What are your thoughts on “learn more” links?
Have you considered the potential impact on your website? Is it killing your conversion rate and increasing your bounce rate?
A Google search for “Learn More links” generates approximately 3,080,000,000 results. In other words, people have a lot to say on this subject.
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Did you know that Google processes more than 40,000 search queries every second? Or how about the fact that it processes approximately 3.5 billion searches every day?
This doesn’t even take into account search engines with a smaller market share, such as Yahoo and Bing.
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Does increasing website traffic increase sales?
Well technically, yes.
Assuming your conversion funnel is optimized enough that an increase in visitors will equal additional sales.
But what if the people visiting your site were window shoppers, or worse spam bots, not interested in making a purchase.
Would that traffic still be valuable?
Absolutely Not!
There are 2 million blog articles written each day on the web, and almost every single one of those articles ask for email address. But very few offer something valuable in return. This is the content upgrade. Something very valuable, in exchange for your email address.
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As a company with a storefront or physical office, it’s imperative to have an accurate and comprehensive Google My Business profile.
But what should you do if you have more than one location, or 100’s of locations?
The best approach is to create a business account that provides bulk location management functionality. This allows you to share the management rights of each location with multiple team members.
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In the ever-changing world of search engine optimization (SEO), it’s critical to implement a sound strategy with the goal of achieving high-level results. Unfortunately, it’s easy to fall behind, making it difficult to drive organic traffic to your website.
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Regardless of your business type and industry, you’re sure to have quite a bit of competition. The way you deal with this competition – especially in regards to your online presence – has a lot to say about your future success.
This leads to an important question: what’s the best way to spy on your competition online?
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If you weren’t paying attention last month, you may have missed out on news of an important Google update.
Danny Sullivan of Google announced on Twitter that the search engine is updating its algorithm.
As a broad core update, this one has the potential for a far-reaching impact.
Known as March 2019 Core Update, Florida 2 Update or Update Florida 2, there are a few important questions you need to answer: Read More
So, you learned about the power of backlinks.
As search engine optimization continues to evolve, it is interesting to see how link building evolves with this trend. The strategy is completely different from a decade ago. Even looking at the past five years presents a lot of changes.
Therefore, it makes sense to discuss how to use modern best practices, so you don’t get blackballed by Google. Below we discuss the power of link building for your business.
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There is no denying the importance of choosing the right keywords for your website.
After conducting the appropriate research, you’ll known which keywords can drive a large quantity of targeted traffic to your website – and that’s exactly what you want.
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Even though Google is the leader in the search engine space, Bing is a viable alternative that has the potential to drive serious traffic to your website.
With approximately eight percent of search engine market share with 6 billion monthly desktop searches, trailing only Google and Baidu, webmasters should focus some attention on obtaining traffic from Bing.
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Our goal in this article about spam is to teach you have to remediate and eliminate spammers opportunities with your WordPress website and Google Analytics data.
As the world’s most popular content management system, there’s a good chance your website and/or blog is powered by WordPress. So we combined the two into one post.
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A popular question that I get from readers is for recommendations on SEO tools, training, resources and services available for search engine optimization.
People especially want to know what tools I use to run SEO Mechanic and our client’s SEO campaigns.
Because of that I’ve put together a list of recommended SEO tools that I personally use or one’s that come highly recommended by industry professionals. Read More
With so many benefits of installing an SSL certificate – including enhanced security and better search engine rankings – a growing number of website owners are moving in this direction.
Once you install an SSL certificate, your website is available over both HTTP and HTTPS.
While you’re not required to make any additional changes, it’s important to force HTTPS instead of HTTP. By doing so, you’ll redirect all your visitors to the encrypted version of your website.
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Website migration doesn’t have to be nearly as difficult as it sounds. Despite the potential search engine optimization challenges, taking the right steps allow you to complete the process in a timely manner – and all without making any mistakes.
Regardless of why you’re moving your website, there are several SEO website migration tips you must follow to make the process as seamless and stress free as possible: Read More
Are you having a hard time blogging?
It’s no secret that blogging can boost your website traffic. But knowing what to blog about can be time consuming for a business owner running their business.
Running your business is a full time job! Who has time to constantly figure out new and exciting ways to talk about your business?
Thankfully with a little bit of training you can learn how to find fresh ideas to blog about on a daily basis. Your business is a buffet of ideas.
But if you don’t know where to look it could seem like a daunting task to write just one blog.
Below are six blog topic ideas you can apply to any local business with a little creativity.
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In the history of mankind, it has never been easier to find information. With a click of a button we speak what we want, and results appear in a matter of seconds.
The power of voice search is one of the main catalysts for this transformation in the retrieval of information from the internet.
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When you look at your vacation rental listing on Airbnb and VRBO what do you see? While it’s important to focus on the details that set your property apart – such as the amenities and upgrades – there are other things you can do to get more bookings.
It’s critical to optimize your vacation rental listing, as doing so increases the number of people who view it. Subsequently, your chance of regular bookings is much greater.
Here are five SEO tips you can do to optimize your listing: Read More
Any local establishment that wants to grow in the 21st century needs a web presence. One of the best ways to increase this presence is through local search.
To make this job a little easier we want to include some high quality local SEO plugins on your WordPress website. Read More
There are many things you can do from an SEO perspective to improve the performance of your website. A comprehensive XML sitemap provides search engines with a roadmap of your website, allowing them to efficiently find all your most important pages.
Think about it this way: if Google doesn’t know a webpage exists it’s impossible to index it. And if your page isn’t indexed, there’s no way to attract organic traffic.
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As a small business owner, you want to evaluate the importance of SEO for your business. Not surprisingly, we believe SEO will continue to play a huge role in your digital marketing strategy.
However, you need to understand the best practices of SEO for your business.
After all, 81% of businesses research their purchases on search engines. Additionally, 61% read product reviews prior to making a purchase.
With so many people using search engine to research their products makes it an important part of next year’s search strategy. Here is how you can incorporate SEO into your small business marketing plan.
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What makes one website successful when it comes to SEO, and another one fail? Is it the number of links on a page? Is it the amount of fresh, unique content?
There is no one answer. Fortunately, success leaves clues. That is why we want to explore the SEO success factors for your website.
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The WooCommerce plugin for WordPress is a powerful force for businesses to drive e-commerce revenue.
However, without significant traffic, it becomes impossible for your online store to attain the quality and quantity of buyers needed to succeed.
It is therefore essential when you use platforms like WooCommerce to combine that with powerful SEO strategies that actually work.
In this article, we discuss how to use WooCommerce SEO to rank your products higher and drive more sales.
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Are you learning about search engine optimization and interested in pushing your website to the top of the search engine results for your targeted keywords?
Of course you are!
According to a March 2019 survey by netcraft, they received responses from 1,462,021,378 sites, 232,162,099 unique domains, and 8,526,624 web-facing computers.
That’s why search engines, like Google, use a series of algorithms, that analyze vast amounts of information, parse it into indexes, helping organize it by categories of what you are looking for, and helping to return useful information from the web.
Google is so fast at parsing the data, they can return up to 3.44 million results in 0.28 seconds! Read More
What do you see when you review your “Google My Business” page?
You hope there is accurate information, plenty of positive reviews, and a variety of reasons for customers to check out your products and/or services. Read More
Do you know the difference between a 301 and 302 redirect? While they might seem similar, the two have different functions to ensure your website works correctly.
To help you understand how to use these two redirects for your website, we want to review them in detail, then explain how they can affect your search engine optimization strategy. Read More
Do you own a local business? Are you looking for a way to generate more interest online? If so, an important first step in any local SEO strategy is to claim and verify your local business’ Google My Business (GMB) listing.
Now’s the time to learn more about Google My Business, including how to optimize this page to increase your chances of showing up in Google’s Local Pack, Local Finder, Google Maps.
Negative SEO is a horrible strategy for another site to use on you. It can devalue your site rankings and traffic, as well as cause months of headaches fixing the problem with Google.
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Did you know there are more than one billion websites on the world wide web?
Along with those that already exist, many more types of content are pushed live every day of the week.
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Small business owners need quality search engine traffic more than ever to drive leads and clients.
The challenge comes you don’t have a complete grasp of how SEO works because you’re not in the industry.
How then can you find a good SEO company to help you with your search strategy?
While there is no secret sauce to finding the right SEO company, below we go through a few recommended steps as well as what to avoid. Read More
It doesn’t matter if you love every ounce of search engine optimization or hate it with ever fiber of your being, nothing changes the fact that it’s important to perform an SEO audit of your website.
Maybe you are among the 95% of marketers who use search engine optimization to enhance loyalty among current customers.
And maybe you agree that SEO has a huge impact on lead generation.
Conversely, you could be part of the group that doesn’t put a lot of stock in the effectiveness of SEO.
You get the point: everybody has a different take on SEO and its impact. Read More
Over the past decade, Google Maps has become one of the most valuable applications for users. However, improving the value of Google Maps requires advanced technology, and the platform updates their technology regularly to work.
Below we discuss how these Google Maps updates work and what technologies are used to enhance them on an on-going basis.
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Do you have a solid SEO strategy in place for your small business?
Do you know exactly what you are doing, down to every last detail?
It doesn’t matter where you stand, you should always make time to learn from others.
One of the best ways to increase your knowledge on SEO, is to read SEO-related blogs. Pick out a few of your favorites, stay current with each update, and then implement any search engine optimization advice that could boost your business. Read More
Did your website drop from the first page of Google to nowhere overnight?
Are you checking your ranking and slowly going down or not showing up at all?
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It is hard to believe Google search is 22 years old now. In the history of search engines, we have to admire the ever-changing Google’s search algorithm that continues to meet the increasing demands of searchers around the world.
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There are many benefits of using the WordPress content management system (CMS) to power your website or blog.
While ease of use will always be at the top of the list, another well known benefit is access to more than 50,000 plugins.
It’s nice to know that you have options, but this can make it difficult to decide on which plugins to install. This is particularly true when it comes to SEO plugins.
Everyone has his or her own idea as to which WordPress SEO plugin is best, especially for Local SEO. If you’re on the fence and unsure of which one(s) to install, here are several that have been popular among site owners and marketing professionals for many years:
Considered the “cream of the crop” by many, Yoast SEO stakes claim to more than five million active installations.
With a history dating back to 2008, Yoast SEO provides a variety of features to help optimize your site for the search engines:
If you only want to use one SEO plugin, Yoast SEO is probably a good place to start.
It may not be as popular as Yoast, but this WordPress plugin still has more than three million active installations.
Believe it or not, All in One SEO Pack is one year older than Yoast, making it one of the oldest plugins (and that’s a good thing).
Some of its top features include:
If Yoast SEO isn’t exactly right for you, there’s a good chance All in One SEO Pack will suit your needs.
Let’s face it: search engine optimization is not for the faint of heart. It takes experience, knowledge, and dedication to reach the top of the search results.
Fortunately, SEO Squirrly is on board with the idea that most people consider themselves a non-SEO expert.
It’s built for beginners, while still giving users everything they need to optimize their site for a high level of success.
SEO Squirrly is all about helping you optimize your content for search engines. While you type your blog posts, the plugin provides SEO tips. This allows you to make changes on the fly, thus saving time and adding much needed confidence to your content marketing strategy.
Content is king and SEO Squirrly is its trusty sidekick!
With more than 200,000 active installations, Shortlinks is anything but an “under the radar” plugin.
It’s every bit as powerful as it sounds, and this excerpt from its official download page explains what it can do for you:
Pretty Links enables you to shorten links using your own domain name (as opposed to using tinyurl.com, bit.ly, or any other link shrinking service)! In addition to creating clean links, Pretty Links tracks each hit on your URL and provides a full, detailed report of where the hit came from, the browser, os and host
The more you use the Shortlinks plugin the more you’ll wonder how you ever lived without it. It can do wonders for any WordPress website or blog.
With more than nine years of solid history, the Google XML Sitemaps plugin has a reputation for being a “must install.”
The way it works is simple: once you download the plugin, it will automatically create XML sitemaps to help search engines – including Google, Bing, and Yahoo – better index your website.
The last thing you want is for your high quality content to go unnoticed by the search engines. The Google XML Sitemaps plugin helps protect against this.
As you can see, there is no shortage of powerful WordPress SEO plugins.
Maybe you only install one of these. Or maybe you find a way to use a handful.
Either way, make sure you learn more about each plugin, as there’s a good chance that one of them can have a positive impact on your website and its search engine rankings.
What’s your favorite WordPress SEO plugin?
For businesses looking for a drag and drop website designer, Wix is an impressive content management platform. With over 3.6 million paid users, small businesses use the platform to promote their company. We want to focus today on one component of this promotions strategy: Wix SEO.
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As somebody who has been in the SEO industry a long time, the question clients ask me the most is “How long before we are #1 in Google?”
Unfortunately the answer is more complicated than the question.
To some extent, SEO gives immediate results in the form of fresh content, better organization, but the majority of businesses are after something a little more long term and visible, usually a prime spot on page one of major search engines.
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Squarespace is one of the most popular CMS systems on the internet.
Millions of businesses and individuals use Squarespace to share their vision.
To share their vision, most websites rely on search traffic.
Below we talk about how to improve your Squarespace SEO as well as the pros and cons of using the platform to increase your traffic. Read More
Did you ever receive valuable information from the Google Snippet in the search results? Then your month got twice as good.
Google decided to double the size of the Google snippet from 160 characters to 320 characters. It seems like a small step.
But it will have major consequences for search marketers looking to convert more impressions on Google into clicks. We want to help you get ahead of the trend now.
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Do you ever ask yourself this question: what do top websites in your industry do that others do not?
Once you know the answer, it becomes easier to adjust your SEO strategy and improve future results.
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Every second of every minute of every day, consumers go online to search for businesses like yours.
With this in mind, there’s an important question to answer: is your website positioned for success?
Some background:
In the early days of the internet, most people subscribed to the “if you build it they will come” strategy.
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If you’re like most businesses, who started a blog in the mid 2000s, you’re probably wondering what should you do if your site has excessive quantities of old blog posts?
Unfortunately, the early years of branded blog content revolved around quantity and keywords, instead of quality and usability by the end user.
At the beginning of the internet era, search results were erratic. Companies like AOL and Yahoo! did their best to interpret what they believed users wanted.
Yet, it was common to get completely unrelated search results.
New companies like Google and Bing started using artificial intelligence (AI) to improve the search algorithms to help customers find better search results.
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Mobile devices are taking over. In fact, more than that three quarters of Americans, 77%, own a smartphone.
That number jumps to almost everyone (92%) when you look at the under 30 crowd.
And nearly 20% of Americans under 30 rely primarily on their smartphones to access the web.
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Search engine optimization never stops.
The ultimate goal of SEO is to improve your site’s ranking so that you can bring the right people in from search engines.
When it comes to SEO, things are always changing. What worked today may not work tomorrow. And what works tomorrow is not likely to produce results a few years in the future.
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Do you have dreams of pushing your website to the top of the search engine rankings for your target keywords?
While Google takes many factors into play when ranking websites, links from other sites remains at the top of the list. This is why it’s so important to focus on building high quality, relevant links.
Many companies struggle with this for one primary reason: they don’t know which links to chase.
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Why Your Site Doesn’t Show Up in Google Search
Is your site not showing up in Google search results?
Test if your site has been indexed by searching for its exact URL or domain name with no other words (ex: http://www.yourdomain.com).
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Are you considering a website redesign or wondering how to generate more leads from your website? There are several critical elements you must never forget to include.
It doesn’t matter if you are designing the first website for your business or taking on a revamp, some details are more important than others. There is a big difference between an “average, run of the mill” business website and one that is built to achieve great results.
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Are you failing at SEO?
The vast majority of people don’t click past the first page of search results, so it’s not enough for your site to simply be indexed by Google, Bing, and Yahoo.
Making SEO mistakes happens, but not fixing them can have a domino effect on your online marketing strategy and larger marketing plan.
Here are 12 mistakes that can make your SEO efforts impossible:
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Did your website drop from Google page 1 to nowhere?
Are you checking your ranking, and slowly going down or not showing up at all?
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Do you consider search engine optimization (SEO) a waste of time and money? Are you struggling to understand why search optimization is important to your business?
If you answered yes to either question, you’re in the same position as many other company owners, entrepreneurs, and marketing professionals.
However, it’s important that you don’t continue down this path. While a lot has changed in the “SEO game” as of late, it’s every bit as important today as it was five years ago.
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Got Fred?
Every couple of months Google rolls out an update that has webmaster’s deleting pages or high-fiving co-workers.
It seems on March 8th, Google rolled out another one thats being called Fred.
Some sites saw their traffic drop by as much as 90%.
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If you read my blog you know I write a lot about SEO.
Why? What’s the big deal? Why am I obsessed with SEO?
On the personal side, I write about optimization because, well, I really enjoy helping businesses grow.
This leads me to my next question!
Is your website suffering from too much of a good thing?
Well, if you are reading this blog post, its very possible you are suffering from over-optimization!
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Mobile devices, such as smartphones and tablets, are gaining market share.
They are now the go-to device for communicating, emailing, social networking, checking the time, killing time, taking photos and finding and researching products, services and businesses.
Consumers spend 15+ hours per week researching on their smartphone and on average visit mobile websites 6 times according to research by Nielsen.
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Do you want to attract visitors who are looking for what you offer? Track ROI down to the penny? You can do this with Google AdWords.
Google AdWords is often overlooked by businesses because it can be expensive. Like any form of advertising, pay per click (PPC) is not for every business, but PPC offers a number of advantages over other forms of advertising. Read More
Who says you have to spend a lot money on Facebook advertising to grow your business? In the early days of Facebook, there was no place for companies trying to engage with their audience and/or land new customers.
Things have changed over the years, and now Facebook for Business is one of the most powerful tools for companies of all sizes, spanning a variety of industries.
If you are unsure of how to use Facebook to boost your business, you are not alone. However, you will be on the outside looking in if you neglect to consider this strategy.
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Conversion rate optimization. It is enough to drive you nuts. At the same time, mastering this part of your business could boost revenue and profit to new heights. How does that sound?
Many people think conversion rate optimization is all about one thing: content. While this is a big part of your website, you cannot afford to overlook the importance of design.
The wrong web design elements can hold your site back from achieving great success. Conversely, making a few changes may be all it takes to reach your goals.
Enough about the importance of conversion rate optimization. Let’s examine five aspects of your site’s design that are killing your conversion rate:
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What is trust? In the digital domain trust is revenue.
Every business wants to increase sales, revenue and customer loyalty.
In an effort to do so, companies will offer promotions, create social media contests, and advertise their business.
All of these things are good, but make sure you have a trustworthy website.
Trust is tough to earn. With the possibility of phishing scams, malware—or even just plain poor customer service, people are much more wary with websites than ever before.
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10 Blog Topics your Business Should be Talking About
Burned out on blogging?
Anybody can create and publish a high quality blog post from time to time.
Only the best are able to churn out meaningful content on a regular basis.
At times, you may struggle to find topics to blog about. This is only natural. This is something that every business blogger runs into at some point in time.
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Why You Should Leverage Retargeting Ads
Everyone who has a website for their business asks themselves the same question:
“How do I get more customers?”
Even if your website does not have a lot of traffic, your SEO strategy can be amplified, across the internet, for fractions of a cent per impression with retargeting ads.
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6 Quick SEO Tips for Beginners (That Actually Work)
Success in search engines, as with most things in business, comes down to understanding SEO basics.
With that in mind, here are 6 SEO tips, and online marketing essentials that nobody wants to believe, but everyone should follow. Read More
Hyphens (-) or Underscores (_) in URLs?
As you build your website from the ground up, you’re faced with a variety of decisions. For this reason, it’s only natural to overlook a few important details that can have a major impact on your search engine rankings.
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A lot of people are familiar with and have considered being found in Google search results.
But, not as many have thought about other search engines that can deliver visitors. Read More
How to Add Your Website to Google Analytics
During your search engine optimization (SEO) campaign, Google Analytics is a free tool SEO professionals use to track your performance by showing how people are finding your site in search engines and how they are navigating your content.
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How hard is it to come up at the top of Google search results?
Without question, the rules for effective search engine optimization has evolved to a more complex marketing channel. As marketing professionals we need to refine our SEO processes multiple times a year.
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How do you find the best keywords for my business? This is a question that clients always ask me.
They want to understand exactly how keywords work, and how they will make back their money from search engine optimization and pay per click campaigns.
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Being visible in search results is more important than ever right? But that still doesn’t mean Search Engine Optimization (SEO) will benefit your business.
It’s only beneficial to invest in SEO if being No.1, for that keyword, will generate financial benefits for your business. Anything else is a waste of time, and money.
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The simple blog headline haunts all people who write online. You’ll hear how much time you should spend on a headline, but doesn’t it seem like a little overkill after writing an article that took a couple hours of your time?
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How to Earn Your Business $1.5 Million with SEO
Have you been wondering how much SEO can generate for your business? Getting to $1,500,000 is a difficult task. Surely, I have something up my sleeve, right?
Well, I’ll let you in on a little secret. I have no clue how much money your business can make from search engine optimization. But its more than $1.5 million.
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Are you running for election?
It’s difficult to create content that resonates with voters, but it’s even more difficult to create content that inspires action.
Considering the number of people who turn online to find information about candidates, SEO is a viable strategy for political campaigns in the digital age.
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How Often Does Google Update Search Results?
Is your website not showing up in Google search results?
Or, did you recently make a change to your site and noticed that Google didn’t crawl index your recent content updates?
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When potential customers are looking for pest control services, 88 percent do research on search engines according to Pest Control Technology.
If you want to reach that audience, optimizing your website presence is important. SEO is essential in turning online traffic into potential pest control customers.
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Find out if you’re making mistakes in Google. Get Graded Today
August 13, 2019
