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: 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,
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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 6: Redesigns Impact Search Traffic
October 17, 2014 • Jill Kocher Brown
This is the sixth installment of my “SEO 201″ series, following: “Part 1: Technical Rules”; “Part 2: Crawling and Indexing Barriers”; “Part 3: Enabling Search-engine Spiders”; “Part 4: Architecture Is Key”; “Part 5: Evaluating Ecommerce ...
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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
Use Google Analytics Site Speed to Identify Performance Problems
June 23, 2014 • Armando Roggio
Google Analytics offers several powerful reports that can help businesses monitor how quickly web pages are loading and identify what factors may be causing poor performance. How quickly a website loads ...
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Technical SEO
Panda 4.0 Algorithm Update Rocks Google Search Results
May 23, 2014 • Jill Kocher Brown
Google released two algorithm updates this week targeted at removing low quality sites from its search results. Payday Loans and Panda both received major updates, with upwards of seven percent ...
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Technical SEO
SEO: What to Do When Site Traffic Hits Bottom
March 14, 2014 • Jill Kocher Brown
It’s a search marketer’s worst nightmare: Your SEO performance has hit rock bottom and you have no idea why. It may be comforting to remember that there is a reason that ...
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Technical SEO
How SEO Integrates into Site Design
March 7, 2014 • Jill Kocher Brown
Search engine optimization performs best when it’s integrated into website design and maintenance programs. That’s because so many of the decisions that impact SEO occur outside of the bounds of ...
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Technical SEO
SEO: Yahoo’s New Secure Search Removes Referral Data
January 24, 2014 • Jill Kocher Brown
Yahoo has moved to secure search by default, effectively removing all referral data that indicates the source of the search and which keywords were searched for. The secure search update ...
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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
SEO: Managing Faceted Search
December 13, 2013 • Jill Kocher Brown
Faceted site search can help ecommerce shoppers quickly find the products they are looking for. But faceted search can shatter your search engine optimization efforts. What can you do, therefore,
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Technical SEO
SEO: 5 Ways to Avoid Indexation
October 25, 2013 • Jill Kocher Brown
It sounds counterintuitive, but sometimes the goal of search engine optimization is avoiding indexation. Consider the following scenarios. Faceted navigation spews out thousands of pages of duplicate or low value content. Email landing ...
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Technical SEO
SEO: Google’s Hummingbird Changes the Ecommerce Game
October 11, 2013 • Jill Kocher Brown
Google released its Hummingbird search algorithm under the radar in August. Hummingbird reportedly impacts 90 percent of all search queries. So how does Hummingbird change the game for ecommerce sites? With ...
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Technical SEO
SEO Traffic Changes When URLs Change
September 6, 2013 • Jill Kocher Brown
You may have noticed that we recently updated Practical Ecommerce with a fresh, new design. Behind the scenes, a lot of things changed as we moved to a new platform,
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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...