This original post has been updated in 2025, but many of the basic themes have held true for years. With small businesses, or really any business, we have to be careful to use each dollar of our budget wisely. This is why it is critically important not to make basic mistakes with your website that [...]
Google is in the business of providing the best answers to user’s searches. There are certain basic SEO elements to keep in mind when building or redeveloping any business website. The basics of Google search have been the same for 20 years. They are just getting better at measuring and understanding the content and adjusting [...]
Sometimes in the world of SEO we get a little too black and white in a world with a lot of grays. Google themselves tells us that the number one ranking factor is user experience (UX), which probably includes hundreds of what we all consider individual ranking factors, which opens up to a lot of [...]
Will Smith set the country on fire last night with his actions at the Oscars. Without getting into the psychology of whether Will Smith is ok or the morality of what he did, let us all acknowledge it made everyone start Googling Will Smith this morning. It is a good example of how Google has [...]
Carolyn Lyden gave a great keynote address at SMX Advanced 2021 this week about empathy marketing and it really hit home with me. It was a great way to put much of what I have been preaching into one succinct phrase. Empathy marketing is all about the user and making sure you are giving them [...]
2021 is expected to be a year with new technology forcing us all to focus on the user more than ever. Google has always said UX is the top-ranking factor. I have always said that is pretty vague considering how many individual factors make up UX, but if you have been ignoring the user up [...]
Fresh off of a nice, but brief talk with the Eastern Monmouth Area Chamber of Commerce, where I really had to streamline a longer SEO talk into just the basics, it got me thinking about some very basic stuff small business owners can keep in mind to help with their SEO in 2020. I am [...]
With each year and update, Google gets better and smarter at understanding searcher intent and providing the best answers to their queries. Title tags have always been an important part of small business SEO. They are sometimes approached formulaically, trying to get in that main keyword and maybe the key geographic target. But now with [...]
With all of the craziness of November, we never got out the You Can Be Found Anywhere last month. Here it is from West Point, where I joined some friends to attend the Army football game and lots of other interesting and exciting fanfare and history. Army provides a very unique experience if you ever [...]
If your site isn't mobile friendly yet, you either haven't been paying attention, or you have been so busy that you haven't had a chance to address it. Google started rolling out mobile first indexing in 2018, and now your rankings are based on the mobile version of your site. Even if you aren't worried [...]
