Today I’m answering a great question that I saw in an SEO forum, “Can you do SEO without paid SEO tools?” When we say, “paid SEO software”, it refers to tools like Ahrefs, SEMrush, Moz Pro, Majestic, Mangools, and many others. I believe that you can do SEO without any tools except for Google itself. […]
Can You Do SEO Without Paid Tools?
Did the Google Search Quality Raters Visit Your Site?
What are the Google Quality Search Rater Guidelines? They are a checklist given to Google independent contractors, who are tasked with scoring the search results that Google returns for certain search phrases. If you want to see the Search Quality Rater Guidelines, there’s a link here. They were last updated publicly on July 20, 2018. […]
“We Have 100 Google Reviews, But We’re Not in the 3-Pack Map?”
Published March 10th, 2019 No Comments on “We Have 100 Google Reviews, But We’re Not in the 3-Pack Map?”I saw an interesting question recently: a mattress company with over 100 Google reviews wants to know why they don’t come up in the 3 pack map. When they search for mattress company related keywords close to their location, the Google 3 pack map shows businesses farther away. These other companies have far less Google […]
Should You Change the Publish Date of a Post for SEO?
Today’s question is, “What criteria does Google look at when they are trying to figure out the last time a blog post or article was updated?” “I have some blog posts that need updating. Some need a few tweaks. Others need major overhauls.” “But I need to know what they are looking for when reconsidering […]
Why Google Rewrites Your Titles and Descriptions in Search Results
Published January 31st, 2019 6 Comments on Why Google Rewrites Your Titles and Descriptions in Search ResultsIn certain cases, Google will rewrite your title tags and meta descriptions in search results. We look at some reasons the Google algorithm will choose to do this.
“How Much SEO Boost Does a Mobile-Friendly Site Give You?”
Published January 18th, 2019 No Comments on “How Much SEO Boost Does a Mobile-Friendly Site Give You?”I want to talk about a thread I saw in one of the Reddit SEO channels, a question about the ROI of a mobile-friendly website. This is a paraphrase of what the original poster asked, but it went something like this. “Our website is not mobile-friendly right now. If we make our website mobile-friendly, how […]
A Tale of Two Companies
Today, I’m going to tell you the story of two companies. Company A and Company B were both founded in the same year, and sold a similar product line. Both companies went trade shows, built a distributor network, and were making sales calls every day. Each company had a decent looking website when they launched, […]
Using HARO for SEO Backlinks
Google has said publicly that two of the most important SEO ranking factors are the content of your website and the link profile of your website. Links from other websites to yours have been as a proxy for site authority and relevance by search engines for many years. In order for incoming links to have […]
Presentation: Deep Dive on SEO (for Nevada County Online)
Published November 4th, 2018 5 Comments on Presentation: Deep Dive on SEO (for Nevada County Online)Recently, I had a chance to do a presentation for the Nevada County Online Meetup. This was a deep dive on SEO, which included a presentation, and answering questions from the audience, during a lunch and learn. Fortunately, this presentation was videotaped for posterity, and is available on the NCO YouTube channel. What I wanted […]
Searcher Intent and SEO: The Invisible Ranking Factor
What is searcher intent? Searcher intent is the task that a user wants to accomplish at the end of a Google search. By pattern matching what’s already ranking, we increase the probability a given page will rank higher.