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: Understanding XML Sitemaps
June 29, 2012 • Jill Kocher Brown
XML sitemaps serve a very niche purpose in search engine optimization: facilitating indexation. Posting an XML sitemap is kind of like rolling out the red carpet for search engines and giving them a roadmap of the preferred routes through the site. It’s the site owner’s chance to tell c...
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Technical SEO
SEO Site Migration Checklist
May 18, 2012 • Jill Kocher Brown
Migrating a site to a new platform or domain, or implementing a major redesign, is one of the most stressful situations in search engine optimization. The potential for massively impacting organic search traffic and sales is higher during these launches than at any other time. But with ...
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Technical SEO
Google’s Over-Optimization Penalty an Evolution, Not Revolution
April 27, 2012 • Jill Kocher Brown
Google’s much discussed over-optimization penalty turned out to be a moderate evolutionary step in Google’s site quality crusade. Launched April 24, Google wrote in a blog post of its update, “The change will decrease rankings for sites that we believe are violating Google’s quality gui...
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Technical SEO
Google’s Secure Search Squeezes SEO Planning and Reporting
March 30, 2012 • Jill Kocher Brown
Google's secure SSL search protects users' search results and the keywords they searched on. Unfortunately, it also poses a growing threat to data-driven search engine optimization. Firefox recently joined Google Chrome — and Google.com, for logged-in users — in defaulting to secure sea...
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Technical SEO
Google Plans SEO Over-Optimization Penalty
March 22, 2012 • Jill Kocher Brown
Google’s head spam cop Matt Cutts announced the impending launch of a new over-optimization penalty to “level the playing ground.” The disclosure came earlier this month at the South By ...
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Technical SEO
SEO Benefits of Responsive Web Design
March 1, 2012 • Jill Kocher Brown
Site owners have many competing needs when developing mobile sites. Different devices, different capabilities, different screen sizes and resolutions, all have an impact on designing and developing mobile sites today. According to Mongoose Metrics, a tracking and analysis firm, only 9...
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Technical SEO
SEO: Letting Customers Generate Long Tail Search Terms
November 23, 2011 • Jill Kocher Brown
Search engine optimization typically focuses on the trophy terms, the high-volume keyword phrases, because marketers need to drive the highest value with the lowest effort. Unfortunately, those juicy trophy terms are great for brand recognition and customers' initial awareness, but they...
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Technical SEO
Navigation: Your Biggest On-Site SEO Asset
October 28, 2011 • Jill Kocher Brown
A site's navigational links can help its search engine optimization. Links pass "link popularity," little votes of value, from the linking page to the destination page. In addition, the link's anchor text — the visible text portion of the link — passes a relevance signal. Relevance and...
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Technical SEO
How to Increase Page Speed and Help Search-Engine Rankings
May 11, 2011 • Michael Stearns
In the spring of 2010, Google announced it would factor page speed more heavily into its search ranking algorithm. "Faster sites create happy users," Google stated in the blog post describing the algorithm change. Your ability — as an ecommerce merchant — to improve your site's speed d...
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Technical SEO
SEO Case Study: Improving the Site’s Architecture
March 25, 2011 • Jill Kocher Brown
Editor's Note: This is the second installment of a search-engine-optimization case study from contributor Jill Kocher on the SEO travails of The Motor Bookstore, a retailer of automotive manuals. Like most ecommerce businesses, The Motorbook Store relies heavily on traffic from search ...
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Technical SEO
SEO: Understanding Advanced Search Operators
September 30, 2010 • Jill Kocher Brown
Let’s face it, the engines control search. They may keep tight-lipped control of their algorithmic secrets, but they also provide their users with tools that SEO practitioners can use to understand how the engines see their sites. These advanced operators offer a peek behind the curtain...
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Technical SEO
SEO: Unique Content Good for Search Engines, Good for Consumers
September 3, 2010 • Jill Kocher Brown
Unique, valuable content is a critical part of a successful SEO strategy. That is especially the case for ecommerce sites that utilize non-unique stock product descriptions from the manufacturer’s database. But, I’m often asked if there’s a faster, cheaper, free way to generate content....
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Technical SEO
The PEC Review: Online Image Optimizer Speeds Load Times
July 26, 2010 • Armando Roggio
A slow-loading retail site is akin to the store clerk who ignores you in a brick-and-mortar shop. On a recent trip, I stopped at a small antique store. My wife and I entered the store, walked around for about 20 minutes, examined dozens of items, and never once during the entire experi...
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Technical SEO
Google Changes Search-Results Page, How Merchants Can Benefit
May 25, 2010 • Bill Hartzer
Google has made some major changes to its search results recently, adding more options for searchers. These are not changes to search algorithms, which determine the websites that show up, and where. Rather, the new changes give searchers options that allow them to tailor the type of s...
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Technical SEO
The PEC Review: Speedtest.net
May 17, 2010 • Armando Roggio
Most ecommerce merchants are digital natives, spending hours each day online, managing orders, marketing, or just staying ahead of the competition. When so much of your working day is spent on the Internet, even modest changes in upload and download speeds can have a major impact on pr...
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Technical SEO
SEO MAYDAY: Analyzing the Impact of Algorithmic Changes
May 13, 2010 • Jill Kocher Brown
Google makes periodic adjustments to its algorithm that determines organic search results. It likely does this each day, using small adjustments, to avoid large-scale mayhem that infrequent adjustments would presumably cause. Recently, however, many SEO professionals have detected dram...
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Technical SEO
SEO: Google Ranks Site Speed, Too
April 19, 2010 • Jill Kocher Brown
In its continuing quest to provide searchers with the best possible search experience, Google announced last week that site speed is now a signal in its search ranking algorithms. Along with the hundreds of other signals, like link popularity and keyword relevance, Google is now factori...
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Technical SEO
Search Engine Optimization Overkill
March 31, 2010 • Bill Hartzer
Editor’s Note: is a contributor to Practical eCommerce and the owner of BillHartzer.com, a Dallas-based online marketing firm. Hartzer wrote the article, below, which first appeared on his website, BillHartzer.com. Are you using search engine optimization tactics that lead to overkil...
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Technical SEO
Ask An Expert: How to Redirect URLs Without Losing Link Juice
January 21, 2010 • PEC Staff
"Ask an Expert" is an occasional feature where we ask ecommerce experts questions from online merchants. For this installment, we address a question about redirecting users from old URLs to new ones. It comes from Brian Rogers, web merchandising manager for 511 Tactical, an online (and ...
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Technical SEO
SEO: Capture More Search Traffic with Rich Snippets
December 16, 2009 • Jill Kocher Brown
The difference between a snippet and a rich snippet is the difference between just showing up at a party and showing up in style. Showing up in style can ensure you get the attention you want. For an ecommerce merchant, "the party" is a search engine's results page. A snippet is your U...
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Technical SEO
SEO: Forgotten Content Can Damage Search Performance
November 17, 2009 • Jill Kocher Brown
Sometimes a site’s own past dampens its bright SEO future. The forgotten designs, old campaigns, and abandoned domains that accumulate unnoticed in a web server can have a negative impact on a site’s ability to rank and drive natural search-referred traffic and sales. Search engines ret...
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Technical SEO
SEO: There Is No Duplicate Content Penalty
October 15, 2009 • Jill Kocher Brown
There is a long held belief that search engines – namely Google – penalize websites that duplicate content or produce material that is largely the same as other sites on the Internet. But, I’m here to tell you, The Duplicate Content Penalty is a myth. Think about it this way. If a page...
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Technical SEO
Ecommerce Know-How: Adobe Flash vs. Search Engine Optimization
July 27, 2009 • Armando Roggio
New technology, user demand, and search-engine-optimized design are making it possible for search engines to index, rank and display sites developed completely with the Adobe Flash platform. To be sure, rich Internet applications (RIAs), like those created with Flash and Flex, are a ch...
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Technical SEO
PeC Traffic Report: Searches for “Saving” Words Slowing in 2009
July 20, 2009 • Armando Roggio
Google search queries for "saving" words like "coupon" and "discount" were relatively flat in the first half of 2009. This is in spite of a U.S. national unemployment rate that has risen 69.6 percent in a year and the remaining effects of widespread recession. Relative data from Google...
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Technical SEO
PeC Traffic Report: Does Google’s “Vince Update” Favor Big Brands?
May 12, 2009 • Armando Roggio
A recent change to the Google algorithm apparently favors established, well-known brands in some categories, potentially making it harder for small online sellers to compete with large retailers for search engine rankings. The so-called "Vince Update" seems to have taken effect on Janu...
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Technical SEO
Ecommerce Know-How: Bot Herding, A SEO Internal Linking Tactic
December 30, 2008 • Armando Roggio
A relatively simple SEO linking strategy can improve how well and how often your store's product pages are indexed and displayed in organic search engine results. This linking technique goes by several names. Bruce Clay Inc., an Internet business consultancy, refers to it as "siloing."...
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Technical SEO
PageRank: What Is It? And How Do You Calculate It?
December 19, 2008 • Armando Roggio
Google’s PageRank technology plays an important role in how online stores show up in search results. Understanding how this ranking system works will help ecommerce merchants improve their search engine optimization and potentially increase website traffic. PageRank is a proprie...
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Technical SEO
SEO: Breadcrumb Trail Boosts Rankings
September 1, 2006 • Stephan Spencer
Breadcrumbs are text-based navigation showing visitors where they are in a website's navigation. While helpful for humans, breadcrumbs also greatly help with search engine optimization.
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Technical SEO
Optimize Your HTML For Search Engines
February 1, 2006 • Stephan Spencer
SEO can be broken into two distinct areas – "onpage" factors and "off-page" factors. On-page factors include anything that you can affect on the page itself, such as the title tag, body copy, H1 heading tags, image “alt” attributes, etc. Off-page factors encompass things that influence...
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