Keyword Research Archives

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 ...

Keyword Research

SEO: The Best URLs Contain Keywords

November 20, 2015 • Jill Kocher Brown

Most ecommerce sites that perform well in organic search have jumped on the keyword URL bandwagon. Optimizing URLs to contain keywords is good for search engine optimization and also helps ...

Keyword Research

SEO: Prioritizing Keywords and Content

November 2, 2014 • Jill Kocher Brown

With limited resources and a vast sea of keywords and content that need optimization, some marketers need to prioritize the search engine optimization work they do to focus solely on ...

Keyword Research

SEO 201, Part 7: Using Structured Data

October 24, 2014 • Jill Kocher Brown

This is the seventh, and final, installment of my “SEO 201″ series, following: “Part 1: Technical Rules”; “Part 2: Crawling and Indexing Barriers”; “Part 3: Enabling Search-engine Spiders”; “Part 4: Architecture Is Key”; “Part 5:

Keyword Research

Google Updates Keyword Planner with Dates, Devices

April 25, 2014 • Jill Kocher Brown

The depth of keyword data available to search marketers has varied widely over the last couple of years. This week, Google AdWords made several enhancements to its Keyword Planner tool ...

Keyword Research

SEO: Getting More from Google’s Keyword Planner

March 21, 2014 • Jill Kocher Brown

Keyword research is the foundation of search engine optimization. Keyword data allows us to peek into consumers’ desires and analyze what they really want. Google AdWords Keyword Planner opens that window ...

Keyword Research

Understanding Google’s Keyword ‘Not Provided’ Data

September 27, 2013 • Jill Kocher Brown

Google quietly released major changes to its search product this month to, among other things, move toward encrypting all search activity. The move is touted as an effort to protect ...

Keyword Research

SEO: Is your Site Relevant for that Keyword?

September 13, 2013 • Jill Kocher Brown

Understanding the interplay between search relevance and intent can mean the difference between a well optimized site and a lot of time wasted chasing keywords for which you’ll never rank. Organic ...

Keyword Research

SEO: Using Google’s New Keyword Planner

July 19, 2013 • Jill Kocher Brown

Keywords are the foundation of search engine optimization. They’re what searchers type in Google’s search box, and what marketers incorporate into their web pages to attract searchers to their sites. Google recently launched a new tool that changes the way we research keywords: AdWords ...

Keyword Research

Using Keyword Research beyond SEO

November 30, 2012 • Jill Kocher Brown

Keyword research is one of the foundational pieces of search engine optimization because it illuminates the exact words real-life customers use to search for the products we sell. But why stop there? The insights that keyword research provides can inform other many other areas of the bu...

Keyword Research

Google Analytics: Overcoming ‘Not Provided’ Keywords

November 7, 2012 • Jaime Brugueras

What do you do when 36 percent of your traffic data is gone? For most of us, the answer is “panic.” After all, for an online business, traffic data and search-engine-optimization knowledge is essential. If you don’t understand the behavior of visitors to your website, then your business...

Keyword Research

SEO: Marshaling Your Keyword Army

October 12, 2012 • Jill Kocher Brown

Content optimization for search engines seems straightforward. You research the keywords that your customers use most frequently and you use them on your site in the places that matter most to search engine algorithms. But deciding which keywords to apply to individual pages when you’re...

Keyword Research

5 SEO Keyword Research Sources in Google

October 3, 2012 • Chris Silver Smith

Many search marketers are intimidated by the keyword research phase of search engine optimization. They falsely assume that it requires purchasing expensive subscriptions to tools, or hiring experts. However, Google provides a wealth of data that you can leverage if you know where to look. Read on for five fantastic sources of keyword ideas in Google itself.

Keyword Research

SEO: Using Excel for Keyword Analysis

August 17, 2012 • Jill Kocher Brown

Excel is the SEO tool I use most frequently. Excel helps me organize my thoughts, decide which keywords or pages to focus on, illustrate key concepts, and even draft rudimentary content. This article lists my favorite Excel formulas, menu items, and keyboard shortcuts for search engin...

Keyword Research

SEO Keywords: ‘Red Roses’ vs. ‘Roses Red’

June 22, 2012 • Jill Kocher Brown

Search engines are code-driven, logic-based pieces of software and hardware that know and do what they’re programmed to do: rank data gathered from crawling websites according to specific algorithms against searchers’ queries. Those algorithms based on keyword relevance prefer exact mat...

Keyword Research

SEO: How to Amplify Keyword Signals

May 11, 2012 • Jill Kocher Brown

Search engine optimization is all about "signal" and "amplification." The signal is simply using relevant keywords. Amplification is about how to use those keywords and encourage linking and sharing. Think of the keywords as the voice of a site and the amplification as a megaphone. The ...

Keyword Research

Optimizing a Page for Search Engines, Part 3: Keywords to Content

January 27, 2012 • Jill Kocher Brown

Editor's Note: This is the final installment of a three-part series on optimizing ecommerce pages for search engines. The first two installments, "Part 1: Keyword Research" and “Part 2: Keyword Mapping,” we published previously. I discussed keyword research and content mapping in detai...

Keyword Research

Optimizing a Page for Search Engines, Part 2: Keyword Mapping

January 20, 2012 • Jill Kocher Brown

Editor's Note: This is the second installment of a three-part series on optimizing ecommerce pages for search engines. The first installment, "Part 1: Keyword Research," we published last week. "Part 3: Keywords to Content" we published after the article, below. Keyword research is ess...

Keyword Research

Optimizing a Page for Search Engines, Part 1: Keyword Research

January 13, 2012 • Jill Kocher Brown

Editor’s Note: This is the first installment of a three-part series on optimizing ecommerce pages for search engines. “Part 2: Keyword Mapping” and “Part 3: Keywords to Content” we published ...

Keyword Research

SEO: Automating Keyword Selection with AdWords API

August 23, 2011 • Jill Kocher Brown

Optimizing a website around highly searched keyword terms can materially increase traffic from search engines. But identifying those keywords takes time. Few SEO managers relish the tedium of slogging through thousands of keyword variations — as critical as that process is to a search-e...

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Supercharge Your Opera, Firefox Web Searches with Search-Preference Keywords

November 5, 2010 • Armando Roggio

Every major web browser allows users to conduct a web search directly from its address bar. But Opera and Firefox take this convenient shortcut a step further, allowing folks to search several different sites or engines directly from a single spot. For professionals who work on the Int...

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SEO: Keyword Research and Analysis

June 22, 2010 • Bill Hartzer

Editor’s Note: is a contributor to Practical eCommerce and the owner of BillHartzer.com, a Dallas-based online marketing firm. Hartzer wrote the article, below, which first appeared in that company’s blog. Keyword research is one of the most important parts of online marketing. Somet...

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Test: Mobile Search Results For Popular Retail-Shopping Keywords

March 25, 2010 • Brendan Gibbons

The number of mobile users is increasing at a far greater rate, it seems, than the number of mobile sites. But some merchants have already begun reacting to the mobile web by optimizing their sites for these devices. In order to get a feel for the current status of the mobile ecommerc...

Keyword Research

Ask an Expert: How to Get Better Search Rankings for Major Keywords

February 8, 2010 • PEC Staff

"Ask an Expert" is an occasional feature where we ask ecommerce experts questions from online merchants. For this installment, we address a question about ranking on search engines for major keywords. It comes from Jeramie Westbay, owner operator for Crazy Ed's Roadkill, an online store...

Keyword Research

Ecommerce Know-How: Understanding Brand-Influenced Search Queries

August 25, 2009 • Armando Roggio

When shoppers navigate to a search engine and begin their queries, they usually have some idea of what they are looking for. In many cases, that initial idea is the result of brand-influence. In very general terms, search engine queries fall on a specificity scale. On one end of this s...

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...

Keyword Research

PeC Traffic Report: Use Blog Titles that Reflect Keywords and Content

December 26, 2008 • Armando Roggio

Blog titles play an important role in how search engines index blog posts. Bloggers that want to get the most web traffic possible seed post titles with important keywords and make interesting promises about the content. Many online retailers use blogs to both communicate with consumer...

Keyword Research

Keyword Research: Wordpot Rivals KeywordDiscovery, Wordtracker

September 4, 2008 • Jeff Muendel

While website architecture, link building, and template coding all affect search engine optimization, keyword research and placement is perhaps the easiest SEO attribute to implement. It is often the low hanging fruit of an SEO campaign. To that end, a few months ago, I wrote about Goog...

Keyword Research

SEO: Optimizing Your Content

May 1, 2006 • Stephan Spencer

This month, I'd like to build on what I've already covered in past issues regarding keyword research (November 2005 issue) and writing for search engines (December 2005 issue) and integrate them together into a plan for optimizing your site's content. A “SMART” goal is one that is spec...

Keyword Research

Keyword Sleuthing: Locate the Right Word

November 1, 2005 • Stephan Spencer

Effective SEO starts with keyword research. Chasing after the wrong keywords is a waste, costing time and effort. The "right" keywords are the ones that are not only relevant to your business, but are al...