Posted by MiriamEllis A thousand thanks to the 1,411 respondents who gave of their time and knowledge in contributing to this major survey! You’ve created a vivid image of what real-life, everyday local search marketers and local business owners are observing on a day-to-day basis, what strategies are working for them right now, and where…

Posted by rjonesx. Correlation studies have been a staple of the search engine optimization community for many years. Each time a new study is released, a chorus of naysayers seem to come magically out of the woodwork to remind us of the one thing they remember from high school statistics — that “correlation doesn’t mean…

Posted by -LaurelTaylor- Around 2005 or so, corporate blogs became the thing to do. Big players in the business world touted that such platforms could “drive swarms of traffic to your main website, generate more product sales” and even “create an additional stream of advertising income” (Entrepreneur Magazine circa 2006). With promises like that, what…

Posted by DiTomaso Organic and paid search aren’t always at odds; there are times when there’s benefit in knowing how they work together. Taking the time to know the ins and outs of AdWords can improve your rankings and on-site experience. In today’s edition of Whiteboard Friday, our fabulous guest host Dana DiTomaso explains how…

Posted by Whitespark It has been another year (and a half) since the last publication of the Local Search Ranking Factors, and local search continues to see significant growth and change. The biggest shift this year is happening in Google My Business signals, but we’re also seeing an increase in the importance of reviews and…

Posted by MiriamEllis “American business is overwhelmingly small business.” – SBE Council Small businesses have created 61.8% of net new jobs in the US since the early 1990s. Local business is big business. Let’s celebrate this in honor of Small Business Saturday with 3 strategies that will support independent business owners this week, and in…

Posted by randfish If you have an audience on YouTube, are you doing everything you can to reach them? Inspired by a large-scale study from Justin Briggs, Rand covers the top factors to invest in when it comes to YouTube SEO in this week’s episode of Whiteboard Friday. Click on the whiteboard image above to…

Posted by Emily.Potter Google’s increasing dominance of their own search engine results pages (SERPs) has kicked up a lot of panic and controversy in the SEO industry. As Barry Adams pointed out on Twitter recently, this move by Google is not exactly new, but it does feel like Google has suddenly placed their foot on…

Posted by tomcasano If your goal is to grow your organic traffic, you have to think about SEO in terms of “product/market fit.” Keyword research is the “market” (what users are actually searching for) and content is the “product” (what users are consuming). The “fit” is optimization. To grow your organic traffic, you need your…

Posted by willcritchlow Questions about URL structure and information architecture are easy to get confused, but it’s an important distinction to maintain. IA tends to be more impactful than URL decisions alone, but advice given around IA often defaults to suggestions on how to best structure your URLs. In this Whiteboard Friday, Will Critchlow helps…