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SEO
Stalking Competitors’ SEO Tactics
January 20, 2010 • Jill Kocher Brown
Despite my contention that Internet marketers need to stop obsessing about rankings, an examination of the SEO tactics of competitors that outrank your site can be extremely enlightening. Stalking a competitor's SEO tactics can uncover content optimization and link building opportunitie...
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SEO
SEO: Capture More Search Traffic with Rich Snippets
December 16, 2009 • Jill Kocher Brown
The difference between a snippet and a rich snippet is the difference between just showing up at a party and showing up in style. Showing up in style can ensure you get the attention you want. For an ecommerce merchant, "the party" is a search engine's results page. A snippet is your U...
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SEO
SEO: Forgotten Content Can Damage Search Performance
November 17, 2009 • Jill Kocher Brown
Sometimes a site’s own past dampens its bright SEO future. The forgotten designs, old campaigns, and abandoned domains that accumulate unnoticed in a web server can have a negative impact on a site’s ability to rank and drive natural search-referred traffic and sales. Search engines ret...
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SEO
SEO: There Is No Duplicate Content Penalty
October 15, 2009 • Jill Kocher Brown
There is a long held belief that search engines – namely Google – penalize websites that duplicate content or produce material that is largely the same as other sites on the Internet. But, I’m here to tell you, The Duplicate Content Penalty is a myth. Think about it this way. If a page...
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SEO
SEO: Search Engine Rankings Vary Among Searchers
September 16, 2009 • Jill Kocher Brown
Rankings have long been a valued metric in search marketing. After all, it's easy to monitor and seems like a really important measure. However, if you really want to measure the effectiveness of your SEO campaign, stop obsessing about rankings. Proactively changing the focus of your c...
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SEO
Five SEO Mantras for Website Redesign
August 18, 2009 • Jill Kocher Brown
I’m often asked to make search engine optimization recommendations during a site’s redesign process. From the clients' points of view, they’re making a major investment and they need to safeguard their existing SEO success in addition to growing their natural, post-launch search traffic...
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SEO
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
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
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
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
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...