by Mike Fleming You see it all the time: web marketing that fails to satisfy customer wants and needs in the buying process from first exposure to conversion. The problem is that it's so easy to simply leave a buying trail that you're on with the web. All it takes is a click. This puts buyers in total control and makes them uber-sensitive to what they engage with online.

by Nick Stamoulis I was talking with a prospective client once about their priority keywords and our conversation went something like this, Client - "We want to rank number one in Google for widgets." Me - "I think that's a good long term goal, but "widgets" is extremely competitive and there are some big players in your niche that are going to be hard to beat." Client - "So what do we do?" Me - "While we're building up to "widgets,

by Stoney deGeyter SEO - at least good SEO - doesn't fit nicely into a box. It can't come prepackaged, predetermined or wrapped nicely with a cute little bow. SEO can barely be predicted! It can't ever be guaranteed*, and it isn't a magical way to reach the next billion dollar IPO. )*Technically you can guarantee a certain result, but those who do typically offer enough small print to make any such guarantee basically useless.( Put simply, SEO is fluid.

by Nick Stamoulis In a perfect world, SEO would be seamlessly integrated into the rest of your marketing efforts. Everything you do to market your business, both online and offline, can be leveraged for SEO in some way. However, it can sometimes be tricky to "SEO-ify" your other marketing efforts when you aren't used to integrating SEO into everything you do.

by Todd Bailey Writing SEO-friendly content can be a challenge when you do it for your own company. It's even more difficult when another company asks you to do it for them. Not only are you tasked with writing SEO-enhanced content, but you're doing so for a company-possibly an entire industry-that you're not familiar with. This is where a client call makes a world of difference. Well, can make a world of difference. Like the copy you plan to write,

by Mike Moran Now, those of you running small Web sites may be snickering at this point-you know how many pages you have, for Pete's sake. And if you forget, well, you know how to count. Many medium-to-large Web sites, however, can't pin down exactly how many pages they have. They need to use some method of estimating their total number of pages. Unless they know how many pages they have, they won't know how many they hope to see in search engine indexes. So,

by Stoney deGeyter As an SEO , I talk a lot about developing great websites that earn top rankings, as opposed to manipulating search engine algorithms for temporary gains. There is a lot that goes into a good SEO campaign, one of the most important being your website's content. Yet, it seems that many sites are at a disadvantage when it comes to content development. Informational sites do wonders at pumping out pages and pages of articles, blog posts, tips, how-to's,

by Stone Reuning Facebook seems like the star of the social networking show these days, doesn't it? It's where people connect and keep in touch with friends and family all over the world, and from a business perspective there's no doubt that it can be a great place to build relationships and gain contacts. With all of the press surrounding Facebook though, it can be easy to forget that another network out there offers its own advantages: LinkedIn.

by Nick Stamoulis The "new and improved" Digg launched the other week. And while I'm not going to get into the pros and cons of the new design, one very important thing to mention is that all the old links from Digg's past, approximately 14 million of them, are gone. I had been wondering for several weeks in the time leading up the Digg revamp what was going to happen to those old links and now we know. While I can hope that they'll be "reinstated" down the road,

by Stoney deGeyter Several years ago I wrote an article declaring that content is dead and community is king . What's most interesting about the article is that it contains zero references to Facebook and Twitter, two of the largest online communities today. While content certainly isn't dead, the passing years have really proven the value of community engagement. This is no more obvious than the invention of Google+,

by Nick Stamoulis As an SEO provider, you'd think that a keyword like "SEO" would be my number one priority, right? After all, that's the industry I work in, it's the services I offer and it's a keyword that could potentially generate a ton of business for my company. In the US alone, "SEO" gets well over 2.2 million searches each month-that translates into some serious revenue for a company that can own "SEO" in the SERPs. But as I have discussed before,

by Todd Bailey Businesses start SEO campaigns to reach the top of the SERPs. But, let's be clear, the goal isn't just to achieve a number one ranking. The goal, as it is in all business ventures, is to make more money. This is why SEO is often supplemented with pay-per-click campaigns and other traffic-generating initiatives. Regardless of how you get the traffic, though, money comes from conversions. So, with that said,

by Stoney deGeyter Since the Bible is the best selling book of all time, I figured I might be able to find some indispensable wisdom for the Internet age. Who knew the Bible could provide us with sage advice for SEO and Internet marketing! Each book of the Bible has an overarching historical theme. These themes can be applied to our online marketing and SEO campaigns. While the Bible doesn't quite give us specific SEO strategies )who'd follow them anyway?(,

by Mike Fleming When it comes to online marketing, I see and hear about way too many companies that don't take the paid traffic channel seriously enough. They either don't do it )huge mistake(, or they do a less-than-professional job of it. Maybe they do it in-house. Or, they have an agency do it, but one that doesn't have a dedicated paid traffic specialist. While Google, Bing and others continuously refine their systems to make campaign management "easier" than ever,

by Todd Bailey When it comes to optimizing one's site for the major search engines, it's tempting to believe that there is some magical formula that will guarantee increased traffic and lead to conversions. We often get bogged down in the technical side of the SEO process. How can we increase the load speed of the homepage? Are we getting maximum use out of the site's meta data? While these are certainly all important things to keep in mind during an SEO campaign,

by Nick Stamoulis More than one site owner has asked me how many links they should build each month, or how many links they can expect my team to build for them as a full service SEO client. Since so much of SEO seems to follow "best practices" and "guidelines," with very few hard and fast rules )although they do exist and it's important you know what they are(, many site owners are looking for a quantifiable way to measure and control their SEO campaign. Unfortunately,

by Mike Fleming Not testing your website is like telling your investors, shareholders, employees or other stakeholders that you already make enough profit and you'd really not like to make any more in the foreseeable future. Crazy, right? So, why don't marketers do it? Typically, they don't know what to test, how to get approval, who needs to be involved and how it will affect their site. But,

by Mike Fleming Most companies don't test their sites. Their main justification for this tends to be that they don't have the budget to take it on. But, this is clearly a misunderstanding because free tools )like Google's Content Experiments ( make it VERY cheap. When you put that together with the logic that testing is just going to help you improve conversion on your site , not doing it is costing your more than doing it. Not doing it is like telling your investors,

by Stoney deGeyter I'm not the most mechanically inclined person. Whenever I try to fix things, they )or I( often tend to come out more broken than before. When something needs to be fixed, everyone benefits greatly when I hire a handyman. Even easy tasks are not so easy for me. )You don't want me anywhere near a paint brush!( We've all heard the saying, "If it ain't broke, don't fix it." That's me. I'm not going to try to soup up my truck,

by Nick Stamoulis Let me start off by saying that I have seen black hat SEO tactics work for some sites, and in some cases they work very well. However, in my opinion, the potential for disaster and the long term effects that a Google penalty can have on your website are not worth the risks of black hat SEO. Google has spent years warning website owners about the dangers of black hat SEO,