Category: Practical Ecommerce

My latest article at Ecommerce Developer, read it in full here.

 

The new release of a website requires all sorts of testing — from security testing to load testing to testing the functionality of transactional elements. But what about search engine optimization testing? Many feature releases and design changes have an impact on SEO performance. That impact can be tested and predicted before the release goes live, as well as confirmed after the release is public.

Communicating the SEO impact of a release before launch can save all sorts of headaches after launch, such as the CEO storming down to your office and demanding to know why he no longer ranks for his favorite phrases. Better yet, predicting a large enough negative SEO impact before the launch may be enough to resolve the issue prelaunch, or even delay the release temporarily depending on competing priorities. In short, roping your SEO into the planning phases of the site’s release cycles can help cut off SEO issues before they make it into the code in the first place.

Read more »

My latest article at Practical Ecommerce, read it in full here.

 

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 value, or quality, are the foundation of SEO. A site’s navigation has the power to improve both.

Read more »

My latest article at Ecommerce Developer, read it in full here.

 

In my ongoing efforts to work more closely with developers to achieve search engine optimization goals, I decided to poll a few of my developer friends anonymously to understand their side of the love, less-love relationship between search engine optimization and site development. Three primary trends quickly appeared.

Read more »

My latest article at Practical Ecommerce, read it in full here.

 

Working in the organic search industry, I’ve often had large search marketing clients who envied the success of their affiliates, which sometimes outperformed their own in-house search marketing efforts. But Carolyn Tang Kmet opened my eyes to the ways that search affiliates can actually be beneficial to smaller businesses that lack the resources to develop and manage marketing programs in-house.

I work with Kmet at Groupon — the daily deals site — where I’m a search-engine-optimization manager. She’s director of affiliate marketing for Groupon — the affiliate page is here — and the recipient of the Affiliate Summit Pinnacle Award for “Affiliate Manager of the Year 2010.”

Read more »