This Is What an SEO Spammer Looks Like
This is an actual email that one of my SEO clients received a few days ago: Hi I recently visited your website during a routine survey of sites which may be capable of higher search engine performance through Search Engine Optimization (SEO). Efficient SEO brings an increase in online sales or leads. I hope this information may be of use to you, if not then I apologies for any inconvenience caused. So, here's a summary of my findings on your site: - Your Google Page rank is 0/10 - You have 0/10 back-links - Your website has 0/15 pages indexed I'm going somewhere with all this... I wanted to do my homework and research your website because I want to show you that I have applied some research to your website before contacting you with my proposal. We are in the business of offering 3 benefits for your website: 1) Diagnosing and fixing all issues with your website 2) Ranking your site to the top of the search results 3) Significantly increasing your online revenue levels. Let me know if you would like to further information by email or we could schedule a call. I look forward to your feedback Regards XXXXXXXXXXXX This is clearly a spam or fishing email from someone trying CLICK HERE TO READ MORE...
Is a Paid Blog Review Worth It?
I’m on the fence about paid blog reviews. I think one every now and again is a great way to get valuable inbound links, generate new visitors to your site, build your online brand presence and more, but you have to be careful to not rely too heavily on paid reviews. If you are thinking about paying for a blog review, it’s important that you pick a blog that will actually help your brand. Here are five things to look at when considering a paid blog review: 1. The WHOIS info for the site to see if it is hosted in the U.S. and how long it has been registered. Best practice SEO dictates that you stick with aged and US-based sites, as these tend to be more CLICK HERE TO READ MORE...
Why is Ranking Well NOT A Good SEO Metric? – SEO Video Lesson
The search results are getting increasingly personalized. This means that a person's search history, social signals, location and other factors are all influencing what kind of results they see in the SERPs. Because ranking can fluctuate from hour to hour ranking is not a good SEO metric. Watch this week's SEO video lesson! For more Internet marketing lessons from Nick Stamoulis, check out the Brick Marketing Internet marketing video lesson CLICK HERE TO READ MORE...
Will Penguin Target Keyword Rich Domains Next?
Many site owners are still feeling the effects of Google’s Penguin update , which went live on April 24th. In my opinion, that rollout is just the first in a long line of Penguin updates to come. Since Panda launched in February of last year there have been about 15 subsequent Panda updates; I firmly believe Google will do the same thing with Penguin. So the question then becomes, what’s next for Penguin? Based on what I’ve seen so far, I’m willing to bet a Penguin update that goes after keyword rich domains can’t be too far off. To me, a Google attack on keyword rich domains seems like the most logical step. Panda targeted sites with low-quality content and Penguin really CLICK HERE TO READ MORE...
How Does Reading Other Blogs Help Your SEO?
For many marketers and website owners, our daily to-do list is already taking up the majority of our day. However, all you need is 15 minutes each day (I like to do it first thing in the morning or while eating lunch) to read a few other industry blogs. Why waste your time reading other peoples’ blogs? Well, aside from using their experiences and expertise to further your own knowledge and keep up with industry trends, reading other blogs can actually end up helping your own SEO. Here are a few ways reading other blogs can help your SEO: 1. Inspiration for your own content marketing. One of the biggest complaints I hear from my SEO clients is that they don’t know what to write about for CLICK HERE TO READ MORE...
Is Bidding on Trademarked Brands a Viable SEM Tactic?
The rationale behind bidding on trademarked brands is something like this: if I bid on my competitor’s name than my company’s PPC ad will show up in any branded searches for my competitor. Since my competitor and I are going after the same target audience, this is good way to piggyback on the brand value of my competition and drive targeted leads to my own site. Full disclosure, bidding on a competitor’s brand for my own PPC campaign is an SEM tactic that I once tested. I tried it out for a month or two, but I quickly realized a few very important things. First, when someone is searching directly for a brand they are just about ready to pull the trigger and convert. My CLICK HERE TO READ MORE...
How to Prevent Your Website From Going Offline
There is nothing more heart stopping for a site owner than seeing that their website has been taken offline for some reason. Sometimes it’s not even your fault—your hosting company might be performing maintenance on their servers or is experiencing technical difficulties—but that doesn’t really make you feel any better about the situation. Every hour your website is offline the more damaging it is to your online business. Every wasted second means potential visitors can’t access your site even if they wanted to, which means your company has no way of making money online. Site’s that are down for an extended time might even find themselves facing serious SEO ramifications that can take a long time to overcome. Here are three ways you can help prevent CLICK HERE TO READ MORE...
Connect with Better Fans, Not Just More Fans – SEO Video Tip
When it comes to social media marketing, it's more important to focus on connecting with the right audience, not just getting as many fans and followers as possible. Too often site owners scramble to increase the amount of connections in their social network and lose sight of their real online goals, which is to drive visitors and increase business on their site. Watch this week's SEO video lesson! For more social media marketing lessons from Nick Stamoulis, check out the Brick Marketing social media marketing video lesson CLICK HERE TO READ MORE...
Does Facebook Marketing Help Your Website or Facebook?
Let me start off by saying that I think social media marketing is an incredibly important component of any inbound marketing campaign. Alongside SEO and content marketing, social media marketing helps build your overall online brand presence, connects your company with new and interested consumers, and strengthens your industry authority and more. Without a doubt, Facebook is still the 800 pound gorilla of the social networking world and should be incorporated into every company’s social media marketing plan in one way or another. But in the last year or so I’ve noticed a growing trend when it comes to Facebook marketing—companies are giving their Facebook profiles a lot of “face time” on all of their marketing platforms—TV commercials, radio ads and print ads invite consumers to CLICK HERE TO READ MORE...
Get That Content Published!
A lot of site owners and marketers, especially B2B marketers, have a hard time developing a consistent content marketing strategy. Many feel that they have nothing to say or that their audience isn’t interested in hearing from them—this is not the case! Your target audience, regardless of industry, is looking for more information. They want best practice tips and guidelines, product reviews and demos, industry trends and more. Every business exists to solve a problem (otherwise they don’t stay in business for very long!) and your content shows potential customers that your brand is the best solution. That being said, stop worrying about what you’re going to say and start publishing! While it’s important to publish quality, relevant content, many site owners get so bogged down CLICK HERE TO READ MORE...
Natural Link Building and SEO – SEO Video Lesson
Natural link building occurs just like it says, naturally! A positive product of all your SEO and online marketing efforts, natural link building happens when other sites and blogs willingly link to your content. Natural links weren't asked or traded for--they happened because you have great content! Natural links build up overtime, so it's still important to invest in a link building campaign, but natural links are a great addition to your link portfolio. Watch this week's SEO video lesson here! For more link building lessons from Nick Stamoulis, check out the Brick Marketing link building video lesson CLICK HERE TO READ MORE...
If the Web is Immediate, Why is SEO Slow?
SEO is a marathon, not a sprint. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again—SEO is a slow, ongoing process that you just can’t rush. This is the number one SEO lesson I strive to teach my clients. On more than one occasion I’ve been asked by a full-service SEO or SEO consulting client, “But Nick. I can publish a blog post/article/video/changes to my website and it goes live immediately. Why doesn’t SEO happen immediately too?” There are actually a few factors that impact how quickly your SEO takes effect. Here are 3 of them: Too much content for it all to be immediately searchable. Yes, you can publish a 100 blog posts at once if you want, hoping your content CLICK HERE TO READ MORE...
Domain Registration Best Practices – SEO Video Lesson
When you register a new website, always try to register it for at least 10 years. This is important for a few reasons. First off, it shows you long term commitment to the search engines, which will help build trust. Secondly, it ensures that you won't lose your website should the registration renewal deadline pass without you remembering. Watch this week's SEO video lesson from Nick Stamoulis here! For more Internet marketing lessons from Nick Stamoulis, check out the Brick Marketing Internet marketing video lesson CLICK HERE TO READ MORE...
The Wrong Things to Think When Hiring an SEO Company
Fair warning, some of these thoughts may come across as a little ridiculous (especially for site owners that understand SEO), but after 13 years of Internet Marketing I’ve run into my fair share of ridiculous! If you are looking to hire an SEO company, here are six ideas you don’t want popping into your head during the process. 1. They’re an SEO firm, if they say my site isn’t doing well they must be right! Believe it or not, I probably get one or two calls a week from other SEO companies telling me that Brick Marketing is doing poorly in the search engines and isn’t generating enough visitors. First off, you’d think an SEO company would do a little better research before they CLICK HERE TO READ MORE...
Use Broad Keywords to Start Your Keyword Research – SEO Video Tip
It's important when you start your keyword research that your first few keyword lists are created using a broad keyword as the seed. If you start with too long tail or niche of a keyword, you won't be able to come up with enough viable (and actually searched for!) variations. It's also important to not let company ego get in the way when conducting keyword research and only use keywords the management likes. Watch this week's SEO video lesson here! For more keyword research lessons from Nick Stamoulis, check out the Brick Marketing keyword research video lesson CLICK HERE TO READ MORE...
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Nick Stamoulis:
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