SEO Articles
SEO Should Be a Priority Within Marketing Teams
If SEO isn't valued within your marketing team, it's time to consider what you're missing out on. SEO can help to establish a brand online, becoming recognizable by more users as time progresses. Unfortunately, teams don't always realize how important it is and prioritize other activities. SEO is si...
Use Niche Keywords to Grow a Brand
Niche keywords are not taken seriously by many digital marketing strategists for one big reason: low search volume. On one hand, this makes sense since everyone wants to use keywords that are searched for often. Niche keywords have their place as well and can actually provide benefits to your brand....
Canonical Tags Still Necessary for SEO?
Canonical tags have been known to help Google and other search engines better understand which pages of a website have original content and which are duplicates. Currently, Google states that canonical tags are not recommended for syndicated content. Why is this? The canonical link element is no lon...
Algorithms Shouldn’t Dictate a Digital Strategy
Every social media platform and search engine has its own algorithm. Algorithms can be useful in determining what posts are getting the most attention and what hashtags are being used. This can be helpful in targeting your social media ads. In turn, this can help a business use their marketing budge...
Is There a Google SEO AI Penalty?
With AI being used more often to create content these days, it's normal to wonder if there are penalties that come along with doing so. Google does not penalize the use of AI for SEO, but this doesn't mean that there aren't things to take into consideration if you decide to use AI to create SEO cont...
Why XML Sitemaps are Still Necessary
An XML sitemap is a file that lists a website's important pages. It's necessary to help Google and other search engines find your pages, crawl them, and index them. An XML sitemap is also known as an SEO sitemap, which describes its purpose well. A sitemap will help boost your SEO, allowing your pag...
SEO Should Be Ongoing
You know how to start an SEO strategy. You've done your keyword research, you've optimized your content to include those keywords, and you've likely performed an SEO audit followed by making the technical changes necessary to your website. All of these activities will boost your SEO's performance, b...
Proactive SEO vs Reactive SEO
SEO is a digital marketing strategy that can see highs and lows. That's the natural rhythm as keywords change and evolve, algorithms change, and competitors change their strategy. Your search engine results can be kept high by taking advantage of different practices. Some of these practices can be c...
Homepage SEO Takes More Time
When thinking about SEO, your focus may be mainly on content, making sure it's optimized with relevant keywords and sharing topics your audience is searching for. Optimizing your website's homepage is another area to consider when thinking about your SEO strategy. It's not enough to simply welcom...
Writing for SEO is Never Good
When creating content for your website, social media, or other outlets, you don't want to focus on SEO. Surprised? After all, we know that SEO is what helps content to be discovered in the search engines and will drive people to your business website and social media accounts. Writing for SEO is not...
What is an SEO Algorithmic Penalty?
An algorithmic penalty is something that website owners have come to dread. It's a penalty that detects and punishes websites that are in violation of guidelines and other rules that are meant to keep everyone on the same playing field. Algorithms are constantly being updated, so websites often find...
The Role of SEO in Digital Marketing
These days, SEO is considered to be an offshoot of digital marketing. So, rather than look at all the elements of digital marketing, such as SEO, it is much better to consider it to be part of a whole. The reason for this is that all the elements, such as content marketing, social media, and SEO, wo...
Technical SEO Audit Checklist
Technical SEO plays a critical role when optimizing a website for search engines. While many factors contribute to technical SEO, there are several important items that you should check to ensure your website is optimized for search engines. Here are the essential items you should check: Search for...
The White Hat Creation of SEO Backlinks
It's true that backlinks are an important part of any great SEO strategy. The issue is, getting backlinks has to be done in a "white hat" way, or else they won't be effective and can even do more harm than good. Google says: Google uses links as an important factor in determining the relevancy of...
Doing an SEO Competitive Analysis Is a Must
You have done your SEO research to determine the best keywords that will get your brand and website noticed. You implement these keywords into your content both on your website and throughout your social media. You post fresh content regularly and your following is growing. Your search engine result...
Why Established Brands Should Not Forget About SEO
As an established brand with a following and customers, you may feel that SEO is behind you. You were diligent about it when first starting out, but once you got results, it didn't seem necessary anymore. After all, your brand is now known and people are investing in the service or product you offer...
SEO Data Should Be Used to Make Informed Decisions
SEO is the process of optimizing a website to be ranked higher in search engine results for relevant keywords. SEO is a long-term and ongoing process, and it is crucial for websites to track their progress and success. That's where SEO data comes into play. But, with so much data available, it can b...
The Right Way to Optimize for SEO
Search Engine Optimization (SEO) improves the visibility of a website or a web page in a search engine's unpaid results. The higher a website or a web page appears in the search results, the more likely it is to be visited by a user. To optimize your website or web page for SEO, there are several...
Ongoing SEO is a Essential to Achieve the Win
When it comes to SEO, it is true that you need to do all the initial work. This include keyword research and optimization, performing a technical SEO audit, and making any necessary technical changes on the site to help SEO. The problem is, businesses often perform the initial stages, but they don'...
SEO Keyword Research is Still Needed
Keyword research is an important step in any website or blog search engine optimization (SEO) and it has been for some time. Yet, some people don't really pay much attention to it these days. The truth is, keyword research helps you figure out what keywords people are searching for, which will hel...
Content Title Writing Tips That Help SEO
It's true that SEO helps your content get seen in the search engines and ultimately can help you boost your organic traffic. However, it all depends on how you handle your content. Your SEO content needs to be engaging, informative, and catchy, or people will fall away from your site as quickly as p...
Why Local SEO Matters
When putting together an SEO program, there are a few ways that you can approach it. Of course, you should always optimize for national keywords. However, if you have a locally-based business, you will want to incorporate local SEO into your strategy, since it can help attract local customers. Yet, ...
How Often Should an SEO Audit be Completed?
Whenever starting an SEO program, it is true that one of the first steps is to do an SEO audit. This helps assess where the SEO stands and what needs to be improved. However, what tends to happen is that most people do this process only once, at the beginning of the program. The reality is that it s...
Tips for Making an SEO-Friendly Blog Post
Writing a great blog post for SEO can be a challenge. The goal is to find a way to write engaging content that is optimized for SEO, without making it look like it had been optimized. If your content reads as if it had been stuffed with keywords, the content may not perform well and could even be pe...
Optimizing Keywords With a Low Search Volume
When it comes to SEO, sometimes you need to decide not only how you will use the keywords you find, but also need to make a choice as to which keywords you will use in the first place. The ultimate goal is that you need to find the right keywords that best express your industry, niche, and overall g...
Develop an Improved SEO Keyword Strategy
Keywords are words or phrases combined with search terms to make a search query more specific. It is an essential part of any SEO campaign. Keywords vary depending on what the company does; thus, companies must research before creating their keywords. This research will help them avoid potential ...
What Different Types of Keywords Mean for SEO and Your Audience
The world is full of competition, and the race to the top is always challenging. One of the most crucial aspects of marketing a business is optimizing for search engines. One way to do that is by using keywords as metadata for your website content to make it rank higher in search engine results page...
Get Buy-In From Leadership for SEO
When marketing strategies and programs are implemented, getting leadership buy-in is often the most challenging element. After all, your organization’s leaders are responsible for ensuring that the company meets its strategic objectives. However, there’s often hesitation when it comes to...
What is Enterprise SEO?
Enterprise SEO is a marketing strategy that combines an understanding of web-wide search engine optimization and digital marketing. It is essential to approach these strategies with a well-defined online presence; this way, you can get the best results out of your enterprise SEO efforts. It lets yo...
Why Should You Do An SEO Audit?
As long as the search engines are a factor in our behavior online, there will be a need for search engine optimization. These days, the focus really should be on your audience and making sure they are happy with your website and your content. In doing so, your website will stand a greater chance of ...
What Are the Benefits of SEO?
Digital Marketing is an important part of any business marketing strategy, and SEO is certainly part of this. SEO involves various techniques that make it possible for your website to perform better in organic search results, but aside from that, there are other important benefits. Here are some o...
Does Page Speed Affect SEO?
When it comes to SEO, there are many factors that can make an impact on your results, and site speed is one of them. However, when it comes to SEO, people often gloss over this in favor of other tactics, such as making sure that the website has plenty of great content. Yet, SEO isn’t about o...
Importance of Website Taxonomy for SEO
There is a lot that goes along with digital marketing, and some of the strategies that can help are less tangible than others. Of course, a good website sits at the center of a good digital marketing program, but there is more to it than simply sharing content with your audience. Your content needs ...
Can SEO Backlinks Improve Results?
When it comes to SEO, there are many pieces of the puzzle that can help improve results. Of course, we all know we need great content that satisfies our audience, but there are other items that are part of SEO, too, such as backlinks. However, there is an art to building a great backlink portfolio, ...
Create an Effective SEO Strategy for a Rebranding
Do you need to rebrand your business? If so, it isn’t just a simple matter of changing your logo, graphics, or even your business positioning. You need to assess how the rebrand will affect your digital marketing as a whole, and this includes your search engine optimization. You need to figure out...
Take an Audience First Approach with SEO Content Writing
When writing content with SEO in mind, it can be tempting to take a keyword-first approach. However, this is the wrong approach because even though keywords can give you clues as to what you should be writing, you aren’t writing to please the search engines. You’re actually writing to sa...
Can SEO Help with Internal Site Search?
It’s true that search engine optimization can help increase your website’s visibility in the search engines, especially when the plan is executed correctly. There’s an art to creating a well-optimized website that follows the best practices of SEO, and also to executing your SEO st...
Should You Use SEO Tools?
There’s a lot that goes into search engine optimization, and there’s a lot that goes into setting up and implementing a good SEO strategy. From analyzing data to making sure you have enough content on your website to attract the right audience, the tasks involved with SEO are numerous. I...
Does User Intent Matter for SEO?
When it comes to SEO, there is a lot that goes into creating a great strategy. Over the years, the search engine algorithms have gotten more sophisticated, and this has changed the game for those wishing to get their websites to be returned for search results. More than ever, the algorithm is design...
Attracting Natural Links for SEO
It’s not enough to just have great links coming to your website, they also need to be relevant. When they’re relevant, you don’t need to work too hard in order to attract these backlinks because less is more. It is better to have a smaller number of high-quality links than a larger...
Knowing if a Link is Good for SEO
When it comes to SEO, it isn’t necessarily the amount of links that is important, it’s the quality of the links. Of course, if you have a large number of quality links pointing to your website, that’s even bette. If your link has any perceived relevance issues, the search engine...
SEO Can Help Your Business Reach
SEO is a vital part of your digital marketing strategy. Every aspect of digital marketing, such as content marketing, social media, online advertising, and SEO, work together with the ultimate objective to help you achieve your goals and improve your business reach as a whole. Businesses need to mak...
Title Tags Are Important for SEO
When it comes to SEO, there are many things that you can do that make a difference. Each of these elements, when taken by themselves, don’t have a discernible impact. The magic of a good SEO program is the consistency it takes to execute it. It is this consistency that will yield results over ...
Control Your Brand through Branded Search
When compiling and executing your SEO strategy, chances are pretty good that you will focus the majority of your efforts on working with keywords that will attract people specifically to your website. However, SEO has another use that you may not realize. It’s valuable to help build your brand...
Does Usability Help with SEO?
SEO is a digital marketing practice that enables your website to get seen in the search engines. There are many factors that impact SEO, and each one needs to be accounted for when developing an SEO plan. These include developing content that your audience will find valuable, making sure the intent ...
How Do You Optimize Your Content Using SEO?
When it comes to Search Engine Optimization or SEO, content should be treated as the cornerstone. After all, it is your content that will attract your audience to your brand, either by visiting your website on their own, or when an internet search connects them to your website. In order to get the m...
How Does SEO Work?
These days SEO, or Search Engine Optimization, is so common that you may not even really think about it. However, it certainly is a vital component of digital marketing. You may understand that implementing an SEO plan could help you gain more visibility in the search engines, but that might be wher...
Importance of Site Structure for SEO
When it comes to SEO, site structure is one of those elements that you may not think makes a difference. However, it is a lot more important than you may realize. It is one of those essential elements that can make or break your strategy. If you organize your website well and make this organization ...
Take Advantage of Seasonal SEO
It’s true that SEO is something that takes a while to build. In fact, to get to where you want to be in the search engines, it could take years of consistent effort. This makes it difficult for many businesses to stick with an SEO plan, because the immediate pay off isn’t there. However,...
Pros and Cons of SEO
There was a time when the main focus of marketing a business online was by using strategies surrounding search engine optimization. While it still plays a role in digital marketing, there are other strategies that are also used, such as social media and content marketing. It can be argued that socia...
You Need a Sitemap for SEO
If you are working on the SEO for your website, one of the first things you should do is make sure that you have a sitemap. This is essentially a roadmap that helps Google understand how your website is organized. Although nothing is truly predictable when it comes to SEO, a sitemap is an important ...
5 Ways to Get More Website Leads from Organic Traffic
The purpose of running an SEO campaign is to increase organic traffic to a website from the search engines. And while an increase in traffic typically results in more leads, it’s important to ensure that your website is set up in a way that makes it easy for website visitors to fill out your lead ...
Brand Strength Correlates with SEO Results
It's true that brand strength correlates with SEO results. You’ll often hear SEO professionals talk about branded keywords vs. non-branded keywords. It’s all fairly straightforward. Branded keywords include the brand, company name, branded products or services, etc. as part of the search term. ...
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 ...
Be Sure to Maintain Your SEO
When it comes to optimizing your website, it is true that it is important to do it in the early stages of your business or a website launch. It is, of course, much easier when a website is optimized during the launch, but we know that this doesn't happen. We often have clients come to us who have be...
SEO for an Existing Website
Most people are pretty diligent about putting their SEO into place when they first launch a website. However, many years could pass before they even touch it again. The reality is that websites should revisit their SEO every few years, just to make sure that it is updated. Things change quickly in t...
Blogging Can Enhance Your SEO Strategy
It's true that SEO, or Search Engine Optimization, can help your website perform better in organic search results. There are many tools that can be used to enhance your SEO, but few are as effective as blogging can be. SEO is the practice of optimizing the visibility and ranking of a website on sea...
SEO Should Align with Your Business
It's true that SEO is something that can help increase your organic visibility in the search engines. However, the process goes much deeper than that. Ultimately, it is a technique that businesses can use to make sure they are finding the right people who are interested in what they have to offer. T...
Deep Linking Can Work Well to Enhance SEO
These days, search engine optimization is looked at as an extension of digital marketing. This is how it should be perceived. However, many believe that the tactics that were once effective in SEO may not be relevant. This is simply not true. Many seem to ignore strategies like deep linking, but the...
Ranking is Not a Metric to Grow Your Business
The ultimate goal of a good search engine optimization campaign is to help you grow your business. There are some misconceptions associated with this, and perhaps one of the biggest is concerning "page rank". The theory is that if you improve your website's Page Rank score, then you will automatical...
SEO, Content and Social Media 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 ...
Keywords Should Align With Audience
When putting together a digital marketing plan, SEO is certainly going to be part of it. Keywords are always at the core of any good SEO plan, but the days of coming up with long lists of keywords are over. While this may have been commonplace ten or fifteen years ago, Google's many algorithm change...
Why Security Is Important for SEO
There are many factors at play in search engine optimization. Some may depend on the search engine you use. There are various factors that impact SEO such as keyword optimization, technical considerations such as the URL structure of each link, site content, and also other factors such as the qualit...
3 Ways to Increase Your Chances of Earning Natural Links
Inbound links are still considered to be one of the top SEO ranking factors, which is why link building should remain a priority. Of course, link building has changed. The quality of inbound links is much more important than the quantity of inbound links. And when it comes to link quality, a link th...
SEO Basics Never Change
When it comes to search engine optimization, things change constantly. SEO strategies that worked five years ago may not work today, or worse – they can cause penalties. It gets especially sticky when Google rolls out another algorithm change. SEO strategists and web developers often scramble to...
Have Realistic Goals for Your SEO Program
It's true that search engine optimization is an important component of digital marketing. When done correctly, it helps attract people to your website via organic results in the search engines. SEO enables your site to get noticed in search results. It can even result in your website holding the top...
SEO Results Can’t Be Promised
One of the first questions that prospects often ask during the sales process about our SEO services is, “So when can I be on the first page of Google?” While it seems like a fair question to ask an SEO firm, the response that we give is always the same. We cannot promise that kind of result from...
How to Make Content Marketing Work for SEO
Content marketing has been a big part of SEO as a whole for a long time now, and it has certainly evolved over the years. Many of the perceptions that you may have about creating content for SEO may not be accurate any longer. However, we can't deny that it is still important. However, no matte...
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...
Reasons Why Your SEO Campaign Needs a Blog
There are many reasons to have an active blog on your website. Publishing informative blog posts is a way to convey your authority in your niche and build a following. A blog is also a great place to share company and product news and updates. These are great reasons to have a blog regardless of SEO...
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 ...
Using SEO to Improve Branded Search
The primary goal of any SEO campaign is to attract people to your website. In general, this means getting people over to your website when they search for non branded keywords. However, a certain portion of your traffic will find you in branded search. You can easily use branded search to attract th...
Be Sure to Check SEO Statistics for Year Over Year
There's no doubt that search engine optimization is all about the long game because it could take some time before you can really assess how effective it is. If the SEO program is executed well, you will surely see results. However, when those results happen could be somewhat unpredictable because a...
SEO Tasks to Complete Daily
One of the most important things to understand about SEO is that efforts need to be ongoing in order to maintain and improve a website’s presence in search results. Unlike an ad campaign, you can’t turn it off and on as you please without impacting performance. In order to achieve steady organic...
3 Things You Can Do to Earn Natural Links
Inbound links (or links from other websites pointing to your website) are one of the top Google search ranking criteria, but it only works out week if they are obtained naturally. While an important part of a search engine optimization campaign is to actively seek out link building opportunities, it...
Why You Should Launch a Blog for SEO
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...
What to Do if You Have Unnatural Links
As a part of its effort to be more transparent about its practices, Google has been sending out a notification to webmasters alerting them when unnatural links are detected. The notice itself serves as an FYI and doesn’t necessarily mean that a penalty has occurred (yet). The only way to really...
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...
Are Keywords Really That Important?
Search engine optimization is an important part of digital marketing. Many of us look at keywords as an important starting point when it comes to SEO. While that is the case, it is important not to get too attached to the idea of using keywords to help a website get noticed by the search engines. ...
Reasons to Stop Obsessing Over This SEO Metric
Reporting is an important part of an SEO campaign because doing so on a regular basis essentially tells you how the campaign is performing and what tweaks need to be made to improve it. There are many SEO metrics to review and report on, but for whatever reason we find that the one that some webs...
The First 3 Steps of an SEO Campaign
For those new to SEO, it can be a little daunting. There’s a lot involved: keyword research, on-site optimization, link building, content marketing, social media, etc. Where do you start? What’s the best approach: all at once or start with one thing and build to the next? Different SEO firms wil...
You Can’t Predict or Forecast SEO Results
When you implement an SEO program, it's only natural that you want to find a way to predict results. In fact, people ask me this very thing all the time. They wonder if they can not only forecast their SEO results, but also their website visitor growth and the ROI of their overall SEO program. While...
3 Easy Ways to Enhance Your SEO Content
The word is out: content is king. We’ve been hearing it for years but it’s clear that website owners are finally getting behind the statement. Essentially, everyone is creating content. The problem is, a lot of this content is sub-par, at best, which means that there’s still opportunity for yo...
Patience Is A Necessity For 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 ...
Resolve Technical Issues to Help With SEO
Concerning search engine optimization, it is easy to forget that there are some technical items that need to be addressed. Most of us know that we need to perform certain activities, such as finding great keywords, regularly publishing new content, and having a well developed and high quality link p...
No Need to Focus on Search Rankings
When it comes to SEO, most people think that the best way to measure success is to achieve excellent rankings for as many keywords as possible. While this is surely the mark of a successful SEO campaign, it isn't necessarily the best way to go about measuring success. In fact, rankings should be ...
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 ...
Let Us Know Your Digital Marketing Concerns!
It's true that we help our clients increase their organic traffic through white hat search engine optimization practices. We have a proven track record of success and we know that our methods produce great results. Although this is what we focus on, we have learned that marketing should be looked at...
What to Do as You Start an SEO Campaign
The most important thing to understand about SEO is that it is a long term process. This means that you need to set up your SEO program and consistently execute it so that you can see the results you desire. It can take months or even years to begin to see traction on your campaign, and if you are...
Top Reasons Why SEO is Slow
One of the most important points that we try to make to prospective full service SEO clients is that SEO is a slow and sometime very long process. It’s not the kind of marketing tactic that’s going to have immediate results or a quick ROI. The complete opposite is true. In fact, it can take ma...
Do These Things Regularly for SEO Success
The key to achieving SEO success and maintaining SEO success is to keep at it regularly. It’s not the sort of campaign that you can turn off and turn back on, expecting to be right where you left off. If you take any time off from SEO work it will likely coincide with a gradual dip in organic traf...
Why Fixating on Rank is a Waste of Time
It is a misconception that rank is a measurement of how well your SEO is performing. These days, while it is still being measured, the end result is one that doesn't seem to have much of a bearing as to how well your website is performing organically overall. Also, at the end of the day, none of tha...
Do You Need to Improve Content for SEO?
It is true that content can help boost your organic search results because it is closely tied to your SEO program. Content marketing programs will naturally change over time, and they will also differ depending on the nature of the business or the industry. Although most content marketing schedules ...
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? On some level, traffic dips are normal. But, when they are noticeable enough, they can really attract your attention. It is important that once you see these traffic dips that you ...
Website Usability is Important to SEO
There is a clear link between website usability and digital marketing, particularly with SEO. However, it can be a struggle balancing usability with the desire to get the website noticed in the search engines. Although SEO is the primary traffic source for a substantial amount of website owners, th...
It’s Impossible to Put a Timeline on SEO Success
When a potential client is interested in getting started with an SEO campaign one of the first questions that they ask is, “how long will it take for this to work?” Unfortunately, it’s a question that’s nearly impossible to answer, especially since a successful SEO campaign looks different t...
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 ...
5 Ways to Keep Your Website Safe from Hackers
Cyber attacks are nothing new but have received newfound attention after the infamous WannaCry and subsequent attacks went after huge corporations, showcasing that nobody is immune. If you own a website, it’s important to do what you can to protect it. From an SEO perspective, it’s important bec...
4 Things to Do Before Launching an SEO Campaign
If you’ve finally decided to get around to the whole “SEO thing” that’s great! Welcome aboard. However, before you get started there are a few things to take care of. Doing so will ensure that the campaign is as effective as it can be. Here are 4 things to do before launching an SEO campaign...
Can You Prove That SEO Works?
There's no way to avoid this - receiving organic traffic from the search engines is something that has to be earned over time. When executing an SEO program, it could take months, if not a year or more, to really see that the consistent efforts of the program are paying off over time. However, when ...
Your SEO Firm is Your Partner
There's an art to choosing the best SEO firm for your business but once you do, it's important to make the most of it. What you really need, though, is a firm that treats you like a partner and not just a client. However, it does work both ways. If you treat them as "hired help" and not like a true...
Don’t Take a Cookie Cutter SEO Approach
Are you looking to hire a digital marketing service provider to take care of your search engine optimization? If so, it's important to do your research in advance so you can know if you are a good fit to work with one another. Depending on the industry you are in, you might find that there are SE...
SEO Blog Writing Myths to Ignore
Blogging is an essential part of an SEO campaign. Every blog post is a new page on a website that creates an additional opportunity to rank prominently in search, driving organic search traffic, and to be linked to, helping to earn SEO trust. While there’s an abundance of advice out there about...
SEO Can’t Stand Alone – Diversify Your Digital Marketing
When it comes to digital marketing, it is so important not to rely on any one strategy. Many believe that it is okay to pick a strategy, like SEO, and then completely rely on it while ignoring the rest. The truth is, all the methods for marketing digitally work in tandem with each other, and it is n...
Rankings Aren’t a Good Measure of SEO Success
Clients often come to us and ask how long it will take before they can start to rank for keywords that will get them noticed in the search engines. At face value, the question is an innocent one, and is designed to assess the results of the SEO program. However, the question also completely misse...
SEO Mistakes Web Developers Make
SEO and web development go hand in hand. SEO work in conjunction with web development work attract both the search engine spiders and target audience members to a website. However, web developers aren’t SEO professionals (just as SEO professionals aren’t web developers!). Sure, they might have s...
Technical SEO Audit – Check Your Website for Problems
SEO is an important piece of digital marketing because it is responsible for increasing organic traffic over time. The technical SEO audit is always the first thing that occurs when it comes to SEO because you need to check that the technical elements of your site are best poised to optimize results...
Handling Multiple Cities and Locations with SEO
When it comes to search engine optimization, several factors need to be taken into account. One of them is the question of whether or not you need to optimize on the national or local level. We believe that optimization should happen on both a national and local level, but the strategies should chan...
When Business is Slow Don’t Give Up on SEO
One thing that I am constantly stressing to my clients is that they can’t let month-to-month fluctuations (visitors to site, ranking in SERPs and so forth) shake their faith in their SEO campaign. Too often, site owners panic during a slow month and decide that SEO isn’t working for them and the...
Website Mistakes that Harm SEO
We might not know everything about Google’s search algorithm that determines where websites should rank for keyword searches, but Google has given us enough hints over the years about what’s important. At the top of the list: quality. Google wants to rank sites that fulfill the needs of searcher...
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...
3 Easy Ways to Elevate the Quality of Your SEO Content
You might not think that there’s anything easy about writing SEO content. And to some extent, that’s true. Writing SEO content certainly requires an investment of time and resources to ensure that what you’re publishing is high quality and will actually generate traffic, clicks, and links to b...
How Your SEO Program Can Add Value
When it comes to search engine optimization, we tend to go through the motions. There are certain elements that need to be executed - such as checking the technical aspects of the site that can impact SEO, researching and optimizing for keywords, posting regular articles to the blog, and making post...
Is Search Engine Rank Important for B2B?
When it comes to marketing your B2B business, there are many strategies available. For those wanting to promote their businesses online, having a website will be at the core of the strategy. From there, other digital marketing strategies, such as content marketing and social media marketing will be ...
Match SEO Keywords to User Intent
When doing the keyword research for your site, it’s tempting to simply choose the ones that get the most searches and leave out the rest. Though this is the general idea, there has to be a little more thought that goes into it. Factoring in user intent while assembling your keyword list will not o...
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. ...
SEO Success: Are You Getting in Your Own Way?
Smart business/website owners know that they don’t want to get on Google’s bad side since SEO success translates to business success. So, they do everything to “play nice” and follow Google’s SEO best practices. They optimize their website content in a natural way, look for relevant inboun...
Don’t Create Pages Just for SEO
When we visit a website, we have certain expectations concerning what we want to gain from this website. In other words, we are looking for a certain experience or specific pieces of information, and since we clicked the link to visit the website, we have this expectation that the website will deliv...
Keywords Help You Connect to Your Audience
On the surface, search engine optimization may look like it has the simple task of boosting a website's prominence in the search engines. While this is certainly true, there is more to it than that. The process of SEO actually provides you with a way to connect more deeply to your audience, because ...
Building Links Should Be Natural
It is true that building a high quality link portfolio is an important part of your SEO program. There was a time when SEO experts would talk about link building all the time, and the tactics that were used back then were very effective. The algorithms were written differently back then, and methods...
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 Reasons to Stop Stressing Over Rank
One of our goals when working with clients is to really educate them about SEO. What “white hat” SEO is and isn’t and that the best SEO campaign is one that follows Google’s Webmaster guidelines to a T. One of the most difficult things to convey to prospects and clients is how little emphasi...
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...
Don’t Let Your SEO Process Define You
It's true that SEO is a valuable part of any digital marketing strategy. It's a long term strategy and one that is effective at eventually bringing in a steady stream of targeted, organic traffic. Since success through SEO is something that needs to be earned over the long term, it can be tough to s...
Don’t Let Analytics Make SEO Too Complicated
It's true that there is a lot that goes into creating a great SEO program and one that is tailored to the specific needs of the business. However, there are certain components that will always be present, such as content marketing, social media, and link building. Despite that, there is still a d...
How to Make Social Media Work for SEO
When someone tells you that social media doesn’t impact SEO, they’re only half right. It’s true that there aren’t any direct ties to your follower count, number of likes and shares, and links that you share in the search engine algorithms. Yet, that doesn’t mean that social media doesn’t...
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...
Why Your New Website Isn’t Ranking Yet
If you are launching a new business website you certainly have a few things going for you. It’s a fresh slate and you can really take the website in any direction that you choose. You have the opportunity to hit the ground running by implementing on site search engine optimization right from the s...
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...
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 ...
How to Prepare for an SEO Campaign
Are you new to SEO? Or maybe you’ve been out of the game for awhile and are looking to re-start? If that’s the case, you might be wondering what the first steps are and how you can prepare yourself for an SEO campaign. Here are 5 of the most important steps to take: Research SEO It’s in your...
Don’t Forget About These Pages for SEO
On site optimization is the process of incorporating targeted keywords into the on-page content, title tag, meta description, and URL of each page of the website so that the search engines can match the page with related search queries. While primary service/solution/product pages are certainly a pr...
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...
What Does an SEO Campaign Look Like?
If you want your website to rank organically in the search engines and generate targeted organic traffic over time, you need to launch an SEO campaign. Or, you need to hire an SEO professional to launch one for you. But, what does that mean exactly? What does an SEO campaign look like and what does ...
Why Communication Matters
When we take on a client, we know that we can really improve their SEO. We have a trusted and established process that really produces results and our clients have had a lot of success. Not only that, but we are a white hat firm and we know exactly what needs to be done in order to produce the resul...
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...
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...
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...
Local Business SEO Tips to Follow
If you operate a local business, you might not think that SEO is all that important, especially if you’re successful and already have a steady stream of business coming in. You might think that the advertising channels you’re already using are working just fine. However, even with a basic SEO pl...
3 Key Responsibilities of SEO Clients
For many businesses, especially of the small to medium sized variety, it makes the most sense to outsource SEO work to an SEO company, rather than hire in-house SEO specialists (too expensive) or assign the work to an already overstretched current employee (the work won’t get done). However, just ...
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...
Do you Really Need to Optimize Your Content for SEO?
Search engines are in the business of making sure that returned results best match search queries. In order to make sure that your website is amongst those search results, it is a good idea to follow a solid SEO program. Content is an essential piece of a solid SEO plan because it gives the search e...
Don’t Make These Costly SEO Mistakes
Search engine optimization is an essential component of online marketing since an organic search presence for targeted keywords will result in website visitors which can lead to sales and conversions. Most website owners know this today and understand that they need to get involved in this “SEO th...
3 Keys to Building a Solid SEO Campaign Foundation
If you’re just getting started with SEO, one of the most important things to keep in mind is that SEO is all about the long-term. There’s no such thing as overnight success and anyone who tells you differently is lying. This is why it’s so important to take the time up-front to build a solid S...
Why A Business Blog is a “Must-Have” For SEO
It's true that businesses must have a blog. Of course, you don't need to actually refer to it as a blog because frankly, some industries don't respond well to the term. The main point is to have a section on your website where you regularly add new content, and you can call this anything you want, w...
Trust the Established SEO Process
It's true that the SEO industry has changed over the years, and these changes are largely dictated by Google and the various algorithms updates that have occurred over the years. What has worked in past years doesn't necessarily work today. The only thing that remains consistent is that what hat SEO...
How to Maintain Your SEO Rankings
After continually working your SEO program for at least the past six months, you're now starting to see how much the program is paying off. You've been regularly publishing new content, sharing posts on social media, and earning valuable links in the process. As you continue to do these activities,...
SEO is About More that Just On-Page Optimization
SEO has changed a lot since the early days, and most of it has to do with how much more sophisticated things have become. The queries that search engine users make have change a lot, and so have the search engines. With all the algorithm advancements made after the past few years, the search engine...
What Happens If You Let Your SEO Go?
You work hard to build a solid SEO program. You do everything you need to do, such as post new content on a regular schedule, manage the technical aspects of your website, and execute a consistent social media plan. After a while of consistently working on it, you finally get the results you were wa...
Handling Website Images for SEO
When it comes to SEO, your website can have a huge impact on your results. If you do everything right with the rest of the elements of your program, such as your keyword research and posting and sharing and content, it won't do much good of the technical elements of your website are standing in the ...
Understand the Limitations of Your Proprietary CMS for SEO
When it comes to digital marketing and search engine optimization, the CMS that you have chosen can be a deciding factor as to what you can accomplish online. There are many options when it comes to selecting a content management system, and most that we have seen get the job done pretty well. Th...
These Technical SEO Items Still Matter
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 ...
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...
Tips for Hiring an SEO Consultant
If you own a small business, it probably doesn’t make financial sense to hire someone to do your SEO in house. Small to medium sized businesses can benefit from outsourcing the work to an SEO firm, but we understand that sometimes that isn’t financially possible either. The next best thing is...
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...
Your Technical SEO Might Need a Refresh
When was the last time you performed a technical SEO audit on your website? We see this all the time. The common idea is that once you take care of performing the audit and taking care of any technical issues you might have once is enough. Well, this isn't necessarily the case. You should check up o...
Everyone in Your Organization Should Learn SEO
Most people delegate SEO to the marketing department without giving it much thought. If the marketing department isn’t equipped to handle it, they outsource it to a specialty firm. No matter which scenario your company embraces – outsourcing or doing it in house – it’s important for everyone...
Don’t Put Your SEO and Social Media on Hold!
Are you thinking of putting your SEO and social media on hold? Over the years, we have seen clients come and go for various reasons. However, no matter why they decide to walk away from our partnership, they need to remember one important fact - that SEO and social media are both ongoing and should ...
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...
Why SEO Is a Continual Learning Process
Even if you decide to outsource your SEO campaign execution and management to a full service SEO company I believe it is incredibly important that site owners and marketing managers take the time to learn SEO for themselves, even if it’s just an understanding of the basics. I know what you’re th...
Understanding User Search Patterns for Effective SEO
Every SEO strategy begins with keyword research and in many ways, information gathered during the research phase will set the tone for the entire campaign. Every good keyword list will incorporate hard data gathered from keyword and analytical tools with manual tactics, such as creating lists of rel...
On Page SEO Is More Complex Than You Think
There is a lot that goes into an effective full service SEO campaign. You need to produce great content on a regular basis, earn quality links, and your on page SEO needs to be as effective as possible. In the past, it was enough to come up with a bullet list of things that need to be addressed as p...
Develop an SEO Mindset for Success
Are you ready to embrace SEO success? This may seem like a silly question, but it is worth asking. Search engine optimization takes a while to get going, and the work can often be thankless for a long time until everything suddenly clicks together. It's worth examining this question so you can know ...
SEO: A 5 Step Program
Sometimes it seems like almost anything can be done in “5 easy steps” these days. Losing weight, building a business, earning extra income, getting over an ex, and the list goes on and on. SEO can also be categorized as a 5 step program, but it certainly isn’t easy. In order to find SEO succes...
Ways to Integrate Trade Show Marketing and SEO
There was a time when trade shows were incredibly common, and even though there aren't as many as there used to be, they are still a crucial marketing tactic for many industries. However, if you decide to attend a trade show, it stands to reason that you want to leverage the experience as much as po...
Develop a Mindset to Make SEO a Success a Reality
When it comes to marketing your business online, it stands to reason that you want to achieve success sooner than later. With plenty of digital marketing strategies at your disposal to use, though, it can be difficult to decide the path to take to give your business the success you want. One of t...
4 Ways to Supplement an SEO Campaign
Probably the most frustrating thing about SEO is that it takes time for a campaign to have a positive impact. It can take months, or in some cases, years, for a website to be rewarded with a ranking boost in the search engines after on-site optimization, posting great content, and building high-qual...
Where to Start Your SEO Efforts
Quality. You’ll hear that word a lot in SEO circles. You need quality website content and quality inbound links pointing to your website in order to rank prominently for valuable keywords in the search engines. But where do you start? Creating content, building links, or both? To make the most of ...
Optimize Your Website for Content But Don’t Abuse Keywords
There is an art to optimizing your website with the proper keywords and there is a fine line between being effective and doing more harm than good. On the one hand, you need to make sure that the right keywords show up on the page so that the search engines can find your website. On the other, if yo...
Intangible Factors That Make SEO Success a Reality
It’s true that SEO is a vital part of your digital marketing strategy. However, success doesn’t come overnight. Success with SEO is something that needs to be earned, and it can only happen if a specific set of steps is followed on a regular basis. Activities such as onsite SEO, content marketin...
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...
Blogging Doesn’t Create Instant SEO Success
When it comes to search engine optimization, a lot goes into making sure the program is successful. There are multiple components that make up a successful SEO campaign, including technical elements, strategically written content, and the link portfolio. In between all that, certain tasks, such as s...
Broken Link Building How-To Guide
Broken links happen for many reasons – websites go defunct, URL changes are made and pages are removed during redesigns and the webmaster forgets to 301 redirect, etc. The end result is millions of broken links out there that are not only causing bad user experiences, but are also missed SEO oppor...
Make Sure Your SEO Goals Are Realistic
When starting a digital marketing campaign, it's a natural impulse to want to see results right away. Some strategies within digital marketing yield quicker results than others, as is the case for something like pay per click advertising. Other digital marketing strategies, such as search engine opt...
What SEO Data Should I Look At?
When it comes to SEO, there are many things that come into play that could impact results. Known as ranking factors, these elements need to be constantly monitored to insure that the results are as good as they could be. Ranking factors include things like page speed, inbound links, and a secure web...
Take a Conservative Approach When Finding Backlinks
When it comes to SEO, most of us know that backlinks are important. The search engines are incredibly picky as to which backlinks they value and which they don't. This can be frustrating because our impulse as marketers is to control the situation. However, trying to actively find backlinks can actu...
SEO Numbers Don’t Tell The Whole Story
It is true that you have to look at the big picture constantly while working an SEO campaign. The problem is, you have to do this while working the day to day elements of the program, such as writing new content for the website, posting on social media, and building links. It is hard to achieve a se...
6 Things to Analyze to Determine the Value of a Link
An important part of SEO is link building. It’s a manual process of looking for inbound link opportunities on other websites. A link opportunity can be a directory listing, profile page, sponsorship link, partner link, or guest post, among others. These inbound links get crawled by the search engi...
Knowing Your Target Audience is Important for SEO
It's true that SEO is about more than just considering which keywords to use. Search Engine Optimization requires a lot more strategy than that in order to be effective! In fact, SEO is all about how each of the elements tie into one another to form a cohesive strategy. In other words, everything fr...
Can SEO Bring In Local Foot Traffic?
When it comes to operating a business, you want to make sure it is represented in the best way possible online. Everything from your website content, social media profiles, and even your link profile can have a huge impact on the traffic that your website attracts. Although each digital marketing an...
The Buyer’s Journey Should Impact B2B Keyword Research
It stands to reason that you want to target the right keywords when formulating your SEO plan. Getting to know what your ideal customer looks like will go a long way to help you find the best keywords. In order to really find the best keywords, you should take some time to also understand the buyer'...
Have Realistic Expectations for SEO Success
It's true that when you're involved with SEO, you need to make sure that the expectations are realistic. Part of being an SEO agency means educating our clients and making sure that they understand the rules of SEO, see the big picture of what SEO actually entails AND ensure they understand that SEO...
How to Set Yourself Up for SEO Success
How do you know if your SEO program is up to par? How effective your SEO program is depends largely on how you prepare. In other words, there is a right way to do things and then there's a wrong way. There is also a bit of an in-between where your actions could be effective, but your SEO program cou...
Don’t Forget to Address the Technical Aspects of SEO
Most of us understand that SEO helps improve your presence in the search engines. Executing a solid SEO program can help increase traffic over time, and this is something that requires consistent effort in order to reap the rewards. It's true that excellent content, social media, building natural li...
SEO Content Marketing Can Help With B2B Sales
When it comes to SEO, content plays a big role. It has many purposes, such boosting organic presence in the search engines, branding, and developing ways to engage with your audience. Another item that content can help with is that it can absolutely be part of the sales process, especially if you cr...
Do Web Developers Need to Know SEO?
When it comes to creating a website, there is a lot that goes into it. From planning the website's content, designing the page layout, and making sure it runs properly, the developer is in charge of making sure the end result is one that will best represent the company. What does this mean exactly? ...
Determining the Preferred Domain for Business
Business in all industries are often faced with a choice, and this voice can have positive or negative repercussions for years. Choosing a domain name is even more important than actually naming the business since it will form the cornerstone of your business and marketing dealings, especially onlin...
Hiring a SEO Firm in India is a Bad Idea
When looking for a digital marketing or SEO firm, a business has many options. Outsourcing oversees to firm in a country like India is one of the possibilities. These firms claim to handle most forms of digital marketing, such as content marketing, social media, PPC, and even search engine optimizat...
3 SEO Ranking Signals to Improve with a Blog
The Google search engine algorithm has hundreds, if not thousands, of ranking signals. Google notoriously keeps all of these signals and how they affect each other a secret but there are some things that we’ve been able to figure out over the years (or Google has come right out and addressed). And...
Do Keyword Rich Domains Still Work?
There is some debate as to whether or not keyword rich domains can help with search engine optimization or whether overall, they can cause more harm than good. We have seen this on many occasions. Every now and then, a website that has a keyword rich domain will experience great rankings in the sear...
Should You Still Write Guest Posts?
There was a time when guest posting was an incredibly popular marketing tool, particularly for SEO. Those days are long behind us, thanks to Google cracking down on how websites obtain backlinks. These days, backlinks should be natural and not forced. Back when this was a viable tool for backlinks,...
Established Brands Should Invest More Into SEO
We get asked the following question from time to time: If we're a solid brand in a thriving industry, is it worth it to invest money into an SEO program to rank for other keywords in the search engines? In other words, they're asking if it is worthwhile to invest money into an SEO program so t...
Turn Broken Links into SEO Wins
Inbound links remain one of the top search engine ranking factors, which is why it’s in the best interest of website owners to continue to seek out relevant inbound link opportunities over time. While it’s important to create entirely new links from a diverse profile of relevant websites, perhap...
Email Newsletter Marketing Helps Your SEO
When it comes to search engine marketing, there are two items at play, and both factors need to be considered when developing an SEO strategy. The first is that there are direct factor that impact rankings. Although Google hasn't publicly released statements about what these ranking factors are, the...
Analyze Page Load Time As Part of Your SEO Audit
Like any service provider, the search engines want to create a service that will keep customers happy. This means that they want to rank the best possible pages that are relevant to keyword search terms. If the websites that the search engines suggest to users aren’t relevant or are poorly develo...
3 Steps to Take to Prepare for an SEO Campaign
Ready to jump into an SEO campaign? Not so fast. While it might be tempting to get the ball rolling as quickly as possible, the campaign will be much more fruitful over the long term if you take important steps to prepare for it. Trust us, SEO success is slow to build. The difference between startin...
History of Google Panda and Penguin Updates
These days, when Google makes an algorithm update, it is part of the core updates. There was a time when this wasn't the case, and algorithm updates were majorly disruptive, often causing penalties and a dramatic decrease in organic traffic. These issues still happen today, but not nearly to the sam...
How a PPC Campaign Complements an SEO Campaign
Everyone today knows how the search engines work and that there are two sections on the search results page: paid listings and non-paid listings (PPC and organic). So as a business and website owner – where should you dedicate your time and resources? Obviously, we’re an SEO firm so we’ll stro...
Completed Keyword Research: What Happens Next?
SEO is about keywords. While it’s true that search behavior has changed and the search engines have a better understanding about the meaning of a search (as opposed to exact keyword match), it’s still about keywords. If your content includes the words and/or phrases that match up to what someone...
Be Careful When Optimizing Pages With Different Keywords
It's true that optimizing pages with keywords is a key component of search engine optimization. However, it isn't enough to place keywords sporadically throughout the page. A lot more thought needs to go into this than you might expect. The ultimate goal is to match each page on the website with ...
Have Realistic B2B SEO Goals
It’s necessary to take a strategic approach to B2B SEO. In the campaign planning process a business needs to determine what the goals of the campaign will be to measure the success of the campaign as it moves along. The important thing to remember when setting B2B SEO goals is that they need to be...
Optimize Every Page of a B2B Website
After reviewing the competition and the industry online, the next phase of a B2B SEO campaign is to conduct keyword research for every page of the business website and then incorporate selected keywords into the content and meta tags naturally in order to generate organic search engine traffic. Whil...
Follow Google’s Webmaster Guidelines for White Hat SEO
When a digital marketing or SEO firm says that they use white hat Google SEO strategies, what exactly does this mean? The marketing industry has borrowed the term "white hat" and "black hat" from theater and movies, particularly in the silent film era, when it was typical for the hero of the story t...
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...
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...
Audit Your In-House SEO Program
If you're running an in-house search engine optimization program, you may be wondering if it is as effective as it could be. When it comes to SEO, there are certain strategies that create the core of successful program. However, each business is unique, which means that no program will look exactly ...
Benefits of Running a Link Audit
Every site owner should run a link audit on their site at least once a year. When conducting a full link audit, it’s important to visit each and every link in your link portfolio no matter how many links there may be! For some site owners, this may mean you have thousands of links to check out. In...
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...
SEO Responsibilities to Execute Monthly
There are essentially two phases of an SEO campaign. The up-front work like competitive analysis, keyword research, and making on-site SEO recommendations for existing content is phase one. Once that’s complete, you move onto phase two, which is the ongoing component of SEO that supports that up-f...
5 SEO Basics to Implement Today
There are many misconceptions about SEO. While to those who aren’t “in the know” it might seem confusing, the truth is that SEO on a basic level is hardly rocket science. In our line of work, we come across plenty of websites in a variety of niches every day and we’re shocked to see the numb...
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...
3 SEO Misconceptions and What to Believe Instead
Even though it’s been a viable online marketing tactic for many years, SEO is still shrouded in mystery. There are plenty of business and website owners that don’t quite understand it, and it’s difficult to invest in something you don’t understand. Many SEO misconceptions have popped up over...
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 ...
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...
SEO Reporting: More Than Rank
In order to be successful with SEO long term, it’s necessary to get out of the “it’s all about rank” mindset. We’re not saying that rank doesn’t play a role, of course it does, but it isn’t the be all, end all metric to pay attention to during SEO reporting. Ranking fluctuates based on...
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 ...
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 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'...
4 Things SEO Content Must Be in Order to Have an Impact
Website content is what generates inbound links (helping to create trust) and establishes keyword relevancy for the search engines. That’s why content marketing plays such a huge role in an SEO campaign. Yet, there are still plenty of website owners and SEOs that aren’t taking a good approach. T...
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...
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...
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...
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...
3 Things to Earn from Your SEO Content
SEO is all about great web content. Without great content you not only have nothing to optimize, but there’s nothing to set you apart from your competitors and encourage target audience members to invest in your product or services. When creating SEO content, it’s important to keep in mind the f...
The Hard Work That’s Behind Natural Links
Inbound links are important for SEO because they remain a top search engine ranking factor. Inbound links pass trust from one site to the next and convey relevancy to the search spiders. You’ll hear that the best links to earn are “natural” links, or inbound links that occur naturally over tim...
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...
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...
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...
5 Things to Understand About Link Building
If you’re new to SEO, there’s a good chance you’re a little confused about link building. That’s because there’s a lot of information out there, but so much of it is now outdated. What hasn’t changed, however, is that inbound links pointing to your site are a search engine ranking signal...
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...
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...
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...
Want Natural Links? Here’s How to Get Them
“Natural inbound links” is a common phrase in the SEO link building world. Natural links are links that occur “naturally”; another website owner decides to link over to your website on their own website. You don’t ask for the link or create the link yourself by contributing content/a direc...
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...
High-Level SEO Reporting Guide
If you’re going to be investing in SEO efforts like on site optimization, link building, content marketing, and social media it probably makes sense to measure the impact of these efforts over time, right? While SEO reporting can be complex, specifically for very large websites or websites that ha...
3 Reasons to Optimize for Branded Keywords
Some site owners may wonder; why should I bother to optimize my site for branded keywords? I already rank well for them and get all the traffic anyway. Why should I actively make it part of my SEO? This is actually a question we get a lot from many website owners. After all, your brand is everywhere...
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...
B2B Link Building is Reputation Building
Besides asking trusted friends and family members, where is the first place that people usually go to in order to find out more information about a company or brand? The answer is that they head straight to the computer or take out their mobile device and start searching online. Information about ju...
Why Does Black Hat SEO Still Work?
We are What Hat SEO firm, which means that we use strategies that are completely in line with Google's Webmaster Guidelines. We love helping our clients increase their web presence in a natural way. We are transparent about what we do and we don't guarantee results in any way. Every now and then,...
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 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 ...
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...
Use Keyword Data to Make On Page Improvements
Despite what you might believe, keyword ranking data isn’t the “be all, end all” SEO metric to track. That’s because rankings fluctuate and vary depending on the device being used to search and the location and search history of the person searching. While overall organic traffic growth (and...
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...
SEO Tactics that Work
If you know anything about SEO, you know that it’s an ever changing industry. Search engine optimization was a much different game even just one year ago. The search engines are continually changing their algorithms and what worked before may not work now. In fact, what worked before may even g...
Incorporate Long Tail Keywords into the Mix
Perhaps one of the biggest indicators of SEO success is whether or not the correct keywords are chosen to target throughout the campaign. These keywords will be used throughout on site content and within every additional piece of content that is published on the web (press releases, blog posts, etc....
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...
How to Properly Ask for an SEO Quote
At some point during the hunt for a white hat SEO provider, chances are you’ll need to get an SEO quote from several firms. Obviously budget is a big factor in your decision (although it shouldn’t be the only factor!) and it’s important that you know what kind of work you can expect from each ...
5 Signs It’s Time to Switch SEO Providers
Outsourcing SEO work makes a lot of sense. After all, SEO is a specialized industry and a campaign requires time and resources that an in-house marketing team might not have. But how do you know you’re working with the right SEO company? If any of these red flags sound familiar, it might be time t...
Red Flag Warnings to Look For When Hiring an SEO Company
The growing influence of organic search rank on business success has correlated with a growth in SEO companies. There’s certainly no shortage of them. Unfortunately, the industry isn’t regulated. Anyone can essentially call themselves an SEO professional, which is why if you’re working with an...
Don’t Believe These SEO Lies
SEO isn’t new. It’s been an effective online marketing solution for many years. Yet, for some reason many website owners (and marketers!) don’t quite understand it. We blame this on the fact that there are plenty of lies circulating about the industry and website owners don’t really know wha...
CEOs Need to Buy Into B2B SEO Programs
As a marketing professional, you know that it is important that the CEO of the company is on board with everything that you do. Even though your CEO may not be concerned with the details, it is his responsibility to make sure that every decision that is made supports your long-term growth. This is ...
Want to Earn Natural Links? Here’s What You Need
Actively seeking out new inbound link opportunities remains an important part of an SEO program. However, some of the best links are the ones that are earned naturally, when another website owner chooses to link over to your website because they find value in its content. Here’s what’s needed in...
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,...
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...
Making the Case for Nofollowed Links
There are two types of inbound links: followed and nofollowed. In the world of SEO, followed links are “followed” by the search engine spiders and affect PageRank and domain authority. Nofollowed links include html code (rel="nofollow") on the back end that tell Google not to follow a link, or a...
Marketers: Are Your Online Passwords in Order?
This post isn’t about SEO directly, but it’s a topic that is relevant to all online marketers, including SEOs. An important component of online marketing (or any marketing, really) is to expand the reach of your brand and to be found wherever target audience members are. Online, it means setting...
What SEO is NOT
SEO is the practice of making changes to your website in order for the search engines to find and deliver targeted visitors. It's also defined by its white hat practices, such as creating excellent content on a regular basis, performing effective on-site SEO, and building trusted links. However, t...
How to Tell if a Link Will Be Beneficial to Your SEO Program
At a very high level, SEO really comes down to two things; the quality of your website content and the quality of your inbound links (links to your website that exist on other websites). If your content is well-optimized, it can appear in the search engines. And links that point to web pages on your...
3 Advertising Mistakes That Can Negatively Affect SEO
It’s important to take an integrated approach to online marketing and advertising efforts. SEO is important but as an SEO firm, we’ll be the first to admit that it often isn’t enough in today’s crowded web space. It’s worthwhile to invest in other online marketing opportunities and seek ou...
How FAQ Pages Can Help SEO
Frequently asked questions pages are obviously useful from a user experience perspective. If a website visitor has a question, they can head over to the FAQ page to (hopefully) find an answer. Having this content listed prominently on the website also makes the lives of the customer service/sales te...
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...
Local Search: Optimizing for “Near Me” Searches
There’s no question that search behavior has changed drastically since the advent of mobile search. People can now search whenever and wherever they might be. On the go searches have resulted in the “near me” search phenomenon and Google launching mobile-first indexing. For local businesses, i...
Moving from Local SEO to National SEO
Generally speaking, there are two different types of SEO campaigns, local SEO and national SEO. With all of our b2b full service SEO clients, we carefully consider whether it’s best to focus on local SEO or national SEO when developing our strategy. In most cases, we incorporate a combination ...
Outbound Linking Guidelines to Follow
When it comes to SEO, website owners are so concerned about generating inbound links that they sometimes forget that on the opposite side of the spectrum, outbound links matter, too. Yes, it’s important to generate inbound links because they instill search engine trust in a website, but outbound l...
Scam Alert: Negative SEO Extortion Emails
Spammy SEO firm emails are certainly nothing new and we’ve covered this topic before in the blog. Still, these emails are still prevalent as poorly run and spammy firms try to suck unknowing potential clients in by using negative, fear based tactics. Here's a look at what these emails look like an...
Find a Balanced Working Relationship with Your SEO Firm
Signing on to work with an SEO firm is a big step for any company. It’s an attractive option for SMBs that don’t necessarily have the budget to hire an SEO professional to work in-house, but understand how critical the work is. Outsourcing to a trusted firm is the next best option. Yet, the clie...
3 Ways to Make Your Website Conversion-Friendly
SEO works to increase organic search engine traffic from target audience members over time. It’s a necessary part of a marketing campaign today, since pretty much everything is web-based. But we understand that website traffic isn’t the ultimate goal. What you really want is for website visitors...
The Various Types of Searches
When a user plugs their query into a search engine, they usually have a certain motive driving the search. Their reason for searching ties in with the actions they take once they get to your site. In some cases, as is the case with "questions" searches, it can even impact how google displays the sea...
The Easiest Way to Gain Inbound Links
Taking a white hat (Google approved) approach to SEO link building is hard work. It’s a manual process of finding relevant websites that have link opportunities, such as industry/local business directories and industry blogs that accept guest submissions. The days of paying for links for SEO or ex...
Don’t Forget to Ask for These Links
Building links for an SEO program has become more and more challenging as the years have gone on and the search engines have become stricter with what types of links actually pass on any authority. The best types of links are those that appear naturally, when another website owner finds the content ...
SEO Data to Look at Regularly
When it comes to SEO reporting, the most obvious data point to report on is organic traffic growth. Unfortunately, as we know, this can be slow to build. It’s easy to get frustrated after a few months if it doesn’t seem to be increasing. This is when some website owners scale back on their SEO e...
How Bounce Rate Relates to SEO
Bounce rate is defined as the percentage of visitors that enter a site and leave without viewing other pages on the site. It is thought that when the bounce rate improves, this could also improve search engine rankings. In this article, we'll examine how bounce rate relates to SEO and also what to d...
The Pros and Cons of an In House SEO Expert
While most small businesses can’t afford to hire an in-house SEO expert, for some larger brands it might actually make more sense than hiring an SEO company. It might sound strange hearing that from an SEO provider but I’ve always believed in working with clients that we’re a good fit for and ...
The Importance of Informational and Transactional Keyword Targeting
The first step of a thorough SEO campaign is to conduct keyword research to determine how target audience members are searching. When selecting which keywords to target on existing pages and within new content that will be created going forward, it’s important to keep in mind that not all target a...
How to Get Natural Links? It’s No Secret
Inbound links pointing to a website remain a top ranking signal for Google. Having high-quality, relevant websites linking over to your website is a sign of trust which is why an important part of SEO is to actively seek out inbound link opportunities. However, this type of link building is somewhat...
Voice Search SEO Best Practices
As voice search increases in popularity – is it on your radar when it comes to your SEO campaign? If not, it should be. People are searching for pretty much anything using voice search, it’s not just for traffic information or recipes anymore. Why? Because it’s so easy to use. It takes less ti...
How Your Competitors Can Help Your SEO Campaign
The best SEO campaigns are the ones built on research. The first step is to thoroughly research SEO best practice. You want to know what you should and shouldn’t be doing before embarking on a campaign. Once you have a handle on this, it’s a good idea to see what your competitors are doing. Not ...
Are You Building an SEO Pyramid or House of Cards?
There is a difference between SEO best practices today and the SEO best practices of the past. Google is constantly changing its algorithm, and when it does that means there is the possibility that the methods could change slightly. Back in the early days of SEO the SEO hierarchy of needs (based on...
How to Evaluate an Inbound Link Opportunity
Along with the quality of your website content, inbound links are one of the most important ranking factors that the search engines consider. Inbound links, or links to your website on other websites, essentially help tell the story of your website to the search engines. It shows them what your webs...
SEO Software Won’t Do the Work for You
SEO isn’t just something that’s needed for big websites or large corporations. Every website that exists needs to be optimized in order to increase its online visibility and build brand awareness. Think about how many websites there are out there. Without an optimized site, it’s easy to get lo...
Where Do SEO Keywords Go?
While it’s true that SEO has evolved over the years, there remains one constant: keywords. Search behavior has changed and the search algorithms have gotten better at understanding the context of a search query, but keywords remain important. They are still what tell the search spiders what a web ...
Today’s SEO Link Building Best Practices
Despite what you may have heard, link building is still an important part of SEO. That’s because the search engines still use a website’s inbound link portfolio as a ranking factor. The more high-quality, relevant links a site has, the better. However, it’s true that link building has drastica...
URL Writing Best Practice for SEO
Is your URL structure SEO-friendly? On the surface, it may not seem as if such a small detail would matter. However, an effective URL structure helps increase usability to your website, which could increase traffic and also give you an advantage over your competition. When creating your website, it ...
Link Building Opportunities That Are Still Relevant Today
Link building has undergone many facelifts in recent years. That is, if you’re following a white hat strategy. There are plenty of tactics that are no longer effective and can even harm a site, but there are also plenty that are still relevant today. If you’re shying away from link building alto...
Top Local SEO Priorities
While there might be a few people out there who still use the Yellow Pages to find a local business, these thick booklets are more likely to be used as a doorstop, or tossed in the recycling bin. That’s because the majority of people looking for a local business are turning to their computers, tab...
Make Sure Your SEO Strategy Helps with Branding
Over the years, it has become clear that Google favors business websites that show a strong brand presence in addition to creating a website that users will find valuable. Back in 2008, Eric Schmidt, the CEO of Google, said that, "Brands are the solution, not the problem," and that they give us ...
Pros and Cons of Hiring Different SEO Service Providers
You know that you need some with your SEO and for this, you have a few options. You can hire various SEO service providers to improve your SEO program, including: SEO consultants, SEO firms or agency, or you can do the ongoing SEO work in-house. How do you know which choice is the best? Well, there ...
A Guide to SEO Hats
In the SEO world, there’s a lot of talk about white hats, black hats, and gray hats. When talking amongst fellow SEO co-workers or others in the industry, we know what’s being discussed when one of these terms pops up. But what if you’re somewhat new to SEO? Do you have any idea what these SEO...
Pre-SEO Campaign Launch Checklist
Like any other marketing initiative, taking the time to plan ahead and get all of your “ducks in a row” before launching an SEO campaign helps to set it up for success long-term. SEO work takes time and results can be slow to build, which is why taking a few extra weeks or months to set the camp...
Technical SEO: How Is Your Website Performing?
There are so many things that go into a successful SEO campaign. And that’s because there are so many search engine ranking factors. The search engines are looking at what visitors are seeing on your website to determine rank, but they’re also looking at what visitors aren’t seeing; the back-e...
How to Measure Organic SEO Traffic
In my opinion, one of the best ways to measure to overall success of your SEO campaign is to look at your organic SEO traffic. Rank just isn’t a good SEO metric for a variety of reasons including the increased personalization of search, the impact of social signals on the search results, the effec...
Can You Trust Your SEO Firm?
As the Google search algorithms have gotten smarter and stricter over the years, lots of the phony SEO firms out there got filtered out of business. However, every time we think we’ve seen the last of the outdated, spammy, black-hat SEO practices, we have a conversation with a potential client and...
How to Research New Link Building Opportunities
Link building isn’t hard. It’s just time consuming. And what typically takes the most time during the process is the research, or actually finding new link opportunities. That’s why it’s so important to be organized so that you aren’t essentially re-doing the same work over and over, which...
Why You Still Can’t Beat Your Search Competition
SEO is a long term process. You aren’t going to see results quickly, but within six months to a year of an SEO campaign you should start to see some improvement in your search ranking. What if you’ve been working at it for a year and don’t see any significant change? What if you just can’t s...
Yes, Branded Pages Should be Optimized Too
SEO best practice is to optimize every page of a website by writing unique titles and descriptions for each page and optimizing on page content where applicable. A common mistake that we see some website owners make is to only optimize their “priority pages” which are typically their primary ser...
Make Sure You Have Time to Work With Your SEO Firm
When you hire an SEO firm, it's important to make sure you have enough time to work with them. Sure, you trust their expertise. You have complete confidence that they'll deliver great results. However, if you don't have enough time to work with them, it will make it harder on them to execute the ...
Online Advertising Tactics to Consider With SEO
If your goal is to drive targeted traffic to your website in order to increase leads and sales, SEO is an absolute must. An SEO campaign will improve a website’s organic search presence, ranking, and traffic over time. However, it’s that “over time” part that leaves some website owners wary....
The Two Parts of an SEO Campaign
No two SEO campaigns are going to be exactly the same, because no two websites are exactly the same. The details of an SEO campaign for the website of a small, local business are going to be different than those for the website of a large, international corporation. However, at a high-level, all SEO...
Reasons to Hire an SEO Professional
Are you thinking of hiring an SEO professional? By now, any company that wants to find success online should know that search engine optimization is mission critical. After all, if a website can’t be found in the search engines, what good is it? Sure, there are other ways to promote a website (w...
Technical SEO Best Practice Checklist
The SEO best practices that you probably hear about the most include posting fresh, optimized content on your website regularly, looking for relevant linking opportunities, and sharing content in social media. What you might not hear about as often are technical SEO factors. No matter how great your...
SEO Tips for Developers During a Redesign Process
While SEOs and web developers are both responsible for the success of a company’s website, their jobs are very different from one another. The web developers get to use their design skills to make the website look “cool” but they usually don’t know what they should about SEO. The SEO’s wor...
Is Your SEO Program Working? Here’s How to Tell
It’s common knowledge today that if you want to increase website traffic, you should be implementing an SEO campaign. However, the execution of an SEO campaign is really only one part of it. What’s the point of investing in an SEO program if you have no idea how it’s performing? While results ...
3 Signs It’s Time for a Fresh Start with a New SEO Provider
If you’ve been working with an SEO provider for some time, that’s great! Clearly you recognize the importance of an organic search engine presence and think it’s worth an investment. Hopefully your experience has been nothing but positive. Unfortunately, it’s not always the case. Even if a r...
Link Building Blunders That Will Set Your SEO Campaign Back
SEO informed website owners know to stay away from spammy, low-quality links and that it’s the quality of their inbound links that matters more than the quantity. A huge inbound link portfolio means nothing unless all of the links are from well-respected, authoritative industry websites. However, ...
Thinking of Outsourcing SEO? Here’s Some Advice
While it might be nice to have your own in-house SEO specialist, it’s just not the reality for the majority of businesses (websites). Experienced SEO specialists require a salary (and other overhead employee costs) which is why for the majority of businesses, and website owners, outsourcing SEO is...
4 Reasons to Align Paid Search with SEO
Search engine marketing (SEM) is comprised of two functions: paid and organic. As an SEO firm, we’ll obviously tell you how important the organic function is, but that isn’t to discredit the paid function. The best SEM campaign utilizes both and ensures that they aren’t operated in silos. Ther...
Basic SEO Items to Execute Right Now
Not all business website owners are SEO experts, however that doesn’t mean that business website owners get off the hook completely when it comes to SEO. The purpose of having a business website is for target audience members to learn more about what you do/sell and hopefully to encourage them to ...
5 SEO Tactics that Will Never Hurt You
One of the most exciting things about SEO is that it’s constantly evolving. While this certainly keeps things interesting, it also causes fear and anxiety. SEO rules are known to change which often makes website owners hesitant. They understandably don’t want to invest time and effort into somet...
Does Google Ads Help Your SEO?
It seems to be a common question that new SEO clients ask. “If I run an AdWords PPC campaign in Google, will it help with my SEO program?” The thought is that if you are paying Google some money, maybe they will help you out organically, too. It actually doesn’t work that way because Goog...
Think SEO is all About Rank? Here’s Why You’re Wrong
One of the biggest misconceptions about SEO is that it’s all about rank. To an extent, we get it. Yes, if you rank in the top positions for a search, you’re going to get more traffic, and get more sales. However, fixating on rank as the only metric that matters when executing an SEO campaign and...
4 Steps Towards Local SEO Success
How are you marketing your local business? Sure, the tried and true traditional advertising channels can still be effective, but let’s face it: when someone is searching for a local business or service, they are heading to Google. Are they going to find your local business? If not, you’re missin...
Make the Most of B2B SEO by Following These Website Conversion Tips
Leads are the lifeblood of any B2B organization. As a B2B SEO campaign gains traction, it should result in an increase in organic traffic that correlates with an increase in web leads. If you’re seeing the increase in organic traffic, but those visitors aren’t converting, there could be a conver...
5 Link Building and Content Mistakes to Stop Making
Link building and content marketing are no longer separate SEO entities. Essentially, they are the same thing today. In order to build valuable inbound links to your site, you need to be creating high-quality content that is going to get noticed. Even with this knowledge, there are plenty of link bu...
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...
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...
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...
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...
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...
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...
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...
Search Engine Algorithm Proof SEO Tactics
As website owners, it’s true that much of our business success really is at the mercy of the search engines. Traditional marketing certainly still has its place in the marketing mix, but more often than not people are turning to the search engines when they are in need of a product or service. It�...
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...
5 Online Marketing Tactics to Explore Alongside SEO
As an SEO firm, of course we’re going to tell you that SEO is a necessary part of the online marketing mix. But we’ll also be the first to tell you that SEO works best when it’s not a standalone strategy. For starters, it takes time to build and maintain a search engine results presence that g...
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 ...
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...
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 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...
What Does Blogging Have to Do with SEO?
When you’re researching SEO, you’ll find that there’s a lot of talk about blogging. Every reputable SEO firm/consultant/trainer etc. will recommend it. So, you might be wondering, what exactly does blogging have to do with SEO? A lot, actually. Here are the top reasons why blogging is an impor...
How to Increase Organic Listing Click Through Rate
It stands to reason that if you’re ranking well organically in the search engines for priority search terms, that you’ll also be generating organic search traffic. But what if we told you that there are things you can do to increase that traffic even more? After all, as we’re always saying, SE...
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...
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...
What to Know About Link Building if You’re New to SEO
If you’re just getting started with SEO and doing some research, you’ll likely see the phrase “link building” used a lot. While link building remains an important part of SEO, how you go about link building has changed over time and a lot of the tactics you’ll see mentioned are no longer r...
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...
Winning Approach to B2B Content Marketing
When it comes to the B2B sector, consumers are looking for as much information about a product, service, business, or brand before making a decision as to whether to spend their money. Since the sales cycle can be rather long with B2B, the content has an even more important role - to keep brand enga...
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...
B2B SEO vs. B2C SEO
Business to business and business to consumer markets are treated differently in many ways, including the ways in which that they are marketed. In fact, because the two types of business are different, the two approaches shouldn't be the same. Each market includes very different target audiences ...
A Common Keyword Research Mistake
Depending on the industry your company (and website) operates in and the content on your site, there might be hundreds of keywords that you could target with your onsite SEO (incorporating keywords naturally into the on-page content and meta information of each page of the site). Best practice dicta...
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...
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...
Sometimes It’s OK to Ignore SEO Plugins (And Other SEO Tools)
Here at Brick Marketing, we’re really into WordPress. We use it on all of our sites and always recommend it to clients going through a re-design. At the very least, we recommend it for blogging since it’s very user-friendly. To assist with SEO efforts, it’s advisable to use an SEO plugin. Our ...
Don’t Focus on Rank to Measure SEO Success
So many potential SEO clients have one thing on their mind. They want their website to rank number one in the major search engines for their priority keywords. What they don’t realize is that ranking can never be guaranteed, and any SEO company that does guarantee a number one spot is full of it. ...
Ask Yourself These Questions Before Pursuing a Link
Inbound links pointing to your website play an important role in determining where your website appears in search. The search engines use these links to determine the trust and authority of your website. Earning inbound links naturally is the ultimate goal but it’s also in your best interest to se...
If You’re a Marketer You Can Be a Link Builder
Some marketers are apprehensive of the secret world of SEO link building. The truth is, there’s really no magical secret to link building and it’s not that complicated. If you are a marketer, you can be a link builder. Today’s link building is a manual process, much like any other form of mark...
Don’t Miss These Easy Link Building Opportunities
Link building as a whole isn’t easy. That’s because a big link building focus is on generating natural inbound links that are earned by publishing great, linkable content. However, that doesn’t mean that there aren’t some easier ways to get inbound links. There are plenty of “low hanging f...
Follow These Steps to Generate the Best Possible Inbound Links
Inbound links pointing to your website are one of the top 3 Google ranking factors. Clearly, link building remains an important part of an SEO campaign. Link building can include specifically seeking out link building opportunities but it also includes doing things that will attract natural links ov...
Link Building Fundamentals are Marketing Fundamentals
Despite search engine optimization being a legitimate online marketing practice for many years now, there are still plenty of marketing folks who don’t quite understand it. Some even fear it due to fear of the unknown. All they hear about are link warnings and penalties from the search engines and...
3 Things that Generate More Inbound Links to Content
Publishing great website content is important for a number of reasons. For SEO purposes, it’s necessary in order to rank for specific keywords and to generate natural inbound links that help to convey trust (and determine rank) in the search engines. That’s why it’s so important to not only pu...
The Downsides to Working with a Specialized SEO Provider
If you’re in the market to hire an SEO firm, you essentially have two options. You can hire a firm that specializes in your industry or you can hire a firm that doesn’t specialize and works with clients across multiple industries. While it might seem like a no-brainer to work with a firm that sp...
5 Reasons to Still Do Keyword Research
Search behavior has evolved. Instead of typing (or speaking) a keyword into a search engine, people are more likely to ask a full question. And, thanks to the Hummingbird update and machine learning, Google has a better understanding of what searchers are looking for and is delivering a relevant res...
6 Easy Link Building Opportunities to Capitalize On
Despite what you may have heard, not all link building is difficult. Sure, link building might take some time and effort but there are some link building opportunities that are rather easy to capitalize on. Here are 6 “low-hanging fruit” link opportunities you don’t want to miss out on: Press...
Be Wary of Link Building Opportunities
Let’s be honest. White hat link building is tough. We know we need inbound links but also know that Google’s link building rules are strict. It’s a sort of catch-22. That’s why it’s always tempting when a website owner reaches out with a link opportunity. “The site looks halfway decent, ...
Attending a Trade Show Can Improve B2B SEO
B2B marketing can be quite complex. In order to be found, and remembered, by business decision makers it requires many touchpoints. Trade shows have always been a main staple of a B2B marketing program. Presenting or speaking at a trade show provides businesses with the opportunity to network with o...
Is Your Website Worthy of a Natural Link?
Link building remains an important component of an SEO program, since inbound links still convey trust to the search engines and remain part of the search algorithm. However, link building has shifted away from the quantity of inbound links and instead focuses on the quality of inbound links. And wh...
Your Link Building Activities Need to Be Relevant!
At Brick Marketing, we are advocates of strictly white hat link building. That means that we believe that SEO campaigns need to play by the rules set forth by the search engines (as best as we can understand them anyway) and avoid anything that might land our clients' websites in hot water. There ar...
Save Your Link Portfolio with a 301 Redirect!
Are you rebuilding or redesigning your website? If so, then you'll want to make sure that you keep your SEO partner informed for several reasons. One of the most important of these is because you will want to make sure that you keep your hard-won link portfolio intact as you make any changes to your...
Turn a Product Launch into B2B Content Marketing Gold
Content is perhaps one of the most important components of a good B2B social media strategy today. B2B decision makers are looking for as much information as possible and it’s the content that they find online that helps guide their purchase decisions. While most B2B marketers understand this conc...
SEO Challenges Faced by Large Corporations
For the most part, the SEO process is what it is regardless of the size of the website that is being optimized. The process begins with industry and keyword research, then moves on to on site optimization, then continues on to link building. In some special instances on site optimization and link bu...
Why Long Tail Keywords are Important
Keywords are the foundation of an SEO campaign and are at the center of every SEO decision that is made. When conducting keyword research the most important things to pay attention to when selecting keywords are the relevancy and the search volume. For a small business or one that is just getting a ...
How RankBrain Has Impacted Search Results
When Google launched RankBrain in October 2015, it was unknown what the implications of having a machine-learning technology play a part in Google's search results would be. Essentially, they developed a system of artificial intelligence that is designed to make search queries more efficient. It ...
B2B FAQ Page Tips for SEO
Potential customers and clients visit a B2B website for more information both about the company and about the products or services. Unlike a B2C focused website, a B2B product or service has business implications and it’s important to choose the product or service that is just right for the busine...
What You Need to Know About Direct Answers
Back in May of 2012, Google launched its Knowledge Graph, which is a system for organizing information and facts about well-known people, places, and organizations. Recently, they implemented another aspect of the Knowledge Graph - the Direct Answers Box, which displays answers to direct questions a...
Diversify Your Website Traffic Sources
This is going to sound strange coming from an SEO professional, but organic SEO alone isn’t enough when it comes to developing an online marketing campaign. While SEO is important for online success, it's only one piece of the online marketing pie that a website needs to invest in if it wants to b...
Keyword Intent Builds Audience Engagement
When it comes to optimizing your content with keywords, there's a lot more that goes into choosing a keyword. It's not a simple matter of performing the research to see which keywords get the highest volume. There are search engine users behind every keyword who are hoping that it will lead them t...
SPAM Links Can Hurt Your SEO
Many website owners and search engine optimization specialists have made the error of including spam links, potentially damaging their backlink profiles to boost the search engine rankings of their client's websites. A backlink established only to inflate page rankings and does not consider the use...
Black Hat SEO Tactic to Avoid: Link Schemes
Link schemes are a black hat SEO tactic that should absolutely be avoided. As a white hat full service SEO firm, we absolute avoid link schemes and you should too! Here's more information on what they are and what you can do instead: What Link Schemes Are According to Google, link schemes are defi...
What is Needed in an SEO Audit
An SEO audit is a detailed analysis of an organization's website that looks at its foundations and content quality to determine strengths and weaknesses and diagnose any possible optimization opportunities. An audit can be performed on an entire website or just a few pages. When a business audits it...
SEO Keyword Research Best Practice Tips
Before you can execute your SEO campaign, you need to perform keyword research so that you can perform your on-site optimization, which begins with the website. If your website is new, or you decided to redesign it, you'll want to wait to do the on-site optimization until the website is up and runni...
SEO Isn’t Black and White
As a website owner, you want search engines to view your website as favorable. This means ranking and getting more eyes on it. To improve your chances of ranking, you know SEO matters. You may play by the rules that Google has laid out in their Webmaster Guidelines, but did you know there is a gray ...
Skills That Will Benefit Your SEO Writing
Good content requires good writing skills, but not everyone has these skills. You may know what you want to convey to your readers, but can't get the words out. When you do get the words out, they may be disorganized or simply not flow well enough to be understood by readers. Being able to understan...
Why Is Internal Linking Important?
The search engines don’t rank websites as a whole in the SERPs - they rank individual pages. For most websites, the homepage is going to get most of the traffic and inbound links, but that doesn’t mean that deeper internal pages can’t also be useful from an SEO standpoint. However, in order f...
SEO Is More Than Just Analytics
Every business will have some unique needs when creating an SEO program. There are things that will always be needed though, such as link building, social media, and content marketing. When creating and working on your strategy, you may find yourself analyzing day-to-day activities more than you sho...
Do B2B Companies Need a Mobile App?
Are you wondering if you should develop a mobile app for your B2B business? With the growing dependence on our smartphones and tablets to perform business-related tasks, it’s no wonder that B2B businesses are thinking of jumping on the app bandwagon. Should B2B businesses jump on the trend and cre...
SEO Items That Should Be Executed Regularly
Unlike most marketing campaigns, an SEO program doesn't stop. It is a long-term strategy that will benefit your website if you keep up with it. Search engines prefer websites that are active and consistently adding high-quality content. This, along with inbound links that point to your website, cre...
Pros and Cons of Using SEO to Increase Business
When it comes to SEO, you are probably aware of the benefits. SEO can help draw more traffic to your website and help your website rank higher in searches. The goal of SEO is to improve your organic presence online, but as it turns out there are many businesses questioning if this is the right fit ...
Blog Commenting Tips for SEO Link Building
Commenting on blogs has been a valuable practice for years, but the practice has changed somewhat. Before Google’s policy and algorithm changes, blog commenting offered a way to get direct links. Now, most blogs are set at “no follow” to stay in compliance with industry changes. Commentin...
How To Handle Unnatural Links
What are unnatural links? Unnatural links are links that are intended to manipulate the ranking of a web page in a search engine. Google sends webmasters notifications when they detect unnatural links. This notice doesn't imply a penalty has been imposed yet, but serves more as a warning that it co...
Internet Yellow Pages (IYP): Good for SEO?
Do you remember when the Yellow Pages were a trusted phone directory? It seems like a long time ago and times have certainly changed. Now, very few people actually use the phone book. Instead, they look online to find products or services that they need. Before Google completely dominated the In...
The Basics of SEO Remain the Same
Search engine optimization, or SEO, can seem confusing and overwhelming whether you're just starting out or have been dabbling in it a while. Things seem to always be changing. Strategies that worked a few years ago that you still employ today, might not be as effective. Worst case scenario, they m...
The Important First Steps of Your SEO Campaign
Search engine optimization, or SEO, can be overwhelming if you're new to it. There are a lot of components involved in creating a successful SEO campaign including keyword research, link building, content marketing, on-site optimization, and social media to name just a few. Knowing where to beg...
Essential SEO Copywriting Tips to Follow
Whether writing copy for your own website or that will be published elsewhere, you want to make sure that you are always putting out your best work. Considering the basics such as grammar, spelling, punctuation, and structure are important, but there are also things to consider that will improve yo...
Don’t Let a Small Budget Hold Back Your SEO
To improve your business' online presence, SEO should be a focus. When you have a small budget, you might think that good SEO is out of reach. While it does cost money, you don't have to let a tight budget hold you back. You might not be able to hire an in-house SEO specialist, but you also don't h...
Checking Out Your SEO Competitor Will Provide You With Valuable Info
When you begin developing an online marketing plan, there are many angles you can come from when creating your strategy. One of the best things you can do for your marketing plan is to check out your competition and see what they are doing. Knowing where they are coming from SEO-wise can help you t...
Duplicate Content on Multinational Websites
If you have a multinational corporation, it stands to reason that you'll want all of your customers to understand your site. This means that you'll likely have several versions of your content to accommodate your wide customer base. However, unless this is done correctly, it can actually hurt your S...
Top B2B SEO Mistakes To Not Make
If you operate a B2B, it's important that you are active in marketing your business online. Since B2B decision makers take advantage of the web, SEO is important for marketing. Decision makers will go to search engines to find the information they need and your B2B SEO campaign can be the differenc...
Red Flags To Look For When Hiring an SEO Company
Hiring an SEO company is a big deal. You don't want to take your chances by hiring the first company you come across. Just like with any company you want to hire, there will be good options and poor options. You want to make sure you're investing your hard-earned money into a company that will serv...
An SEO Friendly Blog is Just Steps Away
Creating and publishing high-quality content on your website on a regular basis is one of the best things you can do for search engine optimization. This is why it is so highly recommended that a business website should have a blog. A regularly updated blog will keep the website updated, which is p...
Daily SEO Tasks That Are Very Important
Search engine optimization (SEO) requires more than a weekly or monthly effort. It is an ongoing effort. This daily effort will keep your SEO performance at its peak, whereas if your effort is off and on, your results will be the same. If you go all-in with your SEO efforts for one week and then ta...
Get to Know the 2 Phases of SEO
When it comes to SEO, there is a lot to consider and multiple steps that must be completed. It is important that no steps are skipped and time is taken to fulfill each one to the best of your ability. There are two phases of the SEO process. Phase 1: On Page SEO On-page SEO is an important ph...
How to Know if Your SEO Campaign is Successful
SEO, or search engine optimization, takes time to see results. This is a long-term process, but the good news is there are ways to tell if your hard work is paying off. By optimizing your website, remaining active on social media, and link building, you can expect your efforts to have positive resu...
What You Should Know About Optimizing Pages With Different Keywords
Page optimization with keywords is an important part of search engine optimization (SEO), but there is more to think about than simply placing random keywords on each page and crossing your fingers they do the trick. Your goal should be to place keywords that make sense to the page and will also be...
Don’t Let These Website Mistakes Hurt Your SEO
There is a lot about algorithms that isn't known, but luckily Google has provided hints about what they look for and what's important when it comes to ranking for keywords. Quality, unsurprisingly, is at the top of the list. It's important to Google that the needs of searchers are fulfilled. Go...
Forget What You’ve Learned About SEO and Blog Writing
While SEO and blog writing are connected, you've probably learned some things along the way that simply aren't correct. Blogging is an important part of a search engine optimization campaign. Blog posts are a crucial part of gaining backlinks, ranking in searches, and driving organic traffic to you...
Patience is Key When it Comes to SEO
Search engine optimization, also known as SEO, is an important part of creating a successful business. While it is well worth the time and energy, SEO can feel like a slow process. Unfortunately, there is no way to speed up this process. As a website owner, you won't see immediate results. In ma...
Whitepaper Marketing Can Build Your SEO
Do you engage in whitepaper marketing to help build your business? If you don't, you should seriously consider it. Whitepapers can help your business in a variety of ways. A good whitepaper marketing campaign will drive leads, encourage newsletter subscribers, and add value to your product or servic...
Tips to Protect Your Website From Hackers
Cyber-attacks are a common occurrence and something we all hope doesn't happen to us. When a website is attacked, this can have an impact on not on the owner's time, energy, and money, but also on their SEO. When a website is hacked, search engines such as Google, will warn visitors that the websit...
Be Careful of Outsourcing Your SEO
One of the essential aspects of any website is its SEO or Search Engine Optimization. SEO is about developing and optimizing a website so that it can rank in search engine results. The purpose of SEO is to increase visibility and traffic from the web and generate online sales. Lessons to Learn...
Is This Your First Time Hiring an SEO Firm?
Are you hiring an SEO firm for the first time? Whether you've been doing your SEO work in-house or you haven't been doing SEO at all, hiring a firm will help you make massive strides. You've made an investment into the future success of your company. Also, your online presence will improve consider...
Do Keyword Rich Domain Names Help with SEO?
There is no doubt that domain names with keyword-rich domains help search engine optimization a lot. But does this mean that driving traffic to keywords rich domains is a legitimate practice? And if so, should you do this on your own website? In this article, I'll give you the answers to these ques...
When You Should Care About Local SEO
If you're running a business, it's essential to make sure that you do everything you can to optimize your website for local search. Even if you're not brick and mortar, making sure your site appears in local search results can help you attract more customers. There are many things you can do to hel...
Get to Know Local SEO
SEO (search engine optimization) is a great way to drive highly targeted buyer-ready traffic to your website. However, the way SEO works is a little different for businesses that operate actual storefronts in specific physical locations as opposed to purely online businesses. This is because people...
Make Sure Your Website Doesn’t Have Dead Links
As you've probably heard before, content is king. However, before you can produce a superb article in addition to other quality content, like videos or infographics, your website must be search engine optimized for it to reach and potentially rank top on the Google results page. One must have a sol...
What is Technical SEO?
Technical SEO is the process of initiating changes to your site's code which will help search engines crawl your site more efficiently and rank it higher in their organic rankings. Many of the tasks involved with technical SEO are repetitive and time-consuming, and that's where outsourcing comes...
Importance of Title Tags and Meta Descriptions
That’s why it’s essential to make sure your title tags and meta descriptions are well written and accurately reflect the content on your website. Here are a few tips for creating effective title tags and meta descriptions: Title Tags Your title tag is the first thing search engines see...
Stop Trying to Rank Keywords
If trying to rank for keywords isn't taking your website where you want it to be, then you might have two initial thoughts. First, you could assume that you're ranking for the wrong keywords. Second, you might believe that you just need to modify the keywords you're trying to rank for. In actuality...
Website Speed and How it Relates to SEO
Google’s web page ranking algorithm consists of a multitude of different factors; content quality and relevance, titles, metadata, and many other factors all influence a website’s placement in Google search results. With click through rates dropping from 28% for the first place result, to 15.7%...
Why You Need a Sitemap
In the context of SEO, a sitemap, also known as an "XML sitemap," is invisible to anyone who uses the website. Its purpose is to signal to Google's crawlers, which collects information from the website to produce search results. When the crawlers come across a website with a sitemap, they can acces...
Why Search Intent is Important for SEO
If you have a business, it’s essential to make sure that you’re doing everything possible to optimize your website for search engines. After all, if people can’t find your website, they can’t buy your products or services! This article will discuss the significance of unders...
Develop a Workable SEO Strategy
Whether you're building a stand-alone blog or a website with a blog component, blogging alone can't be your marketing strategy. It's important to build search engine optimization (SEO) tactics into your blogging efforts in order to gain new customers, clients or readers. It's not enough to simply p...
Great Content is Essential for Great SEO Results
If you build it, they will come...unless it's a website, of course. Nowadays, building a website entails more than just setting up a domain and webpage. You also have SEO to consider. SEO, or "search engine optimization," describes the process of arranging website content in a way that allows it to...
SEO Checklist for WordPress Website Launches
Are you getting ready to launch a new WordPress website? Here is a short SEO checklist you’ll want to run through to make sure you site is setup for success right out of the gate! While this is by no means a comprehensive list, make sure these basics are in place before you launch so you won’t m...
What is Earned Media and How Does it Impact SEO?
There are two general ways that a business can get noticed. With paid media, banner ads, pay per click campaigns, and traditional offline advertising are used to generate this attention. Earned media, however, is publicity that has been generated by third party sources. This includes likes to your F...
Don’t Invest in SEO Until You Are Ready to Invest in SEO
Most businesses know now that they need some kind of SEO program in order to be successful. Every piece of information we consume, from breaking news, pop culture and sports highlights, local restaurant reviews, driving directions and even strategic business advice and services—it’s all online a...
How Many Visitors is Enough for My Website?
How many visitors a month is good for my website? This is actually a question I get asked frequently from our SEO clients, especially when we are just beginning their SEO campaign. In my professional opinion, visitor growth is the best metric for SEO success, so I can understand why a site owner wou...
Microsites: Good or Bad for SEO?
When putting together your SEO campaign, you may be wondering if it is a good idea to set up a few microsites in addition to your main website. Before you work them into your strategy, understand that there are pros and cons to using microsites as part of your marketing strategy. Think twice befo...
SEO is About the Big Picture
You’ve been told that executing a successful SEO campaign requires patience. Each task you complete, such as making sure your website is responsive and posting new, optimized content, will bring you one step closer to achieving success in the search engines. While you’re executing the campaign a...
Stop Measuring SEO Success by the Competition
A former client of ours was an international enterprise software company. And even though they weren’t even half as big as IBM or Oracle, they measured the success of their entire SEO program against those two industry giants, and not against companies they were truly competing with in terms of si...
Earn Natural Links and Reap the SEO Rewards
Your business website benefits from having inbound links. These are links from other websites that will bring users to your website. When it comes to search engine ranking, this is the top criteria especially for Google search. When it comes to search engine optimization (SEO), having natural links...
Search Engine Optimization Basics
Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is a process in which a website or a company's website is placed on the first page of search engines like Google. Without SEO, the site can't be viewed by many people, which makes it very difficult to get more customers. The Basic Requirements for SEO 1. Good ...
What is Organic Traffic Exactly?
If you're running a website, it's essential to know what organic traffic is and how to increase it. Once you have a solid understanding of the concept, you can take steps to improve your website's ranking in search engines and draw more visitors to your site. By following the tips in this guide, yo...
White Hat vs Black Hat SEO
There is no such thing as a "golden method" in SEO. In reality, everyone does things a little bit differently based on what performs best for their site and business. That said, there is a narrow line between experimenting with strategies that perform for your site and exploiting search engine algo...
How SEO Connects You with Your Audience
For any content marketing strategy to succeed, it must end with a goal. But what is the goal of SEO? Outside of ranking well in search engines, there are a plethora of goals that we can accomplish. For starters, SEO helps us connect with our audience’s interests by leveraging keywords relevant to...
How the Different Pieces of an SEO Strategy Work Together
Search engine optimization is a broad term that applies to any activity that helps your website rank higher in search results. In other words, SEO is the process of optimizing your website to rank higher in search engines like Google. Once an SEO strategy is put into place, it will result in severa...
Put Users’ Needs First – Not Search Engines
SEO (search engine optimization) is a big deal when it comes to getting your website and web pages ranked in the search engine results. However, SEO has changed a lot over the years and keyword stuffing and backlink farming aren't going to cut it anymore. Instead, the quality of your content plays ...
Best Ways to Perform Keyword Research
Keywords are one of the most influential factors in search engine optimization right now. Google, Bing, Yahoo, and other major search engines have algorithms that look out for keywords in blogs or articles to determine which content to display in search results. If you are a website owner or con...
What Exactly is Search Engine Optimization?
You've probably heard of search engine optimization (SEO). However, do you know how to Optimize your site for high-quality content? Learn it quickly and efficiently if you don't know how to read on. Finding the right people who know about SEO can be a problem. SEO is More than Just Content Se...
Get to Know On-Page SEO Factors
On-page SEO is one of the most important aspects of a successful SEO strategy. It's essential to understand the different factors influencing your ranking in search engine results pages (SERPs). We will discuss some of the most crucial on-page SEO factors that you need to know. Keyword Research ...
Get to Know Off-Page SEO Factors
Crucial Off-Page SEO Factors to Consider for Your SiteIn the competitive world of digital marketing, it's easy to get lost in all the different metrics and stats. It's essential to understand how they work and how they affect your site performance. But some off-page factors matter just as much as o...
User Experience and SEO: Why They Need to Work Together
User experience is a hot topic in web design and development. It touches everything from how your site looks to how it feels. The goal is to create a site that performs well and provides a good experience for people who use it. User Experience (also known as UX) is about making sure your users are ...
Can You Really “Ramp Up” Your SEO Program?
There comes a point in every SEO vendor-client relationship when the client wants to “take it to the next level,” as if their SEO vendor had actually been holding back the true secret to SEO success! But the real secret is there is no secret. There are no tricks or games you can play with your S...
How to Advocate for the SEO Process In-House
Putting together a great SEO strategy for your business uses up some of your resources, whether it's the time spent developing and executing the plan in-house or if you spend the money to hire an SEO company to get it done. As a result of this, it can be hard to justify to other people in your compa...
Use Custom SEO Training to Get Your Employees Onboard
Before you start worrying about link earning, content creation or social promotion, your SEO program needs to be accepted from the inside out! Without a strong internal push for strong SEO your program will never be as successful as it good be. You have to invest in SEO training for everyone in your...
SEO Won’t Fix Fundamental Problems With Your Business
The fundamental purpose of SEO is to go through a purpose that will get your website noticed by the search engines. By targeting certain keywords, creating great content, and using a variety of tactics to help your site build quality, organic links, you'll help your site achieve better search engin...
When SEO is Working Well, Diversify Your Efforts!
Your business website is performing well in the search engines. Your organic traffic has increased, lead generation is up, people are interacting with your brand on the social networking sites, and your site is getting found for all the right keywords. Are you wondering if there is anything else you...
3 Reasons Why 404 Errors Are Bad For Your SEO
Every site, especially a news organization or e-commerce site where content is constantly changing, is bound to have a handful of 404 errors lurking in the shadows. It’s also common to see a lot of 404 errors after a major site redesign when the URL structure changes. But while a few are not the e...
4 Things Your SEO Program Cannot Control
There are 200 and some odd factors in Google’s ranking algorithm and it’s constantly evolving. While we know that certain factors help your website do better organically, we cannot say quantifiably exactly how much of each factor equals success (and anyone who says otherwise is selling something...
Are People Still Searching For Keywords?
Month over month organic traffic is going to ebb and flow, especially if your business is heavily influenced by external factors such as seasonality (no one searches for “Christmas tree farm” in June, for instance). Like so many other things in SEO, search volume is completely out of your contro...
PPC Is Essential for Branding in SEO
When creating your brand, there are many strategies that effectively work together. It's a collective effort between your company's website, logo, social media presence, and search engine optimization. Pay per click advertising is also a big part of this, especially when it comes to branding that is...
With SEO Good Writing Matters
These days, writing content that is optimized for the search engines is about more than just including keywords in the content. In fact, too many keywords in your writing can hurt more than help. These days, it’s good writing that really matters. Not only that, but you also need to please two audi...
Tips To Help You Write Better SEO Content
In the past, writing good SEO content meant filling each piece with keywords. The idea was that algorithms weren't as sophisticated as they are today and that was the most effective way to write SEO content. Today, algorithms are more sophisticated and content doesn't need to be stuffed with keyword...
Don’t Forget Off Page SEO!
While it’s true that great content is the lifeblood of your SEO campaign, it’s all too easy to spend the majority of your time on that. However, off page SEO shouldn’t be ignored, either. Both strategies work together to give your site its best chance to be successful. In the old days of SE...
Why All Businesses Need SEO
SEO is a staple for modern businesses. It can help you attract more customers, increase brand awareness, and ensure your business is accurately and reachable on the Internet. But what does it take to gain the attention of search engines? What might be potential obstacles to your company’s visibili...
Don’t Get Left Behind When SEO Tactics Change!
SEO has changed much over the past decade. In fact, some of the strategies that worked well back then could negatively impact your site if applied today. Whenever the search engines change their algorithms, you need to be ready to adapt or suffer the consequences. If you don’t adapt, this could re...
Brand Building and SEO Should Work Together!
Brand building and SEO strategies aren’t mutually exclusive. In the past, it used to be that marketers needed to choose between the two. This is no longer the case. Many of the strategies that are used for one are also used for the other! Though brand building can include strategies that fall out ...
Mobile Device Usage Affects SEO
With increased mobile device usage, it makes sense that Internet usage has increased as well. People who use their mobile devices to go online are doing more than just making simple web searches, too. They play games, read the news, check their email, use social networks, and basically use it to do ...
Don’t Forget Local Search in Your SEO Plan!
These days, if you aren’t utilizing the search engines’ local search features, you’re completely missing out. When people are in need of an electrician, for instance, they look for one that operates in the area in which they live. Most tend to search for this information online and not their a...
Why You Should Invest Resources in Your SEO Strategy
Have you invested resources in developing and implementing your SEO strategy? If so, how long ago was that? These days, it’s hard to go online without being conscious of search engine optimization strategies. The very phrases we enter into search boxes are closely tied to it! However, knowing t...
SEO Tweaks That Could Help Your Site
SEO has changed a lot over the years and some of us are guilty of using old strategies that not only don’t work, but also could cause a penalty. These are the big, obvious strategies such as developing quality content that isn’t “too optimized”. Some tweaks, however, are almost too subtle to...
The Way We Search Online Has Changed – Has Your SEO Strategy?
How do you search online? Chances are, your search style has changed and you may not have even realized it. Thanks to Google’s continual algorithm updates, it makes it easier than ever for people to search for information. In the past, it was almost a necessity to use specific keywords to find the...
Audience Driven Engagement Affects SEO
Yes, it’s true that audience engagement drives your SEO campaign and can help make it more successful. Brands that have a high social presence tend to experience better search engine rankings for their website. However, people drive audiences and a one-size-fits-all approach won’t work. What wo...
Answers to Common SEO Questions
Hiring an SEO company can benefit your company in many ways. When you consider hiring an SEO company, there are certain things you would like to know. You might ask about their overall success rate, the types of strategies they put into place, and how much their services cost. Of course, there are ...
How to Keep Your SEO Campaign Fresh
An effective SEO campaign has several important elements - keywords, content, social media, and effective link building. Doing it the wrong way can hurt your efforts more than help. It is well worth the effort to make your campaign as effective as possible. The only problem is that it can feel stagn...
It’s Time to Fix Your Slow Website
How long does it take your website to load? Across any device, a website should ideally load within a few seconds. After all, that’s what web users have grown accustomed to. Anything longer than a few seconds results in frustration and is a scary reminder of the dial up days of yore. Nobody wants ...
SEO Results Can’t Be Predicted
Implementing an SEO program is always a beneficial thing to do for your business, especially when you go with an SEO company who is reputable and plays by the rules. No matter how successful an SEO firm is though, they cannot forecast or predict results of your specific program. It's just not possib...
Rank Isn’t the Most Important SEO Metric
While ranking is important, it is, after all, how people will have your business or brand in front of people's eyes, it is not the only or most important metric there is to determine your success with SEO. Keeping an eye on your ranking is a good idea as it can help you identify any fluctuations th...
Is Seasonality Driving Your SEO Program?
If you were like most of our clients, traffic across the board was probably down between Thanksgiving and Christmas. Why? The holidays of course! Most B2B businesses see a noticeable slow down in the amount of traffic, leads, engagement metrics and final orders during that time period simply because...
5 Signs You’re Over-thinking Your SEO Strategy
With each algorithm change, Google has website users fearful of the future. When will the next change be? How will that impact your website? The end result of this fear is that it’s all too easy to make things more complicated than they need to be. Don’t fall into this trap! Here are five of th...
Your Website is More Than Your Homepage
Your homepage is an important part of your website. It generates the lion’s share of your website traffic and essentially is like an introduction to not only your website, but also to your company. The homepage needs to be well designed, user friendly, and optimized properly. However, website owne...
Tips for White Hat SEO Backlinks
Search engine optimization (SEO) optimizes your website's visibility on search engine results pages. It is essential to have a good SEO strategy to drive organic traffic to your website. One of the most important aspects of SEO is building white hat backlinks. Backlinks are links that point to your ...
SEO Practitioners Wear Many Hats
Whenever that question comes up in social settings, “So, what do you do?” How are we SEOs supposed to answer? Simply saying, “I do SEO” isn’t going to cut it. While SEO has certainly become more mainstream, we’re still likely to get the follow up, “And what does that mean exactly?” W...
Consider Investing in PPC Along with SEO
SEO really isn’t optional today. If you have a website and you want to drive as much traffic as possible to that website, it’s necessary to invest in a search engine optimization campaign, even if it’s on a small scale. People turn to the search engines when they are looking for information, w...
How SEO Factors into the Buying Cycle
The buying cycle that you have come to know and understand over the years has evolved. It's important as a business owner of any size to get to know the changes so that you can adjust your SEO accordingly. First, you should know a bit more about how the traditional buying cycle is changing. Unlike ...
Don’t Base an SEO Strategy on Perceived Search Engine Weaknesses
If you think that SEO is a way to “game the system”, you’re wrong. This perception is why the SEO industry as a whole has earned a bad reputation. Looking for search engine weaknesses to capitalize on in order to gain short-term results is no longer what SEO is about. Unfortunately, too many w...
Simple Ways to Protect Your Website from SEO Failure
With every algorithm update, SEO becomes more complex. However that isn’t to say that as a website owner, you don’t have any control. There are certainly simple, straightforward ways to protect your website from any SEO related fallout. This is by no means an exhaustive list, but here’s...
Find the Right SEO Firm for You
Over the many years working in the SEO industry I have vetted thousands of potential SEO clients. Everything from local roofers to mid-sized B2B businesses to international software companies and in that time one of the biggest lessons I have learned that not every client is right for every SEO firm...
How Much Organic Growth is Enough?
When we started working with a new client a few months ago they asked us what a "normal" organic growth looks like after a year of SEO. Could they expect to see a 10% change? 20%? 30%? I explained to our contact there that our clients have seen everything from as little as 2% change in organic to as...
Assessing Link Relevance for SEO
It's not enough to just have great links. You also need them to be relevant. This is one of the most important factors when ranking well on search engines like Google, and it's especially true for SEO. A link is a signal that a third-party thinks might be of value to the person or website they are l...
Statistics Do Matter For SEO
SEO is a long-term strategy, so it can take a while to fully assess how effective it is. It's true that results can fluctuate because SEO depends on the search engines, but when a campaign is effective, you will be able to see that. Before you can determine how your SEO strategy is doing, it's cruc...
Is Your Enterprise SEO Campaign Guilty of These Things?
If you think an enterprise organization has it easier than a small business when it comes to executing an SEO campaign, at first glance you’re right. After all, enterprise organizations have bigger budgets, more resources, and typically have strong brand recognition that gives an SEO campaign some...
SEO Clients Can’t Disappear From the Process
If you’re in the market to hire an SEO firm, here’s one important thing that you need to understand: you will need to be an active participant in the SEO process. If you think that you’re outsourcing the work so that you don’t have to deal with it and you can just review monthly reports you ...
The Internet Is Immediate. SEO Is Not.
One of the hardest things for site owners to wrap their heads around, especially those struggling with a penalty, is that SEO is not an immediate form of marketing. The work you do today doesn't help you today...or even next week. Sometimes it takes months to feel the true effects of your SEO work. ...
Why SMBs Can Win At SEO
Small to medium sized business owners tend to think that they might be at a disadvantage when it comes to SEO. They have fewer resources than their enterprise counterparts and think that it’s the money that matters the most. The more money you have, the more you can “throw at” SEO and quickly...
Don’t Let SEO Get Stuck in the Approval Process
It happens all the time. We sign on an SEO client and we’re on the same page. The client understands that their input is important to the process and they are willing to make it a team effort. Things start off smoothly enough but then within a few weeks or months we hear from them less and less. W...
SEO and the Long B2B Sales Cycle
One of the biggest differentiators between B2C marketing and B2B marketing is understanding the nature of the sales cycle. Many B2C marketing campaigns are developed for the short term, generating quick sales from a promotion. In the B2B world, it’s often more complicated. That’s because the sal...
SEO Isn’t a Be All And End All Solution
SEO is important. There’s no denying that. Search engine optimization tactics are what help to improve the search engine presence of a website and let’s face it, the search engines are where people turn to when they are looking for the products or services that you are trying to sell. If you can...
5 Key Analytics Metrics to Monitor SEO Success
When getting started with an SEO campaign one of the first things that should be done is getting Google Analytics set up on your site if it’s not already. It’s a fairly simple process and it’s free information straight from the almighty Google. Without Analytics data it can be difficult, if no...
5 Important SEO Takeaways
If you’re just getting started with SEO you might be realizing that it’s unlike any other form of marketing that you’ve implemented before. There are lots of moving parts and variables that determine SEO success. The nature of SEO can sometimes be frustrating to website owners, but there’s n...
Don’t Keep Your SEO Firm in the Dark
For many companies that don’t have the necessary time or resources in house, it makes sense to outsource SEO activities to an SEO firm. However, an SEO firm should be viewed as an extension of your own business. The SEO team is responsible for increasing traffic to your website, which is a critica...
On Site SEO Basics That Still Apply
It’s true that SEO has undergone a few facelifts in recent years. The SEO campaign that you were implementing just a few years back has hopefully been tossed in the trash and replaced with something more current. Some SEO tactics that once worked and improved a site’s placement on the search eng...
Questions to Ask an SEO Firm before Signing a Contract
Before signing on the dotted line and committing to pay an SEO firm for a specified period of time it’s necessary to have an understanding of the type of work that the firm does and what exactly is included in the proposed rate. An SEO program involves many moving parts and you don’t w...
Beyond the Visitor Report: Ways to Measure SEO Success
In order to determine how your website and SEO campaign is performing, it’s necessary to add analytics code to the site. There are plenty of website analytics tools to choose from, both free and paid. What we recommend is Google Analytics. It’s a free tool that really provides a wealth of inform...
Required Elements of a Modern SEO Campaign
SEO has undergone multiple transformations through the years. During the early days, the focus was on building links to your website. At one point, nearly any link would help. However, that’s no longer the case. The only way a link is going to help your SEO efforts today is if it generates traffic...
Are You Expecting the Impossible from Your SEO Program?
One of our full-service SEO clients has experienced tremendous SEO success this year, with a 210.27% growth in organic traffic. I wish we could deliver such incredible reports to all of our clients because I know as a site owner if I saw that kind of YoY organic growth I’d be jumping for joy. But ...
How to Make Your Blog Work for SEO
One of the most important components of a search engine optimization campaign is content since it’s what can be optimized using keywords and is what generates natural links. That’s why a blog should be incorporated onto your website. However, just adding a blog to the site isn’t going to magic...
How to Measure SEO Campaign Success with Analytics
SEO is an online marketing function that is built for the long term. If you start SEO one month, there’s a very small chance that you are going to see much improvement the next month. However, as the SEO campaign moves along and you are producing SEO content and generating quality inbound links yo...
Why Blogging Matters for SEO
When considering whether a new potential SEO client is a good fit there are a number of things that we take a look at. When reviewing the site one of the first things that we do is check the navigation to see if the site has a blog. If the site already has an active blog up and running, that’s a p...
Business Changes That Your SEO Firm Needs to Know About
Many companies choose to outsource SEO work because they don’t have the resources to handle all of the work that needs to be done in house. However, it’s imperative that an SEO firm still be viewed as a part of the team. A successful SEO firm/SEO client relationship is like a partnership and one...
SEO Won’t Guarantee Conversions
The purpose of a search engine optimization campaign is to conduct activities that will capture the attention of the search engine spiders, and in turn get your website content to rank prominently in the search engines for related keyword search terms. If you are able to improve your search engine p...
Why SEO Success Won’t Happen Overnight
If you’re looking for a marketing solution that is going to generate a quick response and result in an uptick in sales, leads, conversions, etc. in the short term- SEO isn’t it. What’s frustrating to most website owners about SEO is that it is a necessary evil. It’s necessary because people ...
What Lazy SEO Looks Like
There are many SEO industry professionals and it’s likely that nobody takes exactly the same approach to an SEO campaign. However, if your business website is in the market to hire an in house SEO professional, an SEO consultant, or an SEO firm the one thing that you want to make sure of is that t...
Recognizing the Small B2B SEO Successes
Depending on what B2B niche your company operates in there might be a ceiling when it comes to how much new organic traffic you can pull to your site for certain keywords. For instance, “live chat software” has a monthly search volume of 5,400. If your website is already pulling in 3,500 visitor...
How to Start SEO for Your New Website
If you’re a start up and you’ve just launched a business website, it’s smart of you to already be thinking about SEO. After all, SEO is a slow moving process and the earlier you get started at it, the better off your site will be. However, we don’t recommend that new website owners hire an S...
Consider the Competition in an SEO Campaign
An SEO campaign is like any other kind of marketing campaign in that it involves conducting research before getting started. It’s necessary to research the market online, which includes target audience behavior as well as a competitive analysis. If your business and/or website is relatively new to...
3 Common SEO Misconceptions
Even though search engine optimization has been around for years, it’s still a marketing tactic that many website owners don’t quite understand. This is partially due to the fact that the industry is always changing. What was an acceptable SEO practice even just 6 months ago might no longer be v...
SEO Writing Requires an Additional Skill Set
Not everybody has the skills required to be a good writer. You need to be able to understand what people want to read and convey it in a proper manner. Of course there are different kinds of writing. Formal writing requires citations and research while less formal writing can be written just as if y...
Protect Your SEO While Redesigning Your Site!
A lot of our clients have undergone site redesigns this year in some way, shape, or form. Some just reworked a chunk of their content while others completed changed the entire design, URL structure, content and messaging and more. And while websites need to be redesigned every few years in order to ...
Common Enterprise SEO Challenges to Overcome
The SEO process is mostly similar for any website, regardless of size. It begins with conducting industry and target audience behavior research before selecting the proper keywords to target on every page. Keywords are then implemented naturally into on site content including meta information and on...
Common Reasons Why SEO Success Isn’t Happening
What SEO clients need to understand about SEO is that it’s a process. It takes time to begin to see the results of your efforts. However, if after six months of SEO work you still don’t see any kind of improvement, it could be because you are making common mistakes that are limiting the amount o...
4 Important SEO Reports to Measure Success
While it’s true that SEO is a long-term process and you aren’t going to see an immediate ROI, that doesn’t mean that there is no way track the success of the campaign. Throughout the duration of the campaign, it’s important to check on your Analytics to make sure that things are trending the...
3 Tips for Selecting The Right SEO Firm
There are hundreds of SEO firms, consultants, experts and agencies out there to choose from. Some specialize in local SEO, others prefer to work with B2B firms, and still others do nothing but international SEO. With so many options all-clamoring for your business, how is a site owner to know they a...
What SEO Clients Need to Understand
SEO is an important component of an online marketing strategy. After all, when people are looking for the products or services that you provide the first place that they go online is to the search engines. While the large corporations may be able to hire an in house SEO team, that’s typically not ...
4 Common B2B SEO Mistakes
Being a B2B business owner myself, I understand first-hand what it takes to create, launch, and maintain a successful B2B SEO campaign. And even though I’ve been in the SEO industry for over 13 years I still don’t “know it all,” simply because SEO is still a very young industry and tactics a...
Items to Measure after One Year of SEO
The goal of an SEO campaign is to improve a search engine presence as well as the number of relevant visitors to the website over the long-term. Due to the complexities of the search engine algorithms and the number of websites that are competing for target audience member attention, it’s nearly i...
5 Components of Successful SEO Today
What’s both exciting and frustrating about the SEO industry is that it’s always changing. We are at the mercy of the search engine algorithms which are constantly being tweaked. That’s why it’s so important for SEOs to stay up to date by reading the search engine Webmaster Guidelines and SEO...
Forget These Old School SEO Thoughts
What’s both exciting and challenging about SEO is that it’s an industry that is constantly evolving. What was considered best practice even just a few years ago might no longer be relevant. This is why it’s so important for those of us in the industry to stay informed by reading the search eng...
Get the Most SEO Value Out of Blog Posts
Blogging is a great way to attract the attention of target audience members. Consumers are looking for information online and the more information that you can give them, the better. Informational blog posts help to establish a business as a trusted source. When it comes time to buy a product or hir...
Why Clients Should Learn the SEO Basics
There’s a reason why so many successful SEO firms exist today- there’s a huge need for them! Businesses understand that an online presence today is everything, and more specifically, a positive search engine presence. This is why they are willing to invest in online marketing and SEO. If an orga...
SEO Questions an SEO Company Can’t Answer
If we’re an SEO company, we should be able to answer all of the hard hitting SEO questions- right? Unfortunately that’s not always the case. There are plenty of SEO variables that are simply out of our control so that we can’t give definite answers to certain questions. This can be frustrating...
What Does B2B SEO Success Look Like?
What frustrates many clients about B2B SEO is the long term nature of the strategy. It’s just not realistic to think that a brand new SEO campaign is going to yield quick results, even though that’s what clients obviously want. There are many outside factors that control SEO success, which is wh...
