Networking for Small Businesses in Raleigh and the Triangle Small businesses definitely have had their challenges over the last year. This has required a lot of creativity and hard work from business owners and they should definitely be given a lot of credit. While the way many conduct business has …
Reviews are one of the easiest things for your customers to provide and still one of the marketing wins that businesses struggle with. It is not that they don’t want to say nice things, but they are busy and it is never top of mind. This will help them by …
Let your friends know how they can help For everyone who has ever started up their own company, one of the first things you do is tell everyone about your new business. Inevitably you will always hear the same reply from friend and family. “Let me know how I can …
Where would we be without our friends. Since they were so gracious to offer to help you out, here is a simple step by step tutorial that will take 30 seconds of your time to invite friends on Facebook to like a business profile page. Inviting Facebook friends from desktop …
If there is one term that gets thrown around more than any other in marketing it is the term keyword. The improper usage in everyday discussion will often cause me to grit my teeth. I do not fault people who genuinely do not know what they are, but I do …
Raleigh List of Top Keywords Whenever the topic of keywords come up, people are always curious to know what people are searching for in Google. While there is a lot of data to discern when putting together an SEO plan, sometimes it is just interesting to look at the raw …
Updated blog since first published to include results at bottom. For the last few years I have been very frustrated with GoDaddy and their unwillingness to provide SSL certification to sites on a website at no or at least a reasonable fixed cost. The only option they had were paid …
It is impossible to discuss marketing trends that are occurring right now without referring to Covid. This one event has had more impact on our industry than any other in the last twenty years. It has been transformational and without putting to fine a point on it, it has changed …
The Much Anticipated 2020 Christmas Catalogs Have Been Mailed Amazon has printed and mailed it’s new Holiday Catalog for 2020. Click the button to download the PDF. 93 pages of shopping and fun activities for kids. You can also find the gift list from the catalog right on Amazon.com Click …
Over time you will find a need to remove a URL on your website from Google’s search results. It can be for any number of reasons. But most often times it is because you accidentally indexed content that belonged behind a paywall. Or maybe a website has been hacked and …
The stores have come out with their Christmas promotions and now the 2020 Target catalog is here. There are 88 pages and it is jam packed with holiday gifts for all ages. They may have these in the stores, but I am unsure if you can request one be mailed. …
Walmart Christmas Catalog Some people just like having a physical, printed catalog around at Christmas time. This year it is 56 pages front to back and guides you with some of the most fun and have-to-have gifts. Brand name toys and games along with stickers and even a neat Scan …
Just like any industry trade, marketing departments and agencies need tools. Luckily there is a wide variety to choose from online. Some SEO professionals have paid tools and often aren’t even sure why. Over the years we try them and collect them and once in a while review the company …
Client – “Can you guarantee me first page rankings on Google for my website?” Me – “No, no I can’t.” Yes, it is difficult being a salesperson in digital marketing. SEO is the toughest because I cannot, and should not promise…anything. I stand before a prospect and I can give all of …
Lessons Learned From Facebook Marketing If your entire marketing plan is dependent upon one way of being able to deliver leads to drive sales, sell product, whatever the case may be then you are holding your business hostage to other platforms. Years ago Facebook allowed business pages to show up …
Everyone has heard of Google Analytics. It is one of the best free online tools available. You add it to your site, and track the traffic to your pages. Now one of the lesser know free tools from Google is Search Console (formerly known as Webmaster Tools). When digital marketers …
Setting Up an Online Store Does Not Have to be Expensive Click and Mortar refers to the idea of having a physical store location(s) and also having a way for people to buy online. Smaller retail stores often think it is not worthwhile to have ecommerce on their website. This …
My Website Traffic Dropped When you launch a new website redesign launches, there can be all sorts of issues that occur for ranking and traffic. If thought through and well planned, these issues can usually be addressed ahead of time and perhaps even increase rankings when relaunched. But sometimes your …
Since your Facebook business page is separate from your personal profile, it starts out with zero likes. So of course everyone asks how to quickly get lots of likes so the page does not appear so sad to visitors. Here is a quick and easy way to get people to …
When a downturn in the economy occurs, inevitably many people consider starting a small business. There can be many reasons for this from not being able to find that type of employment, not aking enough money to feeling trapped in their current job because other companies are not hiring. Sometimes …
There are literally hundreds and to some extent thousands of social media platforms online where you can promote your business. Social media accounts set up for your business can have a cumulative effect on building your SEO strength by establishing a stronger online presence. They are one of the easier …
How Much Does SEO Cost? As an overall budget, businesses should invest at least 5% of annual revenue on just SEO. If you are spending less than $10,000 for the year, you should have your SEO company do the work in a two month time period. They will unlikely do …
It is free It provides you the opportunity to show up near the top of page 1 on Google in a competitive market Believe it or not, it does not even require your business have a website to show up Google attempted to create a social media platform years ago …
SEO and 301 Redirects You have launched the new website and over the last few days traffic has taken a nosedive. Your analytics looks like a graph from the Dow Jones on a very bad day. The web design firm assures you this always happens with a new website and …
Agencies and internal marketing departments of companies have been managing brands in a similar manner since before the internet. Many digital marketers believe that since Google and other search engines came along, there is no need to market brands in the same way and all that it now takes is …
As with most of us in the industry, we collect domains like baseball cards and work with many client domains in a mixture of hosting, email and sometimes redirecting entire domains for SEO purposes. I was recently troubleshooting an issue in this last scenario and ran across a new practice …
Pay Per Click Advertising vs Search Engine Optimization Organic SEO (Search Engine Optimization) and Paid Search (Google Ads) are two different marketing efforts to produce the same goal: to have your website found in the SERP’s (search engine result pages). Deciding which one is better than the other really depends …
Most ranking factors fall into two categories for Search Engine Optimization; Content and Backlinks. Since search engines crawl every page on the web that they can discover, they found over the years it was useful to pick up other signals and information while they were categorizing this content. When a …
The Correct Spelling of the Word: ecommerce How is this word that has been around for almost 30 years now, actually spelled? Over the years there have been plenty of variations by many sources to settle this question. Let’s check out some of the old reliable sources then. Webster’s Dictionary …
Do You Own Your Website? It doesn’t happen often but once in a while, I will sit down to have a conversation with a potential client who would like to discuss the prospect of having us do their marketing. Within this discussion, the topic of hosting their website comes up. …
We’re proud to support the this year’s (12th!) Internet Summit, taking over the Raleigh Convention Center this November 12-14, 2019. Join us and 2200+ of your peers — and dig deep into the latest digital marketing trends and practices from leading brands. Discount Code: RTPSEO Here’s what’s in store for …
Getting started in SEO You may be a small business owner in need of more leads, a college student wanting to learn more about Digital Marketing, or someone just trying to start out in the industry. Sooner or later, you asked yourself the question…where do I start learning SEO? The …
Whether a company gains a new partner or feels the need to rebrand themselves, many businesses from time to time choose to change their name and/or the domain of their website. While updating your website, marketing materials, and even the sign on your building can often be top of mind, …
“Black hat SEO” is a phrase to describe various techniques used by webmasters in order to rank high in search engines that violate search engine guidelines. Each search engine have their own guidelines to help webmasters get their site included in search engine indexes. In order to get included a …
