Content Is King but Links Are Gold
July 22, 2016 • Jill Kocher Brown
Creating compelling, customer-centric content isn’t enough to win rankings and shoppers. Without a strong internal linking structure, even the best content will still fail to perform in natural search. The three ...
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Schools & Resources
To Improve SEO, Understand How It Works
July 15, 2016 • Jill Kocher Brown
Search engine optimization isn’t a mystical dark art. It boils down to signals of relevance and authority. Understanding the signals that search engines interpret as relevance and authority is key ...
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Technical SEO
3 Server Errors That Drain SEO
July 8, 2016 • Jill Kocher Brown
Servers are the foundation of the web, but their archaic status codes have a big impact on search engine optimization that few marketers understand well enough. Three types of server ...
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Amazon & Marketplaces
SEO: Most Online Shoppers Start at Amazon and Google, Study Says
July 1, 2016 • Jill Kocher Brown
When searching for products online, Amazon and Google are the leading places to start, according to a study released this week. Thirty-eight percent of shoppers polled reported starting their shopping ...
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Google Ads
SEO: How to Combat Google’s Ad Increase
April 1, 2016 • Jill Kocher Brown
In the wake of Google’s move to increase ads at the top of the search results pages while removing side-rail ads, many are focusing on the impact on paid advertising ...
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Technical SEO
SEO: How Search Engines Work
March 27, 2016 • Jill Kocher Brown
Search engines trawl the web, sifting through billions of data points to serve up information in a fraction of a second. The access to instant information we’ve come to take ...
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SEO
SEO: Getting More vs. Losing Ground
March 11, 2016 • Jill Kocher Brown
Every company needs more of something. Maybe your company’s goals focus on more customers. Or maybe it’s more conversions. Whether it’s more sales, more leads, more registrations, more items sold ...
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Content Marketing
SEO: Content Optimization Checklist
March 4, 2016 • Jill Kocher Brown
Content enables consumers to find your pages in search results. But all of the compelling content your team spends so much time planning, designing, writing, and developing could be invisible to ...
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Technical SEO
SEO: AMP for Ecommerce
February 26, 2016 • Jill Kocher Brown
News on the mobile web is now four times faster, thanks to Google’s Accelerated Mobile Pages. AMP, as the project is known, is targeted at Google mobile searchers looking for long-form ...
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SEO Tools
For SEO Time Travel, Use Wayback Machine
February 21, 2016 • Jill Kocher Brown
Which pages your site promotes as the most important is critical for search engine optimization. Remembering the details of past internal linking structures is impossible, unless you use the Wayback Machine ...
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SEO
SEO: Continuous Improvement vs. 1-time Campaigns
February 12, 2016 • Jill Kocher Brown
With pressure to support a business’s overall marketing initiatives, it’s easy to lose sight of the actions needed to improve organic search performance. Most of the marketing team in an ecommerce company is ...
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Keyword Research
SEO: Using Keyword Research to Better Your Business
February 5, 2016 • Jill Kocher Brown
Which products and attributes do your shoppers want most? How could your navigation help consumers find what they want faster? What content areas should you focus on? Where should you ...
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SEO
For SEO Success, Build into Core of Company
January 29, 2016 • Jill Kocher Brown
Search engine optimization isn’t a project you can do once. For lasting success, SEO needs to be built into the core of how you manage your ecommerce business. Fifteen years ago ...
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Technical SEO
SEO: 9 Reasons to Crawl Your Ecommerce Site
January 22, 2016 • Jill Kocher Brown
Every search marketing professional should have a crawler in her arsenal of tools. Organic search’s first and most important rule is that search engines must be able to crawl to a ...
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SEO
404 Error Pages Serve 2 Purposes: SEO and User Satisfaction
January 15, 2016 • Jill Kocher Brown
Friendly 404 error pages have two basic components: the 404 server header status required to manage indexation on search engines and the friendly design required to protect the user’s experience ...
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SEO Tools
6 Free Android Apps for SEO
January 8, 2016 • Jill Kocher Brown
Put your Android phone to work for search engine optimization. These free Android apps will help you monitor your SEO performance and add critical insights in meetings, when you’re away ...
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SEO
SEO: Prepare Now for 2016 Holiday
December 27, 2015 • Jill Kocher Brown
Analyze 2015’s holiday search marketing performance before you do anything in 2016. Search engine optimization attempts to improve past organic search performance. You must know how your site performed this year ...
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On-page SEO
SEO: Which Pages to Optimize First?
December 18, 2015 • Jill Kocher Brown
Deciding which pages to optimize for search engines can so paralyze marketers that they sometimes end up optimizing nothing. To optimize a page, edit the text that search engines place the most priority on:
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SEO
9 ‘Naughty or Nice’ SEO Practices
December 11, 2015 • Jill Kocher Brown
The holidays are upon us and the opportunity to make large-scale organic search performance changes is for the most part past. As my kids talk about Santa’s visit and who has been ...