6 Steps to Effortless SEO

Missing jigsaw puzzle with text HARD and EASY.

What’s the easiest way to make fast cash with search engine optimization (SEO)? If we knew that, we would be too rich to lower ourselves to write blog posts like this.

9 Steps to Land & Keep Fortune 500 Clients

Making big business moves

I’ve been inspired today by a post written by Demian Farnworth entitled: What a Cocky CEO Can Teach You About World-Class Blogging. The post was excellent, and as a small business creator and owner, I loved the points made in the blog on keeping our companies “focused, lean, fast.” Embracing these attributes usually keeps you […]

Paid Links are Bad, No Good, No Bad…

Michael Gray doesn’t know who I am, I don’t expect him to. We sat next to each other one day at lunch during Pubcon, he is a polite, engaging guy, with obviously tons of knowledge in SEO/SEM field. I enjoyed Michael’s many interviews on Local search, and learned much from his posts. He has earned […]

Specialized Search is Simple Economics

There has been much speculation about how personal and local search, which I term “Specialized Search,” will affect search marketing strategies in the future. Although it feels recent, the discussion of more specialized search systems really started to heat up back in 2004, when Google’s Sergey Brin made comments concerning Google’s foray into Specialized Search […]

Image Isn’t Everything, But It Is Something.

Taking a look at the corporate logs in the image to the left, how do you feel about those brands? Do you feel anything? Much in marketing is focused on influencing the public’s perception of our companies, our products and our brand. We want others to think our products/services are high in quality, a good […]

Is a Customer Ever Wrong?

The simple answer is yes, there are times when the customer is wrong, but that doesn’t really matter much in the end. We still have to deal with the situation and attempt to make the most of it, while not further upsetting and potentially losing a client. This can be very tough for some, I […]

Hey Businesses… Its about Blogging time.

A good friend of mine, Thayne Peterson, called up yesterday and asked what he should do with his website to just help it perform a bit better. As you can imagine we get that question quite a bit around here, especially now that more people have kind of figured out what SoloSEO is about. This […]

When the First Result Is Not the Best Result

You have probably tried Google’s “I’m Feeling Lucky” button before. But what if you based your business and purchasing based solely on getting the first result of a query?

When a Good Domain Name is Bad

I just moved to Southern Utah (hence the lack of posts). We found a nice local furniture store, Boulevard Home Furnishings, that everyone calls “The Boulevard”. They seem to do everything right, the perfect furniture store. They have car shopping carts for the kids, candy for the kids, bottled water for the adults, sales people […]

SEO – Vital to Small Business

To small business owners, SEO cannot be seen as the “end all – be all” to their potential success, but it rightfully should be considered a “must do” in order to maximize their full business potential. Based on our own situation, and finally deciding ourselves we needed to spend time on SEO, we now understand […]

If You Want Customers, Don’t Scare Them Away

Many of us in the Internet Marketing world may not use mass physical mailings very often, but they are a very traditional form of marketing. Note the back of this mailing I received the other day. You might first notice it has a rip in it. Yes, that was my first instinct after seeing what […]

The Perfect Solution to Paid Link Disclosure

There is a big brouhaha over Matt Cutt’s recent postings (yes, 3 of them) about the disclosure of paid links (big one here, another here, and one more here). There’s been a lot of postings about it, with a great summary here by GrayWolf at SEOclass.com, some here by GrayWolf at Wolf-Howl.com, more here from […]

Deliver on your Page and Ad Titles

A radio ad I heard this morning starts out “Another how-to half minute from the Home Depot…”. Now, before you read on, what are you expecting to get out of the next 25 seconds or so left of this radio spot? A “how-to half minute” makes me ready to learn something about landscaping or home […]

SEO around the globe

SoloSEO has been quite a surprise. When we launched last November, we had no idea the draw a stand alone SEO system would have, nor the level of interest it would generate. It has been truly a whirlwind. We did some quick figuring the other day and discovered that domains from over 40 different countries […]

Starting your SEO Business: 10 Ways to Make Your Small SEO Firm Look Big

Nowadays you don’t have to be big to get big clients. After 3 months of starting up (early 2006) our own web content firm (Applied Content), we landed a big deal with a Fortune 500 company (actually in top 30 though!). It’s not that we looked like a giant corporation, but we looked big enough […]

Keywords – More Than Meets the Eye

When you were a kid, did you ever have one of these transformers? I had several transformers and even loved watching the cartoon. A transformer, like Optimus Prime, would be a semi-truck at first, but then you could move the pieces around and make it into a robot machine. The tagline for Transformers was, “Transformers, […]

PPC Advice – Good or Bad… or VERY BAD

Today, I took a few moments to take in a bit of the current online marketing blogscape. I eventually came across a post entitled “17 most common PPC mistakes web marketers make” by Igor Mor. It was posted on SEOMoz as part of their YOUMoz program where they “claim” posts from others they deem appropriate. […]

SEO vs. Paid Search Marketing Clash

If you have not gone over and read about the tussle between Dave Pasternack and SEO pros, you must take a minute to review it, it has been quite entertaining. Our friend Michael Gray has jumped in with both feet, and his post called Dave Pasternack of Did-it.com – How to Fix Your Problem is […]

Your Customers aren’t Targets

I heard a great radio ad about radio advertising, which included the following: Your customers aren’t targets, they’re your friends and neighbors. They want to be talked with, not shot at.

How to Optimize your Search Engine Snippets

In search engine optimization it can be easy to overlook search engine snippets (you know, the smaller text below the title when you get your search results). All of us care a lot about rankings, conversions, and backlinks, but what about that first opportunity to tell a potential reader something with a search engine snippet?

Why are you scaring your customers?

Now unless you have a conversion rate of 100%, some of your customers are getting scared. Certainly some come accidentally to your site, but what is scaring the rest of them from taking action on your site? What can be done?

If you don’t have a Company Blog, Get One

Do you really have time for a blog? Running a company is enough to keep you busy, and then some. Let’s get outside of the company for a minute, and think of what at least some portion of your customers are looking for. They want transparency, to see what the company is really like, to […]