If you’re a small business with a brick and mortar store, your SEO strategy will look slightly different from national brands. Since 46% of all Google searches are local, focusing on local SEO can be your best bet for driving leads. Why is local SEO so important? According to @ThinkWithGoogle, 76% of people who search for local...

The world is a weird, scary place. Ups and downs, highs and lows. It’s all there.  Sometimes you go left when you should have shimmied right.  In the end, you just need to keep moving. Setbacks are normal, and if everything goes your way 24/7, you might just be playing things too safe. I don’t have an SEO point here. This is just...

If you’re seeing serious changes in your site rankings, join the club. It’s been widely reported that a phantom Google update dramatically changed placements for a variety of sites across several industries. Google has neither confirmed or denied this change. What happened to that transparency they promised? Either way, this is...

The SEO community is buzzing after a potential Google algorithm update this week. We really are the gossip queens of the marketing world. There’s nothing an SEO loves more than some sweet algorithm drama. So, have you seen anything weird with your site? I won’t tell anyone. The News Warner Bros changed the title of the new Harley...

Test paralysis. So many teams I’ve worked with have suffered from this problem. They simply default to testing every idea to death, regardless of common sense. Sometimes it’s institutional — if you don't test your manager will grind the project to a halt (did you even test this yet!?) Sometimes, testing is used to mask a lack of...

Big week for SEO news, with Verizon entering the search engine market, and the January 2020 core update continuing to rock rankings across industries. How do you stay above water with all this SEO volatility? Focus on quality and experience. Write for your audience first, then fill in the lines with SEO best practices. You can’t...

Backlink Breaker is back! Took a bit of an extended holiday vacation due to the birth of my daughter. Which is awesome. Now I’m just easing into that SEOdad life. It’s pretty much exactly the same as before, but with -80% sleep and 150% more dirty diapers. 

There’s a short answer and a long answer to the question, “Should I blog for my business?” The short answer is YES! The longer answer: if you have a web presence, want more users to come to your site, and want customers to view you as an authority in your field, then YES! If you haven’t run a blog before, getting started can seem...

The Wall Street Journal wrote an incredibly stupid, and outright false article about Google and SEO last week. If you’re interested, here’s the link, but it’s behind a paywall and complete garbage. Search Engine Land did a nice concise roundup of all the things WSJ got wrong, which is a much better read. 

Authenticity is an increasingly valuable asset. For SEO, writing, marketing... everything. You can’t fake authenticity. You can’t steal authenticity. It immediately generates a competitive advantage that your audience will embrace. Embrace authenticity. If you work on a project or with a brand that pushes you away from...

I’m back!  Honestly, it’s been a struggle to keep up on this every week since as we've added more and more new clients. It’s been amazing to watch this little agency grow, but there’s also a lot of growing pains. I can’t do everything myself and still keep up. Luckily, we just hired an amazing new SEO Account Manager (and will be...

I studied politics in college. I wanted to change the world. I believed that if I could master the machinations behind modern political systems, I could expose them for what they really were — manipulators of human psyche for the gains of the elite.  But mostly, I wanted to become a journalist so I could get paid to travel to...

I’m back! Need to take a few weeks off the SEO news beat to focus on client work. Our little agency is growing, fast. It feels good, but it also means long days and weird nights. I missed the free, public therapy writing Backlink Breakers provided, so here we are, back to the SEO news-update-grind, with 30% less sleep and 33.33%...

Google’s finally cracking down on the review rich snippet spam that’s been plaguing search results for years. This will not only help reduce self-serving review markup in SERP, but Google has finally provided clear guidelines for writing code that’s eligible for rich snippet placement. Huge win! I can give back that crying towel...

Why do we do what we do? We should all take a minute and really think about it. Not to uncover some life changing epiphany, but just to stop — it’s always go. And go. And go. Maybe the simple act of stopping, and looking back at yourself, can be valuable on its own. So, why are you doing all this work today? The News Google will...

Lucky number 20, let’s dive in people.

I took vacation, but the world kept turning. Weird.  The News Chat may soon become an essential player in your lifecycle marketing mix. According to a survey from Drift and SurveyMonkey Audience, over 40% of consumers expected a response from a chatbot within five seconds of the original interaction. While email and telephone are...

SEO life can be tough, but at least we don’t have to deal with Facebook Ad Manager. Amirite? Anyway, lots of good news this week  — Google stepped out of its shell with some candid information about indexing bugs, and the content marketing world came to life with with some unexpected Tumblr news and some big podcast marketing...

Everything felt good this week. Positive late summer vibes bleeding directly into the digital world. Some super useful updates across Google’s search and web properties will help industrious SEOs and Content Marketers, while healthy business news from Pinterest and Yoast combine for a generally excellent time for everyone.  The...

Perspective Friday! Facebook generated $16.6 billion in Q2 ad revenue. That’s more than three times the $5 billion penalty they owe the FTC for privacy violations. Facebook is totally dead guys.  The News Meanwhile, Google laughs at Facebook’s numbers, reporting $32.6 billion in Q2 advertising revenue (22% YoY growth).  Google...