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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.

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SEO
SEO Report Card: SolsticeSupply.com, Part 2

October 7, 2011 • Jill Kocher Brown

Over two years ago, we published an "SEO Report Card" for SolsticeSupply.com, an ecommerce site dedicated to closeout winter goods ranging from skis and snowboards to winter apparel. With a final grade of D+, the review didn't go well for founder Justin Clapick, who requested it. Clapic...
SEO
SEO Sidecars More Trouble than They’re Worth

September 30, 2011 • Jill Kocher Brown

I'll get right to the point. You can't bolt a couple of pages onto the edge of your ecommece site like a sidecar to a motorcycle and call it search engine optimization. Or, rather, you can launch your SEO sidecar but it won't achieve the organic search performance you desire without app...
Keyword Research
SEO: Automating Keyword Selection with AdWords API

August 23, 2011 • Jill Kocher Brown

Optimizing a website around highly searched keyword terms can materially increase traffic from search engines. But identifying those keywords takes time. Few SEO managers relish the tedium of slogging through thousands of keyword variations — as critical as that process is to a search-e...
SEO
How to Check Your Website’s SEO Health

June 27, 2011 • Stephan Spencer

There’s no reason, really, why ecommerce merchants cannot improve the search engine visibility of their websites. That’s because there are many free tools to gauge the search-engine-optimization health of those sites, and suggest SEO corrections to them. In this screencast below, I’ll...
SEO
Search Engines Love Blogs; 3 Benefits

May 12, 2011 • Stephan Spencer

Search engines love blogs. They provide original, updated content that contribute to highly ranked sites. But how do merchants optimize blogs for search engines and how do they incorporate the blogs into their ecommerce sites? I'll discuss optimizing blogs for search engine performance ...
Technical SEO
How to Increase Page Speed and Help Search-Engine Rankings

May 11, 2011 • Michael Stearns

In the spring of 2010, Google announced it would factor page speed more heavily into its search ranking algorithm. "Faster sites create happy users," Google stated in the blog post describing the algorithm change. Your ability — as an ecommerce merchant — to improve your site's speed d...
SEO
SEO Case Study: When Past SEO Efforts Hurt Today’s Traffic

April 15, 2011 • Jill Kocher Brown

Editor’s Note: This is the third installment of a search-engine-optimization case study from contributor Jill Kocher on the SEO struggles of The Motor Bookstore, a retailer of automotive manuals. The Motorbook ...
Technical SEO
SEO Case Study: Improving the Site’s Architecture

March 25, 2011 • Jill Kocher Brown

Editor's Note: This is the second installment of a search-engine-optimization case study from contributor Jill Kocher on the SEO travails of The Motor Bookstore, a retailer of automotive manuals. Like most ecommerce businesses, The Motorbook Store relies heavily on traffic from search ...
SEO
SEO Case Study: One Store’s Struggle with Google Updates

March 17, 2011 • Jill Kocher Brown

In an effort to increase the quality of its search results, Google launched an update in late February dubbed the “Farmer/Panda Update” by the search-engine-optimization industry. The update affected 12 percent of Google’s results, decreasing organic traffic for sites like the one owned...
SEO
Google’s ‘Farmer’ Algorithm and What It Means for Ecommerce SEO

March 8, 2011 • Armando Roggio

A massive change to Google's search engine ranking algorithm has recently improved query results, while having a negative effect on businesses that had been "gaming" the system or reusing others' content. The so-called "Farmer" algorithm update went into effect in late February and aff...
SEO
How to Waste Time on SEO Activities

March 4, 2011 • Stephan Spencer

As a general rule, search engine optimization consultants are activity-focused. They typically suggest a huge laundry list of various activities to perform. Perhaps the list is prioritized, but nonetheless it is frequently chock full of action items. Unfortunately, many of these activit...
SEO
J.C. Penney Incurs Google SEO ‘Action’; How to Protect Your Own Company

February 15, 2011 • Jill Kocher Brown

Search-engine-optimization agencies often play a vital role in ecommerce sites, where winning and converting organic searches to sales directly impacts the e-tailer’s bottom line. But how far should a company trust an SEO agency to act on its behalf? The SEO community erupted this weeke...
SEO
SEO Consequences of Negative Reviews

November 30, 2010 • Jill Kocher Brown

An alarming new flavor of search engine optimization surfaced on Friday when The New York Times reported on DecorMyEyes, an unscrupulous eyewear etailer who goads customers into writing negative reviews for SEO benefit. Nothing boosts a well-crawled site’s rankings higher than an infusi...
SEO
SEO Report Card: 877MyJuicer.com

November 17, 2010 • Stephan Spencer

Andrew Casey, founder and CEO of 877MyJuicer.com, asked for an "SEO Report Card" for his site. As always, I’m happy to oblige. Andrew started this business in 2004 by selling juicers on eBay. Over the past 6 years, he has grown his startup into a million dollar company with its own e...
Keyword Research
Supercharge Your Opera, Firefox Web Searches with Search-Preference Keywords

November 5, 2010 • Armando Roggio

Every major web browser allows users to conduct a web search directly from its address bar. But Opera and Firefox take this convenient shortcut a step further, allowing folks to search several different sites or engines directly from a single spot. For professionals who work on the Int...
Link Building
Bing Social Search: Are ‘Likes’ the New Links?

October 28, 2010 • Jill Kocher Brown

Organic search revolves increasingly around personalization, delivering relevance not just to a searcher’s literal query, but also to the implied intent, geographic location, and historical preferences. Earlier this month Bing took another step toward integrating Facebook’s social dat...
SEO
Ask an Expert: Subdomains, Subdirectories and SEO Implications

October 20, 2010 • PEC Staff

"Ask an Expert" is an occasional feature where we ask ecommerce experts questions from online merchants. For this installment, we address a series of questions on the proper use of subdomains. For the answers, we turn to Michael Stearns, CEO of the Internet marketing and design company...
On-page SEO
Shopping Cart FAQ: How to Evaluate SEO Effectiveness

October 14, 2010 • Jon Hos

Editor's Note: We are excited to debut "Shopping Cart FAQ," our monthly column aimed at merchants who are evaluating shopping carts. Merchants frequently have different priorities for their carts. Some may seek specialized merchandizing features, others may seek customized shipping inte...
SEO
SEO Report Card: AxisLabs.net

October 4, 2010 • Stephan Spencer

In this month's “SEO Report Card,” I'll look at the website for Axis Labs, a company that produces and sells nutritional supplements. Headquartered in Denver, Colorado, this private company went international in 2006 and now distributes to six of the seven continents. Axis Labs curren...
Technical SEO
SEO: Understanding Advanced Search Operators

September 30, 2010 • Jill Kocher Brown

Let’s face it, the engines control search. They may keep tight-lipped control of their algorithmic secrets, but they also provide their users with tools that SEO practitioners can use to understand how the engines see their sites. These advanced operators offer a peek behind the curtain...
Link Building
SEO: 5 Ecommerce Link-Building Ideas

September 24, 2010 • Bill Hartzer

To obtain good organic rankings in the search engines, web pages need inbound links. This is because search engines look for some way to determine how to rank one page over another. They look for some sort of indication of quality, some sort of "approval" that one ecommerce product page...
SEO
Google Instant: 9 Frequently Asked Questions

September 21, 2010 • PEC Staff

Roughly half of the visitors to an ecommerce site come from search engines, typically. And when those search engines change the method in which consumers search for online products, the effect on ecommerce merchants can be dramatic. Enter Google Instant, the new auto-fill search proces...
SEO
Google ‘Instant’ a Game Changer?

September 17, 2010 • Jill Kocher Brown

Last week, Google introduced "Instant," a feature that predicts searchers’ queries as they type them and streams the results for that predicted query onto the results page in real time. Google announced Instant on its blog, at "Search: now faster than the speed of type." Google Instan...
Technical SEO
SEO: Unique Content Good for Search Engines, Good for Consumers

September 3, 2010 • Jill Kocher Brown

Unique, valuable content is a critical part of a successful SEO strategy. That is especially the case for ecommerce sites that utilize non-unique stock product descriptions from the manufacturer’s database. But, I’m often asked if there’s a faster, cheaper, free way to generate content....
Link Building
Ask an Expert: Do No-Follow Links Help with SEO?

August 16, 2010 • PEC Staff

"Ask an Expert" is an occasional feature where we ask ecommerce experts questions from online merchants. For this installment, we address a question about the search-engine-optimization value to no-follow links on social bookmarking sites, such as Digg and StumbleUpon. The question come...
SEO
SEO for Anti-SEO Business Models

July 29, 2010 • Jill Kocher Brown

I recently changed SEO jobs. I went from an agency that manages clients' search-engine-optimization efforts, to an in-house SEO manager for a single company. I knew previously, from working with many ecommerce clients, that business models and product offerings have an impact on SEO suc...
Technical SEO
The PEC Review: Online Image Optimizer Speeds Load Times

July 26, 2010 • Armando Roggio

A slow-loading retail site is akin to the store clerk who ignores you in a brick-and-mortar shop. On a recent trip, I stopped at a small antique store. My wife and I entered the store, walked around for about 20 minutes, examined dozens of items, and never once during the entire experi...
SEO
SEO Report Card: Woot.com

July 23, 2010 • Stephan Spencer

For this month’s “SEO Report Card,” I thought I would do something different and review a site that didn’t request it. The site I chose, Woot.com, is near and dear ...
Keyword Research
SEO: Keyword Research and Analysis

June 22, 2010 • Bill Hartzer

Editor’s Note: is a contributor to Practical eCommerce and the owner of BillHartzer.com, a Dallas-based online marketing firm. Hartzer wrote the article, below, which first appeared in that company’s blog. Keyword research is one of the most important parts of online marketing. Somet...
SEO
SEO Report Card: United States Golf Association, Photo Store Website

June 16, 2010 • Stephan Spencer

This month in “SEO Report Card,” I’ll be reviewing the photo store for the United States Golf Association Museum website. This was at the request of Robert Sabin, the president ...

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