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
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 ...
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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 ...
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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 ...
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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 ...
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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 ...
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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 ...
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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 ...
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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,
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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 ...
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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...
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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...
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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 ...
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SEO
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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 ...
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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.
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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...
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Technical SEO
SEO Audits: What to Expect
March 15, 2013 • Jill Kocher Brown
One of the challenges that plagues the search marketing industry is a lack of standards around the quality and scope of work. Different agencies and consultants will use similar words to describe very different deliverables and processes. One of the most abused of these is the SEO Audit...
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Technical SEO
SEO: Impact of Ecommerce Catalog Structure
March 1, 2013 • Jill Kocher Brown
Information architecture and search engine optimization are both critical aspects of developing an ecommerce site. During the process, early decisions made about the structure of a site and its product catalog can have surprising ramifications for SEO. Which product types and attribute...
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Technical SEO
SEO: Optimal Ecommerce URLs
February 1, 2013 • Jill Kocher Brown
The ecommerce platform that hosts a site determines the URL structure, which in turn can have an impact on the site’s search engine optimization. Each platform creates URLs according to its own rules, but nearly all can be modified for greater SEO and brand recognition. In years past, ...
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SEO
SEO New Year’s Resolutions for 2013
January 4, 2013 • Jill Kocher Brown
With a new year ahead, it’s time to think about New Year’s resolutions. What do you want search engine optimization to do for your site in 2013? The most likely goals for any ecommerce site revolve around driving more traffic and converting more visitors. Let’s look at some steps for an...
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Technical SEO
SEO: When Product Facets and Filters Fail
December 21, 2012 • Jill Kocher Brown
Ecommerce sites rely on filtered or faceted navigation to make their product catalogs more easily digestible for customers. Depending on how filters and facets are implemented, however, they can either be fantastic for search engine optimization or a big failure. SEO is based on three ...
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Technical SEO
SEO: Working Around a Redesign
December 14, 2012 • Jill Kocher Brown
When a redesign or platform change looms in your site’s future, it’s easy to turn off all search-engine-optimization work and focus on planning the new site. After all, why bother making changes that will just be overwritten when you launch the new site? Focusing on a few key areas will...
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SEO
The SEO Benefit of Infographics
December 7, 2012 • Jill Kocher Brown
Search engine optimization professionals don't usually recommend creating more images, but infographics can have a real benefit to SEO. Typically, images are used in place of textual content to convey the same message visually. Consequently, images tend to be viewed as detrimental to SE...
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Keyword Research
Using Keyword Research beyond SEO
November 30, 2012 • Jill Kocher Brown
Keyword research is one of the foundational pieces of search engine optimization because it illuminates the exact words real-life customers use to search for the products we sell. But why stop there? The insights that keyword research provides can inform other many other areas of the bu...
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Technical SEO
4 Fast Ways to Kill Your SEO
November 9, 2012 • Jill Kocher Brown
Search engine optimization experts usually focus on what you should do to improve your site’s organic search rankings. In this post, I'm asking the opposite question: What are the fastest ways to destroy your site’s SEO performance? Here's a list of my top four mistakes. Mistake 1: Lau...
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Keyword Research
Google Analytics: Overcoming ‘Not Provided’ Keywords
November 7, 2012 • Jaime Brugueras
What do you do when 36 percent of your traffic data is gone? For most of us, the answer is “panic.” After all, for an online business, traffic data and search-engine-optimization knowledge is essential. If you don’t understand the behavior of visitors to your website, then your business...
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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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