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: Tools for Link Building

April 1, 2006 • Stephan Spencer

In last month's issue, I discussed links and their importance in search engine optimization. Now let's get acquainted with some powerful tools to aide us in our link building efforts. Yahoo! Site Explorer offers a quick way to review competitors' and your own inbound links. PageRank Se...
SEO
SEO Report Card: Golfgods.com

April 1, 2006 • Stephan Spencer

This time around we're going to be taking a slightly different tack, as I was privy to a redesign in-the-making–of golf equipment seller Golfgods.com – with numerous SEO and usability improvements, along with a shift in ecommerce platforms. In fact, by the time this article ends up in p...
Link Building
SEO: Weaving a Web of Links

March 1, 2006 • Stephan Spencer

Links are the currency of the web. Not only do their drive traffic in their own right, but they also are essential to high search engine rankings. Without good inbound links to your web site, your search engine optimization (SEO) efforts won't get off the ground. Link building isn't ab...
SEO
SEO Report Card: Stayleaner.com

March 1, 2006 • Stephan Spencer

Each month it gets harder to select an ecommerce site to assess, as the requests from readers keep coming in increasing volume. This month I've chosen Stayleaner.com, the ecommerce site for J & J Health Foods, which sells vitamins, herbs and supplements for sports nutrition and body...
Technical SEO
Optimize Your HTML For Search Engines

February 1, 2006 • Stephan Spencer

SEO can be broken into two distinct areas – "onpage" factors and "off-page" factors. On-page factors include anything that you can affect on the page itself, such as the title tag, body copy, H1 heading tags, image “alt” attributes, etc. Off-page factors encompass things that influence...
SEO
SEO Report Card: Discountflies.com

February 1, 2006 • Stephan Spencer

Welcome back to another installment of “SEO Report Card.” Each month I assess the search engine optimization effectiveness of an ecommerce site. This month's brave volunteer is DiscountFlies.com, an online retailer who sells flies for fly fishing and uses the MIVA Merchant platform. Di...
SEO
Search Engine Optimization: Avoid Complex URLs

January 1, 2006 • Stephan Spencer

Search engines tend to have problems fully indexing dynamic websites (in other words, sites that are hooked up to a database of content). The kinds of sites that search engines have the biggest trouble with are ones that have overly complex URL structures, including numerous variables ...
SEO
SEO Report Card: Balancedlifeproducts.com

January 1, 2006 • Stephan Spencer

Welcome to “SEO Report Card”, where I assess how well search engine optimized a selected ecommerce site is. For this first installment, our guinea pig is BalancedLifeProducts.com, a small ecommerce site, based in Madison, Wisconsin, that sells meditation and massage products such as yog...
SEO
Search Engine Optimization: Writing Effectively

December 1, 2005 • Stephan Spencer

In order to achieve maximum search engine visibility, you need to think a bit like a search engine when writing the copy for your website. Search engines look at the HTML code that makes up your web page and attempts to parse out the textual copy on the page, eliminating the HTML markup...
Keyword Research
Keyword Sleuthing: Locate the Right Word

November 1, 2005 • Stephan Spencer

Effective SEO starts with keyword research. Chasing after the wrong keywords is a waste, costing time and effort. The "right" keywords are the ones that are not only relevant to your business, but are al...
SEO
Basics of Search Engine Optimization

September 1, 2005 • PEC Staff

First, what is search engine optimization? Also known as "SEO," search engine optimization can be defined as a set of methodologies aimed at improving the visibility of a website in search engine listings.