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: How to Identify High Rankings That Produce No Clicks

January 14, 2018 • Hamlet Batista

Google's AdWords Keyword Planner is helpful for keyword research, as are many third-party tools. But Google Search Console can also identify keyword optimization opportunities. I'll explain in this post. Many search engine optimizers believe that a web page can rank organically for just a few keywords, perhaps three to five.
SEO
7 Ways to Integrate Natural and Paid Search

January 12, 2018 • Jill Kocher Brown

It’s not a matter of organic search traffic being more important than paid, or vice versa. What matters is integrating the two — paid and natural search — so that the whole is larger than the individual parts. The goal of integrated search is to use the data available from both organic and paid search programs for strategies that maximize visits and revenue.
Keyword Research
How to Build an Ecommerce Keyword List

January 9, 2018 • Armando Roggio

Keywords are an important building block for ecommerce marketing. Developing and maintaining a keyword list may help an ecommerce business understand shoppers and do a better job of marketing to them. In the context of search engine optimization, searchers' words or phrases summarize their thoughts, questions, or needs. Those keywords represent the language people use to ask for help finding resources online.
SEO Tools
Optimizing Google Search Options for Android Apps

January 7, 2018 • Jill Kocher Brown

Apps for iOS and Android mobile devices represent a chance to sell to captive prospects — if they can find your app to download in the first place. The first place to start is the Google Play Store, where Android users install apps. Google web search is another opportunity for app search, but most of the optimization focus should be on the Play Store itself.
Technical SEO
How to Increase Click-throughs on Organic Search Listings

January 4, 2018 • Hamlet Batista

Finding new keywords to target and developing content around them is a common practice for search engine optimization. But optimizing for a keyword does not necessarily mean a searcher will ...
SEO
How to Create Your 2018 SEO Strategy

December 22, 2017 • Jill Kocher Brown

If you don’t have a search engine optimization strategy for 2018, it’s high time to create it. Writing an SEO strategy can be intimidating. It sounds like such a lofty document,
SEO
Voice SEO: What Marketers Know Now

December 20, 2017 • Armando Roggio

How should your business optimize for voice search? The answer may be that the search engine optimization community doesn’t really know yet. In fact, perhaps the best thing your marketing department ...
SEO
How SEO Impacts the Ecommerce Sales Funnel

December 17, 2017 • Jill Kocher Brown

Ecommerce marketers spend a lot of time thinking about the sales funnel. Search engine optimization plays a major role in filling that funnel at the various stages. In aggregate, we can ...
Technical SEO
SEO: For Redesigns and Migrations, Prepare for the Worst

December 1, 2017 • Jill Kocher Brown

You spend months preparing for your ecommerce redesign or migration. You take search engine optimization into consideration and anticipate an increase in organic search traffic after launch. But what happens ...
SEO
SEO: Enabling Performance beyond Home Page and Brand

November 26, 2017 • Jill Kocher Brown

Ecommerce sites with the strongest natural search performance drive visits to every page, not just the home page and not just for searches for the brand. A search engine optimization channel ...
Technical SEO
SEO: How to Perform a Flash Audit, to Restore Traffic

November 14, 2017 • Hamlet Batista

I’m often asked to help reverse drops in traffic from organic search. It usually occurs from major site developments, such as redesigns and ecommerce platform changes. Traffic drops can be ...
Technical SEO
SEO: 7 Ways to Kill Duplicate Content

November 12, 2017 • Jill Kocher Brown

Duplicate content is endemic to ecommerce sites. Seemingly every platform, no matter how SEO-friendly, produces some form of duplicate content, holding a site back from peak performance. First, let’s look at ...
SEO
Store Locators That Work Harder for SEO

October 27, 2017 • Jill Kocher Brown

Does your store locator receive natural search traffic, or do yellow-page sites and Yelp win the clicks from keyword searches for your brand? Without an SEO-friendly store locator, you may ...
SEO
The Essential Component of Viral Videos

October 26, 2017 • Stephan Spencer

Hundreds of hours of video are uploaded to YouTube every minute. As marketers, we often wonder why only a tiny percentage of those uploads go viral. We lament why it ...
SEO
B2B SEO Requires an Integrated Approach

October 19, 2017 • Armando Roggio

Complex products and long buying cycles make search engine optimization for B2B sites different than for B2C. The difference, however, is not in the specific techniques, but in the way SEO ...
Technical SEO
SEO Fire Drill: ‘Traffic Is Down!’

October 15, 2017 • Jill Kocher Brown

Organic search traffic often drives significant revenue for ecommerce sites. As a result, it is prone to fire drills around performance. Here’s how to determine when there’s a critical problem ...
Technical SEO
SEO: How to Improve Site-specific Ranking Factors

October 10, 2017 • Hamlet Batista

A client recently attended a webinar where a presenter provided a list of the top search engine ranking factors. The client wanted me to confirm the list, or provide my ...
SEO Tools
Mobile-first SEO Makes Search Console More Important

October 6, 2017 • Jill Kocher Brown

In 2018, Google will judge your desktop search ranking by the signals from your mobile site. Google’s mobile-first index, the algorithm update that will flip the importance of desktop sites compared ...
On-page SEO
Optimizing Your Mobile Presence for Natural Search

September 29, 2017 • Jill Kocher Brown

Google’s mobile-first index is coming in 2018. Search-result rankings for your desktop site will be based on the signals from the mobile version. Will you be ready? More people search Google ...
On-page SEO
SEO: Preparing for Google’s Mobile-first Index

September 22, 2017 • Jill Kocher Brown

Most searches on Google are from mobile devices. In 2018, Google will judge your desktop and mobile sites’ worthiness to rank based on your mobile implementation. If your mobile experience isn’t ...
Technical SEO
SEO: Making Recommendations on Mockups

September 15, 2017 • Jill Kocher Brown

Mockups are a key part of creating new marketing campaigns and redesigning entire websites. As partners in the process of producing those new experiences, search-engine-optimization professionals should offer feedback at ...
Technical SEO
How to Incrementally Move an Ecommerce Site to HTTPS

August 27, 2017 • Hamlet Batista

In October, Google Chrome will release version 62, which will warn website visitors with a “Not Secure” message when they type in data — such as site searches and newsletter ...
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 ...
Technical SEO
3 SEO Wins (Often Overlooked) for Ecommerce Sites

July 16, 2017 • Hamlet Batista

There is more to search engine optimization than keywords, titles, meta descriptions, and H1s. In this post, I’ll address three valuable, and often overlooked, SEO opportunities for ecommerce sites: PDFs,
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 ...
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 ...
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 ...
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 ...
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 ...
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 ...