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
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.
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Technical SEO
SEO: How Google Reads and Renders JavaScript
July 24, 2019 • Armando Roggio
JavaScript can improve a shopper's buying experience, encourage interaction, and even bolster site performance in some cases. But where search engine optimization is concerned, JavaScript requires an extra degree of care.
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SEO Tools
Using Google Trends for Ecommerce
July 23, 2019 • Bill Sebald
Google Trends reports the relative popularity of search terms across languages and regions. It's helpful for identifying when consumers start thinking about a product.
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Technical SEO
SEO: Optimizing Crawl Budget for Ecommerce Sites
July 17, 2019 • Armando Roggio
Optimizing an ecommerce site for crawl budget may impact how often Google's web crawler, Googlebot, visits a given page and how quickly that page appears in search results. It can also guide Googlebot to the most important content on a site, which could impact how those pages rank.
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SEO
Negative SEO Is Not Your Problem
July 12, 2019 • Jill Kocher Brown
Webmasters cannot prevent negative SEO. Thus it creates much fear among ecommerce owners. But that fear is overrated and possibly unnecessary.
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SEO
The High Cost of Ignoring SEO
July 9, 2019 • Hamlet Batista
Ignoring organic search traffic can be costly. I addressed the topic last year at Edgenet Academy (now Syndigo), which helps manufacturers and retailers manage product content. I shared the story of two competitors that sell equipment for printed products.
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Technical SEO
SEO Checklist for Website Redesigns and Replatforms
July 7, 2019 • Jill Kocher Brown
Major website redesigns and replatforms can kill organic search traffic. Use this checklist to minimize the impact.
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SEO
The 4 SEO Priorities for Ecommerce Sites
June 28, 2019 • Bill Sebald
I can't calculate clear-cut ROI from SEO. But I can address the activities that, in my experience, typically lead to higher rankings for ecommerce merchants. It's not a stretch to suggest that 80 percent of your daily SEO activities should be connected to the four items below.
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SEO
New Search Console Updates Confirm Mobile-first Indexing
June 27, 2019 • Armando Roggio
Recent changes to Google’s Search Console made it easier to identify whether a site was primarily indexed based on mobile or desktop content and identified which crawler (Googlebot Smartphone or Googlebot Desktop) was primary on a given report or chart.
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SEO Tools
15 SEO Plugins for WordPress
June 24, 2019 • Sig Ueland
Here is a list of search-engine-optimization plugins for WordPress. There are all-in-one plugins that provide a variety of tools and, also, plugins to improve specific search-related areas, such as site speed, tags, and image optimization. All of these tools are free, though several have premium versions as well.
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SEO
Tips for Diagnosing Steep Drops in Organic Search Traffic
June 19, 2019 • Armando Roggio
If you own or manage an ecommerce business and organic search traffic drops suddenly, it can feel like the sky is falling. You might not know what went wrong. Here are a few tips for diagnosing a steep drop in organic traffic to your ecommerce site.
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SEO
What’s the Value of SEO?
June 16, 2019 • Jill Kocher Brown
Here’s a look at the cost of optimizing a site for search engines, the value it drives, and the impact of not doing it. The average salary for a search-engine-optimization specialist is $65,000, according to Glassdoor. That’s before benefits and other internal costs.
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Link Building
Can Ecommerce Sites Generate Organic Search Traffic without Backlinks?
May 30, 2019 • Hamlet Batista
Can an ecommerce site launch in 2019 and receive organic search traffic without backlinks? Most search optimizers believe it's not possible. I used to think the same. But I keep seeing evidence of the contrary.
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Technical SEO
SEO: Can Ecommerce Sites Win the Answer Box?
May 26, 2019 • Jill Kocher Brown
The "answer box" is Google’s way of responding to questions directly from the top of the search results page. Can ecommerce sites win the answer box? Absolutely. But winning the answer box for their own brand searches is not as straightforward as it may seem.
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On-page SEO
SEO: 4 Signs Your ‘Optimized’ Content Could Be Spam
May 19, 2019 • Jill Kocher Brown
In this post, I'll address four signs that your content could be over-optimized, risking a penalty or a rankings hit. Think about how your content could look to a human, not a search engine.
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SEO
13 SEO Takeaways from Google’s 2019 State of the Union Address
May 12, 2019 • Jill Kocher Brown
Every year at the “State of the Union” address, representatives from Google Search announce new features, drop tips, and give hints to the things that matter to the company. What follows are my 13 takeaways from the 2019 address, which occurred last week.
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Technical SEO
How to Expedite Product Changes in Google Organic Listings
April 30, 2019 • Hamlet Batista
In this post, I will cover a technique of updating organic listings using the Google Shopping API. The goal is to accelerate the impact of the Shopping feed on natural search.
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Link Building
SEO: How to Quickly Find Internal Linking Opportunities
April 23, 2019 • Bill Sebald
Optimizing internal links can be helpful for search engine optimization. The larger the website, the more that the optimization can help Google identify important pages. But how can we identify all of the pages to link from?
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SEO
Thinking about SEO Strategy
April 21, 2019 • Jill Kocher Brown
Think of your SEO strategy as a plan to grow your share of the pie. There are two options to increase your portion: (i) grow the size of the pie overall or (ii) take a larger piece from your competitors. Here are the three steps for getting more SEO pie.
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SEO Tools
SEO: 9 Content Optimization Tools
April 5, 2019 • Jill Kocher Brown
Contextual relevance in search engine optimization refers to how the content on a website aligns with searchers' words and phrases. These nine content optimization tools will take you from keyword research to written word to optimized copy.
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SEO Tools
SEO: Using Lighthouse to Improve Site Speed
March 29, 2019 • Jill Kocher Brown
Site speed is tricky for search engine optimization practitioners. It’s a ranking signal for Google and a key factor in a customer's experience. But few SEO pros have the development chops to improve speed. One option is to use Google's Lighthouse, a site auditing tool.
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Technical SEO
Measuring Traffic from Google Shopping’s New Organic Listings
March 27, 2019 • Hamlet Batista
In my previous article, I explained how Google Shopping is expanding to include free organic search listings. The next step is to explore an easy way to measure the performance of organic traffic coming from Shopping feeds.
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Technical SEO
SEO: Lessons from Google’s ‘rel=prev/next’ Pagination Identifier
March 24, 2019 • Jill Kocher Brown
Search engine optimization professionals were caught off guard this week by Google’s admission that it hasn’t used its pagination identifier in “a number of years.” The admission reinforces the requirement ...
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SEO
SEO: Google Launches Algorithm Update to Little Notice
March 17, 2019 • Jill Kocher Brown
Once or twice a year Google releases a broad core algorithm update. The March 12 update, called Florida 2, was typical: unannounced. Google acknowledged it only after industry leaders reached out with questions about performance changes they were seeing across a broad number of sites.
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SEO
8 Ways to Revitalize Your SEO Program
March 8, 2019 • Jill Kocher Brown
Over time, your search engine optimization program grows weary and slows down. It may lose momentum so gradually you don't notice it’s happening. The good news is there are ways to revitalize a stalled SEO program. In this post, I will discuss eight of them.
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SEO
SEO: Tell Google Which Pages Not to Crawl
March 7, 2019 • Armando Roggio
The typical goal of search engine optimization is to have your site's pages show up on a Google results page in answer to a query. But there are pages that should not be included in search results. Removing them from Google's index might actually increase search engine traffic.
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Technical SEO
7 Ways to Integrate SEO with IT
March 4, 2019 • Jill Kocher Brown
Search engine optimization relies heavily on support from information technology personnel. Improving relationships and processes between the SEO and IT teams greases the skids so that support is in place before a critical need arises.
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Keyword Research
How to Find Seed Keywords and Explore Topic Clusters
February 28, 2019 • Armando Roggio
Creating a short list of seed keywords is fundamental to search engine optimization, content marketing, and pay-per-click advertising. But for some marketers, the task of identifying seed keywords isn't clear.
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Technical SEO
Real-time SEO: Create a Google Product Feed from an XML Sitemap
February 26, 2019 • Hamlet Batista
It is now possible to update product listings in organic search results in real time via a product feed. In this article, I’ll explain how to create a feed from an XML sitemap.