4 Tips for Choosing a New SEO Provider

Choosing an SEO provider is a big decision. You want to make sure you’re working with someone that cares about your business and your long term success as much as you do. At the end of the day who you decide to hire as your SEO provider will have a dramatic impact on your long term SEO success because it is their expertise and advice that you will be building your SEO campaign around—you want to make sure you work with the right one!

Here are four questions you should ask yourself when looking for a new SEO provider: Read more

Why Content is So Important for SEO

As marketers, most of us can claim to be decent writers at the very least. We should have a good grasp on the English language, know how to string a sentence together, and sooner or later arrive at a point. But some of us are going to be much better at writing the kind if content that compels, persuades, and connects with our readers (as opposed to just being able to put words on a page), and those are the kind of people you want on your team! If you’re not a fantastic writer that’s okay; just make sure your hire or team up with someone who is so your SEO campaign will never flat line.

Here are 3 reasons why content is so important for SEO (and why a great writer is essential to success): Read more

Does Your Content Creation Cover Every Stage of the B2B Buying Cycle?

I was lucky enough to interview B2B marketing expert Michael Brenner a few weeks back. If you don’t know him, Michael is the author of B2B Marketing Insider, co-founder of the social news site Business 2 Community and editor-in-chief of SAP’s “innovation” blog. He’s knows his way about the world of b2B content marketing better than just about anyone else. We started discussing the B2B buying cycle and how content marketing factors into it. Here’s what he had to say; Read more

How to Evaluate the Quality of a Link

Thanks to the Google Penguin update the quality of your back link profile is more important than ever. More generic links aren’t better than fewer quality links and that’s so important to remember as you go about your link building. In my opinion, the authority and relevancy of a website are the two most important things to consider when evaluating the quality of a link. Read more

Is Your Content Evergreen?

Evergreen content is any piece of content (blogs, white papers, videos, webinars, articles, etc) that contains information that is relevant and useful to readers for an extended period of time. For instance, the methodology behind conducting keyword research hasn’t really changed since SEO began. The tools have definitely evolved but the basic premise of how to go about creating and scrubbing a keyword list is very much the same now as it was five years ago and I anticipate (although I could be wrong) that it will be the same process five years from now. A how-to blog post about conducting keyword research that is two years old is probably still as relevant to readers now as it was the day it was published. That is evergreen content. Read more

Don’t Let a Keyword’s Conversion Rate Trick You!

When trying to determine how well a particular keyword is working, many site owners will look at the keyword’s conversion rate. For instance, let’s say a personal finance software company wanted to know if “budget software” or “budget management software” was a more successful keyword for their website. First and foremost, it’s important to look at overall search volume for these two keywords, because a keyword with little search volume isn’t going to send that much traffic to your site in the first place. In this scenario, “budget software” gets about 60,500 searches each month while “budget management software” only gets about 720. That’s a pretty big difference! Read more

How Many Organic Visitors a Month Is Enough?

A question I hear fairly frequently from many SEO clients and prospects is “How many visitors a month should my site get? What’s a good number?” And I completely understand the logic behind this question—if the goal of SEO is to drive more organic visitors to your site, how many organic visitors will you need to see before your SEO is “working?” But the problem with this question, like many others in SEO, is that there is no right answer; it’s completely dependent on your website and industry. Read more

Sometimes Blog Syndication Isn’t All It’s Cracked Up to Be

I realize that for many site owners and bloggers, having their company or personal blog picked up and syndicated on a popular industry site is a huge boon. It provides a ever-growing source of quality links, exposes your brand to a wide audience time and time again, helps your content get shared more frequently and (hopefully) drives more traffic to your site in the long run. But a few months ago I realized that blog syndication isn’t always as great as many think it is and sometimes it’s not worth it. Here’s the story… Read more

Looking at the Whole Picture to Determine SEO Success

I was talking with an SEO client the other day that is determined to drive traffic using a short list of priority keywords. They are on page one for about 1/3 of their list and page two for probably another ¼. The rest are spread about between pages 3-5 with a few not yet cracking the top 50. While I don’t usually like pulling ranking reports because I don’t find them to be a valid method of measuring SEO success, this client insists on them each month. While I have no problem giving a client whatever data they need to help justify our work, this client has a tendency to silo the reports and only focuses on those priority keywords, where they rank and how many visitors they send each month. If those numbers don’t come across as “good” it means their SEO campaign isn’t working. Read more

4 Competitive Link Analysis Tips

Running a competitive link analysis every six months or so is a great way to enhance your own link building strategy. It can give you a good idea of how your link portfolio stacks up against the competition, as well as what you need to do to become more competitive. It pays to know what your competition is doing so you can capitalize on any opportunities as they come up.

Here are 4 tips when conducting a competitive link analysis: Read more

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