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: 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: Harnessing Domain Authority across Multiple Websites
April 24, 2017 • Jill Kocher Brown
Every domain acquires authority based largely on the quality and quantity of links pointing to it. When your business model necessitates multiple domains, harness them in a mutually beneficial linking ...
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Technical SEO
Using Server Logs to Uncover SEO Problems
April 11, 2017 • Hamlet Batista
Sometimes websites have search-engine-optimization problems that Google Search Console, Google Analytics, and off-the shelf SEO tools cannot locate. When this occurs, I often rely on an old-school method: web server logs. What ...
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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
SEO: How to Migrate an Ecommerce Site to HTTPS
March 8, 2017 • Hamlet Batista
Google began encouraging websites to move to encrypted SSL connections, which carry the HTTPS reference in the URL, as early as 2014. Google promised a ranking boost to sites that ...
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Technical SEO
How to Avoid SEO Disaster from a Replatform
February 22, 2017 • Hamlet Batista
Redesigning your ecommerce site or changing platforms is nerve racking. It’s easy to miss an important step and lose valuable organic search traffic and revenue. I have assisted many ecommerce sites ...
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Technical SEO
SEO: How to Quickly Reverse a Traffic Downtrend
January 31, 2017 • Hamlet Batista
During a website redesign, re-platform, or domain change, it is not uncommon to see a reduction in organic search traffic. The panic generally starts weeks after trying one thing after ...
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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
SEO: Google Rolls Out Mobile Popup Penalty
January 13, 2017 • Jill Kocher Brown
Right on schedule, this week Google began rolling out its intrusive mobile popup penalty, aimed at reducing the number of results that take mobile searchers to pages that use large ...
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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
4 Things to Check for Holiday Ecommerce Traffic
November 16, 2016 • Bill Hartzer
The holiday shopping season is here. Millions of consumers are looking for holiday deals. Preparing your marketing campaigns, such as social media ads and email promotions, is imperative. Beyond that,
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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
Google Penguin Now Part of Core Search Algorithm
September 24, 2016 • Bill Hartzer
Google just announced that its Penguin algorithm is now a part of its core algorithm, updated in real time. Google last updated Penguin a few years ago. Updating Penguin continuously will likely affect many businesses. Recall that Google Penguin monitors ...
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Technical SEO
SEO: Simplifying Navigation Cuts Performance
September 9, 2016 • Jill Kocher Brown
The trend toward simplicity in web design is affecting navigation. The impact on search engine optimization of navigation changes can be staggering. Navigation isn’t just a way for shoppers to navigate.
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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: How Search Engines Work
March 27, 2016 • Jill Kocher Brown
Search engines trawl the web, sifting through billions of data points to serve up information in a fraction of a second. The access to instant information we’ve come to take ...
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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: Do You Need More Than One Domain Name?
December 17, 2015 • Bill Hartzer
I recently spoke with a business owner who had purchased every possible version of his company’s domain name (including the "typos”) to protect his brand.
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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
Panda 4.2 Complicates SEO for Ecommerce Sites
August 7, 2015 • Jill Kocher Brown
Google released Panda 4.2, the latest Panda algorithm update, in mid-July. If you didn’t feel an impact on your site’s performance on July 18, you’re not alone. Panda 4.2 is Google’s latest algorithm update
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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: Using Rich Snippets to Increase Clicks
February 27, 2015 • Jill Kocher Brown
If you don’t win the click, you can’t make the sale. But if you don’t get noticed, you can’t win the click. Ecommerce sites need to take advantage of every option ...
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Technical SEO
4 SEO Friends: Strategy, UX, Creative, Development
February 20, 2015 • Jill Kocher Brown
Effective search engine optimization requires cross-discipline collaboration. Make friends or forge strong working relationships with these key stakeholders to ensure that SEO needs are met at every stage of site ...
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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,