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
4 Ways Google Defines ‘Quality’

August 8, 2019 • Jill Kocher Brown

One of the most frustrating elements of search engine optimization has been Google's attempt to address quality. Now we have Google’s definition of “quality.” In a blog post this week, Google listed 20 questions that determine quality, across four key areas.
Technical SEO
SEO Tips When URLs Differ for Mobile and Desktop

August 5, 2019 • Jill Kocher Brown

If you still have a separate mobile ecommerce site, meaning that you have different URLs for mobile and desktop, your search engine optimization requires extra effort.
SEO
Dissecting ‘Request a Quote’ in Google Search Results

July 26, 2019 • Jill Kocher Brown

Google is making it easier for businesses to collect leads. A new “Request a Quote” button is appearing in Knowledge Panels, the boxes on the right of search results.
Photography & Video
11 Steps to On-site Video SEO

July 21, 2019 • Jill Kocher Brown

Once you decide to invest in video, you still need to figure out how to get people to view and interact with it. That’s where search engine optimization comes into play. Follow these 11 steps to optimize your videos for organic search, to improve their ability to rank and drive views.
SEO
Negative SEO Is Not Your Problem

July 12, 2019 • Jill Kocher Brown

Webmasters cannot prevent negative SEO. Thus it creates much fear among ecommerce owners. But that fear is overrated and possibly unnecessary.
Technical SEO
SEO Checklist for Website Redesigns and Replatforms

July 7, 2019 • Jill Kocher Brown

Major website redesigns and replatforms can kill organic search traffic. Use this checklist to minimize the impact.
Customer Retention
Retargeting Improves Conversions from SEO

June 30, 2019 • Jill Kocher Brown

Retargeting turns visitor actions on your site or app into a second chance to capture a sale. It’s an excellent way to move top-of-funnel traffic from organic search to conversions.
User Experience
9 Ways UX Improves Rankings and Revenue

June 21, 2019 • Jill Kocher Brown

User experience impacts organic search performance. A positive UX reduces bounces and encourages visitors to browse and purchase. It drives ratings, referrals, and inbound links. These nine factors influence user experience and thus organic search traffic.
SEO
What’s the Value of SEO?

June 16, 2019 • Jill Kocher Brown

Here’s a look at the cost of optimizing a site for search engines, the value it drives, and the impact of not doing it. The average salary for a search-engine-optimization specialist is $65,000, according to Glassdoor. That’s before benefits and other internal costs.
Technical SEO
6 Tips to Win Google’s Answer Box

June 9, 2019 • Jill Kocher Brown

The answer box — Google calls it "featured snippet" — occupies prime real estate at the top of Google’s organic search results. Only ads appear higher. In this post, I'll review six tips on how to win the answer box.
Product Pages
SEO: Structured Data Markup for Ecommerce Product Pages

June 2, 2019 • Jill Kocher Brown

Structured data markup helps ecommerce merchants in two ways. First, it aids search engines in understanding the content and purpose of a web page. Second, it can enhance the appearance of an organic search listing, making it much more prominent.
Technical SEO
SEO: Can Ecommerce Sites Win the Answer Box?

May 26, 2019 • Jill Kocher Brown

The "answer box" is Google’s way of responding to questions directly from the top of the search results page. Can ecommerce sites win the answer box? Absolutely. But winning the answer box for their own brand searches is not as straightforward as it may seem.
On-page SEO
SEO: 4 Signs Your ‘Optimized’ Content Could Be Spam

May 19, 2019 • Jill Kocher Brown

In this post, I'll address four signs that your content could be over-optimized, risking a penalty or a rankings hit. Think about how your content could look to a human, not a search engine.
SEO
13 SEO Takeaways from Google’s 2019 State of the Union Address

May 12, 2019 • Jill Kocher Brown

Every year at the “State of the Union” address, representatives from Google Search announce new features, drop tips, and give hints to the things that matter to the company. What follows are my 13 takeaways from the 2019 address, which occurred last week.
Google Ads
Comparing SEO to PPC

May 3, 2019 • Jill Kocher Brown

Search engine optimization is different than pay-per-click advertising. While they share the goal of driving searchers to a website, you can’t expect the immediate results in SEO that paid search often produces. Likewise, approaching PPC with an SEO orientation misses opportunities.
Photography & Video
Optimizing Images for Google Search Results

April 26, 2019 • Jill Kocher Brown

Google search results now include images 34 percent of the time. Optimizing images for search engines is based on relevance to a keyword theme, as is optimizing textual content. For images, however, the lack of visible text means that the process is different.
SEO
Thinking about SEO Strategy

April 21, 2019 • Jill Kocher Brown

Think of your SEO strategy as a plan to grow your share of the pie. There are two options to increase your portion: (i) grow the size of the pie overall or (ii) take a larger piece from your competitors. Here are the three steps for getting more SEO pie.
Product Pages
SEO: Product Descriptions Are a Blind Spot for Ecommerce Merchants

April 14, 2019 • Jill Kocher Brown

Why does the ecommerce community have such a blind spot when it comes to unique product descriptions? Syndicated descriptions produce duplicate content. Why is duplicate product copy accepted so blindly? The answer depends on whether you’re the syndicator or the site using the syndicated content.
SEO Tools
SEO: 9 Content Optimization Tools

April 5, 2019 • Jill Kocher Brown

Contextual relevance in search engine optimization refers to how the content on a website aligns with searchers' words and phrases. These nine content optimization tools will take you from keyword research to written word to optimized copy.
SEO Tools
SEO: Using Lighthouse to Improve Site Speed

March 29, 2019 • Jill Kocher Brown

Site speed is tricky for search engine optimization practitioners. It’s a ranking signal for Google and a key factor in a customer's experience. But few SEO pros have the development chops to improve speed. One option is to use Google's Lighthouse, a site auditing tool.
Technical SEO
SEO: Lessons from Google’s ‘rel=prev/next’ Pagination Identifier

March 24, 2019 • Jill Kocher Brown

Search engine optimization professionals were caught off guard this week by Google’s admission that it hasn’t used its pagination identifier in “a number of years.” The admission reinforces the requirement ...
SEO
SEO: Google Launches Algorithm Update to Little Notice

March 17, 2019 • Jill Kocher Brown

Once or twice a year Google releases a broad core algorithm update. The March 12 update, called Florida 2, was typical: unannounced. Google acknowledged it only after industry leaders reached out with questions about performance changes they were seeing across a broad number of sites.
SEO
8 Ways to Revitalize Your SEO Program

March 8, 2019 • Jill Kocher Brown

Over time, your search engine optimization program grows weary and slows down. It may lose momentum so gradually you don't notice it’s happening. The good news is there are ways to revitalize a stalled SEO program. In this post, I will discuss eight of them.
Technical SEO
7 Ways to Integrate SEO with IT

March 4, 2019 • Jill Kocher Brown

Search engine optimization relies heavily on support from information technology personnel. Improving relationships and processes between the SEO and IT teams greases the skids so that support is in place before a critical need arises.
Staffing
9 Things to Do When Your SEO Pro Quits

February 22, 2019 • Jill Kocher Brown

An ecommerce company's search-engine-optimization pro will eventually leave. Here’s what to do next. First, ask her why. Make it clear that you want her feedback to make the program stronger.
Content Marketing
SEO: 9 Tips for Writing Great Content

February 15, 2019 • Jill Kocher Brown

Textual content enables search engines to understand your site. The words you choose should engage shoppers and boost your site's relevance to the keywords and phrases that consumers search for. If creating articles, blog posts, product descriptions, and other textual content strikes fear into your heart, try some of these tips.
Keyword Research
SEO: Free Keyword Research in 3 Steps

February 8, 2019 • Jill Kocher Brown

There are many expensive tools that claim to simplify and speed up the keyword research process. If you don’t have thousands of dollars in your budget, however, there’s always the old-school, free method.
SEO
How to Do a Competitive SEO Analysis

February 4, 2019 • Jill Kocher Brown

Keeping up with the Joneses in search engine optimization starts with clicking and scrolling in the search results. Copying competitors won’t help you outrank them — at best you’ll keep pace. Instead, identify what they’re doing well, and then do it better.
On-page SEO
Rise of Mobile Users Alters SEO Tactics

January 31, 2019 • Jill Kocher Brown

The percentage of U.S. searchers clicking on advertisements in Google search results is growing. Likewise, the percentage of visitors that click nothing is also growing. But the percentage of visitors that click natural search listings is shrinking.
SEO
SEO: 6 Things to Do When You Have Nothing to Do

January 18, 2019 • Jill Kocher Brown

Search engine optimization is self-directed. Unless you’re being managed by another practitioner who tells you what to do and when to do it, SEO can be difficult to plan. These six things can help fill your days with interesting work and deliver natural search value.