Directive Blogs

Have you been running those free online SEO audits, and have been disappointed with the results? Instead of fearing your website is trash, take a moment to understand the pros and cons of a free online SEO audit.

There is no denying that SEO can seem to be a little... nebulous at times. However, there are many ways to measure if SEO is working for your business: your analytics, search position, and of course conversions. Despite these tangible measurements, many businesses don’t feel their SEO is working. Before you call it quits, here are some questions to answer before you give up on your SEO.

Your business’ online web presence is directly related to how extensive your SEO strategy is. As you by now know, a good way to improve and manage your SEO is your business’ Google Business profile.

While SEO is critical in helping your website rank higher in the search results, long gone are the days where you focus solely on your keywords. Backlinks are one of the numerous SEO tactics you should explore to drive traffic to your site. Take a moment to learn why backlinks should be a part of your SEO marketing strategy. 

Looking to rank your website higher, but not sure where to start? Here are fourteen frequently asked questions that should better help you understand what SEO is and how it can help your business attract traffic to your website, increase your rank, and ultimately generate leads.

The goal of SEO and marketing is to drive traffic to your website for you to introduce them to your services and convince them to take a chance with you. However, while SEO can drive traffic to your site, it can’t make visitors stay if your website is out of touch with user intent.

When it comes to search results, all search is local. The more connected you are to your community, the better your chances are to rank higher in local search results. While there are a variety of steps to increase your local search marketing, the most basic, but critically important, is to ensure that Google knows where your business is. If your NAP (Name, Address, Phone Number) isn’t consistent throughout your presence on the internet, there is a chance that you may not appear in your localized search results.

Marketing your business may seem like a huge endeavor, or that you need to be a marketing mastermind to actually effectively market your business, but that is not true. If done right, marketing can be done without any stress or hassle. Where do you start? With a plan of course!

Search engine optimization, or SEO, is a critical consideration when building a website. After all, higher search rankings bring in traffic, which is exactly what you want your website to receive - otherwise, what's the point? There are, of course, different tactics one may implement to improve their position in rankings, with varying degrees of moral standing. These practices are divided into two subsets, white hat and black hat tactics.

I do apologize for that awful pun, but the Google Panda update has caused a huge stir in the SEO world. Google updates their algorithm all the time, but every once in a while they have a big update that completely changes the game. Google Panda was a massive update by Google to their search engine to limit content scrapers (people who steal content and host it on their own sites in the hopes of getting revenue from ads). Many legit sites saw a major drop in traffic and ranking, and Panda has changed (drastically even) the way SEO works. The latest update is starting to clear the fog, and Google has been explaining their reasoning behind the Panda Update.

Everyone who uses the Internet has used a Search Engine.  It’s nearly impossible not to.  Google, the leading Search Engine, has practically integrated itself into the English Language; it’s not uncommon to swap the words ‘search’ and ‘google’ (don’t know something?  Just Google it!) when talking about using a search engine.  The other leading search engines are Yahoo, and Microsoft’s latest incarnation, Bing, but there are countless others.  Search Engines generally work the same way, but we’ll use Google for example:

Everyone is talking about Social Media and using it for their business.  The benefits are pretty clear; you should be using social networks to market your organization, but how does that affect your search engine ranking?

Links from relevant and important sites have always been a great way to get traffic & acceptance for a website, but how does Google rate links from platforms like Twitter and Facebook to your website?