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Attributes of a Good SEO Firm
The decision to hire an SEO company isn’t made lightly. The types of businesses that hire a firm as opposed to hiring someone in house to do the work typically have a limited budget and SEO work requires a significant investment. Of course, that investment is well worth it since a positive search ...
Getting More Value from Your Published B2B Content
Most B2B marketers understand the importance of great content and how it can impact their long term B2B SEO success. However, most B2B marketers are concerned with producing enough content to help drive their SEO and social media marketing campaigns forward…and they should be. In my experience, a...
3 Questions You Shouldn’t Ask Your SEO Company
In my 13 year career as an SEO professional I’ve gotten some pretty crazy questions from clients. Not that I mind answering questions—I think a well-educated client makes for a better client so I’m happy to answer any and all questions my clients have about SEO, no matter how basic it may seem...
4 B2B Link Building Ideas
Most B2B companies understand that in order to have a successful SEO program they can’t just get a few links here and there from random sites and expect to be successful. Although no B2B link building campaign is set in stone, here are four ideas that should definitely be incorporated into your ov...
Don’t Make These B2B SEO Errors
While the overall approach to SEO may be similar for B2Cs and B2Bs, B2B SEO often takes additional care since the sales cycle is that much longer. B2C customers make decisions much more quickly, especially if the product is relatively inexpensive. B2B decisions affect an entire organization and ther...
Why B2B Content is Essential for Link Building
Link building is the ongoing component of a B2B SEO campaign. Link building is never really “done” since the search engines like to see that inbound links pointing to a site grow naturally over time. If a site is steadily growing links and then suddenly stops, it will eventually result in a dip ...
Read Industry Blogs to Improve Your SEO
We all know that blogging is an important part of SEO because it creates fresh content on your site and provides an opportunity to target different variations of keywords and get noticed by the search engine spiders. Almost as important as it is to create and publish your own blog posts is to spend ...
What to Look for When Researching an SEO Firm
As a firm that specializes in B2B SEO services we understand the complex process of B2B decision making. Deciding that an SEO firm should be hired to improve the search presence of a business website is a step in the right direction, but it also means that there will be some work involved on the par...
Is Your SEO Program On Autopilot?
There are plenty of SEO tools and software programs out there that can help automate some of the aspects of your SEO program, freeing up your valuable time so you can focus more on other SEO-related tasks like content creation and blogger outreach that can’t (and shouldn’t) be automated. I’m a...
SEO Tactics for New Website Owners
It’s a policy of ours to only take on a new full service SEO client if their site has existed for at least a year or two. This is because a brand new site doesn’t yet have the search engine trust that is necessary in order to see a measurable improvement in ranking or traffic in the short term (...
Ways to Gauge Social Media Success
There is often a struggle between the marketing department and the finance department. The marketing department knows the importance of long term efforts like SEO and social media marketing, both of which require some of the budget in order to execute the strategies efficiently. However, those respo...
Competitive Analysis is Part of an SEO Campaign
When getting started with a marketing campaign of any sort, one of the first things that must be done is to conduct a competitive analysis. It’s necessary to understand what the competition is doing in order to know how much work needs to be done to compete and what kind of angle you can take to s...
Don’t Host a Business Blog on a Separate Domain
One of the best ways to give your SEO program a boost is to become a content marketing machine. Content that includes targeted keywords is what gets noticed by the search engine spiders and content that provides useful information is what gets noticed and shared by target audience members. Win win. ...
How to Properly Conduct Keyword Research
If you frequent this blog you’ll notice that we mention “keyword research” quite often. Actually, any SEO blog is likely to discuss keyword research a fair amount. After all, it is one of the most important components of an SEO campaign. The search engines find and rank websites based on the w...
What to Look for When Hiring an SEO Copywriter
Not every business owner or marketing manager is going to be a great writer, and that’s okay! For some people writing just comes naturally—they know how to craft a story, make a point, teach the reader something and keep someone engaged for 1500+ words. Others struggle to come up with even a 500...
Making Enterprise SEO A Priority Across Your Departments
Unlike a small business where the owner handles SEO, or even a mid-sized firm with a marketing manager or marketing director, an enterprise can have multiple teams and departments that contribute to the ultimate success or failure of an enterprise SEO campaign. The key is to make SEO a priority acro...
How B2Bs Should Use Social Media
When social media first started gaining momentum as an outlet to promote a business, the first companies that found success were the B2Cs. It makes sense if you think about it. B2Cs typically target a wider audience and since most people have at least one social media account it was a great way to g...
Consider SEO from the Start
While it may be hard to believe, there are businesses out there that still don’t have a website. There are plenty of other businesses that have a bare bones website and are realizing that it’s time for an overhaul. And of course there are always new businesses being launched that need to create ...
The Buying Cycle Has Evolved- What’s SEO Got to Do With It?
I came across this really interesting post on MPDailyFix.com a few weeks ago about the excuses that SMBs come up with to avoid blogging. The post has a lot of good points, but the one that resonated with me the most was this: Studies consistently demonstrate that the majority (70% or more) of the...
Is Your Business Blog Conveying the Wrong Message?
Business blogging is highly recommended for any business that is looking to improve upon its SEO efforts, social media efforts, and online marketing efforts overall. For SEO purposes, a blog post is an opportunity to target relevant keywords. Each blog post is a new page of content on the website an...
SEO Musts for Your Local Business
For many reasons, local businesses are often the most hesitant when it comes to getting involved with SEO. Maybe they have found success by simply using other marketing methods like direct mail or flyers and promotions. Or maybe they rely heavily on word of mouth within the area. Local businesses ty...
SEO Company Red Flags
There are plenty of SEO providers out there to choose from. There are some good ones, and some not so good ones. Unfortunately it’s the not so good ones that give the industry a bad reputation. Prior to hiring an SEO firm it’s important to do some research in order to determine what firm is the ...
Why You’re to Blame for a Failed SEO Campaign
What SEO clients need to understand from the get go is that the relationship between SEO client and SEO firm should be viewed as a partnership. Both parties need to work together in order to achieve positive results. An SEO client can’t sign a contract with an SEO firm and then think that the work...
Make Content Creation a Top Priority
If you want to grow your business it’s necessary to have an online marketing presence today. If you want to succeed in online marketing it’s necessary to create quality content on a regular basis. Content is really at the foundation of an online marketing strategy. Without good content you reall...
Important Ways to Improve Local SEO Efforts
Unless your business is booming simply by positive word of mouth or being in the right busy location, it’s necessary for your local business to have a search engine presence. People are looking for just about everything in the search engines, and if you can’t be found, you’ll miss out on new b...
Offer Your Referral Sources Lasting Value Throughout the Year
This is a guest post by Steve Klinghoffer, President of WPI Communications, Inc. Many people base the bulk of their purchasing decisions on relationships and on things like social proof (e.g., a friend’s recommendation, a colleague’s referral or a glowing review), good customer service, or h...
A New Year Means New SEO
I see so many site owners make the mistake of thinking that SEO is a “set it and forget it” medium. Just like any other marketing campaign you may undertake this year, SEO is something that can’t just put on the back burner and expect to run itself. No, you don’t need to be re-optimizing you...
B2B Conversions Require More than SEO
Some may argue that B2B marketing is more challenging than B2C. A B2B marketer typically needs to convince more than one person within an organization that their product/service is the right one for the organization. Since multiple employees may have a say in the decision, the sales cycle is typical...
Google Analytics Data to Pay Attention To
One of the first things that you should do once your website is up and running is to add Google Analytics to the site. Google Analytics is a free tool by Google that provides you with data about the performance of your site. Without Analytics, you are essentially operating your site blindly. How are...
SEO Copywriting Rules to Follow
When writing copy that is going to be published anywhere it’s important to consider the basics- correct spelling, language, grammar, structure, organization, etc. However, writing for the web and more specifically, for SEO purposes, is a different kind of writing that requires additional thought. ...
How to Execute SEO with a Small Budget
SEO is extremely important for any business that wants to improve its online presence and good SEO does cost money. Unfortunately many small businesses don’t even bother looking into SEO because all they think about is the cost that is associated with it. While it’s true that a small business wi...
Don’t Favor Social Profiles Over a Website
Social media has become a huge part of online marketing today, and for good reason. Nearly everybody has a presence on at least one social networking site while most people have accounts on multiple sites and check in on a daily (or even hourly!) basis. Social media is where the people are, which me...
What to Know Before Outsourcing SEO
A business/website owner has a few options when it comes to SEO services. The first option is to hire an in house SEO Specialist. While large companies can afford the salary of an SEO Specialist or an SEO team, many smaller companies cannot. The owners of very small businesses may elect to do the SE...
SEO Advice for a New Small Business
Congratulations on your new small business! Your website is up, your phone is connected and you’re just waiting for those visitors to start falling into your lap, right? Well before you can start to see any real online growth there are a few things about SEO that a new small business owner should ...
Guest Blogging Isn’t Just for Link Building
One of the best ways to build links to your site is to participate in content marketing. After all, content based links are very valuable. As long as the content is good it will get noticed by the search engine spiders and target audience members. When speaking to anyone in the SEO industry about bu...
Save SEO Efforts during a Website Redesign
A website redesign can be a huge undertaking and typically many parties get involved in the process. One important party to keep in the loop from the start is your SEO firm and if you don’t have an SEO firm, this might be a good time to get some guidance from an SEO consultant. It’s important to...
Share-Worthy Content Ranks Higher In Search
Did you know that the majority of content that ranks high in the search engines tends to be the most popularly shared. As social signals are having more of an impact on the SERPs, you need to make sure your content is not only optimized for search engine spiders, but for your readers and followers a...
Why Rank is the Wrong Metric to Pay Attention To
Of course there is value in ranking in the top spot in Google. We’re not trying to tell you there isn’t. However, it’s important to understand that rank isn’t the only way to measure the success of your SEO efforts. It’s a good idea to keep an eye on rankings because too much fluctuation c...
SEO Competitor Info to Look At
When developing any kind of business or marketing plan it’s always important to consider the competition. If you are entering a market that has lots of established players, you are going to have to do one of two things. The first option is to provide something that is exemplary that will allow you...
Should You Accept That Guest Blog Post?
Are you a blog owner that has received an email that looks something like this: Dear Brick Marketing, We came across Brick Marketing, and found many blog posts interesting. "Tips to Succeed in Local Search" is one of the best blog post we liked in the blog section. After reviewing your website...
SEO Clients are Also Responsible for Results
When a company decides that it wants to improve its website visibility in the search engines it has a couple of options. A larger corporation that has the budget to do so may consider hiring an in house SEO Specialist. Since that isn’t an option for many businesses, alternate options are to have c...
Are You Using LinkedIn Properly?
Most of the attention in the social media world is paid to Facebook and Twitter while other sites like Google+ and Pinterest continue to gain popularity. It seems like LinkedIn tends to get lost in the shuffle and only comes up in conversations when people are looking for a job or looking to recruit...
3 Signs that Your SEO Campaign is Working
SEO is a long term process. It takes time to see results from efforts, but as long as you did a good job of optimizing your site and are regularly building links and keeping active in social media you should begin to see an improvement. What many businesses make the mistake of doing is putting too m...
The Best SEO Firms Practice What They Preach
One of our employees was at a recent SEO roundtable discussion where an inquiring mind asked “how do you find the best SEO company?” Another member of the discussion replied by saying “look at the company’s SEO. It’s like hiring a personal trainer; you would want to look for someone who wa...
3 Onsite SEO Tips for the Internal Pages of Your Website
Every single page of your website needs to be optimized for SEO, including those deep internal pages. One very important thing to remember about onsite SEO is that the search engines rank individual pages, not the website as a whole. This means that each page (in theory anyway) has a good chance of ...
Good SEO is a Two Phase Process
The SEO process involves multiple steps and for the best results it’s important to take them one by one and dedicate ample time to each. You shouldn’t rush the SEO process and you also shouldn’t jump around from one thing to the next without completing the prior step. SEO involves two phases. ...
Retraining Your Brain to Focus on Content Creation
Content creation is definitely one of the biggest challenges facing B2B marketers these days. While you might not think turning out a quality blog post every once in a while is all that hard you have to remember that a strong content marketing campaign requires consistency and a continued commitment...
When an SEO Firm Shouldn’t Take on a Client
The relationship between an SEO firm and an SEO client should be viewed as a partnership. After all, the two parties will be working together for (hopefully!) a long time. It’s important that there be a level of trust and comfort there between the two. An SEO partnership is different than working ...
Content Marketing Tips for Small Business
Inbound marketing tactics, specifically content marketing, is all the rage these days. Potential customers and clients don’t want to feel like they are being advertised to. The companies that get their business are the ones that earn it over time by providing useful information that garners trust....