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Content Marketing
SEO: What to Base Content Decisions On
September 3, 2017 • Jill Kocher Brown
Content is the first thing that comes to mind with search engine optimization. There is a process, however, to creating and optimizing strong content. The process involves four separate tasks: data ...
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SEO
Why Do Companies Underfund SEO?
August 25, 2017 • Jill Kocher Brown
Search engine optimization is often underfunded and misunderstood. When resourced appropriately, however, it can produce a cycle of positive performance that keeps building. The most common reason that organizations tend to ...
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Analytics & Data
Measuring What Matters for SEO (Hint: It’s Not Rankings)
August 18, 2017 • Jill Kocher Brown
When measuring natural search performance, use the key performance indicators that matter to the bottom line. While each piece of data has its place in managing SEO, only visits and revenue ...
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Staffing
How to Hire for Ecommerce SEO
August 6, 2017 • Jill Kocher Brown
One of the hardest parts of search engine optimization is finding the right professional to manage it. Since there are no universal SEO accreditations, hiring comes down to a resumé
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Content Marketing
SEO: 8 Free Sources of Content Inspiration
July 28, 2017 • Jill Kocher Brown
One of the hardest aspects of providing meaningful content on ecommerce sites is trying to determine what your audience members read as they’re shopping. Coming up with ideas for new and ...
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User Experience
SEO: Design for People, Develop for Bots
July 21, 2017 • Jill Kocher Brown
One of the frequent reasons given for ignoring search engine optimization is this: “We’re not selling to bots, we’re selling to people.” This argument highlights an ignorance of the role ...
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Technical SEO
SEO: 7 Reasons to Use a Site Crawler
July 14, 2017 • Jill Kocher Brown
No matter how well you think you know your site, a crawler will always turn up something new. In some cases, it’s those things that you don’t know about that ...
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Schools & Resources
9 Trusted SEO Blogs
July 9, 2017 • Jill Kocher Brown
Search engine optimization is always changing, requiring constant investigation to keep up. One of the best ways to identify new trends, in addition to research and analysis on your own ...
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SEO
5 Scalable SEO Projects, for Faster Results
June 30, 2017 • Jill Kocher Brown
To maximize your search engine optimization budget, look for scalable projects that can improve natural search performance across the site with a single action. Scalable SEO tends to require a ...
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Staffing
6 Tips for Managing an SEO Team
June 23, 2017 • Jill Kocher Brown
Whether your search engine optimization team is in-house or at an agency, staying in touch with what they’re working on is critical. A team left to their own devices may ...
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SEO
SEO: 7 Questions to Fix Analysis Paralysis
June 16, 2017 • Jill Kocher Brown
Analysis paralysis, that tendency to want to find problems rather than resolve them, destroys your ability to grow the natural search channel. One of the hardest aspects of search engine optimization is ...
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SEO
How to Optimize for Voice Search in 5 Steps
June 9, 2017 • Jill Kocher Brown
Content sites may have a natural advantage in voice search. But ecommerce sites can garner visitors from voice searches, too. Follow these five steps to learn how to optimize your ...
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SEO
SEO: Voice Search Is Here. Are You Ready?
June 2, 2017 • Jill Kocher Brown
For search engine optimization, the implications of voice search are subtle, but increasingly important. In her 2017 Internet Trends report this week, Mary Meeker, partner at venture capital firm Kleiner ...
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SEO
SEO: Keep Rankings Up while Site Is Down
May 26, 2017 • Jill Kocher Brown
Website outages are disruptive enough to business without having to worry about your natural search performance. How you handle server outages and site downtime can impact the length and severity ...
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Analytics & Data
Bad Product Data Hurts SEO
May 19, 2017 • Jill Kocher Brown
The quality of product data impacts natural search performance on ecommerce sites, far beyond whether meta tags are optimized. Product data isn’t traditionally thought of as contributing to SEO, but ...
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Technical SEO
SEO: Your Faceted Navigation Could Be Better
May 15, 2017 • Jill Kocher Brown
Faceted navigation drives traffic and sales for valuable long-tail search phrases because it applies increasingly refined attributes to shoppers’ searches for their desired products. Optimizing your faceted navigation is the ...
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Technical SEO
SEO: Faceted Navigation Is Your Biggest Opportunity
May 7, 2017 • Jill Kocher Brown
Regardless of what your ecommerce site sells, the biggest opportunity for improving your natural search performance is likely optimizing faceted navigation. Also known as faceted or guided search, faceted navigation applies ...
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Technical SEO
SEO: Creating the Perfect URL, or Not
April 28, 2017 • Jill Kocher Brown
URLs are what search engines use to aggregate all the data they collect regarding a page of content. For search engine optimization, what’s in a URL can be the difference ...
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Technical SEO
SEO: Harnessing Domain Authority across Multiple Websites
April 24, 2017 • Jill Kocher Brown
Every domain acquires authority based largely on the quality and quantity of links pointing to it. When your business model necessitates multiple domains, harness them in a mutually beneficial linking ...
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SEO
SEO How-to, Part 1: Why Do You Need It?
January 27, 2017 • Jill Kocher Brown
Search engine optimization is part science and part art. But the foundational principles of SEO are straightforward. Still, before I can address how to practice SEO, I should explain what it is and why it’s important.
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Link Building
SEO: Be Community-centric to Earn Links
January 20, 2017 • Jill Kocher Brown
Search engine optimization requires a unique blend of relevance and authority. Relevance is more easily mastered, but authority requires the community of people that is interested in the things you ...
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Technical SEO
SEO: Google Rolls Out Mobile Popup Penalty
January 13, 2017 • Jill Kocher Brown
Right on schedule, this week Google began rolling out its intrusive mobile popup penalty, aimed at reducing the number of results that take mobile searchers to pages that use large ...
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SEO
Embedding SEO into Your Organization
January 6, 2017 • Jill Kocher Brown
Achieving even the simplest improvements to an ecommerce site can feel like a Herculean effort. Effective search engine optimization requires buy in and participation from your entire organization, from the top down ...
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Staffing
7 Signs Your SEO Agency Isn’t Working for You
December 23, 2016 • Jill Kocher Brown
Do you wonder whether you’re really getting your money’s worth from your search engine optimization agency? It’s one of the biggest concerns with contracting any agency. These seven signs will ...
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Link Building
SEO Study: Backlinks Decline as Ranking Factor
December 16, 2016 • Jill Kocher Brown
In a practice as complex and seemingly indecipherable as search engine optimization, the clues gleaned from large ranking factor studies can shine some light. To this end, Searchmetrics, a search ...
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User Experience
SEO: What Google’s Mobile-first Index Means for Ecommerce
November 18, 2016 • Jill Kocher Brown
Google started experimenting with a mobile-first index two weeks ago, making the mobile ecommerce experience even more critical to natural search performance. Shopping is a core behavior for mobile users. Last ...
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Technical SEO
SEO: To Drive Shoppers, Let the Bots In
November 6, 2016 • Jill Kocher Brown
We rely on search engines to drive shoppers to our sites to purchase our products. Before the shoppers can come, however, you have to let the bots in. It sounds more ...
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SEO
SEO Checklist: 16 Monthly Tasks to Manage Performance
October 28, 2016 • Jill Kocher Brown
Search engine optimization is not a one-time project. If you’re not managing SEO performance and improvements continually, your site won’t remain competitive in natural search — you’ll lose rankings, clicks,
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User Experience
SEO: Rethinking Mobile Search, for Ecommerce
October 21, 2016 • Jill Kocher Brown
Smartphones are fast becoming a search marketer’s best friend — or biggest concern. More than half of all searches on Google are conducted on a smartphone. In this critical holiday ...
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Technical SEO
SEO: Accelerated Mobile Pages for Ecommerce
October 14, 2016 • Jill Kocher Brown
Google’s Accelerated Mobile Pages protocol makes mobile sites faster. Faster sites typically see lower bounce rates, higher time-on-site numbers, and higher conversion rates. AMP also benefits natural search performance. Smartphone users want speed.