SEO

Our huge library of search engine optimization articles addresses strategies and tactics for ecommerce businesses. Our 12-part “How-to” series explains the basics. Advanced topics include faceted navigation, crawling and indexing, cross-border optimization, and much more.

Keyword Research | Link Building | On-page SEO | SEO Tools | Technical SEO

Technical SEO
SEO: Catchall Redirects Are a Bad Practice

September 11, 2019 • Hamlet Batista

At first glance a catchall redirect page seems like a good solution. Instead of fixing thousands or tens of thousands of redirect errors, set up a simple catchall rule and send all users (and bots) to a single page. But it’s a bad idea.
Technical SEO
SEO: HTML, XML Sitemaps Explained

August 30, 2019 • Jill Kocher Brown

There are two types of sitemaps: HTML and XML. HTML sitemaps guide visitors, mostly. XML sitemaps guide search engine bots, to ensure they find a site’s URLs to index. Understanding the strengths and weaknesses of each will help with your search engine optimization.
Technical SEO
6-step SEO Indexation Audit for Ecommerce

August 25, 2019 • Jill Kocher Brown

Search engines need to index your site before it can rank. But it's not always obvious if a search index contains the correct pages. Content that should be indexed may not be. And content that should not be indexed often is. Use the following six steps to ensure that the right pages are indexed across your ecommerce site.
SEO
Use ‘Barnacle SEO’ to Drive Traffic without Ranking

August 21, 2019 • Armando Roggio

Using so-called "barnacle SEO" tactics, an ecommerce business may be able to put its products and its brand in front of many potential customers without ranking its website for a target phrase. The idea is to place content on large established domains to win one or more spots on the search engine results page for your company's most competitive keyword phrases.
Technical SEO
8-step SEO Crawl Audit for Ecommerce

August 18, 2019 • Jill Kocher Brown

Your site won’t rank if search engine bots can’t crawl it. And hidden doors that don’t impact human visitors can lock bots out. Use these eight steps to ensure search bots can access all of your ecommerce site.
Link Building
SEO: A Common Sense Assessment of Link Quality

August 14, 2019 • Armando Roggio

A quality backlink pleases both humans and search engine algorithms. It is editorial in nature. It comes from a well-respected source, and it is relevant to the topics covered on both the linking and linked websites.
SEO
3 Tools to Find Broken Links on Your Website

August 11, 2019 • Armando Roggio

Finding and fixing broken links should be part of your company's regular site maintenance. Here are three popular SEO tools and instructions on how to use each to locate broken links.
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
SEO: That Blob of Text May Not Be Helping

July 30, 2019 • Armando Roggio

Adding on-site text for search engines and not users could confuse algorithms and may amount to keyword stuffing, according to a Google spokesman. The practice is understandable. Merchants seek to attract traffic from organic search. They know that search algorithms love unique content.
Technical SEO
SEO: Analyzing Googlebot Crawls for Problems, Inefficiencies

July 28, 2019 • Hamlet Batista

Crawl budget inefficiencies can affect organic search performance if new or updated content is not getting crawled and indexed. In this post, I will explain how to generate reports to help determine if your site has a Googlebot crawl budget problem.
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.
Technical SEO
SEO: How Google Reads and Renders JavaScript

July 24, 2019 • Armando Roggio

JavaScript can improve a shopper's buying experience, encourage interaction, and even bolster site performance in some cases. But where search engine optimization is concerned, JavaScript requires an extra degree of care.
SEO Tools
Using Google Trends for Ecommerce

July 23, 2019 • Bill Sebald

Google Trends reports the relative popularity of search terms across languages and regions. It's helpful for identifying when consumers start thinking about a product.
Technical SEO
SEO: Optimizing Crawl Budget for Ecommerce Sites

July 17, 2019 • Armando Roggio

Optimizing an ecommerce site for crawl budget may impact how often Google's web crawler, Googlebot, visits a given page and how quickly that page appears in search results. It can also guide Googlebot to the most important content on a site, which could impact how those pages rank.
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.
SEO
The High Cost of Ignoring SEO

July 9, 2019 • Hamlet Batista

Ignoring organic search traffic can be costly. I addressed the topic last year at Edgenet Academy (now Syndigo), which helps manufacturers and retailers manage product content. I shared the story of two competitors that sell equipment for printed products.
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.
SEO
The 4 SEO Priorities for Ecommerce Sites

June 28, 2019 • Bill Sebald

I can't calculate clear-cut ROI from SEO. But I can address the activities that, in my experience, typically lead to higher rankings for ecommerce merchants. It's not a stretch to suggest that 80 percent of your daily SEO activities should be connected to the four items below.
SEO
New Search Console Updates Confirm Mobile-first Indexing

June 27, 2019 • Armando Roggio

Recent changes to Google’s Search Console made it easier to identify whether a site was primarily indexed based on mobile or desktop content and identified which crawler (Googlebot Smartphone or Googlebot Desktop) was primary on a given report or chart.
SEO Tools
15 SEO Plugins for WordPress

June 24, 2019 • Sig Ueland

Here is a list of search-engine-optimization plugins for WordPress. There are all-in-one plugins that provide a variety of tools and, also, plugins to improve specific search-related areas, such as site speed, tags, and image optimization. All of these tools are free, though several have premium versions as well.
SEO
Tips for Diagnosing Steep Drops in Organic Search Traffic

June 19, 2019 • Armando Roggio

If you own or manage an ecommerce business and organic search traffic drops suddenly, it can feel like the sky is falling. You might not know what went wrong. Here are a few tips for diagnosing a steep drop in organic traffic to your ecommerce site.
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.
Link Building
Can Ecommerce Sites Generate Organic Search Traffic without Backlinks?

May 30, 2019 • Hamlet Batista

Can an ecommerce site launch in 2019 and receive organic search traffic without backlinks? Most search optimizers believe it's not possible. I used to think the same. But I keep seeing evidence of the contrary.
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.
Technical SEO
How to Expedite Product Changes in Google Organic Listings

April 30, 2019 • Hamlet Batista

In this post, I will cover a technique of updating organic listings using the Google Shopping API. The goal is to accelerate the impact of the Shopping feed on natural search.
Link Building
SEO: How to Quickly Find Internal Linking Opportunities

April 23, 2019 • Bill Sebald

Optimizing internal links can be helpful for search engine optimization. The larger the website, the more that the optimization can help Google identify important pages. But how can we identify all of the pages to link from?
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.