The Goal of SEO is to Inform People

February 5, 2009

SEO helps businesses connect to consumers via search engines. For consumers, that means it’s easier to find what they’re looking for online. I think it’s easier to illustrate with a story: I recently landed in Buenos Aires, Argentina, a city I haven’t visited since 2001, long before my thoughts ever turned to things like Facebook, [...]

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SEO in the Economic Downturn

October 15, 2008

A lot of people have been asking me recently about how my business has weathered the economic downturn. I haven’t noticed any changes in the number of calls I get and I have two explanations for this: 1) Most of the damage so far has been to publicly traded companies, major corporations, and real-estate related [...]

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New Maryland Web Directory and Blog Directory

October 7, 2008

Jon Payne of Ephricon Web Marketing has started a new local directory for Maryland websites and blogs and the submission fee is only $25. When I teach my SEO class at Howard County Community College, most of the students have businesses that are local to Maryland in nature, so I tell them to find directories [...]

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The Wall Street Journal on Small Business Websites and SEO

August 12, 2008

The WSJ wrote a how-to article yesterday for small business owners on how to create a web presence for a small business, from scratch and on the cheap. The article says that it can be done for $10 and while I agree that a small business can do a lot on the web without spending [...]

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New Local Site in Baltimore – 600block.com

July 22, 2008

If you live, work, or play in Baltimore City, check out a new local site, 600block.com. They just opened up the site to the public and it allows you to review your favorite hot spots and restaurants. If you own a business in Baltimore, then make sure your info is updated and correct on the [...]

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The Physical Location of Your Business Determines Your Online Presence

June 1, 2008

Location, location, location is a frequently repeated mantra when it comes to real estate, and the physical location of your business has major ramifications for you if you’re in the retail industry. Guess what? Your physical location is now just as important in the online world. As more and more potential customers turn to local [...]

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How to do Keyword Research for Local Sites with AdWords Traffic Data

January 24, 2008

One of the problems with keyword research tools on the web like Keyword Discovery or Wordtracker is that their data is often unreliable, especially for low volume searches. How many times have you entered in a medium-tail keyword like “baltimore tanning”, only to be told that nobody ever searches on that term? Well I know [...]

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Where to Start Link Building for a Local Site

January 12, 2008

There are lots of free links available for local businesses in the form of Yellow Pages and Local Search sites. If you’re just starting out in optimizing your website for local search, I would hit the major local directories like Google Local, Yahoo Local, SuperPages, etc. Not only will you have some extra link juice [...]

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Naymz.com for Reputation Management and Free Links

January 5, 2008

I just set up a profile page at Naymz.com. It’s a site meant for reputation management–you can create a profile with information about you that will (supposedly) show up in search engines when people search for your name. I like it from a link-building standpoint because they let you link out to sites you own [...]

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Organic SEO for Real Estate Agents – Start now and Beat the Crowd

January 4, 2008

Before I became a search engine marketer, I was a real estate agent and investor. And while I was in real estate, I discovered blogging and the power that it had as a way for professionals to create an audience, establish their brands, and showcase their expertise in their niche or their neighborhood. Unfortunately, learning [...]

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