SEO

Nothing can be worse for a site than being hit by a manual action! But what exactly are Google's manual action penalties? How do they differ from ranking losses at the hands of an algorithm update? More than that, how do you go about getting out the penalty box and removing the grasp that a manual action has over your site, your revenue, and your life?! 

As someone constantly immersed in SEO questions, audits, implementation, and troubleshooting all day, every day, I think many SEO specialists often forget that what seems like basic, general knowledge to us is often completely foreign to small businesses (SMBs).

This is especially true as they’re often juggling many things like running their businesses, managing finances, marketing, hiring, and much more. Here are the top questions that local SEO agencies and consultants should make sure to answer for prospects and clients.

When it comes to search engine optimization, there are seemingly endless tasks to complete. You have both on-page and off-page considerations, as well as content audits, competitor research, tracking and monitoring, and technical issues. Of course, once that is done, you’ll have to do plenty of research on keywords, find out what the competition is using, and much more.

There are some really great tools every marketer decides on paying for but you can find some of the best SEO tools for free, which can help with a variety of tasks.

If you’ve logged on to any social media account recently, chances are you’ve seen confirmation bias in effect. Confirmation bias is everywhere nowadays though you may not always see its effects directly. As confirmation bias is often not easily observed, it can cloud our marketing decisions and cause us to treat our potential clients poorly. Keeping confirmation bias at the forefront of our decision-making processes is critical to being both an effective and ethical marketer.

Research. It’s simply not possible to run a thorough promotion plan without first doing some solid research: audience research, content research, and so on.

The same holds true for SEO. Everything rests on solid and substantial keyword research. It’s the bones of search marketing. But where do you start when doing keyword research? How do you find the most pertinent keywords and topics?

Here are the basics of how to do keyword research so that you can start the process of getting your web content on the right track!

Are you struggling to rank higher on Google even though you’ve double and triple-optimized everything under the sun? If you’ve mastered the content on your page the problem might be your off-page SEO... or lack of it. Let's get into what off-page SEO is and how can use it to bring your rankings up! 

Apps are insanely popular. Since 2017, the number of apps developed and found in Google Play and the Apple App Store has grown massively. In fact, statistics suggest that there are at least 2.8 million apps out there!

With that many apps, there is bound to be serious competition no matter what vertical your app falls into. Given the saturation of apps, it can seem almost impossible for your app to stand out and entice people. Well, worry no more (or just a bit less) – there is a way to help your app thrive! The answer is called ASO or app store optimization.

Here is everything you need to know about ASO!

Creating YouTube videos has become one of the most effective ways to promote anything online. While pictures speak a thousand words, videos can convey whatever message you want to get across much faster. Whether it be a tutorial on how to fix your washing machine or a review of the latest Hollywood blockbuster, video is the dominant media!

But how do you ensure your content is what YouTube users initially see? How do get your content towards the top of the YouTube results? After all, there’s no sense in creating videos no one is able to find or watch!

If you want to reach a wider audience, drive more traffic to your site, and increase conversions then you definitely want to rank higher on the Google SERP! For you to rank higher and bring in more traffic, the very first thing you need to do is keyword research.

Lucky for you, the 'keyword research road' is not overly complicated (at least it doesn't have to be). 

Here's how you can access and use Google's very own free and powerful keyword research tool... Keyword Planner! 

On-page SEO is one of the pillars of a sound strategy to get your pages ranking on the Google SERP. While over time some of the elements that fall under on-page SEO may no longer be as vital as they once were... there's no way around making sure the content on your page, its URL, etc. are properly optimized.

Here's a list of 31 essential elements to check in order to get your on-page SEO right!

When Danny Sullivan recently tried to explain the difference between neural matching and RankBrain I was initially left scratching my head. I thought, why does this have to be so complicated? Couldn't the difference between neural matching and RankBrain be explained in a tangibly concrete well structured and "scaffolded" manner?

What is the intent of a user when they enter a search term? Rather, what are the multiple layers of intent that Google sees in that query? What has Google determined to be important when showing results for a given keyword? Google has gotten far better at parsing search terms according to the multiple intents embedded within them.

But how are you supposed to determine how Google understands intent for a search term? How do you know what content Google thinks is relevant to users? How can you determine how Google understands intent?

Here's a simple method that's worked for me.