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
SEO: ‘Mobilegeddon’ Is Here, Now What?
April 24, 2015 • Jill Kocher Brown
Google’s “mobile-friendly” algorithm update, dubbed “Mobilegeddon” by the search engine community, began rolling out Tuesday, April 21. Here’s what that means and what to do about it. What Is ‘Mobilegeddon’? The popular ...
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On-page SEO
SEO: Last-minute ‘Mobile-friendly’ Planning
April 17, 2015 • Jill Kocher Brown
After almost seven weeks of hand wringing in the ecommerce world, Google’s “mobile-friendly” algorithm update will go live on Tuesday, April 21. For the first time, Google will use mobile friendliness ...
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On-page SEO
SEO: Q&A for Google’s ‘Mobile-friendly’ Algorithm
April 3, 2015 • Jill Kocher Brown
Google’s “mobile friendly” algorithm update, to be released on April 21, has understandably created a major shift in the way ecommerce sites think about their mobile search optimization strategies. Announced over ...
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On-page SEO
SEO: How Google’s ‘Mobile-friendly’ Update Affects Performance
March 27, 2015 • Jill Kocher Brown
Google’s “mobile-friendly” algorithm update is big news. But how will it impact your ecommerce performance? On April 21, Google will begin rolling out a worldwide mobile-friendly algorithm update that will have ...
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Technical SEO
SEO: Using Rich Snippets to Increase Clicks
February 27, 2015 • Jill Kocher Brown
If you don’t win the click, you can’t make the sale. But if you don’t get noticed, you can’t win the click. Ecommerce sites need to take advantage of every option ...
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Technical SEO
4 SEO Friends: Strategy, UX, Creative, Development
February 20, 2015 • Jill Kocher Brown
Effective search engine optimization requires cross-discipline collaboration. Make friends or forge strong working relationships with these key stakeholders to ensure that SEO needs are met at every stage of site ...
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Technical SEO
SEO: Google Improves Crawling for Geotargeted Sites
January 30, 2015 • Jill Kocher Brown
Ecommerce sites that use geotargeting to serve different content to customers in different countries have faced challenges with organic search. On Wednesday, Google announced its efforts to overcome these challenges,
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On-page SEO
SEO: Impact of Words, Fields in a CMS
January 9, 2015 • Jill Kocher Brown
Sometimes the connection between the words pasted into the content management system and the impact they have on search engine optimization isn’t very clear. As a result, writers often aren’t ...
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SEO
SEO: Google Makes Penguin Algorithm More Slippery
December 12, 2014 • Jill Kocher Brown
Diagnosing a site’s Google ranking penalties just became more difficult. Penguin, Google’s link-spam-fighting algorithm, will now be continuously optimized instead of semi-regular with announced update releases. The buzz around Google’s Penguin ...
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Technical SEO
SEO Technical Requirements Checklist, for Ecommerce
December 5, 2014 • Jill Kocher Brown
In “SEO 201, Part 5: Evaluating Ecommerce Platforms,” I listed basic SEO needs to assist in the selection of an ecommerce platform. This article will go further, listing technical requirements ...
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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 ...
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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:
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Technical SEO
SEO 201, Part 6: Redesigns Impact Search Traffic
October 17, 2014 • Jill Kocher Brown
This is the sixth 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: Evaluating Ecommerce ...
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Technical SEO
SEO 201, Part 4: Architecture Is Key
October 3, 2014 • Jill Kocher Brown
This is the fourth installment of my “SEO 201” series, following: “Part 1: Technical Rules”; “Part 2: Crawling and Indexing Barriers”; “Part 3: Enabling Search-engine Spiders.” No matter which aspect of search engine optimization ...
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Link Building
SEO: How to Identify Low Quality Links
September 26, 2014 • Jill Kocher Brown
Links are the lifeblood of organic search. But the quality of those links can boost or kill a site’s rankings. This article suggests methods to determine the quality of in-bound ...
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SEO
SEO: Understanding Pandas, Penguins, and Pigeons
September 22, 2014 • Melih Oztalay
Editor’s Note: This article was originally published by Web Marketing Today. Practical Ecommerce acquired Web Marketing Today in 2012. In 2016, we merged the two sites, leaving Practical Ecommerce as ...
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Technical SEO
SEO 201, Part 3: Enabling Search-engine Crawlers
September 19, 2014 • Jill Kocher Brown
This is the third installment of my “SEO 201″ series, following: “Part 1: Technical Rules”; “Part 2: Crawling and Indexing Barriers.“ “SEO 201″ addresses technical, backend aspects of site architecture and organization. My ...
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Technical SEO
SEO 201, Part 2: Crawling and Indexing Barriers
September 12, 2014 • Jill Kocher Brown
In “SEO 201, Part 1: Technical Rules,” my article last week, I posited three technical rules that are critical to tapping into Google’s ultimate power as an influencer of your ...
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Technical SEO
SEO 201, Part 1: Technical Rules
September 5, 2014 • Jill Kocher Brown
In my 8-part “SEO 101” series, I addressed the basics of utilizing content on a website for search engines, including keyword research and optimization. With this article, I’ll start a ...
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SEO
SEO: Google’s ‘Pigeon’ Update Impacts Local Businesses
August 15, 2014 • Jill Kocher Brown
Google released an algorithm update at the end of July intended to improve the relevance and accuracy of local search results. The update, dubbed Pigeon by search industry news publisher ...
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SEO
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Merchant Voice
Get off the Google merry go round
August 11, 2014 • Richard Stubbings
It’s all very well having a good ecommerce site, with unique content at decent prices. But the only thing that really matters is sales. It is, after all, the profits ...
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Technical SEO
SEO: Google Adds HTTPS Signals to Ranking Algorithm
August 8, 2014 • Jill Kocher Brown
Google has taken its obsession with security to a new level by including a preference for sites running SSL in its ranking algorithm. Starting slowly with less than one percent ...
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Technical SEO
Use Google Analytics Site Speed to Identify Performance Problems
June 23, 2014 • Armando Roggio
Google Analytics offers several powerful reports that can help businesses monitor how quickly web pages are loading and identify what factors may be causing poor performance. How quickly a website loads ...
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SEO
Google’s Mobile Search Warning Could Decrease Site Traffic
June 6, 2014 • Jill Kocher Brown
In its ongoing crusade to deliver the most beneficial search results, Google announced this week that it will warn searchers when a mobile URL redirects to the home page. Will ...
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SEO
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Merchant Voice
Beware SEO and other scams
June 4, 2014 • Richard Stubbings
One of the first signs that your website is being noticed, and improving its search engine rankings, is the flood of emails from search engine optimization companies telling you that ...
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Technical SEO
Panda 4.0 Algorithm Update Rocks Google Search Results
May 23, 2014 • Jill Kocher Brown
Google released two algorithm updates this week targeted at removing low quality sites from its search results. Payday Loans and Panda both received major updates, with upwards of seven percent ...
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On-page SEO
SEO Depends on Page Names
May 16, 2014 • Jill Kocher Brown
Something as simple as the name of a page has an incredible impact on the optimization of that page in organic search. Platforms use page name data in so many ...
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SEO
SEO: Leverage Expert Authors for Ecommerce
May 9, 2014 • Jill Kocher Brown
Google is actively working on ways to decrease its reliance on links by its algorithms, including identifying and promoting content written by expert authors. While content sites are obvious beneficiaries of ...
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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 ...
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On-page SEO
Mining Reviews for SEO Benefit
April 17, 2014 • Jill Kocher Brown
Customer reviews are an excellent way to inject unique content into your site to benefit search engine optimization while boosting shopper confidence at the same time. For SEO, reviews fall under ...