Technical SEO
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Technical SEO
4 SEO Requirements for International Ecommerce Sites
March 2, 2018 • Jill Kocher Brown
Multinational ecommerce businesses with country-specific websites have distinct search engine optimization requirements. A searcher in Australia, say, must end up on the site containing Australian English, currency, and content. A searcher in Germany must land on that website. And so on.
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Technical SEO
HTTPS Is Important for More Reasons Than SEO
February 9, 2018 • Jill Kocher Brown
A website’s use of the secure protocol — as evidenced by the HTTPS designation and the presence of a security certificate — is a priority for search engines. But recent changes to Google Chrome make it important for web browsers, too. Google is tackling the security challenge across the web via its Chrome browser. Google is tackling the security challenge across the web via its Chrome browser. This week, the Chrome team announced that all web pages without an HTTPS certificate will display a “Not Secure” label in Chrome 68, scheduled to be launched in July 2018.
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Technical SEO
6 Ways Web Developers Can Improve SEO
February 2, 2018 • Jill Kocher Brown
The relationship between web developers and search-engine-optimization teams is sometimes contentious. Seemingly unrelated technical decisions by developers can impact organic search traffic. But there are enormous SEO benefits in working with development teams and their release planning and testing cycles. In 13 years, I’ve encountered just one developer who refused to consider SEO recommendations.
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Technical SEO
SEO: 7 Reasons to Use a Site Crawler
July 14, 2017 • Jill Kocher Brown
No matter how well you think you know your site, a crawler will always turn up something new. In some cases, it’s those things that you don’t know about that ...
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Technical SEO
SEO: Your Faceted Navigation Could Be Better
May 15, 2017 • Jill Kocher Brown
Faceted navigation drives traffic and sales for valuable long-tail search phrases because it applies increasingly refined attributes to shoppers’ searches for their desired products. Optimizing your faceted navigation is the ...
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Technical SEO
SEO: Creating the Perfect URL, or Not
April 28, 2017 • Jill Kocher Brown
URLs are what search engines use to aggregate all the data they collect regarding a page of content. For search engine optimization, what’s in a URL can be the difference ...
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Technical SEO
SEO: How to Detect, Correct Duplicate Content Pages
March 23, 2017 • Hamlet Batista
Duplicate content remains a common obstacle when it comes to increasing organic search traffic on retailer websites. Here are some of the advantages of addressing duplicate content to increase SEO performance,
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Technical SEO
Using Caching (and Hardware) to Improve Page Speed
January 25, 2017 • Eric Davis
In “3 Backend Fixes to Increase Page Speed,” my article last month, I explained that caching can be applied to many areas of an ecommerce website. In this post, I’ll ...
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Technical SEO
3 Backend Fixes to Increase Page Speed
December 30, 2016 • Eric Davis
Page speed is an important factor in search rankings and conversion rates. Every improvement to page speed will likely result in more sales. We’ve addressed page speed at, most recently, “10
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Technical SEO
SEO: To Drive Shoppers, Let the Bots In
November 6, 2016 • Jill Kocher Brown
We rely on search engines to drive shoppers to our sites to purchase our products. Before the shoppers can come, however, you have to let the bots in. It sounds more ...
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Technical SEO
SEO: Accelerated Mobile Pages for Ecommerce
October 14, 2016 • Jill Kocher Brown
Google’s Accelerated Mobile Pages protocol makes mobile sites faster. Faster sites typically see lower bounce rates, higher time-on-site numbers, and higher conversion rates. AMP also benefits natural search performance. Smartphone users want speed.
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Technical SEO
SEO: Reclaiming Links to Deleted Pages
October 2, 2016 • Jill Kocher Brown
When pages on your site go away, their link authority is wasted. But you can harvest that precious link authority and redirect it to other pages on your site, those ...
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Technical SEO
The Real Benefit of Accelerated Mobile Pages
July 10, 2016 • Armando Roggio
The Accelerated Mobile Pages project’s restrictive subset of HTML tags, CSS, and JavaScript encourages web developers and designers to employ practices that may improve the mobile web experience. Contributor Jill Kocher ...
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Technical SEO
3 Server Errors That Drain SEO
July 8, 2016 • Jill Kocher Brown
Servers are the foundation of the web, but their archaic status codes have a big impact on search engine optimization that few marketers understand well enough. Three types of server ...
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Technical SEO
SEO: AMP for Ecommerce
February 26, 2016 • Jill Kocher Brown
News on the mobile web is now four times faster, thanks to Google’s Accelerated Mobile Pages. AMP, as the project is known, is targeted at Google mobile searchers looking for long-form ...
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Technical SEO
SEO: 9 Reasons to Crawl Your Ecommerce Site
January 22, 2016 • Jill Kocher Brown
Every search marketing professional should have a crawler in her arsenal of tools. Organic search’s first and most important rule is that search engines must be able to crawl to a ...
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Technical SEO
SEO: Metadata Can Optimize Search Results
September 6, 2015 • Jill Kocher Brown
Marketers tend to find metadata annoying, like tiny gnats that you’d rather just swat away. Maybe you don’t know where they come from; maybe you don’t know what purpose they serve. But metadata and structured data
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Technical SEO
SEO: Using Metadata to Drive Traffic
August 23, 2015 • Jill Kocher Brown
Metadata can do amazing things for search engine optimization — from removing duplicate content to promoting your site within the search engines. This is my second post on using metadata to improve your site's search engine ranking.
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Technical SEO
SEO: Header Navigation Critical to Success
July 10, 2015 • Jill Kocher Brown
Search engine optimization relies heavily on site-wide navigational elements to broadcast authority signals to the search engines. Pages linked to in the header, footer, and
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Technical SEO
10 Ways to Increase Ecommerce Site Speed
May 5, 2015 • Gagan Mehra
The download speed of ecommerce sites has greatly improved over the years because of the wider availability of faster Internet service. But many retailers still struggle with making their sites ...
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Technical SEO
SEO: Google Improves Crawling for Geotargeted Sites
January 30, 2015 • Jill Kocher Brown
Ecommerce sites that use geotargeting to serve different content to customers in different countries have faced challenges with organic search. On Wednesday, Google announced its efforts to overcome these challenges,
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Technical SEO
SEO Technical Requirements Checklist, for Ecommerce
December 5, 2014 • Jill Kocher Brown
In “SEO 201, Part 5: Evaluating Ecommerce Platforms,” I listed basic SEO needs to assist in the selection of an ecommerce platform. This article will go further, listing technical requirements ...
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Technical SEO
SEO 201, Part 4: Architecture Is Key
October 3, 2014 • Jill Kocher Brown
This is the fourth installment of my “SEO 201” series, following: “Part 1: Technical Rules”; “Part 2: Crawling and Indexing Barriers”; “Part 3: Enabling Search-engine Spiders.” No matter which aspect of search engine optimization ...
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Technical SEO
SEO 201, Part 3: Enabling Search-engine Crawlers
September 19, 2014 • Jill Kocher Brown
This is the third installment of my “SEO 201″ series, following: “Part 1: Technical Rules”; “Part 2: Crawling and Indexing Barriers.“ “SEO 201″ addresses technical, backend aspects of site architecture and organization. My ...
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Technical SEO
SEO 201, Part 2: Crawling and Indexing Barriers
September 12, 2014 • Jill Kocher Brown
In “SEO 201, Part 1: Technical Rules,” my article last week, I posited three technical rules that are critical to tapping into Google’s ultimate power as an influencer of your ...
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Technical SEO
SEO 201, Part 1: Technical Rules
September 5, 2014 • Jill Kocher Brown
In my 8-part “SEO 101” series, I addressed the basics of utilizing content on a website for search engines, including keyword research and optimization. With this article, I’ll start a ...
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Technical SEO
SEO: Google Adds HTTPS Signals to Ranking Algorithm
August 8, 2014 • Jill Kocher Brown
Google has taken its obsession with security to a new level by including a preference for sites running SSL in its ranking algorithm. Starting slowly with less than one percent ...
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Technical SEO
SEO: How to Create a 301 Redirect Map, for Site Redesigns
January 17, 2014 • Jill Kocher Brown
In a website redesign where URLs change, whether your search-engine-optimization goal is to protect existing natural search performance or boost it to a new level, an ironclad 301 redirect strategy is critical. In “For Redesigns, Protect SEO with 301 Redirect Strategy,” my previous article, I outlined why
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Technical SEO
For Redesigns, Protect SEO with 301 Redirect Strategy
January 10, 2014 • Jill Kocher Brown
In most website redesigns, search engine optimization relies on an accurate, complete, and flawlessly executed 301 redirect strategy. An ironclad 301 redirect strategy preserves as much as 85 percent of the link authority that the current site has earned over its lifetime and funnels it into the new site to
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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...