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 Obstacles to SEO Success
December 20, 2019 • Jill Kocher Brown
I’ve worked in SEO for 14 years. In my experience, the following five deficiencies will likely block efforts to improve organic search performance
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Technical SEO
Are SEO Audits Worth the Money?
December 17, 2019 • Bill Sebald
An SEO audit can cover any number of components — technical, content, competitive, backlinks, mobile, and analytics. Or it can be even more detailed. The risk of a generic SEO audit is that it scratches the surface, with little benefit.
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SEO
5 SEO Wives’ Tales That Won’t Go Away
December 13, 2019 • Jill Kocher Brown
There’s a wives’ tale that white wine will remove a red-wine stain. Another claims that eating an apple a day will keep a doctor away. Similarly, many wives’ tales surround search engine optimization. The five below I hear the most from clients and other marketers.
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SEO
How to Make SEO Happen in 2020
December 6, 2019 • Jill Kocher Brown
Effective search engine optimization takes preparation and planning. Random action produces haphazard results. Here’s how to make your SEO plans come to life in 2020.
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SEO
The 8 Benefits of SEO for Ecommerce
November 24, 2019 • Jill Kocher Brown
Ecommerce businesses live and die by their ability to attract new customers. In the race to increase revenue, traffic from organic search can be essential. Here’s why.
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SEO
How to Monitor SEO Topic Clusters, Silos
November 18, 2019 • Armando Roggio
An internal linking strategy around topic clusters or silos can improve site architecture and help search engines understand your content. But topic clusters are not a set-and-forget strategy. They require monitoring.
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SEO
For Ecommerce SEO, Don’t Ignore the Long Tail
November 17, 2019 • Jill Kocher Brown
Search engine optimization typically focuses on popular keywords. However, long-tail SEO targets keywords that are searched for less frequently but drive value in the aggregate.
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Cross-border Selling
Hreflang Explained
November 12, 2019 • Bill Sebald
Hreflang is an HTML attribute that allows Google and other search engines to recognize localized versions of web pages. If you have sections of your site for a French audience, for example, an hreflang tag helps Google understand that the section should appear in search results on Google.fr, not Google.com.
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Technical SEO
For SEO, How Fast Is Fast Enough?
November 3, 2019 • Jill Kocher Brown
Page speed improvements are high on most ecommerce to-do lists. The potential for increased revenue as well as better organic search rankings makes the effort worthwhile. But first, everyone wants to know how fast is fast enough.
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Link Building
SEO Link-building for Ecommerce
October 29, 2019 • Bill Sebald
Link-building is tough. It's especially tough for ecommerce sites. Long gone are the days when consumers linked to products. But that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t be seeking links. It may be even more necessary.
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On-page SEO
SEO: Google’s BERT Update Helps Ecommerce Product Pages
October 27, 2019 • Jill Kocher Brown
Google’s BERT algorithm, released last week, is the company’s latest effort to understand the intent of search queries. For ecommerce sites, the unique details on product pages could now drive more organic search traffic with high purchase intent.
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SEO
SEO: Expertise in 1 Area Can Lead to Weakness in Others
October 20, 2019 • Jill Kocher Brown
Excelling in one area of search engine optimization can lead to weaknesses in others. I've seen it many times. If your organic search channel isn’t growing despite the effort you’re pouring into it, assess whether you are blind to the real issue. Here are three examples.
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Technical SEO
7 SEO ‘Rules’ to Ignore for Ecommerce
October 13, 2019 • Jill Kocher Brown
Search engine optimization tools have evolved into measuring hundreds of variables. But not all of them impact ecommerce performance in my experience. What follows are seven common SEO metrics to ignore, or relegate to a quick glance.
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Technical SEO
Chrome’s ‘Mixed Content’ Updates Could Impact Ecommerce Sites
October 7, 2019 • Hamlet Batista
Google Chrome just announced important changes that could impact ecommerce. The changes address "mixed content" — sites with HTTP and HTTPS resources. In this post, I'll review steps to ensure the changes do not affect your ecommerce site come January.
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Technical SEO
7 Coding Barriers to SEO Success
October 6, 2019 • Jill Kocher Brown
Googlebot obeys only certain commands, ignores forms and cookies, and crawls only the links coded with a proper anchor tag and href. What follows are seven items that block Googlebot and other search engine bots from crawling (and indexing) all of your web pages.
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SEO
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Merchant Voice
My experience with SEO
October 4, 2019 • Richard Stubbings
Relying on organic search traffic is risky for small ecommerce businesses in my experience. Other marketing channels, such as Facebook, could generate a better return on investment. Traditional methods of ...
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Technical SEO
Is Google’s Nofollow Change a Peek into SEO’s Future?
September 25, 2019 • Bill Sebald
Once again, we are faced with a change from Google. In a Sept. 10 post on its Webmaster Central Blog, Google stated that the nofollow attribute is now a hint instead of a directive. Here's the backstory.
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SEO
Google Muzzles ‘Self-serving’ Review Snippets
September 22, 2019 • Jill Kocher Brown
With a new algorithm, Google is determined to remove "self-serving" reviews from rich snippets in search results. Thankfully for ecommerce companies, traditional product reviews on product pages shouldn’t be affected.
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Technical SEO
SEO: Catchall Redirects Are a Bad Practice
September 11, 2019 • Hamlet Batista
At first glance a catchall redirect page seems like a good solution. Instead of fixing thousands or tens of thousands of redirect errors, set up a simple catchall rule and send all users (and bots) to a single page. But it’s a bad idea.
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Technical SEO
SEO: HTML, XML Sitemaps Explained
August 30, 2019 • Jill Kocher Brown
There are two types of sitemaps: HTML and XML. HTML sitemaps guide visitors, mostly. XML sitemaps guide search engine bots, to ensure they find a site’s URLs to index. Understanding the strengths and weaknesses of each will help with your search engine optimization.
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Technical SEO
6-step SEO Indexation Audit for Ecommerce
August 25, 2019 • Jill Kocher Brown
Search engines need to index your site before it can rank. But it's not always obvious if a search index contains the correct pages. Content that should be indexed may not be. And content that should not be indexed often is. Use the following six steps to ensure that the right pages are indexed across your ecommerce site.
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SEO
Use ‘Barnacle SEO’ to Drive Traffic without Ranking
August 21, 2019 • Armando Roggio
Using so-called "barnacle SEO" tactics, an ecommerce business may be able to put its products and its brand in front of many potential customers without ranking its website for a target phrase. The idea is to place content on large established domains to win one or more spots on the search engine results page for your company's most competitive keyword phrases.
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Technical SEO
8-step SEO Crawl Audit for Ecommerce
August 18, 2019 • Jill Kocher Brown
Your site won’t rank if search engine bots can’t crawl it. And hidden doors that don’t impact human visitors can lock bots out. Use these eight steps to ensure search bots can access all of your ecommerce site.
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Link Building
SEO: A Common Sense Assessment of Link Quality
August 14, 2019 • Armando Roggio
A quality backlink pleases both humans and search engine algorithms. It is editorial in nature. It comes from a well-respected source, and it is relevant to the topics covered on both the linking and linked websites.
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SEO
3 Tools to Find Broken Links on Your Website
August 11, 2019 • Armando Roggio
Finding and fixing broken links should be part of your company's regular site maintenance. Here are three popular SEO tools and instructions on how to use each to locate broken links.
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SEO
4 Ways Google Defines ‘Quality’
August 8, 2019 • Jill Kocher Brown
One of the most frustrating elements of search engine optimization has been Google's attempt to address quality. Now we have Google’s definition of “quality.” In a blog post this week, Google listed 20 questions that determine quality, across four key areas.
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Technical SEO
SEO Tips When URLs Differ for Mobile and Desktop
August 5, 2019 • Jill Kocher Brown
If you still have a separate mobile ecommerce site, meaning that you have different URLs for mobile and desktop, your search engine optimization requires extra effort.
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SEO
SEO: That Blob of Text May Not Be Helping
July 30, 2019 • Armando Roggio
Adding on-site text for search engines and not users could confuse algorithms and may amount to keyword stuffing, according to a Google spokesman. The practice is understandable. Merchants seek to attract traffic from organic search. They know that search algorithms love unique content.
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Technical SEO
SEO: Analyzing Googlebot Crawls for Problems, Inefficiencies
July 28, 2019 • Hamlet Batista
Crawl budget inefficiencies can affect organic search performance if new or updated content is not getting crawled and indexed. In this post, I will explain how to generate reports to help determine if your site has a Googlebot crawl budget problem.
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SEO
Dissecting ‘Request a Quote’ in Google Search Results
July 26, 2019 • Jill Kocher Brown
Google is making it easier for businesses to collect leads. A new “Request a Quote” button is appearing in Knowledge Panels, the boxes on the right of search results.