I’ve been hearing some people in the search engine optimization industry say that links aren’t important anymore. That the search engines are moving away from links in favor of other signals. It makes for interesting conversation, unfortunately, recent moves by Google say the exact opposite is true. Just recently we saw guest blog posting once again devalued and two high-profile guest blogging communities slapped with severe penalties. If links weren’t still key, Google wouldn’t be spending the time and effort to combat them. Matt Cutts, the head of Google’s webspam…

Times have changed. Dramatically. Gone are the days of relying on the Yellow Pages to help customers find you. Today, creating a web presence is crucial to businesses large and small and is easily one of the most important things you can do for your brand. Of course, just building a website isn’t enough. Sure, in a perfect world the “build it and they will come” mindset would work, but the truth is, there are many other factors that need to be considered. This is where search engine optimization (SEO)…

When you work in the world of SEO, you get used to seeing the same issues repeat themselves throughout different sites. In fact, there are some issues you can almost expect to see on a site that has never been optimized or touched by an SEO. Being aware of these common SEO issues is a critical start to making sure your website earns high visibility in the search results. What are these SEO problems, and how are they corrected? 1. Canonicalization Confused already? It is a long word. Canonicalization refers…

Search prominence doesn’t happen by accident. No, often it happens thanks to an SEO company working behind the scenes using carefully-crafted techniques to help that site do better in the search engine rankings. Some tactics have continued to work well over the years, some have lost their luster and a few may violate the Google guidelines and cause problems for your site if you choose to use them. With an index reliant on quality, it’s no surprise Google has made it its mission to fight against techniques that violate its…

SEOs bashing PPC experts. PPC pros making jokes about SEOs. It’s SEO vs PPC turf wars and it has to stop. Today, we bring together Senior Web Strategist Tim Jensen and Director of Digital Marketing Shawn Rosko to either hash it out or bring the peace. Tim’s up first. Tim Speciality: PPC For those of us in the digital marketing world, keeping up with social media and industry blogs is an absolute necessity to stay on top of current trends. However, it’s not all good news out there. I’ve also…