Latest Posts
Why the Meta Description Still Matters
Way back in the early days of the Internet the search engines considered all of the meta information of a website as part of the ranking algorithm. But that led to problems since sneaky webmasters were stuffing the tags with irrelevant keywords designed to generate a lot of traffic. It wasn’t resu...
5 Prominent Places for Keywords to Appear
Search has certainly evolved in recent years and the search algorithms now utilize machine learning to understand the meaning behind a search as opposed to exact keyword matching, but that doesn’t mean that keywords aren’t important for SEO. Keywords are still used as search terms and the websit...
Don’t Believe These 4 SEO Linking Theories
The Google Penguin update may have been years ago now, but it’s had a lasting impression on website owners, especially those that were hit with a penalty. To some, “link building” has become a dirty word and they try to stay away from it. The problem with that approach is that inbound links re...
3 Ways to Reuse Your SEO Content
One of the most important parts of an SEO campaign is ongoing content creation. Every new page of informative, high-quality web content is an additional opportunity to rank organically for targeted keywords and generate natural inbound links. Of course, it takes time to create SEO content that’s w...
SEO Tasks to Complete Every Month
Unless you’re a powerhouse brand, you need to be doing SEO in order to generate traffic from the search engines. And, unlike other marketing tactics, SEO isn’t something that you can start and stop. SEO is all about long term gains and there are tasks that need to be completed every month in ord...
4 Reasons Why Your Search Traffic Has Dipped
Have you noticed a sudden drop (or even a steady decline) in the amount of visitors coming to your site from search? There are a multitude of things that could be affecting how well your site does organically, but here are four things you should look at and eliminate first. Seasonality Every busin...
Where to Go for SEO Content Inspiration
If you know anything about SEO you know that fresh content is an extremely important component of an SEO campaign. However, creating fresh content on a regular basis can be anything but easy, especially if you don’t have much writing experience. Perhaps the hardest part of producing quality conten...
Why Fixating on Rank is a Waste of Time
Search engine rank hasn’t been a top SEO measurement for years now, but no matter how often we say it or talk about it here on the blog, we continue to get questions from prospects and clients about how we report on it. While we do pull keyword reports from Google Search Console regularly, it’s ...
Follow These Rules When Adding Outbound Links to Your Site
In the SEO world, all the attention seems to be on inbound linking, or obtaining links from other websites that point to your website. This is for good reason since it’s an important search engine ranking signal (one of the top 3 ranking signals, in fact). However, there’s another type of linkin...
Make the Most of an SEO Investment by Doing These 5 Things
SEO requires an investment of both time and money. Even if you decide to do the work in-house, that’s an investment of time (and time is money, right?). And when you outsource the work you’re still putting in time because you can’t disappear from the process entirely. An SEO provider needs you...
4 Things That Will Always Add Value to an SEO Program
One of the things that the SEO industry is most known for is change. Best practices come and go to stay in line with whatever Google is deeming good or bad (or relevant or irrelevant) at any given time. As the Google algorithm has become more evolved, many SEO practices have fallen by the wayside. R...
Keyword Relevancy is More Important Than Search Volume
One of the first steps of an SEO campaign is to conduct keyword research to determine which relevant keywords people are using to search for the products and/or services offered. Once keywords have been researched, the next step is to select which ones to use. When undergoing the keyword selection p...
Clean Up Organic Listings to Increase Click Through Rate
There’s a misconception that the goal of an SEO campaign is to improve your organic search ranking for priority keywords. The truth is, this is really only part of it. Improving rank is great – but is it correlating with an increase in organic search traffic? Are people actually clicking through...
Ways to Win at Local SEO
When someone is looking for a local business or service, they might ask trusted friends and relatives for suggestions, but more often than not the first place they head is Google. They type in what they want, browse the search results, and go from there, which is why any local business that wants to...
5 Signs You’re Working with a Reputable SEO Firm
SEO requires a significant investment, mostly because it’s a service that never really “ends.” An SEO campaign should really be ongoing, so unless you have the resources to do the work in-house, you’ll always need to be outsourcing it to an SEO firm. Of course, you want to make sure that you...
Do These Things to Set Your SEO Campaign Up for Success
Getting ready to start (or re-start) an SEO campaign? If so, there are some things you can be doing right now so that when it’s time to actually launch the campaign, you’ve already done all of the necessary prep work and the campaign will get started on the right foot. Here are 4 things to do no...
Why A Business Blog is a “Must-Have” For SEO
If you’re a marketer (which you must be if you’re reading this blog!) we shouldn’t have to tell you what the marketing reasons are to operate a business blog. Essentially, it’s an outlet to share your expertise, gain trust among target audience members, gain followers and a community, engage...
Want to Earn Natural Inbound Links? Do These Things Now
There are essentially two ways to generate inbound links. 1. You spend time scouring the web and actively look for inbound linking opportunities, network with other website owners, and take an action (write a guest blog post, submit to a directory, post a blog comment, etc.) that will generate an in...
Make These Website Changes to Turn Organic Traffic into Leads
So, you’ve been working at SEO for some time now and your website is completely optimized, you’re adding new content to your blog, you’ve gained some trusted, relevant inbound links, and you’re starting to see organic growth when you look at your reports. But you’re thinking that that grow...
Improve Your SEO Content in 3 Steps
One of the most challenging things about writing SEO content is that there are so many web pages out there that you’re competing with. Unless you are the only person to write about a specific topic, there’s going to be competition. And, if you are the only person to write about a topic, it’s p...
Yes, Social Media Matters for SEO Link Building
If someone told you that social media doesn’t matter for SEO link building purposes, they’re wrong. While it’s true that links shared in social media are nofollowed and aren’t directly growing your SEO link portfolio or influencing the search engine algorithms, an active social media presenc...
Tips for Outsourcing SEO
For many companies, especially small to medium sized businesses, it doesn’t make sense to hire an SEO team or professional in house. At the same time, it’s also likely that the existing marketing team or professional doesn’t have the time to add SEO responsibilities onto their plate without sa...
Add These to Your Blog Posts Today
If you’re consistently blogging and incorporating SEO elements into your blog posts (incorporating keywords naturally, writing optimized titles and descriptions, etc.), you’re already way ahead of many websites. But there’s a good chance that you can still be doing better. We’re avid blog re...
4 Key Components of SEO
If you are relatively new to the world of SEO, it can seem a bit complicated. After all, nobody can tell you for sure what every single Google ranking signal is or how much each signal is weighted in the overall search algorithm. So, what are we chasing then? Well, the key to a solid SEO campaign is...
Online Advertising Channels That Complement SEO
While we’ll always advocate for investing a portion of your marketing budget on SEO, we’ll also tell you that there are plenty of online advertising channels that can complement your SEO campaign nicely, if you have the extra budget for it. We look at SEO as the long-term strategy that builds a ...
Outbound Linking Best Practices for SEO
When SEO linking is discussed, the focus is usually on inbound links, or links on other websites that are pointing to your website. Inbound links are a ranking factor since they convey trust and authority to the search engines. What usually doesn’t get as much attention is outbound linking, or lin...
4 Content Marketing Best Practices for SEO
Content marketing is a cornerstone of an SEO campaign today. Without well-optimized, high quality content a website will have a hard time earning natural inbound links and ranking prominently for targeted keywords. While most website owners understand the importance of content, there’s more that c...
SEO Items to Execute Regularly
The first thing to understand about SEO is that it’s not like other marketing campaigns that you can start and stop. In order to be effective long term, an SEO program never really “stops.” The search engines favor websites that remain active by posting great content and steadily increase the ...
3 Things That Hinder SEO Results
Website owners usually have the best of intentions when they launch an SEO campaign. They agree to following a white hat strategy and understand that it can take time to start to build an organic search engine presence and see organic traffic from their efforts. However, there are a few mistakes we ...
Where Should I Put My Targeted Keywords?
Search behavior has changed in recent years (think, voice search), but that doesn’t mean that keywords are out the window. Keywords are still used when people search which means that they should still be at the foundation of a solid SEO campaign. Keyword research still matters and helps to uncover...
Do I Really Need a Blog?
One of the first things we recommend to full service or consulting SEO clients is to add a blog to their website if they don’t already have one and to start publishing posts regularly. It’s not uncommon to get pushback from clients since blogging is time consuming. Another deterrent is that ther...
Make Sure You Put Your Customers First
You've spent the last few months executing your SEO campaign. You research keywords, write great content, share your content on the social media sites, and constantly tweak things until you get the results you want. After a while, you notice that it's been paying off because your organic visitors ar...
Online Advertising: Not Set and Forget
While SEO isn’t considered to be online advertising, because there is no money exchange for specific placement, it certainly plays in the same space which makes online advertising worth discussing. SEO and online advertising work well together. While SEO efforts gain traction slowly in the backgro...
SEO Shouldn’t Be a Standalone Strategy
If you own a website, SEO should be a part of your online marketing strategy. However, notice that we said “a part of.” It certainly shouldn’t be the be all end all of the entire strategy. An SEO strategy works best when it’s integrated with other online marketing efforts. That’s because S...
Learning the Art of Storytelling
Webster’s Dictionary defines a story as “an account of incidents or events”. Despite this simple definition, composing a good story is actually an art. Think about how you feel at the end of a great movie, or after you’ve completed reading a novel that left you captivated. After encountering...
5 Signs You’re Running a Bad SEO Campaign
SEO certainly isn’t rocket science, but if you’re running your own SEO campaign it can be easy to get confused. After all, all of the information out there on SEO can sometimes be conflicting. Or, doesn’t give you the whole picture or a thorough explanation about the reasons why you should be ...
Create SEO Content for the Entire B2B Sales Cycle
We know how important content is for SEO. It’s what the search engines “see” and use to determine web page rank. While B2B website owners understand this, many are making the mistake of having a narrow focus to SEO content creation and only targeting prospects that are at the bottom of the sal...
6 Tips to Create an SEO Friendly Blog
One of the most important SEO tips today is to add a blog to your business website and publish new, high-quality content there on a regular basis. This is because new blog posts keep the site updated and “fresh” which brings the search engines back to the site to re-crawl and index it, every blo...
Get More Clicks to Your SEO Content by Following These Steps
To some, content marketing is considered a necessary evil. They know it’s needed for SEO purposes since optimized content is what ranks organically in the search engines and helps drive search traffic over the long term. However, content marketing isn’t easy. It takes significant time and resour...
Where to Incorporate SEO Keywords
There are many components to an SEO campaign, but at the foundation is one thing: keywords. The keywords targeted on a website tell the search engines and website visitors what the website and its pages are all about. This is why the first step of an SEO campaign is to conduct keyword research using...
Save SEO Efforts with a 301 Redirect
There’s a lot that goes into a website redesign. However, because your choices can impact your SEO, it’s important to take a very careful approach before your site goes live. Redesigning the business website may be necessary in order to keep the site looking “fresh” or if the company has und...
4 Steps of an Efficient Link Building Campaign
Link building is a time-consuming process, but it’s a worthwhile one, since inbound links pointing to your website remain an important search engine ranking factor. The key to successful link building is to take an organized, strategic approach. Here are 4 important steps towards an efficient link...
SEO Reasons to Launch a Blog
From a marketing standpoint, there are lots of reasons to launch a business blog as a part of your website. Blogging is a way to demonstrate your expertise in your niche and a blog is also a convenient outlet for sharing product updates and company news. However, blogging has plenty of additional SE...
Web Development Mistakes That Harm SEO
For a business website, hiring a professional website developer is an absolute must. Potential clients and customers will judge your company based on first impressions, and today, most first impressions are made online, specifically with the company website. A DIY website or a website created for fr...
How to Write SEO Content that Matters
There are millions upon millions of pages of web content out there. While that might seem a little intimidating, the truth of the matter is that a small percentage of it is actually any good. And if you’re going to embark on an SEO campaign and begin writing and publishing content, the only way it...
How to Increase Organic Click Through Rate
The best indicator of a successful SEO campaign is an increase in organic search engine traffic over time. Of course, that isn’t the only reporting metric to look at. It’s also worthwhile to look at impression and keyword position data, too. Ideally, search engine results page impression growth ...
What Exactly is Your SEO Firm Doing?
Do you know exactly what your SEO firm is doing for you? What you are paying for each month? During initial meetings with prospects and new clients, we keep hearing a similar story. When we ask what their previous firm did for them, they really aren’t sure. We’ve touched on this topic a few time...
SEO Items to Consider During a Website Redesign
It’s best practice to maintain a modern, functional website. A redesign should be considered every few years. If you’re in the market for a redesign, it’s important to keep SEO in mind throughout the process. While a new, bright and shiny website is nice, it’s only worthwhile if it’s gener...
Are You Really Ready for SEO?
A prominent organic search listing can be a boon for business, which is why executing an SEO campaign is really a no-brainer. The majority of website owners know this, but at the same time they also think that they can jump right into SEO whenever they feel like it. But that’s just not the case. B...
Why Blog Commenting is Important
When it comes to search engine optimization, blog commenting is always considered an important part of the strategy. It's also one of those strategies that only gets better over time. Long term consistency that actually gets results. If you complete a certain number of blog comments per month, it'...