SEO

Rethinking Awareness in Content Marketing

It’s one of the most commonly stated goals of content marketing: “Awareness”. Businesses big and small invest in creating and promoting their content in the hopes that it will generate awareness of their business and ultimately lead to a sale. But in the muck of it all, “awareness” has sort of become a meaningless idea… learn more

Will Your Brand Benefit From Assigning Authorship?

Why would you allow employees to build a personal platform via your brand when you know that they will leave within a few years? That’s a key question for brands thinking about assigning Google authorship to employees for the content they produce. In the end, there’s really not much choice; authorship ties content to individual… learn more

Getting Unstuck: A Pocket Guide to Content Ideation

Writer’s block: the content creator’s curse. Coming up with bright ideas for content can go from fun and exciting to hair-pulling and frustrating in no time flat. So how do the best in the business keep coming up with breakthrough ideas and pertinent pieces? While there’s something to be said for innate creativity, the fact… learn more

Guest Blog Without Fear: How to Stay on Google’s Good Side

Back in July, there was much commotion in the SEO world over a few words from Google’s John Mueller discussing how guest post links should be no-followed if intended for link building. As a result, the industry went into pandemonium, questioning if guest posting was “dead” or still a safe tactic to use. This was… learn more

Offline Tactics for Earning Online Reviews

If you’re finding it difficult to earn reviews for your business online, that’s because it really IS difficult. Users are busy and distracted, review platforms have heavy terms of service and the process of signing up, finding your business and leaving a review is a lot to ask of people. Thankfully, there are steps you… learn more

5 Ways Small Businesses Can Build Links Naturally Without Content

After the Penguin algorithm update first hit (and then struck again in 2013), businesses were reminded that shady link building schemes would only land them in trouble in the long-term. However, as the SEO industry has shifted their tactics towards content-based link building, a lot of small businesses have been left behind. Time & Budget… learn more

8 Things You Didn’t Know About Google+ Reviews

Earning online reviews can be difficult at the best of times. Business owners have enough to worry about without trying to keep up with the ever-changing Google+ platform. Still, it’s important to have an understanding of the Google+ platform so that you can earn reviews that won’t disappear. Here are 8 things you might not… learn more

How to Determine Where you Should Focus your Marketing

These days, there’s a great deal of focus on organic search results in the Google SERPs, at least in the West. In much of Asia, more effort may be place on ranking with Baidu, while central and eastern Europe is normally more focused on Yandex. In North America, Bing and Yahoo are players to be… learn more

How to Create and Use .htaccess

First of all, having an .htaccess file isn’t required in order for your site to function properly. However, it can be extremely useful, as it can perform a number of functions in a relatively simple fashion. Your .htaccess file will be a standard ASCII .txt file, built in a text editor such as Notepad (do… learn more

How to Build a robots.txt File

First, let’s define what a robots.txt file is and why you might want to use one. This file is known as the Standard for Robot Exclusion. It’s just a text file located in a site’s root directory, which gives instructions to all bots visiting your site, restricting their access to certain areas. Of course, that… learn more