1) “The best way to spread Christmas cheer is singing loud for all to hear.” You have invested, or plan to invest I hope, in great content. But that content will not produce any business value unless you expand your reach. At the most basic level, this can be initially accomplished by sharing your content across your social media … Read More
3 Tips for a Successful Site Migration
At some point in the lifecycle of your business you will most likely need to make a significant change to your website architecture. This change may be reorganizing the current content on your site, redesigning your site, consolidating subdomains, or it may be moving your entire site onto another domain. Whatever the scenario may be, the act of moving content … Read More
How to answer the question – Why don’t we rank number one on Google?
We have all received the random email from an executive or shareholder asking the age old question, why don’t we rank number one on Google? It is a fair question. We invest in SEO and want to see the impact of our efforts. The trouble is that rankings have become an almost irrelevant metric in search due to the … Read More
How I Failed a Teammate by Not Listening
There is nothing more important that a leader can do than listen. Sadly, I recently failed a team member by not listening to them. Here was the situation – we brought on a new client and were tasked with creating an SEO strategy to increase their organic traffic. As with any new client, there was a high degree of … Read More
Time Management Advice for Digital Dads
As a new dad working in digital marketing, my greatest challenge has been time management. I have a whole new set of responsibilities at home, yet the demands of clients and management remain high. And Google certainly isn’t slowing down. So it’s up to me to adapt. It’s up to us as dads to adapt. We owe it to ourselves … Read More
2013 SEO Ranking Factors Explained
Moz, the industry thought leader for SEO, released their annual research and analysis on the SEO ranking factors. Every year Moz performs an in-depth analysis in an attempt to answer the question “how do you rank number one on Google?” Unfortunately, the search engines do not share their actual algorithm, so we don’t know for certain which factors they truly … Read More
The Role of Content in Ecommerce
There is a prevalent thought that content does not have a place in ecommerce. The typical arguments against content are that it impedes and distracts from a sale, that it does not fit nicely into the site architecture, or that it is a marketing “issue”. I would argue that content is an absolute necessity to a successful SEO strategy … Read More
The Changing Landscape of SEO
According to a recent study conducted by Dr. Pete Myers of Moz, 85% of today’s search engine result pages (SERPs) contain new features. These new features have been slowly rolled out over the past couple of years, but are growing in the markets that they impact. And while these new features can be seen as Google trying to … Read More
What Happened to My Precious Keywords?
(Not Provided) Increases to 51% of Referring Keywords In October of 2011, Google began encrypting search data in an effort to offer greater security to the personalized data of its users. As a result, the referring keywords used by people to find your content online were hidden in Google Analytics and replaced with (Not Provided). This was not a penalty … Read More
Recent Google Algorithm Updates Causing Ranking Volatility
Google has released multiple updates to its algorithm over the past several months, which have caused an increasing amount of volatility in the rankings. On May 22, 2013, Google confirmed the Penguin 2.0 update. On June 11, 2013, Google confirmed monthly updates of Panda. On June 25, 2013, Google confirmed a phantom update rollout over the following weeks. … Read More
SEO Strategy vs. Tactics
by Chris Thompson with Hardy Kalisher Do you have an SEO strategy? That question might be the most important question you can ask your SEO agency. Yes, “SEO strategy” has become something of a trendy term and as a result is it is used by many, yet understood by few, and developed by even fewer. Google Trends Report on SEO … Read More
5 Ways to Learn Internet Marketing
The role of the Internet in modern business has transitioned from niche to critical. Entire businesses can now function and market exclusively online. Instead of having one intern that managed all aspects of an online presence, entire teams and departments are deployed to navigate multi-channel digital strategies. What is even more fascinating is the speed at which our industry has … Read More
Case Study: Defining Value in SEO
Our role as SEO consultants is to partner with organizations and to create value through search marketing. However, creating value can be a challenge for many reasons. Goals may not have been clearly defined, the execution of strategies may not be not be possible, or access to analytics data may be lacking or corrupted. Despite all of this, it is … Read More