Google RankBrain: Everything You Need to Know About Google’s New Search Algorithm

Close up of woman€™ hands holding sign now we are open support local business.

Google recently released a new search algorithm known as the Google RankBrain, and many people are already asking questions about it. The main purpose of this algorithm is fairly simple, so there is no need to worry that it will cause any serious upheavals in anyone’s daily online routine. Here we will cover the basics of […]

Mobilegeddon and SEO – Why You Should Care

Search engine optimization (SEO) concept.

Mobilegeddon sounds pretty scary, right? But should you be scared? Absolutely! If your site is not up to speed on being mobile friendly, it’s time to kick that mobile website into gear. In March and April of 2015 alone there was a 4.7% increase in mobile friendly sites across the Internet, meaning a lot of people were […]

The Importance of Blogging for Increased Traffic

A business concept. Top view of eyeglasses, calculator, notebook written with text CONTENT MARKETING

With all the changes in the Google algorithm over the years, one thing has remained consistent when Google determines the quality or relevance of a site, and that is content. If fact, some experts believe Google has effectively been able to reduce the gaming of rankings so much, that content has actually become more important […]

Delivering Value from SEO for People as well as for Search Engines

Search engine home page

SEOs come in all colors. The black hats game the system. The gray hats sort of game the system. The white hats play by the rules. SEOs constantly assess the mood of Mother Google (as well as the lesser search engines, such as Yahoo!, Ask, etc). And, yes, it pays to pay attention to what […]

The Power of Persistence in SEO: Seriously, it may be all you need

A woman wearing a shirt that says nevertheless she persisted

Doing SEO is hard. It’s long. It’s challenging. It’s technical. There is so much out there that you don’t know. Tap into any informed blog about the topic, and you will be hit with a firehouse of information. Whether you are building your first website, or your sixteenth, you can rest assured that you haven’t […]

Organization: Why your SEO plan may fall flat without it

Above top desk of SME owner people home office call talk in SEO chart sale report

The forces of order and chaos are always at war, as anyone who has read (or watched) Lord of the Rings or Tim Burton’s new Alice in Wonderland sequel will tell you. On the one hand, SEOs must have structure — guidelines that keep you focused on your goals and principles. On the other hand, […]

Value of Short-Term SEO Goals

Marketing planning strategy

SEOs tend to get infatuated with the latest tricks and techniques published on the hottest blogs. And while it’s enjoyable (and often extremely useful) to check out what other people are doing and to reassess your own process and projects, too much of this “blue-skying” can lead you down the road to severe anxiety and […]

Defining your SEO Core Competency – and Sticking to It!

Competent young business secretary

What is a “core competency”?  Simply put, it is the kind of work that you do best. We all wear multiple hats at our jobs. If you’re a journalist, you’re not only a writer but you’re also a reporter, a networker, a self promoter, and in some senses a psychologist (especially to your interview subjects) […]

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.

A Brilliant SEO Tip for Getting Links

Link building

Links. They are a key currency for any great SEO campaign. But how do you get them? Who do you get them from? How much time will it take you? And how do you maximize the investment of your resources so that you get the best, most SEO friendly links for the amount of time/money/energy […]

Great Read: How to Get an Influencer’s Attention

Influencer, Blogger, Vlogger

Every so often I read a blog post or article that really impresses me, and that happened this morning with Tamar Weinberg’s (@tamar on Twitter) post called How to Get an Influencer’s Attention over at Techipedia. She obviously put a lot of time into it, and received back a lot of noteworthy responses. Not only are […]

Finding Motivation When You’re “Not Feeling It”

Motivation, word as banner headline

SEO is rough, let’s face it. One minute, you feel like you’ve found the key to long-term wealth and high keyword rankings. The next minute, you read an article that makes you rethink your entire plan. It’s easy to get caught up in the emotional roller coaster — changes in attitude that can disrupt your […]

How to Implement “Canonical Tag” To Reduce Duplicate Content

Coding

The Big 3 search engines have agreed on a meta tag standard for identifying a page’s “permalink” or “Canonical URL”. One problem a lot of sites experience is having the same content show up with different URLs due to search features, categories, etc. This can hurt your pages and your site, and so having this […]

Should I Use Local Keywords in Content?

Small business owners going online need to consider just how local their keywords need to be when creating their content. If I was a business owner who had a brick and mortar location, with items for sale to the public, I would be including all kinds of local terms in as much content as possible, […]

Local Search Ranking Factors Report

An excellent report on factors that affect rankings in local search was released today by David Mihm (davidmihm.com and @davidmihm). I was happy to participate as a contributor to the report, particularly with my interest in local search marketing and online customer reviews.

Announcing LeaveFeedback.org, Free Service for Local Businesses

I’m excited to announce a new free service I developed for local businesses, LeaveFeedback.org. Local Search is one of the newest verticals in the search industry bringing with it the convergence of offline (local) businesses and online search. LeaveFeedback.org has a real solution to one of the biggest problems facing local businesses: online customer reviews.

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 […]

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 […]

The Marketing 4 Ps and SEO

Much of a discussion on marketing can be broken down into what is termed “The Marketing Mix, or the 4 Ps” namely; Product, Price, Place, Promotion. Product being the service or product we sell, Price being the retail price a customer will pay for the product, Place being the locale where the product is purchased […]

Stay Online Stupid…

Mike Moran’s post today, entitled Should Small Business Ditch the Web? discusses, well… I was going to say an “interesting point,” but I think instead I will say “ridiculously obvious point.” Mr. Moran essentially uses some of this post as a rebuttal to a comment to a prior post, by someone with the screen name […]

Top 5 Top Blog Posts in SEO

I love a challenge. In fact, if I don’t take on a challenge it drives me nuts. So when Darren Rowse came out with his group writing contest (project) with the topic of “Top 5”, I had to come up with an entry. I thought I would get creative and make a top 5 list […]

Google Categories – Changes to Competitive SEO

Lee Odden blogged about Google Categories yesterday. I wasn’t able to duplicate the categories look, but it did get me thinking about the ramifications to online competition if categories in search become commonplace. As well as how categories might influence our SEO strategies as business owners.