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
How SEO Integrates into Site Design

March 7, 2014 • Jill Kocher Brown

Search engine optimization performs best when it’s integrated into website design and maintenance programs. That’s because so many of the decisions that impact SEO occur outside of the bounds of ...
SEO Tools
SEO: Bing Webmaster Tools for the Other 20 Percent

February 28, 2014 • Jill Kocher Brown

Since Google is the largest search engine, its webmaster tools gets the lion’s share of attention. But depending on your industry and audience, Bing and Yahoo may drive around 20
SEO Tools
Local SEO: 15 Marketing Activities that Improve Citations

February 25, 2014 • Kunle Campbell

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 ...
SEO
5 Excuses Why Ecommerce Merchants Avoid SEO

February 21, 2014 • Jill Kocher Brown

You’re presumably reading this because you want more: more traffic, more sales, more effective methods of reaching your marketing goals. Search engine optimization can help you reach those goals, but ...
SEO Tools
Local SEO for Multiple-location Businesses

February 10, 2014 • Dustin Christensen

Search engine optimization for local businesses can be difficult. That is especially true for companies with multiple locations. But local SEO for small businesses with multiple locations isn’t impossible. It simply requires a highly organized plan based on your business’s goals and geographic priorities.
SEO
SEO Performance Reporting in the Datapocalypse

February 7, 2014 • Jill Kocher Brown

Thanks to the major U.S. search engines implementing secure search, the keywords that drive organic search referrals are no longer available for meaningful analysis in web analytics. The SEO datapocalypse ...
SEO
SEO as Stand-alone Tactic Is Dead

January 31, 2014 • Jill Kocher Brown

Stop doing search engine optimization as a separate discipline. Instead, make sure all aspects of your online business — content, marketing, site design, architecture — are naturally optimized for search ...
Technical SEO
SEO: Yahoo’s New Secure Search Removes Referral Data

January 24, 2014 • Jill Kocher Brown

Yahoo has moved to secure search by default, effectively removing all referral data that indicates the source of the search and which keywords were searched for. The secure search update ...
Technical SEO
SEO: How to Create a 301 Redirect Map, for Site Redesigns

January 17, 2014 • Jill Kocher Brown

In a website redesign where URLs change, whether your search-engine-optimization goal is to protect existing natural search performance or boost it to a new level, an ironclad 301 redirect strategy is critical. In “For Redesigns, Protect SEO with 301 Redirect Strategy,” my previous article, I outlined why
Technical SEO
For Redesigns, Protect SEO with 301 Redirect Strategy

January 10, 2014 • Jill Kocher Brown

In most website redesigns, search engine optimization relies on an accurate, complete, and flawlessly executed 301 redirect strategy. An ironclad 301 redirect strategy preserves as much as 85 percent of the link authority that the current site has earned over its lifetime and funnels it into the new site to
SEO Tools
My Favorite SEO Tools

December 20, 2013 • Jill Kocher Brown

Search marketers’ toolboxes differ based on the type of optimization in which they specialize and how comfortable they are with raw data versus ready-to-use graphs. Many helpful tools aren’t specifically made ...
On-page SEO
SEO for 2014: Easy on-page optimization tips

December 19, 2013 • Jordan Lindberg

“What’s so fascinating and frustrating and great about life is that you’re constantly starting over, all the time, and I love that.” – Billy Crystal Search engine optimization is a never-ending ...
Technical SEO
SEO: Managing Faceted Search

December 13, 2013 • Jill Kocher Brown

Faceted site search can help ecommerce shoppers quickly find the products they are looking for. But faceted search can shatter your search engine optimization efforts. What can you do, therefore,
SEO
SEO: Leveraging Bing’s Pinterest Integration

December 6, 2013 • Jill Kocher Brown

Pinterest generates a lot of social media marketing excitement among brands that have visually attractive products to promote. But to date, Pinterest hasn’t offered as much natural search benefit. Bing’s October ...
On-page SEO
To Improve SEO, Focus on the Page

November 22, 2013 • Jill Kocher Brown

If you want to drive more natural search visits to a page, you need to improve the relevance and authority of that page. That’s SEO 101. But one of the ...
SEO
Google Helpouts Can Share your Brand’s Expertise

November 15, 2013 • Jill Kocher Brown

Most every ecommerce business can claim expertise in something. You wouldn’t be in business if you weren’t at least knowledgeable — and likely passionate — about the products or services ...
SEO
Quick SEO Tips to Boost Holiday Sales

November 4, 2013 • Jill Kocher Brown

The holiday selling season is in full swing. If your natural search visits and sales are falling short of your goals, try these quick search-engine-optimization tips to give them a ...
Technical SEO
SEO: 5 Ways to Avoid Indexation

October 25, 2013 • Jill Kocher Brown

It sounds counterintuitive, but sometimes the goal of search engine optimization is avoiding indexation. Consider the following scenarios. Faceted navigation spews out thousands of pages of duplicate or low value content. Email landing ...
SEO
SEO Review: Glamor and Glitz But Few Organic Clicks

October 18, 2013 • Jill Kocher Brown

Fashion-oriented stationer Pergamino has an organic search traffic problem – there’s not enough of it. Founder and Chief Creative Officer Monica Luburich reached out for an SEO review to find ...
Technical SEO
SEO: Google’s Hummingbird Changes the Ecommerce Game

October 11, 2013 • Jill Kocher Brown

Google released its Hummingbird search algorithm under the radar in August. Hummingbird reportedly impacts 90 percent of all search queries. So how does Hummingbird change the game for ecommerce sites? With ...
Keyword Research
Understanding Google’s Keyword ‘Not Provided’ Data

September 27, 2013 • Jill Kocher Brown

Google quietly released major changes to its search product this month to, among other things, move toward encrypting all search activity. The move is touted as an effort to protect ...
Keyword Research
SEO: Is your Site Relevant for that Keyword?

September 13, 2013 • Jill Kocher Brown

Understanding the interplay between search relevance and intent can mean the difference between a well optimized site and a lot of time wasted chasing keywords for which you’ll never rank. Organic ...
Technical SEO
SEO Traffic Changes When URLs Change

September 6, 2013 • Jill Kocher Brown

You may have noticed that we recently updated Practical Ecommerce with a fresh, new design. Behind the scenes, a lot of things changed as we moved to a new platform,
SEO Tools
SEO: Google Adds Manual Spam Actions to Webmaster Tools

August 9, 2013 • Jill Kocher Brown

Google Webmaster Tools launched its new manual spam actions feature yesterday, enabling verified site owners to check whether their site has been manually penalized by Google. Over the last couple of years, Google has slowly increased its communication to webmasters, with the goal of ...
Link Building
SEO: Google Devalues another Link-building Tactic

August 2, 2013 • Jill Kocher Brown

Google’s search result quality mission stands seemingly opposed to the search engine optimization practice of link building. For years, SEO professionals have worked to increase the number of external in-bound links to a site in an effort to build authority and trust, thus boosting orga...
SEO
SEO: 2 Months of Algorithm Updates

July 26, 2013 • Jill Kocher Brown

If your organic search metrics have been fluctuating more than usual recently, you’re in good company. Google rolled out four notable algorithm updates in the two months between May 21 and July 15, including a Panda update and the much-anticipated Penguin 2.0 update. Each of the updat...
Keyword Research
SEO: Using Google’s New Keyword Planner

July 19, 2013 • Jill Kocher Brown

Keywords are the foundation of search engine optimization. They’re what searchers type in Google’s search box, and what marketers incorporate into their web pages to attract searchers to their sites. Google recently launched a new tool that changes the way we research keywords: AdWords ...
SEO > Merchant Voice
SEO and Magento Ecommerce

July 8, 2013 • Richard Stubbings

Magento has been labelled as very Search Engine friendly, but what does this mean? Why is this important? The bottom line for any Ecommerce site is selling products. The idea is (or should be) to make money. In order to do this you have to get people to visit your site, and once there ...
SEO
SEO Tips for Local Contractors

June 19, 2013 • Chris Silver Smith

It's summertime and for many people this is a time for home improvement projects. For contractors this also means it's high season for business. For house painters, carpet and flooring installers, roofing companies, electricians, landscapers, swimming pool contractors, siding providers, and general building contractors, this is the time of year when ranking in the top of the search results can mean the difference between substantial revenues or mediocre profits.
Technical SEO
10 Free Website Speed Tests

May 13, 2013 • Sig Ueland

Before your customers enter your ecommerce store, they’re waiting for it to load. Page load time is the lapsed time between the moment a user requests a new page and when that page is fully rendered by the browser. Reducing page load times can reduce bounce rates and increase conversion...