Technical SEO
Technical search engine optimization refers to the structure and organization of a site for maximum search engine visibility. Our coverage addresses structured data (Schema.org), website hierarchy, menus, categories, page speed, bot crawlers (including Googlebot), domain names, and more.
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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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.
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Technical SEO
How Query Intent Impacts Ecommerce SEO
February 21, 2019 • Bill Sebald
Google attempts to understand the intent of a searcher's query. The company recognizes the burden of providing the best results, even if the query is vague. For example, if someone types in “jaguar,” Google has to figure out what that searcher wants.
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Technical SEO
6 SEO Myths about Alt Tags
December 10, 2018 • Jill Kocher Brown
Alt tags are a frequent to-do item for search engine optimization. But there's much confusion surrounding the importance of optimizing alt tags. So it’s time for some myth-busting around this oft-misunderstood topic.
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Technical SEO
Use HTML Caching to Increase Page Speed
December 9, 2018 • Hamlet Batista
Heavy traffic to a website can result in performance problems, slower page speed, and fewer conversions. In this article, I'll share a simple process to speed up page loads. The idea is to cache not just images and scripts, but also the HTML content.
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Technical SEO
SEO: Why Is Metadata Important?
November 19, 2018 • Jill Kocher Brown
This article will describe at a high level the types of metadata most commonly used in SEO. Pay careful attention to the terminology. Meta tags are metadata, but not all metadata are meta tags. Some elements commonly called “tags” are actually attributes of a tag.
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Technical SEO
SEO: Understanding Sitemaps for Ecommerce Stores
October 3, 2018 • Armando Roggio
Sitemaps inform search engines which pages on a website should be crawled, and may help search engines discover and index those pages. While sitemaps can be a simple text file listing ...
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Technical SEO
Technical SEO: 15 Critical Areas That Impact Performance
September 30, 2018 • Jill Kocher Brown
The technical aspects of search engine optimization can seem mysterious, especially for content marketers. But it doesn’t have to be that way. The 15 areas below cover the major areas. 15
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Technical SEO
Change Organic Search Snippets to Drive Motivated Buyers
September 28, 2018 • Hamlet Batista
In “How to Increase Click-throughs on Organic Search Listings,” I addressed the importance of compelling messages in organic snippets. In this article, I will dig deeper. I will explore how ...
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Technical SEO
SEO: Building a 301 Redirect Strategy
September 16, 2018 • Jill Kocher Brown
When a site’s URLs change, 301 redirects are crucial to preserve and grow natural search performance. Organic search rankings depend in large part on link authority: the quantity and quality of ...
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Technical SEO
SEO: Retaining Performance on Site Migrations
September 7, 2018 • Jill Kocher Brown
Site migrations are risky for natural search performance. Whether you’re migrating a site to a new design or rebranding, what you do before the new site is live will determine its natural search performance.
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Technical SEO
SEO Is Way More Than Metadata
August 19, 2018 • Jill Kocher Brown
Metadata is just data about data. In the world of organic search, that means title tags and meta descriptions, schema structured data, canonical tags, meta robots tags and the like.
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Technical SEO
SEO: 7 Reasons Your Site’s Indexation Is Down
August 3, 2018 • Jill Kocher Brown
Without indexation, there is no possibility of ranking in natural search results. When indexation numbers drop, there are a handful of potential reasons. Site Speed Increasingly, slower site speeds are masquerading as ...
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Technical SEO
SEO: Shaving Seconds Off Page Speed
July 9, 2018 • Jill Kocher Brown
For customers, site speed matters. For search engines, site speed impacts organic rankings. With its mobile Speed Update rolling out now, Google is applying site speed to mobile search results ...
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Technical SEO
SEO: Harnessing Facets to Drive the Meaty Torso
June 15, 2018 • Jill Kocher Brown
Natural search performance on ecommerce sites often suffers from an invisible problem: a missing torso. For search engine optimization, a “torso” describes keywords that drive too many searches to be called ...
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Technical SEO
SEO: 3 Paths to Crawlable JavaScript
June 3, 2018 • Jill Kocher Brown
Last week’s primer described some of the reasons that Googlebot, in particular, has trouble with modern forms of JavaScript. This article addresses solutions to compensate for bots’ limitations.
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Technical SEO
SEO: No, Google Does Not Support Newer JavaScript
May 25, 2018 • Jill Kocher Brown
Some search engine optimization professionals and developers have concluded in the last couple of years that Google can crawl JavaScript. Unfortunately, that’s not always the case. Sites using Angular (the ...
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