Search Engine Optimization (SEO) Articles
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...
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 ...
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...
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 ...
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...
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...
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 website...
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...
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...
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...
Don’t Take a Cookie Cutter SEO Approach
If you’re in the market for an SEO service provider, it’s important to do your research and check with references before making an informed decision. Depending on the industry you are in, you might find that there are SEO companies that specialize in it. At first glance this might seem like the ...
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...
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...
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...
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,...
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 ...
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...
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...
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...
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...
5 Things to Do as You Start an SEO Campaign
The most important thing to understand about SEO is that it is a long-term online marketing tactic. It can take months or even years to begin to see traction and even longer in very competitive niches. That’s why it’s in your best interest to lay the best possible foundation for the campaign to ...
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...
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...
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 ...
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...
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...
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. ...
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...
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...
Using SEO to Improve Branded Search
While it is true that the primary goal of an SEO campaign is to improve traffic from the search engines from visitors using non branded keywords that are targeted in the SEO campaign, you can’t discount the importance of branded keyword search terms and how SEO affects these kinds of searches, as ...
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...
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 ...
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 ...
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...
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...
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...
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 to...
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...