This should come as a surprise to no one reading blogs like this one. Mobile is your future. Everything points to this. Adoption rates, bandwidth access, changing mobile plans from major carriers, technology evolution in devices, prices decreases and so many more signals all tell us this change is upon us. It’s been known for some time that mobile queries will outpace desktop queries shortly. Today’s businesses are seeing this shift...
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It’s easy to get caught up in the latest and greatest, the forward thinking and the new and shiny. But it always pays to keep an eye on the basics. The stuff you feel you really already know. The stuff that often comes to haunt us when we least expect it. Controlling robots Everyone wants to be indexed. “Let the crawlers come!” But there are times when you need to control access. Areas you don’t want crawlers to enter and...
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Part of the equation of success is being seen as relatable. From time to time, almost all of us hits this wall to one degree or another. And no, I’m not saying you have a personal failing here. When you start a business, you either are an expert in your chosen field, or you become one through exposure, education and experience. One thing you inevitably have to contend with is communicating to your customer or client. And it turns out that in...
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Social media has changed our lives, no question. As a consumer, today you have more power than ever. The Internet brought a massive expansion in choice of where we shop, and increased access to lower prices via that competition. Social media, however, is an equalizer. It’s a conversation medium like none that’s existed before. Enabling a customer in Florida to talk directly to a manufacturer in Oregon in real time (timing permitting...
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Most websites feel they produce quality content. Some even have internal processes in place to review, rate, edit and revise content prior to publication. This does, admittedly, usually take more people, so it costs more and so can be a bit daunting for many smaller businesses to enable. But what is clear, is that everyone strives for quality. Who wouldn’t? We all know quality is a sought after trait. Be it in an automobile, a hand bag, a...
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An age old question that carries a fair amount of import online. Domains are, essentially, real estate. And like actual real estate, you encounter a wide array of people trying to accomplish a wide array of goals. Some seek to develop, wanting only a domain applicable to their needs, willing to look a bit to either side and focus on building their site. Some seek a broad collection, acreage, if you like. Owning as many as possible, while staying...
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There is always a lot of focus on specific topics. Search engine optimization and social media management spring to mind. And for good reason. Both can deliver more returns than the cost to activate. But are you looking across a broad spectrum of tactics? Do you have a plan for multiple areas that can be activated to help propel your business higher? Let’s take a look at the most common areas businesses should be thinking of. These are in no...
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Why do you seek links? The answer to this question may tell you more about your future chances of success in organic search than you realize. Always a hot topic among SEOs – the need to collect links to their content. But why do people seek links in the first place? Once upon a time, links were needed to rank well. In the early days of search (5 – 10 years ago) when algorithms were more unrefined than we see today, links counted for...
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SEO (search engine optimization) has been around for a very long time. During that time, SEOs have found creative ways to move the needle, abused them, lost them to algo updates, found more and generally repeated the cycle 3 billion times. I’ve been on both sides of this, and made a decision about a year into running my first successful website: content would be the focus. Now, mind you, this was before “content was king” and...
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It’s been great attending Namescon this week, though a couple side-bar conversations had me scratching my head. In fact, on three instances I’ve heard people discussing this topic and someone stating that having keyword rich and exact match domain names is where it’s at. This choice alone can make or break you. And they were thinking of developing sites, not parking domains. So let’s examine the value of a domain as...
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