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
  • 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...

  • SEO

    Managing SEO and Social Media Together

    December 13, 2011 •

    How etailers manage their social media marketing channel has a growing impact on organic search results. Google and Bing have both incorporated social data into their algorithms to signal content freshness and quality. While the datasets each engine has access to differ, the fact remain...

  • SEO Tools

    5 Conversion Tools for SEO and Beyond

    November 29, 2011 •

    The quickest path to earning more from an ecommerce site's organic search traffic is to convert more consumers who already go there. I addressed that topic previously, at "SEO: Convert More Before Driving More." Many SEO strategies focus on driving more visitors. But what use is driv...

  • Technical SEO

    SEO: Letting Customers Generate Long Tail Search Terms

    November 23, 2011 •

    Search engine optimization typically focuses on the trophy terms, the high-volume keyword phrases, because marketers need to drive the highest value with the lowest effort. Unfortunately, those juicy trophy terms are great for brand recognition and customers' initial awareness, but they...

  • Technical SEO

    Navigation: Your Biggest On-Site SEO Asset

    October 28, 2011 •

    A site's navigational links can help its search engine optimization. Links pass "link popularity," little votes of value, from the linking page to the destination page. In addition, the link's anchor text — the visible text portion of the link — passes a relevance signal. Relevance and...

  • SEO

    SEO Report Card: SolsticeSupply.com, Part 2

    October 7, 2011 •

    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 •

    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 •

    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 •

    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 •

    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 •

    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 •

    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 •

    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 •

    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 •

    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...

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