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

Keyword Research
SEO: Driving Content Strategy with Keyword Research

October 19, 2018 • Jill Kocher Brown

Keyword research, the foundation of search engine optimization, also drives content strategy. Searchers want something: information or a product. When we research keyword data, we mine the search engines for information ...
SEO
SEO: Include Images and Videos in Sitemaps

October 15, 2018 • Armando Roggio

Including image and video content in an XML sitemap may help Google discover more about them to include in image and video search results. XML sitemaps are a convenient way to share page information with search engines such as Google. While submitting a sitemap will not guarantee that a page will be indexed, it will not hurt rankings.
SEO
4 Steps to Better SEO in 2019

October 7, 2018 • Jill Kocher Brown

Use these four steps to create your search engine optimization strategy for 2019. Start with keyword research. The idea is to understand the market for keywords — what consumers are searching for relating to your offerings and in what volume.
Technical SEO
SEO: Understanding Sitemaps for Ecommerce Stores

October 3, 2018 • Armando Roggio

Sitemaps inform search engines which pages on a website should be crawled, and may help search engines discover and index those pages. While sitemaps can be a simple text file listing ...
Technical SEO
Technical SEO: 15 Critical Areas That Impact Performance

September 30, 2018 • Jill Kocher Brown

The technical aspects of search engine optimization can seem mysterious, especially for content marketers. But it doesn’t have to be that way. The 15 areas below cover the major areas. 15
Technical SEO
Change Organic Search Snippets to Drive Motivated Buyers

September 28, 2018 • Hamlet Batista

In “How to Increase Click-throughs on Organic Search Listings,” I addressed the importance of compelling messages in organic snippets. In this article, I will dig deeper. I will explore how ...
Keyword Research
SEO: Use ‘Niche Down’ Keyword Research for Content Ideas

September 25, 2018 • Armando Roggio

Keyword research is one of the most effective search engine optimization practices. It can open the door to compelling content marketing ideas and link building. The so-called “niche down” method of ...
SEO
SEO: 2 Ways to Collect Competitive Ranking Data

September 23, 2018 • Jill Kocher Brown

Your organic search competitors may not be the sites you think. What matters is who Google and Bing and other search engines think your competition is. They determine which sites rank for individual keywords based on criteria that have little to do with your business model.
Technical SEO
SEO: Building a 301 Redirect Strategy

September 16, 2018 • Jill Kocher Brown

When a site’s URLs change, 301 redirects are crucial to preserve and grow natural search performance. Organic search rankings depend in large part on link authority: the quantity and quality of ...
Technical SEO
SEO: Retaining Performance on Site Migrations

September 7, 2018 • Jill Kocher Brown

Site migrations are risky for natural search performance. Whether you’re migrating a site to a new design or rebranding, what you do before the new site is live will determine its natural search performance.
SEO
SEO Is the Center of Ecommerce Marketing

August 31, 2018 • Jill Kocher Brown

Natural search has become the doorway to your site. That door can open any page. Sites were once developed so that visitors would land on the home page and follow a prescribed path with tailored messaging along that path to a specific destination where they could convert.
On-page SEO
Analyzing Page Speed for Visitors with Slow Connections

August 28, 2018 • Hamlet Batista

Even if you have a fast loading site as measured by a high-speed internet connection, a good portion of your potential customers could be on slow connections. Your site could load slowly for them.
SEO
The Key to Effective Guest Posting (for SEO)

August 23, 2018 • Armando Roggio

Guest posting is a long-standing link-building technique used by many in the search engine optimization industry. But Google has discouraged guest posting for the sole purpose of link building and ...
Keyword Research
Mine Competitors for Top Keywords

August 21, 2018 • Armando Roggio

One of the best ways to discover keyword opportunities is to identify which phrases your company's competitors are ranking for on popular search engines. In this article, I'll address a few ways to identify the keywords that may be working well for your competitors.
Technical SEO
SEO Is Way More Than Metadata

August 19, 2018 • Jill Kocher Brown

Metadata is just data about data. In the world of organic search, that means title tags and meta descriptions, schema structured data, canonical tags, meta robots tags and the like.
Link Building
SEO Broken Link Building as a Content Marketing Strategy

August 14, 2018 • Armando Roggio

A popular link-building tactic is also an excellent way to identify content marketing topics. When combined, broken link building and content marketing could generate traffic for your site and provide ...
Technical SEO
SEO: 7 Reasons Your Site’s Indexation Is Down

August 3, 2018 • Jill Kocher Brown

Without indexation, there is no possibility of ranking in natural search results. When indexation numbers drop, there are a handful of potential reasons. Site Speed Increasingly, slower site speeds are masquerading as ...
SEO Tools
Search Console Is the Gateway to Google’s SEO Data

July 27, 2018 • Jill Kocher Brown

Search Console is Google’s way of communicating with webmasters and search engine optimization professionals about the status of their site within its search results. If you want more information about your site’s natural search performance, Google gives it to you.
Link Building
SEO Link Building Tactics for Ecommerce Businesses

July 17, 2018 • Armando Roggio

Link building, the process of getting links from other websites, improves search engine rankings and traffic, ultimately generating more sales for your business. Link building is one of the tasks a ...
SEO
How to Attract Clicks on a Search Engine Results Page

July 10, 2018 • Armando Roggio

You’ve done the technical search engine optimization steps. You’ve worked hard to create useful, even authoritative content that answers common questions — keyword queries — for your industry. You’ve earned ...
Technical SEO
SEO: Shaving Seconds Off Page Speed

July 9, 2018 • Jill Kocher Brown

For customers, site speed matters. For search engines, site speed impacts organic rankings. With its mobile Speed Update rolling out now, Google is applying site speed to mobile search results ...
On-page SEO
SEO: How to Drive Traffic to a New Ecommerce Site

July 3, 2018 • Hamlet Batista

Larger companies can typically hire or retain competent assistance to help with search engine optimization. But smaller businesses often have to do it themselves, especially when those businesses are new. In ...
SEO
SEO: How to Win against Giant Competitors

June 26, 2018 • Hamlet Batista

Why is it so difficult to rank for highly competitive keywords? I'm often asked about this topic. Can a small company with a limited budget compete on such popular search terms as "fashion," "shoes," and "jewelry"? I'll address that question in this article.
Keyword Research
SEO: Google Changes Keyword Planner for the Worse

June 22, 2018 • Jill Kocher Brown

The end is near for the Google Keyword Planner interface. The new user interface provides (mostly) the same data with (mostly) the same features. But some key differences will force search optimizers to change the way we think about and collect keyword research.
Technical SEO
SEO: Harnessing Facets to Drive the Meaty Torso

June 15, 2018 • Jill Kocher Brown

Natural search performance on ecommerce sites often suffers from an invisible problem: a missing torso. For search engine optimization, a “torso” describes keywords that drive too many searches to be called ...
SEO
SEO: Driving Cross-functional Projects

June 12, 2018 • Jill Kocher Brown

Search engine optimization often requires planning and implementation from cross-functional teams. For example, what initially seems to be a simple request to modify the header navigation may actually result in ...
Technical SEO
SEO: 3 Paths to Crawlable JavaScript

June 3, 2018 • Jill Kocher Brown

Last week’s primer described some of the reasons that Googlebot, in particular, has trouble with modern forms of JavaScript. This article addresses solutions to compensate for bots’ limitations.
Technical SEO
SEO: No, Google Does Not Support Newer JavaScript

May 25, 2018 • Jill Kocher Brown

Some search engine optimization professionals and developers have concluded in the last couple of years that Google can crawl JavaScript. Unfortunately, that’s not always the case. Sites using Angular (the ...
SEO
Consumers Search by Voice. Do You Listen?

May 20, 2018 • Jill Kocher Brown

The future of search is, increasingly, spoken. At its annual I/O conference earlier this month, Google made 100 announcements. More than 20 related to voice interaction. (Many others involved visual ...
SEO
Google Lens Ups the Ante on Image Search

May 11, 2018 • Jill Kocher Brown

Ecommerce businesses have a love-hate relationship with image search. They appreciate the conversion benefits, but they are wary of the labor required to optimize images and the risk of competitors ...