The days of Mad Men marketing are long over. Whether you are ready to admit it or not, very few consumers want to listen to your marketing messages when you are ready to sell. These days, active consumers have taken the buying process into their hands, using search engines, peer review sites, blogs and social networking sites to create their own buying experience based on what they need when they want it. When you want to sell doesn't really matter,

Let's assume you are entering your second or third year of SEO. You have a well-optimized site, a company blog that posts two new posts a week, a decent social media presence and a solid link portfolio. You might think that you can ride the success of your previous SEO efforts for a few months, or even for most of 2012, but easing off on your SEO means the competition can catch up a lot faster than you realize. Before you know it,

For small to mid-sized businesses that don't have $10k to drop on PPC every month, there is still some search marketing value to be had from launching a PPC campaign, even if you can only spend a minimal amount. In my experience, organic SEO produces much more long-term results than PPC, but certain elements of PPC can actually enhance your SEO.

Just last week, Danny Sullivan over at Search Engine Land reported the latest Google algorithm update which targets ad heavy websites. As Google's official blog post announcing the page layout algorithm says, the update affects "' sites where there is only a small amount of visible content above-the-fold or relevant content is persistently pushed down by large blocks of ads. Matt Cutts warned that this update was coming back in November at PubCon.

On-site optimization has become more important than ever to capitalize on changing user search behavior and the new search algorithm updates. Aged and established B2B sites that had never done any previous SEO have the luxury of a strong search engine trust factor, something that only time can bring. A little onsite SEO and they see dramatic results relatively quickly.

While the same white hat SEO guidelines should apply to all websites regardless of size, larger websites )think 1,000+ pages( face a unique set of challenges that smaller website may not have to deal with.

Guest Post Written By Brian Hawkins If you've read enough posts here on Search Engine Optimization Journal. You'll know that there is no silver bullet to high search engine rankings. So if any SEO agency could guarantee top 10 rankings, it's simply not worth the risk. Which is why Brick Marketing is a huge advocate of quality original content with its SEO infused social media services http://www.brickmarketing.

Knowing when and how often you should develop an outbound link from your blog to another site is a tricky thing. No website is an island )that's why it's called the World Wide Web(, but obviously you don't want to lose your hard-earned traffic to another site, especially a competitor. The Internet is full of distractions )so many YouTube videos to watch!( and once a visitor leaves your site there is no guarantee they'll come back.

Business blogging is one of the most valuable marketing tactics a company can employ online. And in light of Google's recent "freshness update" , having a business blog to drive your SEO is more important than ever. However, running a successful business blog is not as simple as many site owners think. It is a huge time commitment )with no end date( and the potential for taking a wrong turn is very real.

Choosing which SEO firm, consultant or expert to outsource your website's SEO campaign to is a big decision. You might look at a dozen potential SEO partners before you decide which one is right for you. But working with an SEO company is not like getting married; you don't have to tough it out for better or for worse. If six months into the relationship you notice that things aren't progressing as smoothly as you had imagined, it might be time to ditch your SEO partner.

We've all worked with a skittish SEO client before"the one that has been burned by a black hat firm in the past or doesn't really believe in the value of SEO"and they are often the most challenging client an SEO provider can work with. How do you prove your value to someone who doesn't really .

Once I year, I have to prepare myself for the arduous process of running a full link audit on my site. Is it fun? Not by any stretch of the imagination, but it is very important nonetheless and helps shape my link building campaign for the coming year. Conducting a full link audit on all of my sites )including my company site and external blogs( is a very time consuming process, but it's imperative that it gets done. The same is true for you and your websites.

Many businesses and websites aren't looking to dominate the national search results; they just care about doing well in their own neighborhood. For instance, a plumbing company in Phoenix, Arizona doesn't want to get visitors to their site from Normal, Illinois, so ranking well for national keywords isn't the primary objective.

It's incredibly important to organize your monthly blog commenting activities for multiple reasons. First and foremost, you don't want to have multiple people from your company commenting on the same posts each month, especially if they have differing opinions! Secondly, you want to create a schedule of quality, related blogs that you know are frequently updated so you don't have to waste time searching for a new blog to comment on.

Inbound marketing is comprised of three main online marketing tactics"SEO, content marketing and social media marketing. While each of these three campaigns can be very successful on its own, when the three are properly integrated the results for your website and brand can be remarkable. Internet marketing is not a one-or-the-other kind of battle. The most successful websites understand how to leverage all their online assets to their benefit,

It's very easy to make small mistakes with your company's B2B SEO campaign that can have lingering effects on its long term success. Many B2B companies don't even realize they are making these simple mistakes and can't understand why their SEO campaign is under-delivering on their expectations. If your B2B SEO campaign seems to be suffering, double check that you aren't accidentally making these 3 SEO mistakes before deciding to chuck your campaign. 1.

The number one complaint/concern I hear from my SEO clients when it comes to content marketing is that they don't know what to write about. The number two complaint/concern is, even if they do have a list of topics ready to go, no one on their staff has the time to commit to a heavy content marketing campaign. To both of those I say, "Oh yes you do!" Content marketing isn't nearly as hard as most site owners think it is,

First off, I'd like to thank everyone who brought this situation to my attention. Without your comments and emails I might have never realized that I was one of the bloggers that Ocean Marketing was blatantly plagiarizing from. Just yesterday a reader sent me this link from Reddit about a company called Ocean Marketing, with a note saying they thought one of the company's blog posts looked suspiciously like a post from this blog. I pulled up the two posts side by side.

Brick Marketing is a proud sponsor of the Boston SEO Meetup, a local Meetup event for SEO and SEM professionals, other marketing professionals and local business owners interested in learning more about SEO. We attend every month's event and use the time to network, build our local brand, come up with new blog post topics and yes, even get links from the event! When I say that everything you do to promote your business, both online and off, can be leveraged for SEO,

A business blog can rank in the search engines for branded searches alongside your company website and social profiles, while individual blog posts can rank extremely well for long-tail keywords. All of this helps build your overall online brand. However, in order for your blog to help your SEO, you need to take the time to properly optimize each post, just like you've optimized each page of your website.