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

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.
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
Measuring Traffic from Google Shopping’s New Organic Listings

March 27, 2019 • Hamlet Batista

In my previous article, I explained how Google Shopping is expanding to include free organic search listings. The next step is to explore an easy way to measure the performance of organic traffic coming from Shopping feeds.
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.
SEO
SEO: Tell Google Which Pages Not to Crawl

March 7, 2019 • Armando Roggio

The typical goal of search engine optimization is to have your site's pages show up on a Google results page in answer to a query. But there are pages that should not be included in search results. Removing them from Google's index might actually increase search engine traffic.
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.
Keyword Research
How to Find Seed Keywords and Explore Topic Clusters

February 28, 2019 • Armando Roggio

Creating a short list of seed keywords is fundamental to search engine optimization, content marketing, and pay-per-click advertising. But for some marketers, the task of identifying seed keywords isn't clear.
Technical SEO
Real-time SEO: Create a Google Product Feed from an XML Sitemap

February 26, 2019 • Hamlet Batista

It is now possible to update product listings in organic search results in real time via a product feed. In this article, I’ll explain how to create a feed from an XML sitemap.
Technical SEO
How Query Intent Impacts Ecommerce SEO

February 21, 2019 • Bill Sebald

Google attempts to understand the intent of a searcher's query. The company recognizes the burden of providing the best results, even if the query is vague. For example, if someone types in “jaguar,” Google has to figure out what that searcher wants.
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 Does Google Find and Index Web Pages?

February 6, 2019 • Armando Roggio

When a potential customer enters a query on Google, searching for the products your business sells, she is not actually searching the live internet. Rather, she is looking up web pages on Google's index of the internet. In a sense, this consumer is searching the recent, known web rather than the real-time, live web.
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.
Link Building
SEO: Reclaiming Lost Links from Site Migrations

January 21, 2019 • Bill Sebald

There is a little-used opportunity for longtime retailers to gain links. If your ecommerce site has changed platforms in its lifetime, you might have editorial links — legitimate, not spam — waiting for you to reclaim.
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.
Keyword Research
SEO: Converting Keywords to Link Authority

January 13, 2019 • Jill Kocher Brown

Link authority is one of the most critical influencers of how a site ranks. How do keywords increase link authority? They indicate the content you need to create to convince others that your site is worthy of linking to.
On-page SEO
Improve SEO with ‘Audience Insights’ in Google Ads

January 3, 2019 • Bill Sebald

What if you could use information about your existing customers to obtain new ones? That’s the purpose of Audience Insights in Google Ads. It helps businesses find new prospects based on current customer data.
Link Building
4 Sales Lessons for SEO Link-building

December 28, 2018 • Armando Roggio

Search engine optimization professionals may think of themselves as marketers but not salespeople. Nonetheless, a good salesperson can teach us at least four lessons related to the SEO process of obtaining backlinks.
SEO
Most Google Search Results Now Come from Mobile Index

December 21, 2018 • Jill Kocher Brown

More than 50 percent of Google’s global search results are served from its mobile-first index, according to an announcement from the search giant. The news is important for those who maintain ...