SEO Articles
Is Meta Data Still Important for SEO?
In the past, the Meta data that you included in the code of our website played a large part in your search ranking. The search engine spiders used this information to determine what your website was about and then ranked your site accordingly. Search engines weren’t sophisticated like they are...
In Addition to SEO, What Can I Be Doing?
A common question we often hear from SEO clients is, “what else can I be doing to get more traffic to my website?” Since SEO is a long-term strategy (slow and steady wins the race), if a client has the budget, we often recommend executing additional online marketing efforts to coincide with the ...
SEO and PPC Should Work Together
While search engine optimization and search engine pay per click advertising are two different marketing functions, they both work under the search engine marketing umbrella and ultimately have the same goal: website clicks that drive conversions. Some website owners choose to deploy one or the othe...
SEO Musts for Local Business Owners
The days of searching for a local business in the Yellow Pages are long gone. Today, when someone is looking for a local business, they type what they’re looking for into Google and pick from one of the top results. This is why it’s so important for local business owners to invest in local SEO. ...
Signs That You Have Unrealistic SEO Expectations
It’s common for website owners to have a love/hate relationship with SEO. They love it because if done correctly, it means an increase in traffic from the search engines, which means more leads and more sales. They hate it because if done correctly, it takes a long time to see those results, which...
Don’t Expect to Live Your SEO Past
There was a time when a website could do very well in the search engines without putting forth a lot of effort. We have a client who fits this description. A few years ago, they achieved success in the search engines with very little effort. Their business was thriving because their site was ranking...
How To Improve Your Domain Authority
There are numerous signals that the search engines consider when ranking a website and as we know the search engines are constantly tweaking these algorithms and giving more or less weight to certain factors in order to improve search results and combat web spam. While we don’t know exactly how...
Can Too Many Pages Hurt Your SEO?
When the Internet was new, websites looked much differently than they do now. Design techniques, programming languages, and SEO tactics have evolved as the web have all gotten much more sophisticated. Over the years, this level of sophistication has impacted SEO. Companies are in a situation that th...
5 Questions to Ask an SEO Service Provider
The SEO industry has come a long way in recent years but it sometimes still can’t shake that “shady” vibe. Well, that’s because, unfortunately, there are still plenty of shady characters trying to sell SEO services to inexperienced and naïve website owners. If you’re thinking about workin...
Are These Things Holding Back SEO Success?
It’s true that it can take time to see SEO results, however if you’ve been doing everything right for more than 6 months (following white hat SEO best practice, implementing keywords naturally into web content, writing new optimized content, building relevant inbound links to the website) and yo...
3 Reasons to Run SEO and PPC Campaigns Together
It’s common knowledge that when someone wants to know more about, well, just about anything, they turn to the search engines and type in (or say) a search query. This means that if you have a business website, you’ll want it to be found in the search engines. There are essentially two ways to ge...
Is Your Website Mobile Friendly Enough for Google?
In a rare turn of events, Google announced way back in February that a major algorithm update was coming. Considering Google almost NEVER warns site owners ahead of time, and often doesn’t even officially confirm an update until several days of panic have passed, giving site owners essentially t...
Ways to Build a Solid SEO Campaign
When it comes to executing an effective SEO campaign, how it's structured makes all the difference. There are certain elements that every SEO program needs to have. Besides that, items beyond your control, such as Google's algorithm changes, can also have an impact. No matter what kind of business ...
Technical SEO Items to Execute Now
You can break SEO up in many ways: there’s on-site vs. off-site SEO, content vs. link building, etc. but another important distinction is separating these things from the technical aspect of SEO that is essentially web design/development. If the website isn’t technically SEO friendly, all of the...
Everyone at the Company Needs to Be on Board with SEO
Are you of the mindset that only the SEO specialists are able to take care of your search engine optimization program? Well, even if you entrust this aspect of your business to a reputable firm, everyone in your company, including the leadership as well as the marketing department as a whole, needs ...
The Most Important SEO Reports
SEO is comprised of many functions, one of which is reporting. After all, if you’re going to be investing time and money on optimizing your website, building inbound links, writing link worthy content, and sharing your content in social media – don’t you want to know if it’s working over tim...
Be Wary of SEO Firms That Email You Out of the Blue
It blows our minds that in 2015 emails like this are still being sent to site owners/managers. What’s worse is there are plenty of small businesses that are still falling for it! While the SEO industry has certainly cleaned up its reputation over the last 5 years, there are still more than a few S...
Valuable SEO Lessons Learned
The SEO industry has evolved so much in the last four years that I hardly recognize it! Can you believe that 10 years ago companies would have employees whose entire job was to build link exchanges! Their annual bonus was directly impacted by how many links they could build. Thankfully those days ar...
3 Ways to Get Your Technical SEO In-Shape
Today, most of your SEO program is actually wrapped up in your marketing efforts. How are you building you brand? Sharing your content? Developing your social authority? There aren’t really any coding “tricks” you need to follow in order to do well organically. However, how your site is built ...
What is the Purpose of SEO?
When people search for information online in the search engines, they go about it by typing in what we’re looking for into the search box. In order for your site to become available when people search for information, the search engines need to determine that the site is valuable so that when peop...
Black Hat SEO Tactic to Avoid: Duplicate Content
Excellent content is the bread and butter of your online presence. However, there is a right and wrong way to create content. According to Google, “Duplicate content on a site is not grounds for action on that site unless it appears that the intent of the duplicate content is to be deceptive a...
Patience Is A Necessity When It Comes To SEO!
Once you have decided to implement a search engine optimization campaign, it’s important to understand that the desired outcome may not come for months, sometimes many months. Even if you have done everything correctly you aren’t going to get instant results. However, the wait will be worth it! ...
On Site SEO Checklist of Things to Remember!
An SEO campaign is comprised of many steps. The first phase is the research phase. It’s necessary to scope out the competition and figure out which keywords would be the best fit to target. Once keyword research has been completed the next phase is on site optimization. This involves going through...
6 SEO Reporting Items to Look at Every Month
An SEO campaign is only worthwhile if you’re going to take the time to analyze its success on a regular basis. Reviewing monthly SEO reports allows you to see where you are making progress and what areas might need additional work. Our SEO reporting go-tos are Google Analytics and Google Search Co...
Make These Website Conversion Improvements to Enhance SEO Results
The goal of an SEO campaign is to increase targeted, relevant organic visitors to a website over time. However, while increased organic traffic is certainly great, it’s not doing anything directly to improve the bottom line. A company is only going to see a return on investment if those visitors a...
Why SEO Shouldn’t Wait Until “Later”
Are you getting your business website up and running? There’s so much to do, it can be difficult to prioritize your tasks. In the beginning, you’re likely focused on tasks that are immediately important, such as making sure your site looks great, is easy to navigate, and has some decent content ...
Black Hat Tactics and White Hat Alternatives
There are many tactics that can be used in a search engine optimization campaign to attract the attention of search engine spiders and get a website ranked prominently for specific keywords. Some of these tactics are considered to be white hat, which means that they are tactics that “play by the r...
SEO Won’t Solve Your Business Problems
A search engine optimization campaign, if implemented properly, can do many wonderful things for your business. It can help improve your brand visibility in the search engines and online overall in order to bring more targeted traffic to your site. An increase in visitors to the site will generate m...
There’s No Quick Money When it Comes to SEO
When it comes to SEO, there’s no such thing as making “quick money”. In fact, chasing fast money can do a lot more harm than good. When you hire an SEO firm, you need to treat them as a partner. This comes in especially handy when you’re presented with opportunities that may seem a litt...
Don’t Over Optimize Your Site
For all of our full service SEO clients, we start the process with on-site optimization. This involves conducting keyword research for each page of the site, writing new and better targeted Meta tags and descriptions, and tweaking H1 tags and page content to seamlessly include the new keywords. The ...
SEO Con Men Are Alive and Well
Do you regularly get emails from people who are trying to drum up business for their SEO services? This happens to me all the time. In fact, I received one just the other day. Typically, the emails read something like this: Hello, You could be doing much better in the search engines. As part ...
Tips for a Productive SEO Consulting Meeting
Business success today is largely dependent on online visibility, and the search engines play a large role in this. Web users want instant gratification and they won’t spend time looking beyond the first one or two pages of search results. Therefore, it’s extremely important for a business to ha...
SEO Tips for Seasonal Businesses
While your business may have slow and busy periods or even close entirely for parts of the year, the Internet never stops, which essentially means that ideally your SEO program shouldn’t either. Sure, there may be more SEO related work to do during certain parts of the year but since your website ...
SEO, Content and Social All Work Together
The way people search for information online isn't necessarily linear, which means that they may arrive at your website in unpredictable ways. Will they find your website based on search results, social signals, or a combination of both? The reality is that social media and SEO work together and enh...
4 Reasons You Aren’t Ready for SEO
Since we’re an SEO firm you probably assume that we’d tell every website owner that they need to be doing SEO. While we do think that every website owner should be doing SEO eventually, the truth is many just aren’t ready for it. Here are 4 reasons why a website owner might not be ready to exe...
Make These 5 Website Fixes to Improve SEO
While it’s true that great content, keyword incorporation, and quality inbound links are at the forefront of an SEO campaign, one important contributor to SEO success that sometimes doesn’t get the attention it deserves is website design and development. Website design and SEO complement each ot...
Putting Together an SEO Report
If you’re actively working on an SEO campaign, it’s important to be aware of how that campaign is performing. The first thing to understand about SEO (and SEO reporting) is that SEO is long term. While it’s recommended to pull reports on a regular basis, it’s highly doubtful that you’re go...
What to Look at to Measure SEO Success
The first thing you should do as you embark on an SEO campaign is ensure that you have Google Analytics and Search Console set up on the website. After all, you don’t want to invest in a campaign that you can’t measure the results of. If you’ve never optimized your website and you’re comp...
Don’t Overlook These SEO Steps During a Website Redesign
Website redesigns often make sense every couple of years in order to keep a website fresh and relevant. If you’re considering a redesign, it’s important to pull your SEO provider into the conversation as early as possible. If you aren’t working with an SEO professional, it’s a smart idea to ...
5 Technical SEO Items to Check Regularly
SEO success relies on many things. You need to have a well-optimized website, write great content on a regular basis, and earn inbound links from other reputable, industry-related websites. However, you can’t forget about the technical component of SEO that matters just as much. Here are 5 technic...
Don’t Let SEO Get in the Way of Branding
When search engine optimization first became a household name, it had negative connotations because it was associated with shady tactics and subpar content. In today’s online world, the climate is much different. Businesses who merge effective SEO tactics while still building their brand identity...
SEO Checklist for Site Redesigns
Does your site need a redesign? If so, it's important not to ignore the SEO aspect of your new site. In fact, redesigning your site presents you with an excellent opportunity to refine your SEO strategy and optimize even more effectively than you were before. You certainly would want to hurt your si...
The 5 W’s of SEO
SEO is a form of marketing and just like any good marketing program, you need to understand certain things before you can be successful with it. One way to look at it is that you should have a clear understanding of the who, what, where, when, and why before you can get anywhere good. The more knowl...
Broken Links Can Hurt Your SEO Efforts
Broken links are a part of owning and/or managing a website and if they're not addressed, they can hurt your long term SEO efforts. In fact, they're bad from both a search engine perspective and a user perspective. Marketers need to continually monitor broken links and address them before they can...
What’s the Difference Between Search Queries and Keywords?
Have you ever noticed that people often use the terms "search queries" and "keywords" interchangeably? The assumption is that they are the same thing, but there is, in fact, a difference between them. Simply put, the keyword is the phrase that we target when putting together an SEO program for our f...
The Argument Against Specialized SEO Services
Many companies understand the importance of SEO, but just don’t have the time or resources to do it themselves. So, they make the smart decision to start looking for an SEO company or consultant to assist them. When researching SEO options you may come across companies that specialize in SEO withi...
Managing Product Pages for SEO
One of the unique SEO problems that e-commerce and b2b lead generating websites face is that their products can be constantly changing. This means that new pages are being added, content is being tweaked and discontinued or out of stock product pages are being taken down. This kind of page turnove...
Protect Your Website with White Hat SEO
Like it or not, all website owners are essentially at the mercy of the high and mighty Google. When people are looking for information, what do they do? That’s right, they “Google it.” This means that website owners that want to rank prominently for relevant keywords in a Google search need to...
Technical SEO Audit Checklist
Every site needs to undergo a technical SEO audit from time to time. Obviously if you’ve suffered a penalty it’s imperative you dig through every corner of your site to determine what went wrong, but it’s also worth doing BEFORE you get hit with a penalty so you can take preventative action to...
Where Do I Put My SEO Keywords?
Keywords are at the foundation of any SEO campaign. People search using keywords and the purpose of SEO is to ensure that your website matches these search queries in order to generate organic search engine traffic from target audience members. To determine how target audience members are searching,...