Ann Smarty - Practical Ecommerce

Articles by: Ann Smarty

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Ann Smarty

Ann Smarty is the brand and community manager at Internet Marketing Ninjas and the founder of Viral Content Bee. Ann's search engine optimization career began in 2010. She is the former editor-in-chief of Search Engine Journal and contributor to prominent search and social blogs, including Small Business Trends and Mashable.

Ann is also a frequent speaker at Pubcon and host of the Twitter chat #vcbuzz.

On-page SEO
How to Fix Orphan Pages for SEO

November 24, 2022 • Ann Smarty

Pages with no internal backlinks can harm overall organic search rankings. Here's how to discover, analyze, and fix orphan and near-orphan pages.
On-page SEO
SEO and Interstitials

November 17, 2022 • Ann Smarty

Popups on a website drive email signups and revenue. They can also disrupt users' experiences, running afoul of Google's ranking algorithms.
Technical SEO
SEO: Answer Boxes vs. Featured Snippets

November 10, 2022 • Ann Smarty

Featured snippets are traffic generators. Answer boxes are not. Here's the difference.
SEO
Anatomy of Google’s Organic Search Snippets

November 3, 2022 • Ann Smarty

Google's standard organic snippets have evolved over the years, but three elements remain constant: title, URL, and description. Here's how to optimize them for more clicks.
SEO Tools
SEO Tools for Assessing Used Domain Names

October 27, 2022 • Ann Smarty

Buying a second-hand domain name can be risky for SEO. Here are three tools to uncover a domain's history.
SEO Tools
3 Tools to Build, Validate Schema Markup

October 20, 2022 • Ann Smarty

Structured data markup from Schema.org is the de-facto industry standard — and increasingly important to Google. Here are tools for implementing, testing, and improving.
SEO Tools
5 Tools to Extract Data from Google’s SERPs

October 13, 2022 • Ann Smarty

An analysis of Google's search results can offer insights as to why one page ranks above another. Here are handy tools for that task.
On-page SEO
7 Steps to On-site Video SEO

October 6, 2022 • Ann Smarty

Videos appear in Google's search results in multiple sections. Here's how to optimize on-site videos for top organic rankings.
On-page SEO
How Images Help Overall SEO

September 29, 2022 • Ann Smarty

Optimizing images for Google helps overall rankings, not just Image search. Here's how.
Technical SEO
SEO for Sitelinks

September 22, 2022 • Ann Smarty

Organic sitelinks expand a listing's prominence in search results. But optimizing for sitelinks is frequently unclear. Here's what we know.
On-page SEO
5 Browser Extensions for On-page SEO

September 14, 2022 • Ann Smarty

Broken links, nofollow attributes, anchor text, structured data — all impact organic search rankings. Here are five handy (and free) extensions to make monitoring quick and easy.
Technical SEO
4 SEO Opportunities in Google Search Console

September 8, 2022 • Ann Smarty

Duplicate content, unknown keywords, poor click rates, and structured data errors — all represent opportunities to improve organic traffic.
Technical SEO
FAQs for ‘Video pages’ in Search Console

August 29, 2022 • Ann Smarty

Google's new "Video pages" report in Search Console has generated many questions from users. Contributor Ann Smarty addresses four of those questions in this helpful post.
Keyword Research
SEO: Keyword Research for a New Site

August 23, 2022 • Ann Smarty

A new site has no history of search queries that drive traffic and sales. But it can still research and optimize keywords. Here's how.
Keyword Research
SEO: How to Assess Keyword Difficulty

August 18, 2022 • Ann Smarty

Optimizing for keywords can improve a page's organic rankings. But the competition for keywords varies. Here's how to tell which ones are worth the effort.
Technical SEO
SEO for Animated GIFs

August 11, 2022 • Ann Smarty

Animated GIFs can provide unique, crawlable page content, boosting organic search rankings. But GIFs can also harm rankings if poorly executed. We explain.
SEO Tools
6 Keyword Tools for Video SEO

August 4, 2022 • Ann Smarty

The intent of consumers searching for videos often differs from searches of other content types. Ecommerce merchants should optimize for both. We explain.
Technical SEO
SEO for Featured Snippets

July 28, 2022 • Ann Smarty

Featured snippets appear at the top of Google's organic search results. Optimizing for snippets is different than for standard listings. Here's how.
On-page SEO
SEO: 4 Ways to Surface Shopify Pages

July 21, 2022 • Ann Smarty

Product pages on ecommerce sites can get buried in the navigation, making them difficult for search engines to access. Here's how to surface deep pages on Shopify.
SEO Tools
SEO: WordPress Plugins to Surface Older Posts

July 14, 2022 • Ann Smarty

Posts in an active blog fade into the archives. The result is no internal links from new content — and less visibility. Here's how WordPress owners can keep older content prominent.
SEO Tools
5 Tools to Monitor Your SEO Competitors

July 7, 2022 • Ann Smarty

Looking to monitor your organic search competitors? Here are five handy (and affordable) tools to track rankings, content updates, links, and more.
SEO Tools
7 Free Chrome Extensions for SEO

June 30, 2022 • Ann Smarty

Chrome extensions can streamline keyword research, analytics tracking, competitor analysis, and more. Contributor Ann Smarty lists her seven favorite Chrome extensions for SEO.
Amazon & Marketplaces
SEO: Amazon Keyword Research Tools

June 23, 2022 • Ann Smarty

Consumers conduct more product searches on Amazon than on any other site, including Google. Hence understanding those search terms on Amazon informs merchants not just on that platform, but for Google optimization, too.
SEO Tools
5 Rank Tracking Tools for Organic Search

June 16, 2022 • Ann Smarty

Monitoring rankings remains the best way to track organic search performance. In this piece, we list five helpful tools to track your site's positions and your competitors'.
SEO Tools
My 5 Favorite SEO Newsletters

June 9, 2022 • Ann Smarty

Staying informed on the latest search engine optimization tactics doesn't have to take a lot of time. Here are five newsletters that will keep you updated quickly and succinctly.
SEO Tools
Local SEO: 9 Free Tools

June 2, 2022 • Ann Smarty

Consumers increasingly use the internet to locate and scrutinize local businesses before visiting. Thus SEO for brick-and-mortar retailers is critical for walk-in traffic.
Technical SEO
SEO: 2 Good Ways to Remove Duplicate Content, and 8 Bad Ones

May 26, 2022 • Ann Smarty

Duplicate content is not subject to a Google penalty, but it does split link equity and thus impact rankings. We explain in this all-new update to a 2019 post.
Keyword Research
How Keyword Clustering Powers SEO

May 19, 2022 • Ann Smarty

Keyword lists for SEO are often cluttered and seemingly endless. "Clustering" can help by grouping keywords by a common modifier.
SEO Tools
3 Keyword Tools for Search Intent

May 12, 2022 • Ann Smarty

Optimizing content for organic rankings requires knowing how Google will interpret searchers' intent — informational, commercial, or navigational.
SEO Tools
Free SEO Tools for Do-it-yourself Analysis

May 5, 2022 • Ann Smarty

The ability to fix basic SEO glitches can save time and money. Here are five free tools to help.