SEO Articles
Why SEO Shouldn’t Wait Until “Later”
Are you getting your business website up and running? There’s so much to do, it can be difficult to prioritize your tasks. In the beginning, you’re likely focused on tasks that are immediately important, such as making sure your site looks great, is easy to navigate, and has some decent content ...
Black Hat Tactics and White Hat Alternatives
There are many tactics that can be used in a search engine optimization campaign to attract the attention of search engine spiders and get a website ranked prominently for specific keywords. Some of these tactics are considered to be white hat, which means that they are tactics that “play by the r...
SEO Won’t Solve Your Business Problems
A search engine optimization campaign, if implemented properly, can do many wonderful things for your business. It can help improve your brand visibility in the search engines and online overall in order to bring more targeted traffic to your site. An increase in visitors to the site will generate m...
There’s No Quick Money When it Comes to SEO
When it comes to SEO, there’s no such thing as making “quick money”. In fact, chasing fast money can do a lot more harm than good. When you hire an SEO firm, you need to treat them as a partner. This comes in especially handy when you’re presented with opportunities that may seem a litt...
Don’t Over Optimize Your Site
For all of our full service SEO clients, we start the process with on-site optimization. This involves conducting keyword research for each page of the site, writing new and better targeted Meta tags and descriptions, and tweaking H1 tags and page content to seamlessly include the new keywords. The ...
SEO Con Men Are Alive and Well
Do you regularly get emails from people who are trying to drum up business for their SEO services? This happens to me all the time. In fact, I received one just the other day. Typically, the emails read something like this: Hello, You could be doing much better in the search engines. As part ...
Tips for a Productive SEO Consulting Meeting
Business success today is largely dependent on online visibility, and the search engines play a large role in this. Web users want instant gratification and they won’t spend time looking beyond the first one or two pages of search results. Therefore, it’s extremely important for a business to ha...
SEO Tips for Seasonal Businesses
While your business may have slow and busy periods or even close entirely for parts of the year, the Internet never stops, which essentially means that ideally your SEO program shouldn’t either. Sure, there may be more SEO related work to do during certain parts of the year but since your website ...
SEO, Content and Social All Work Together
The way people search for information online isn't necessarily linear, which means that they may arrive at your website in unpredictable ways. Will they find your website based on search results, social signals, or a combination of both? The reality is that social media and SEO work together and enh...
4 Reasons You Aren’t Ready for SEO
Since we’re an SEO firm you probably assume that we’d tell every website owner that they need to be doing SEO. While we do think that every website owner should be doing SEO eventually, the truth is many just aren’t ready for it. Here are 4 reasons why a website owner might not be ready to exe...
Make These 5 Website Fixes to Improve SEO
While it’s true that great content, keyword incorporation, and quality inbound links are at the forefront of an SEO campaign, one important contributor to SEO success that sometimes doesn’t get the attention it deserves is website design and development. Website design and SEO complement each ot...
Putting Together an SEO Report
If you’re actively working on an SEO campaign, it’s important to be aware of how that campaign is performing. The first thing to understand about SEO (and SEO reporting) is that SEO is long term. While it’s recommended to pull reports on a regular basis, it’s highly doubtful that you’re go...
What to Look at to Measure SEO Success
The first thing you should do as you embark on an SEO campaign is ensure that you have Google Analytics and Search Console set up on the website. After all, you don’t want to invest in a campaign that you can’t measure the results of. If you’ve never optimized your website and you’re comp...
Don’t Overlook These SEO Steps During a Website Redesign
Website redesigns often make sense every couple of years in order to keep a website fresh and relevant. If you’re considering a redesign, it’s important to pull your SEO provider into the conversation as early as possible. If you aren’t working with an SEO professional, it’s a smart idea to ...
5 Technical SEO Items to Check Regularly
SEO success relies on many things. You need to have a well-optimized website, write great content on a regular basis, and earn inbound links from other reputable, industry-related websites. However, you can’t forget about the technical component of SEO that matters just as much. Here are 5 technic...
Don’t Let SEO Get in the Way of Branding
When search engine optimization first became a household name, it had negative connotations because it was associated with shady tactics and subpar content. In today’s online world, the climate is much different. Businesses who merge effective SEO tactics while still building their brand identity...
SEO Checklist for Site Redesigns
Does your site need a redesign? If so, it's important not to ignore the SEO aspect of your new site. In fact, redesigning your site presents you with an excellent opportunity to refine your SEO strategy and optimize even more effectively than you were before. You certainly would want to hurt your si...
The 5 W’s of SEO
SEO is a form of marketing and just like any good marketing program, you need to understand certain things before you can be successful with it. One way to look at it is that you should have a clear understanding of the who, what, where, when, and why before you can get anywhere good. The more knowl...
Broken Links Can Hurt Your SEO Efforts
Broken links are a part of owning and/or managing a website and if they're not addressed, they can hurt your long term SEO efforts. In fact, they're bad from both a search engine perspective and a user perspective. Marketers need to continually monitor broken links and address them before they can...
What’s the Difference Between Search Queries and Keywords?
Have you ever noticed that people often use the terms "search queries" and "keywords" interchangeably? The assumption is that they are the same thing, but there is, in fact, a difference between them. Simply put, the keyword is the phrase that we target when putting together an SEO program for our f...
The Argument Against Specialized SEO Services
Many companies understand the importance of SEO, but just don’t have the time or resources to do it themselves. So, they make the smart decision to start looking for an SEO company or consultant to assist them. When researching SEO options you may come across companies that specialize in SEO withi...
Managing Product Pages for SEO
One of the unique SEO problems that e-commerce and b2b lead generating websites face is that their products can be constantly changing. This means that new pages are being added, content is being tweaked and discontinued or out of stock product pages are being taken down. This kind of page turnove...
Protect Your Website with White Hat SEO
Like it or not, all website owners are essentially at the mercy of the high and mighty Google. When people are looking for information, what do they do? That’s right, they “Google it.” This means that website owners that want to rank prominently for relevant keywords in a Google search need to...
Technical SEO Audit Checklist
Every site needs to undergo a technical SEO audit from time to time. Obviously if you’ve suffered a penalty it’s imperative you dig through every corner of your site to determine what went wrong, but it’s also worth doing BEFORE you get hit with a penalty so you can take preventative action to...
Where Do I Put My SEO Keywords?
Keywords are at the foundation of any SEO campaign. People search using keywords and the purpose of SEO is to ensure that your website matches these search queries in order to generate organic search engine traffic from target audience members. To determine how target audience members are searching,...
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 ...
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...
Another Reason to Not Focus on Search Engine Rankings
What is the sign of a good SEO program? Any legitimate SEO professional will tell you that it’s a steady growth in organic search traffic over time from target audience members. What a legitimate SEO professional will not tell you is that it’s all about rank. Ranking-focused SEO is long gone. Th...
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...
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...
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,...
How Website Security Impacts Your SEO
Did you know that your website security impacts your SEO program? Let's say your website has been online for many years and everything seems to be going well and you have no technical or security issues. On a regular basis, you publish new website content. Your social media is also going well - you ...
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...
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...
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 ...
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...
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...
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...
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...
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...
Social Signals Do Impact SEO
When we take on a full service SEO client and come up with a strategy for them, social media is always part of the mix. We've known for a while that social signals do impact SEO, but it's important to understand exactly how that happens. Back in 2014, Matt Cutts, who at the time was the head of Goog...
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...
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...
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...
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...
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...
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...
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 ...