Samuel Edwards

For the longest time, SEO was all about on-page optimization for keywords, phrases, titles, and tags. However, as the internet expands, user interest evolves and relevance and authority become more important. Understanding how to properly insert links into content, the validity of said links, and how links impact your ranking is critically important. There are generally two types of links that are inserted into content: internal links and external links. Internal links typically link to other pages or pieces of content on the same site. External links link out to another target website that hopefully has relevant and trustworthy information. External link building can be incredible difficult. One of the primary other link building strategies is to insert external links to relevant sources that build the domain authority of the primary site. Part of that strategy often includes tactics like link exchanges and guest blogging. We’ll dive into both of these topics so that you have an understanding of the importance of running a solid link insertion campaign, how link building has changed and how it has impacted the importance of link insertions. This will  show you how to make the most of your link building efforts. The Shift in SEO The first thing to understand about link insertions is that they are much more important (and difficult) than they used to be, especially if you’re going the white-hat link building route and not paying for them. The reason why many websites and businesses are turning to link building and SEO agencies is because it takes a much more strategic approach to properly utilize link building together with other SEO strategies. Businesses turn to these experts to get help with these complex matters. Even some SEO experts still swear by only focusing on “the most relevant long-tail keywords,” when in fact, SEO is now a multilayered process. While keyword density and relevance are still important, a unilateral approach will not rank your site highly anymore. Your site can use all the best keywords that exist, but if it doesn’t properly use links to other content to build relevance and authority, you’ll likely see your page ranking way lower than a site that uses fewer keywords. The reason for this is that keywords are becoming more competitive with more sites on the web. This means that this single metric is not enough to crack the top of the SERP. You can liken it to a person having an Oxford English vocabulary coupled with a terrible personality. He might speak well, but no one will want to talk to him. What is Link Insertion Exactly? The practice of link insertion is getting link placement to your content hosted on other sites. This is the key principle behind the practice of link building, though link building as a whole involves much more than getting your links hosted on other sites. We don’t want to go too elementary on you, but it’s important to understand the basics. This is so that you know what you’re actively trying to do rather than just going out and begging for links or building sites trying to artificially sell yourself. The former of these options is difficult and is generally unsuccessful, while the latter is technically wrong and will incur the wrath of Google via search rank penalties. Proper link insertion tactics require you or the hired agency to build relationships with other sites, who agree to put a link from their content back to your content on your site, hence why it’s called a backlink (gasp). It sounds really simple, right? Too bad, it’s not. Like we mentioned, begging for links from anyone doesn’t work, and falsifying backlinks will see you lose ranking. So what do you do? There are three ways that links are gained to where they are beneficial to the party that is trying to actively perform the link building. Link Exchanges The first is form is a link swap, which is basically a mutual agreement between two (or sometimes three) parties to share content and backlink to each other. These are quite common but can be difficult to achieve depending on the niche you’re in and your brand’s size, among other factors. Guest Blogging The second is through guest posts. Guest posting is the practice of a person writing content for another site that agrees to link back to the poster’s site. This practice has become quite common as it is mutually beneficial for both parties. One party gets content for their site, while the writing party gets a guaranteed backlink. Being an Authority The third method is less common and relies more on luck as well as being authoritative in your field. These are basically backlinks you get from sites that link to you because you are useful and offer value to their users, even if no formal link exchange has been formed. These are difficult to gauge, and while you’d think all backlinks are good, that’s not necessarily the case. If you’re constantly being linked to sites with sketchy backgrounds and low domain authority, this can damage your own reputation and ultimately hurt your brand. It’s essentially like the concept of being guilty by association; your reputation suffers because of the deeds of someone you casually know. We’ll cover all three link building strategies in detail so that you know which ones will work for you and when to seek out backlinks through different methods. 1. Link Insertions Through Link Exchange Link exchanges can be immensely beneficial to a brand that is trying to build its site ranking and domain authority. Finding willing partners for an exchange has many challenges tied to it, though. Beyond finding sites that are willing to backlink to your content, to properly benefit from reciprocal link building, you want to find partner sites that are relevant to the business you are in and the content you produce. An example would be a parts salesman that is partnered with a local mechanic. Both businesses are in the

Are you finding your conversions aren’t as high as the industry average? Then you may need to bring on board a Conversion Rate Optimization Agency or CRO to address the problem. But what should you look for in a top-flight CRO? Why Use A CRO Agency? Some companies decide to do their CRO within the organization, but optimizing conversions often can get forgotten as staff worries about other priorities. That’s too bad. No matter how much cash your firm drops on Google and social media ads, you’re flushing money down the toilet if you don’t make sure as many site visitors as possible convert into customers. When you bring on a CRO agency, you are working with a team of skilled, proven veterans of the industry. These are usually professionals who have spent many years optimizing conversion rates for their clients in all industries. This means a hired CRO company probably has more experience in the industry, more proven results, and knows what boosts conversions and what fails. When you look at what it costs you to establish a CRO team in your company compared to outsourcing it, there’s no contest. Hiring a CRO costs less, is more efficient, and can produce superior results. Why Evaluate Several CROs? What’s the point of checking out several CROs? If a marketing company says they can handle CRO, shouldn’t you go with them? No. Some say you should view CROs like mechanics. When your water pump goes out, it leaks coolant everywhere, and there are several steps that the mechanic must follow to repair it. If an inexperienced candidate tries to fix it, you could pay a lot of money and still have the same problem. CRO also has a process that requires several steps, methods, and tools. It won’t get you good results if you just hire anyone or try to do it on your own. Companies with experience and skills in CRO processes will give you great results. Many online marketing companies now know that CRO is big, so many offer the service to capitalize. But some less experienced and legitimate agencies try to do CRO on the cheap and take shortcuts. They figure, if we take some online courses or go to a marketing conference in San Francisco, we’re CROs! But the opportunity in the CRO space has led to many companies offering inadequate CRO, and the mistakes they make can damage your conversions. If you want the best CRO, you need to look at several marketing firms and compare them before you invest. Strategy It’s important that a CRO company know what your goals are and be able to meet them. Also, if you talk to them about your strategy for CRO, they should grasp it quickly and point out any issues for improvement. The strategy of the agency should track your key performance indicators (KPI) and make changes along the way to maximize your conversions. The CRO you hire also should sue multivariate testing and A/B testing to determine the strategies that will produce best results in your niche. Appropriate Tools For Testing You should continue shopping for a CRO if you see an agency that isn’t using advanced tools to optimize your conversion rate. These decisions cannot be made well with only intuition. People who use your services and products will usually tell you the best strategy to use. Experience shows that the ideal way to gauge the user experience is with advanced testing tools like Google Optimize. A/B testing is the ideal way to optimize your site; it shows at least two versions of a piece of content to determine which converts better. Also, multivariate tests show full sections of content. These tests are helpful to design the best landing page and finding which page elements produce the best results. The best CRO company understands where your traffic is coming from that produces the most results. And they also glean vital information from your bounce rate, length of session, and other vital components. Web Analysis Tools The CRO you select should understand where conversion traffic originates. If the agency tells you your landing page converts at 3% and and a bounce rate of 65%, think about getting another agency. This is merely data, but you need them to interpret the data and give you insights. The CRO should find out where traffic that converts comes from, when, and how it behaves on your site. The company also should give you strategies that helps that traffic to convert. The information you need from the CRO leads to conversions; giving you data alone doesn’t help. Data analytics also help you figure out which electronic devices are better for conversions for the same site. For example, you could have a high conversion rate on a desktop but not so great conversion rates on mobile. Why is that? How can it be improved? Landing Pages Your CRO should be able to tell you the landing pages that work and don’t. And if you are getting results with one but not the other, the company needs to explain why. Has The Technology In House Not every test a CRO does involves just switching a block of text or headline. CRO is complicated, and you should have a company working for you that can analyze data with their own tools and technology. You should look for a CRO that can execute complications, varied tests with JS, CSS and HTML. As noted above, your CRO should use A/B testing that lets you do as many tests as you want and is completely private. Last, the CRO you select should give you results as they come in in real time, and keeps every stakeholder in your organization informed. When you choose a CRO with these attributes, you’ll know you’re investing in a company and process that will increase your conversions.

Search engines, and particularly Google, have heretofore served as the gateway to the online world. Nobody could find anything on the web without previous knowledge of a domain or access to a search engine. Traditional advertising could help you get the name of your business and the URL of your site in the eyes of the public, but the only way to get traffic from web visitors who hadn’t heard of you was to rank on Google for competitive terms. But is SEO dead and dying? The availability and diversity of online and mobile technology is starting to chip away at the dominance of search engines on online behavior. We still use search engines, obviously, or Google and Bing would have gone under by now, but their influence is starting to wane in response to important trends and developments. What is SEO and what is its purpose? Search engine optimization (SEO) is the process of optimizing a website to increase its visibility in organic search engine results. SEO involves a variety of strategies and techniques to improve a website’s ranking in search results, including optimizing content, structure, and HTML code, as well as building backlinks from other websites. SEO also involves researching and analyzing competitive keywords to ensure that a website is targeting the right phrases and words in order to maximize visibility. SEO is an ongoing process that requires ongoing maintenance, as search engine algorithms are constantly changing. SEO experts must stay up-to-date on the latest technologies and trends in order to remain competitive. SEO also involves monitoring the performance of a website (in perhaps Google Search Console or Ahrefs) in organic search engine results pages and making adjustments as necessary to maintain or improve its ranking. SEO is important for businesses because it can help drive more traffic to a website. A higher ranking in search results can lead to increased visibility and more potential customers, which can help grow a business. By optimizing a website for search engine visibility, businesses can ensure that they are reaching their target audience and increasing their chances of success. eCommerce (i.e. Amazon) The impact of eCommerce giants such as Amazon has been profound. Initially seen primarily as a retail platform, Amazon’s launch into search engine advertising represented an important moment in online commerce, competing directly with Google for clicks and purchases via sponsored ads that appear above organic search queries. This changed the game significantly since now typical businesses have to compete not only against websites optimized by effective SEO strategies but also well-funded tech behemoths driving users off-site towards their own platforms or services. The following graphs “show” better than I could “tell.”     Over 50% of product searches start on Amazon, not Google. That’s a big problem for Google. If you’re a product or eCommerce company doing SEO and you’re not optimizing your search on Amazon, you’re missing out on over half of the revenue opportunities online. As online retail continues to grow at an accelerated rate, SEO needs for eCommerce sites are becoming more specialized. E-commerce websites have different optimization techniques than other types of web pages because the goal is not just visibility but also transactions. There are three main areas that need to be optimized for a successful outcome: page structure (visuals and content), URLs, and product metadata. Social Media Ubiquity Facebook (now Meta) did for social media platforms what Google did for search engines—it was the undisputed king. Until TikTok, overran both Google and Facebook for overall traffic. TikTok gets more traffic than Google. Consumers are fickle and willing to move to other mediums for entertainment and consumption. Facebook itself is making search less relevant as it Google works to keep users on its platform for a source of news and information. Consider Facebook’s Instant Articles, which allow certain publishers to post full-length versions of their articles for Facebook users to read, without ever posting it to an external site first. This idea came from the fact that more people see certain articles on Facebook than they see them on the original publisher’s site. This isn’t the only functionality that Facebook has added recently, with new aggregated messenger functionality, “buy” buttons for advertisers, and auto-play videos just scratching the surface of what it’s introduced. Facebook’s goal here is to present an all-in-one online experience for its users, preventing the need for a search engine to find articles or display content. It’s even planning the release of a digital assistant and search engine of its own, accessible entirely within the app itself. Other social media platforms will likely take notice of Facebook’s shift, adopting new features and add-ons of their own until virtually every social media site becomes an all-in-one online experience unto itself. Social media has revolutionized the way people search for information. With platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram at their fingertips, consumers are able to find news updates and product reviews more quickly than ever before. Additionally, social sites enable users to share content with family and friends, which only increases online visibility, furthering businesses’ reach even more than through traditional SEO methods alone. Since it is estimated that over two-thirds of adults in today’s world use some type of social networking platform, this method provides a powerful tool when used correctly by business owners looking to increase organic results within relevant searches on different mediums, including both mobile devices and desktop versions, across various industries like retail and service providers alike. Social media has become an integral part of modern life, and it’s impossible to deny its influence on the way people search for information. With platforms like Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Pinterest, and more at our fingertips, 24/7, users are relying solely on social networks as their source of data instead of turning to Google or other traditional search engines. This shift in behavior directly affects SEO since content must be optimized differently based on where a user is searching from. Companies need to consider how they can optimize

Ripoff Report (ROR) has seen its Google ranking decline in recent months, but a ROR complaint can still hurt your company. If your firm has a complaint against it on ROR, you’ll want to understand what you can do about it. Keep the information below in mind, so you know what to do if your business appears on Ripoff Report. Ripoff Report Overview Ripoff Report is a ‘review website.’ The problem with it is that any anonymous individual can post negative reviews or complaints there. As a business owner, you have few options to fight the claim. A few years ago, ROR claims would show up high in Google rankings for any company unfortunate enough to be listed on the site. Unlike other review sites such as Yelp, ROR only releases terrible reviews, rather than good and bad ones. There are no terms of service or ways to dispute a negative review. You can’t get a lousy review taken off even if it’s fake or libelous. It’s an unpleasant website to find your company on, and dealing with it is challenging. The site has a ‘rebuttal’ option that allows the company owner to post a rebuttal. Unfortunately, posting a response can make the bad review MORE visible on Google. The website also has a VIP arbitration feature that you pay $2,000 for, but there’s no guarantee that arbitration will be successful. And forget suing ROR – it’s been to court many times and always is protected by the Federal Communications Decency Act. Options To Deal With Ripoff Report But all’s not lost. There are some actions that you can take to mitigate the damage of ROR: Bury ROR Search Results You need to hire a good SEO company to deal with negative search results via an online reputation management (ORM) SEO campaign. You can’t get the firm to take off the review. But an SEO company can use link building and blogger outreach to push high-authority, positive content about your site. You can probably bury the bad review to page two and lower with some work. Potential customers might still find the negative review, but few people look beyond page 2 on Google, so its impact will be lessened. Many reputable SEO companies specialize in this type of work, but they are costly. When performing online reputation management, an SEO agency will use high-profile link building campaigns to bolster other websites that make reference to your brand to push them above the negative Ripoff Report in the SERPs, including pages like: News articles positive to your company and your brand Social media profiles (i.e. Linkedin, Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, etc.) Custom created pages and posts Such a campaign is typically not cheap, but can help to decrease the number of people who see your negative review. Obtain a Court Order (Sue Ripoff Report?) If you can show in state court that ROR published untrue or defamatory something, Google may delist the page from search. The search engine doesn’t charge anything for this service, but you’ll have to pay hefty legal fees. Also, Ripoff Report likes to move the bad review to another URL, which will recreate the problem. Getting a court order can work, but you’ll need to regularly watch your search results to see if the bad review is showing up again. A Ripoff Report lawsuit is nothing new. They’re used to it. Then, you’ll have to contact Google again. Rebrand The option of last resort is to simply rebrand your website and business altogether. Because Ripoff Reports are generally tied to your company name and tend to operate like clickbait, they can not only rank high, but can be difficult to push down in the SERPs. Consequently, sometimes a complete company rebrand may be your best option. Changing your brand can have so many other big and negative implications, that this options should be used very infrequently, especially if your website and brand have a lot of online authority. If you ultimately determine a rebranding has more positive than negative implications, it may be a good option of last resort, provided your perform SEO best practices in things like SEO-friendly 301 redirects and changes to your social profiles. Conclusion Experts say if you have the money, you should try both avenues at once. Bury the lousy report as much as you can as you go to litigate for a court order. Next, get the bad review delisted after you get it. If the lousy report shows up again, you’ll need to bury the new URL again and ask Google to delist one more time. Fortunately when it comes to negative reports, there is evidence in Google search that Ripoff Report pages don’t show up as high in rankings anymore. Some hope that the search engine will develop a more advanced page removal system that can’t be evaded as easily. There IS hope, but many company owners only have limited ways to fight a negative report on ROR. And even if you CAN get the review delisted or buried, it’s going to cost you for an online reputation management (ORM) campaign. Contact us to get started!    

Google Analytics is a powerful tool for tracking website traffic and user behavior. It provides valuable insights that can help businesses make informed decisions about their online presence. However, in order to make the most of Google Analytics, it’s important to follow best practices. Initial Setup of Your Google Analytics Account Setting up a goal is relatively easy. All you have to do is find the Admin section for your target site, click on “Goals,” and then “Create a Goal.” Google Analytics offers a step-by-step process that allows you to set up any goal you’d like. For most users, you’ll be setting up a template goal. Some of the common goals you can choose from include “destination” goals, which are completed when a user reaches a specific page, or “event” goals, which are completed when a user takes a specific action, like playing a video. Once you’ve selected a type, you’ll be able to customize your goals and fill in the necessary information—like the URL for your destination goal. Once you’ve got your initial goals set up, make sure to run a handful of tests to make sure they are functioning properly. Designating a Value You’ll also have the opportunity to designate a value to the completion of each of your goals. Take advantage of this; it’s going to provide you with a major opportunity to objectively analyze your online marketing results later on. For some goals, coming up with this value is easy. For example, if you’re selling an ebook for $5 and you set up a goal for the completion of a single order, the value of the goal would be $5. However, if you’re selling multiple items in varying groups, you’ll have to come up with the average value of a customer order and use that as the assigned value of a goal. The process is further complicated by non-monetary goals, such as those assigned to the completion of a contact form. Here, you’ll have to determine the ratio of inquiries to sales, and then the average sale to determine the average goal completion value. This may take a few extra steps, but coming up with an accurate value is essential to determining the objective results of your campaign later down the road. Determining Which Goals to Set Up The “Goals” section of Analytics is one of the most useful tools you’ll find. If set up properly, you’ll be able to track conversions throughout your site, and run an analysis to determine the overall value of your campaign, giving you a perfect gateway to uncover the ROI of your inbound efforts. One of the most important aspects of Google Analytics is setting up goals and conversions. Goals are specific actions that you want visitors to take on your website, such as filling out a contact form or making a purchase. Conversions are when visitors actually complete those actions. By setting up goals and conversions, you can track how well your website is performing and identify areas for improvement. If a specific action on your website corresponds to revenue or the strong possibility for revenue, you should set it up as a goal. Only then can you be able to concisely and accurately project how much revenue your inbound marketing strategies are earning. Goals don’t take much time to set up, and once they’re set up correctly, you can run with them for as long as you need. Nobody has ever complained about having too much data available. Still, if you have multiple transaction points and multiple points of contact, it may be overwhelming to try and set up a goal for each one of them. Start out with the goals that are the most critical for your business goals, and once those are complete, gradually flesh out the others. Custom Dimensions and Metrics Google Analytics offers a variety of dimensions and metrics that you can use to analyze the most accurate data for your website. However, you can also create custom dimensions and metrics to track specific information that’s important to your business. For example, you might create a custom dimension to track which products visitors are interested in or a custom metric to track how much revenue each page generates. Data Segmentation Segmenting your data (typically using both live and raw data view) allows you to analyze specific subsets of your website traffic. For example, you might segment your data to analyze how mobile users interact with your website compared to desktop users. This can help you identify areas where your website might need to be optimized for specific devices or user groups. For instance, you may want to block internal traffic coming from your own IP address (or even those of your remote workers), so as not to obscure the data points. Use Annotations Annotations allow you to add notes to your Google Analytics data, which can help you remember important events or changes that might affect your website traffic. For example, you might add an annotation for a website redesign or a marketing campaign launch. Annotations can also help you see how specific events or changes impact your website traffic over time. Monitor Your Bounce Rate Your website’s bounce rate is the percentage of visitors who leave your website after only viewing one page. A high bounce rate can indicate that visitors are not finding what they’re looking for on your website. By monitoring your bounce rate, you can identify areas where your website might need to be improved to keep visitors engaged. Setting Up Alerts Google Analytics allows you to set up alerts to notify you when certain events occur, such as a sudden drop in website traffic or an increase in bounce rate. When you create custom reports and set up alerts, you can quickly identify and respond to issues that might affect your website’s performance. The Funnel Setting up a marketing funnel is an optional part of the goal and overall Google Analytics setup process, but I’ve found it extremely

Google Analytics (coupled with Google Search Console) is one of the most powerful tools available for gaining insights about your website traffic and performance. With its wealth of features, you can gain valuable insights into how visitors are interacting with your site, from which pages they visit to where they come from and what device they use. However, there are many Google Analytics features that often go overlooked or underutilized. From event tracking to custom reports, these 15 critical yet overlooked Google Analytics functions have the potential to provide much more detailed information about your website and visitor behavior than you may be aware of. Dive in now to uncover new opportunities for optimization and growth for your own web analytics service! Behavior Flow You’ve probably already checked out the “Behavior” tab, where you can see how users react to different pages on your site, including how long it takes for them to bounce and where they generally enter. But the Behavior Flow section takes it to a new level. You might be intimidated by the visual component of the graph here, but if you break it down, it’s nothing that can’t be understood. In fact, it greatly assists you in visualizing the path the average user takes on your site. You can easily see which entry pages are most popular, where users go from there, and where you’re losing the most users. Use it as your guide to sculpt this “ideal” user path. Long term metrics When you run reports in Analytics, you probably take a look at the last month’s figures, or if you’re very committed, the last week’s. But have you looked at longer trends? Analytics can peer back as far as you’ve had the code on your site, likely giving you several years’ worth of information. Take a look at your traffic patterns between then and now—do you notice any seasonal spikes that could be taken advantage of? Did you have a dip or a substantial gain during a certain year? Have your bounce rates or conversions changed significantly? How have your Google Ads and marketing campaigns performed recently compared to historical numbers? How are your metrics looking in Google Ad Manager compared to overall organic traffic? Audience locations You might not think about your users’ locations, especially if you’re a national brand, but this information can be very helpful in identifying and possibly revising your target audience. Head to the Audience tab, and look at the geographic location of your users. You might find some rogue visitors from other countries that represent a possibility to expand, or you can drill down further and see what state most of your users are coming from. You can use this information to further optimize your site for those audience segments, or appeal to them in your offerings. Experiments Hopefully, you’re already conducting experiments in your online marketing strategy. They’re your best tools in learning more and doing better for your target audiences. However, you probably haven’t scoped out Google’s own Experiments section, which you can find under the Behavior tab. Here, you can set up basic experiments around metrics and parameters you define, offering up to 10 different variations of a single page (or target) to compare different segments of traffic against. If you’re interested in learning more or if you get stuck, Google has a great guide for this section. Goals If you haven’t tapped into Goals already, now’s the time to get started. It’s in your best interest to set up a goal for every significant user action on your site, whether that’s getting to a certain page from a certain page, or filling out a specific conversion form. The more you’re actively collecting data on these target instances of user behavior, the more ammunition you’ll have to adjust your strategy and optimize it further. You can set up Goals in the Admin tab, then view them in the Conversions tab. The process is relatively straightforward as long as you already have specific goals in mind. Shortcuts Do you fumble around in your Google Analytics dashboard every month to create just the right report for your campaign? If so, you haven’t found Shortcuts yet. It’s one of the main tabs on the left-hand side, but it’s often missed by search marketers. Here, you’ll be able to store your most commonly used reports and metrics, and recall them for future iterations. Device- and browser-based information Found under the Audience tab, you might have overlooked the potential of learning your users’ browser and technology preferences. The Technology and Mobile menus can give you a breakdown of exactly how users are accessing your site, giving you critical insight to ensure your site’s proper functionality and possibly come up with new strategies catering to the majority of your users. For example, if you find the majority of your users are finding your site on Internet Explorer, it might be worth spending more time optimizing for Bing. Custom Events This feature allows users to manually track events on their website and app, which can provide insights into user behavior that might not be visible in the standard reports. Site Search Reports With this feature, users can understand how visitors are navigating through their website or application by seeing what they search for while browsing the site or app. Cohort Analysis This type of analysis gives the user an idea of how different cohorts (groups) of customers behave differently over time based on certain behaviors like purchase frequency or engagement rate. Real-Time Reports These types of reports allow you to view information about active users from your Google Analytics account as well as measure performance against goals set in real-time so that changes can be made quickly if needed. Multi-Channel Funnels Users may use multiple channels during a single session when visiting a website or using an app, such as direct traffic, organic search results and referrals from other websites – multi-channel marketing funnels help you identify which ones bring the