Category

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

    5 SEO Shortcuts to Avoid

    July 12, 2012 •

    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...

  • Technical SEO

    SEO: Understanding XML Sitemaps

    June 29, 2012 •

    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...

  • Keyword Research

    SEO Keywords: ‘Red Roses’ vs. ‘Roses Red’

    June 22, 2012 •

    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...

  • SEO Tools

    12 Free Google SEO Tools

    June 13, 2012 •

    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 ...

  • SEO

    SEO Report Card: MotoGP Store, Part 2

    June 7, 2012 •

    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...

  • Link Building

    17 Tools to Analyze Your Links

    June 6, 2012 •

    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 ...

  • SEO

    SEO Report Card: MotoGP Store, Part 1

    June 1, 2012 •

    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...

  • SEO

    Why Does SEO Take So Long?

    May 25, 2012 •

    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...

  • Technical SEO

    SEO Site Migration Checklist

    May 18, 2012 •

    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 ...

  • Keyword Research

    SEO: How to Amplify Keyword Signals

    May 11, 2012 •

    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 ...

  • SEO

    SEO Professionals Can Harm an Ecommerce Business

    May 4, 2012 •

    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...

  • Technical SEO

    Google’s Over-Optimization Penalty an Evolution, Not Revolution

    April 27, 2012 •

    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...

  • Link Building

    SEO: Avoid Link Building Shortcuts

    April 19, 2012 •

    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...

  • Link Building

    SEO: Build Relationships, Not Links

    April 13, 2012 •

    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...

  • SEO > Merchant Voice

    SEO and Selecting a Magento Theme

    April 7, 2012 •

    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 ...

  • SEO

    SEO and PPC: Synergistic or Cannibalistic?

    April 6, 2012 •

    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...

  • On-page SEO

    8 SEO Pointers for Ecommerce Product Pages

    April 5, 2012 •

    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...

  • Technical SEO

    Google’s Secure Search Squeezes SEO Planning and Reporting

    March 30, 2012 •

    Google's secure SSL search protects users' search results and the keywords they searched on. Unfortunately, it also poses a growing threat to data-driven search engine optimization. Firefox recently joined Google Chrome — and Google.com, for logged-in users — in defaulting to secure sea...

  • Technical SEO

    Google Plans SEO Over-Optimization Penalty

    March 22, 2012 •

    Google’s head spam cop Matt Cutts announced the impending launch of a new over-optimization penalty to “level the playing ground.” The disclosure came earlier this month at the South By ...

  • SEO Tools

    Top 5 Reasons to Use Google Webmaster Tools

    March 16, 2012 •

    There’s a common misconception that registering with Google Webmaster Tools somehow enables Google more access to information about a site. In fact, just the opposite is true. Google Webmaster Tools provides site owners access to data available from no other source, data every ecommerce...

  • SEO

    SEO for Mobile Apps and App Stores

    March 9, 2012 •

    The world of mobile applications is foreign territory to most Internet marketers. App development requires different skills than traditional website development. App planning and design forces marketers to understand the limitations of different platforms and devices. But once an app i...

  • Technical SEO

    SEO Benefits of Responsive Web Design

    March 1, 2012 •

    Site owners have many competing needs when developing mobile sites. Different devices, different capabilities, different screen sizes and resolutions, all have an impact on designing and developing mobile sites today. According to Mongoose Metrics, a tracking and analysis firm, only 9...

  • SEO

    BloomReach to Change SEO Technology?

    February 24, 2012 •

    Search engine optimization, boiled down, is the process of making sure a web page ends up highly ranked on search results, for searches relevant to that page. A merchant selling "Columbia Traverse Men's Hiking Shoes," for example, will want to optimize its product page so that searches ...

  • On-page SEO

    SEO: Optimizing Ratings, Reviews and Comments

    February 17, 2012 •

    Content that consumers leave on an ecommerce site can improve the site’s search engine optimization, if the platforms and underlying code are set up optimally. Ratings, reviews and comments each play a part in SEO, utilizing the words and opinions that real shoppers voice to strengthen ...

  • SEO

    SEO Impact of Google’s Search Plus Your World

    February 3, 2012 •

    As search and social become ever more entwined in Google’s and Bing’s algorithms and search results, search engine optimizers cannot afford to turn a blind eye to social media. Bing incorporates Facebook data into its search results. Google has taken another big step with the introducti...

  • Keyword Research

    Optimizing a Page for Search Engines, Part 3: Keywords to Content

    January 27, 2012 •

    Editor's Note: This is the final installment of a three-part series on optimizing ecommerce pages for search engines. The first two installments, "Part 1: Keyword Research" and “Part 2: Keyword Mapping,” we published previously. I discussed keyword research and content mapping in detai...

  • Hamlet Batista SEO

    Too Much SEO Can Harm an Ecommerce Business

    January 26, 2012 •

    Balancing SEO with usability was the topic when we recently spoke with Hamlet Batista. He is a pioneering SEO innovator and the founder of Hamlet Batista Group, an SEO consultancy.

  • Keyword Research

    Optimizing a Page for Search Engines, Part 2: Keyword Mapping

    January 20, 2012 •

    Editor's Note: This is the second installment of a three-part series on optimizing ecommerce pages for search engines. The first installment, "Part 1: Keyword Research," we published last week. "Part 3: Keywords to Content" we published after the article, below. Keyword research is ess...

  • Keyword Research

    Optimizing a Page for Search Engines, Part 1: Keyword Research

    January 13, 2012 •

    Editor’s Note: This is the first installment of a three-part series on optimizing ecommerce pages for search engines. “Part 2: Keyword Mapping” and “Part 3: Keywords to Content” we published ...

  • SEO

    How to Benefit from Googlebot-Mobile’s New Smarts

    December 16, 2011 •

    Google’s mobile crawler Googlebot-Mobile has traditionally focused on content designed for feature phones and their extremely limited browsers. Google recently announced, however, a new version of Googlebot-Mobile that crawls using an iPhone user agent, enabling it to discover content d...

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