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-
Link Building
SEO: 3 Ways to Grow Links to Your Ecommerce Site
November 2, 2012 • Jill Kocher Brown
Search engine optimization relies in large part on relevant content and authoritative links from other sites. As the search engines develop ever-more stringent algorithms around relevance and authority, it becomes harder to acquire links that will actually matter to your site’s SEO effo...
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SEO
Understanding Google’s Algorithm Updates
October 26, 2012 • Jill Kocher Brown
The term "webspam" refers to low-quality sites that use manipulative search engine optimization strategies to win rankings and traffic. Google’s war on webspam has reached an all-time high, with the search giant churning out an average of one-to-two updates a day. Understanding these al...
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Keyword Research
SEO: Marshaling Your Keyword Army
October 12, 2012 • Jill Kocher Brown
Content optimization for search engines seems straightforward. You research the keywords that your customers use most frequently and you use them on your site in the places that matter most to search engine algorithms. But deciding which keywords to apply to individual pages when you’re...
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Keyword Research
5 SEO Keyword Research Sources in Google
October 3, 2012 • Chris Silver Smith
Many search marketers are intimidated by the keyword research phase of search engine optimization. They falsely assume that it requires purchasing expensive subscriptions to tools, or hiring experts. However, Google provides a wealth of data that you can leverage if you know where to look. Read on for five fantastic sources of keyword ideas in Google itself.
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Technical SEO
SEO: Putting Navigation to Work
September 28, 2012 • Jill Kocher Brown
Navigation does more than shuttling customers around your site. In addition to its obvious usability and design functions, navigation can be optimized to improve organic search traffic. Well-optimized navigation strengthens the flow of link popularity throughout your site while sending ...
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Technical SEO
Using Meta Tags for Search Engine Visibility
September 25, 2012 • Lorrie Thomas Ross
Search engine optimization continually evolves to include new tactics. But classics like meta tags are still important. Making the most of your meta tags can be a small step that can make a large difference in your overall web marketing.
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SEO
SEO Ranking Forecast: 74 and Sunny
September 21, 2012 • Jill Kocher Brown
One of the hardest aspects of search engine optimization is determining whether changes in your site’s organic search results are based on changes to your own site or external influences like algorithm changes. SEOmoz created MozCast weather report to help answer this question, and tod...
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On-page SEO
SEO: Using Automated Landing Pages
September 14, 2012 • Jill Kocher Brown
Marketing automation tools make creating landing pages a snap. They focus on making it more efficient to deliver relevant content to relevant individuals at relevant times via email and paid search campaigns. So why not use them to create landing pages for search engine optimization cam...
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Technical SEO
SEO: Avoiding Penguins and Pandas
September 7, 2012 • Jill Kocher Brown
Google’s recent penchant for naming major algorithmic updates after animals has the world of search engine optimization sounding more like a zookeeper’s dilemma. But with rumors of an impending Penguin update — see this article from Search Engine Roundtable — right around the corner, e...
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Technical SEO
SEO: Launching a Redesigned Site
August 31, 2012 • Jill Kocher Brown
Editor's Note: This is part two of a two-part series on identifying, assessing, and mitigating the risk of site redesigns on organic search traffic. Part one, "SEO: Identifying the Impact of a Site Redesign," we published last week. Launching a redesigned site is filled with potentiall...
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Technical SEO
SEO: Identifying the Impact of a Site Redesign
August 24, 2012 • Jill Kocher Brown
Editor's Note: This is part one of a two-part series on identifying, assessing, and mitigating the risk of site redesigns on organic search traffic. Part two, "Launching a Redesigned Site," we will publish next week. Site redesigns can create a period of intense instability for organi...
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Keyword Research
SEO: Using Excel for Keyword Analysis
August 17, 2012 • Jill Kocher Brown
Excel is the SEO tool I use most frequently. Excel helps me organize my thoughts, decide which keywords or pages to focus on, illustrate key concepts, and even draft rudimentary content. This article lists my favorite Excel formulas, menu items, and keyboard shortcuts for search engin...
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SEO
4 Simple Visuals to Explain SEO
August 10, 2012 • Jill Kocher Brown
When talking to marketers, it can be nearly impossible to get them to look beyond the brand imagery and user experience they’ve crafted for their customers online. And while they’re locked into that perception of their sites, it’s very difficult to explain why search engines don’t perce...
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Technical SEO
5 SEO Shortcuts to Avoid
July 12, 2012 • Jill Kocher Brown
Search engines are programmed to reward relevance and popularity, and are striving to algorithmically determine quality as well. Ecommerce sites are programmed to sell product to customers as efficiently as possible while offering a positive brand experience. Ecommerce sites often striv...
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Technical SEO
SEO: Understanding XML Sitemaps
June 29, 2012 • Jill Kocher Brown
XML sitemaps serve a very niche purpose in search engine optimization: facilitating indexation. Posting an XML sitemap is kind of like rolling out the red carpet for search engines and giving them a roadmap of the preferred routes through the site. It’s the site owner’s chance to tell c...
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Keyword Research
SEO Keywords: ‘Red Roses’ vs. ‘Roses Red’
June 22, 2012 • Jill Kocher Brown
Search engines are code-driven, logic-based pieces of software and hardware that know and do what they’re programmed to do: rank data gathered from crawling websites according to specific algorithms against searchers’ queries. Those algorithms based on keyword relevance prefer exact mat...
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SEO Tools
12 Free Google SEO Tools
June 13, 2012 • Sig Ueland
Before you spend any money on a search-engine-optimization campaign for your website, take advantage of Google’s free tools to optimize your site and increase its PageRank. And if you are just starting out with SEO, check out Google’s Search Engine Optimization Starter Guide PDF. Here ...
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SEO
SEO Report Card: MotoGP Store, Part 2
June 7, 2012 • Jill Kocher Brown
The MotoGP Store volunteered for an SEO Report Card. This is the second installment of my analysis of that site. In "Part 1," I reviewed the home page and category pages, internal navigation, HTML templates, title tags and keyword choices on, again, The MotoGP Store. Now I'll look at UR...
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Link Building
17 Tools to Analyze Your Links
June 6, 2012 • Sig Ueland
Monitoring your inbound links is a great way to gauge the progress of your website. Inbound links, or backlinks, give you a picture of who is taking an interest in your site. Compare your inbound links to those of your competing websites, and discover new relationships to build. Here ...
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SEO
SEO Report Card: MotoGP Store, Part 1
June 1, 2012 • Jill Kocher Brown
Every now and then an ecommerce site raises its hand for an "SEO Report Card." It’s a great way for the site to get some free advice and a good link, and an interesting way to give Practical eCommerce some, well, practical tips on how we’d handle SEO challenges with real ecommerce sites...
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SEO
Why Does SEO Take So Long?
May 25, 2012 • Jill Kocher Brown
Search marketing’s two halves are so similar and yet so different. A new pay-per-click advertising campaign can be set up and pushed live, and data starts to roll in that same day. Within a week there may be enough data to analyze performance, tweak and iterate the optimization of the c...
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Technical SEO
SEO Site Migration Checklist
May 18, 2012 • Jill Kocher Brown
Migrating a site to a new platform or domain, or implementing a major redesign, is one of the most stressful situations in search engine optimization. The potential for massively impacting organic search traffic and sales is higher during these launches than at any other time. But with ...
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Keyword Research
SEO: How to Amplify Keyword Signals
May 11, 2012 • Jill Kocher Brown
Search engine optimization is all about "signal" and "amplification." The signal is simply using relevant keywords. Amplification is about how to use those keywords and encourage linking and sharing. Think of the keywords as the voice of a site and the amplification as a megaphone. The ...
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SEO
SEO Professionals Can Harm an Ecommerce Business
May 4, 2012 • Jill Kocher Brown
Like Bon Jovi’s song, “You Give Love a Bad Name,” some search engine optimization companies give that profession a bad reputation. Practical eCommerce recently fielded a question from a reader wondering why his site was being penalized for work his SEO company had done on his behalf. It...
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Technical SEO
Google’s Over-Optimization Penalty an Evolution, Not Revolution
April 27, 2012 • Jill Kocher Brown
Google’s much discussed over-optimization penalty turned out to be a moderate evolutionary step in Google’s site quality crusade. Launched April 24, Google wrote in a blog post of its update, “The change will decrease rankings for sites that we believe are violating Google’s quality gui...
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Link Building
SEO: Avoid Link Building Shortcuts
April 19, 2012 • Jill Kocher Brown
There are no safe link building shortcuts. Instead I want to warn marketers about deceptive search marketers and the dangers of using “easy” link building tactics. In the latest instance, the search engine optimization community is abuzz with news that Home Depot’s SEO team has attempt...
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Link Building
SEO: Build Relationships, Not Links
April 13, 2012 • Jill Kocher Brown
When the Internet was new, it was difficult to find interesting and relevant websites. Link building was easy in those days. It was often just a matter of letting webmasters know that your site existed and they could link to it. Things have changed in the last couple of decades. Webmas...
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SEO
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Merchant Voice
SEO and Selecting a Magento Theme
April 7, 2012 • Richard Stubbings
One of the best ways to implement any cart is to select a template that is close to what you want your site to look like, and then use a professional designer to tailor it to your unique needs. Magento has literally thousands of templates and it can be a little daunting finding one for ...
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SEO
SEO and PPC: Synergistic or Cannibalistic?
April 6, 2012 • Jill Kocher Brown
Many ecommerce managers wonder whether the paid search ads they place enhance or cannibalize the organic search results. They wonder, in other words, if they end up paying for clicks they could have had for free organically. A recent study by Google suggests that the relationship betwee...
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On-page SEO
8 SEO Pointers for Ecommerce Product Pages
April 5, 2012 • Pablo Palatnik
Search engine optimization can be the difference between ecommerce businesses that thrive, and those that don't. Optimizing product pages for search engines is especially important. Below are eight pointers to make sure your product pages are properly optimized. 1. Place Keywords i...
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