Why Wix Is Bad At SEO

Karlie Kloss Creates a Website with Wix.com

It has become recently fashionable in the SEO sector to kick Wix, sorry to pile on, but Wix SEO is a bit of a joke frankly and I’m getting pretty annoyed with their practices and a particular YouTube campaign they are running. Wix has been bombarding me (anyone else?) with ads from Karli Kloss about […]

Build A Free Website With Google My Business

Google My Business

We recently received a request from a client to migrate their old website to a new platform. We were already considering using Google Sites and after reading Mike Blumenthal’s post on the number of sites created with Google My Business we decided to check out this new feature to see if it is worth recommending […]

Fetch as Google: Seeing Your Website as Google Sees It

Fetch as Google: Seeing Your Website as Google Sees It

Users of webmaster tools can see how Google crawls and renders their URLs with the assistance of the “Fetch as Google” tool. Working the same as Googlebot, the tool enables users to check for issues such as blocked resources and to verify that Google is able to render dynamic content correctly to play a role […]

buddingSTEM SEO Audit & Results

buddingSTEM - Science & STEM Clothes for Girls

Our SEO Audit for buddingSTEM found some quick wins for search traffic and some ideas for long-term online marketing strategy.

How To Do Keyword Research

Keyword Research Suggested Google Searches

Keyword research to target searches that match your business goals is a key step in developing an online marketing strategy.

Six Free Website Builders

Technically, HTML and CSS are free, you only need a text editor to create a webpage, but that only works if you know some HTML and you still need to pay for hosting. Having a website is no longer a nice extra, it is a necessity. The downside of free websites are the limitations. Most […]

Hyphens vs Underscores

Yes, stuff like this matters. It matters because the programmers at Google designed the search engine to recognize and search for programming syntax and the underscore is common in programming languages. Google is still a dumb robot, it is getting better at understanding the intricacies of language, but it is still just a program that […]

Is it better to have keywords in the URL path or filename?

Matt Cutts is so funny. Pretending like this isn’t an important question by falling asleep. And then say one looks spammy. You card. Do what makes sense and is easy for you and your users to navigate. Same goes for sub-domains vs. folders. If you have a good reason to run a subdomain then you […]

MediaTemple Acquired By GoDaddy

Hosting companies aren’t perfect. No company is. But sometimes they are especially flawed. GoDaddy is one of those companies. It’s not so much their business, it’s everything else. @mediatemple @portentint just read the comments. #ouch — SEO Bandwagon (@SEOBandwagon) October 15, 2013 Someone at the MediaTemple replied to me on their Twitter feed. The blog […]

Inconsistent Data Within Google Webmaster Tools & Analytics

Secure search and keyword not provided has caused a pretty big shake up. Google’s answer to the lack of keyword data in Google Analytics is to go use the data that is in Google Webmaster Tools. Ok, there’s just one problem with that. Google Webmaster Tools for keyword data, 75% of impressions & 85% of […]

Rank #1 In Google Guaranteed!

Rank #1 In Google Guaranteed!

When you hear, “Rank #1 In Google Guaranteed!”, you need to know that you are being sold. And by sold, I mean lied to.

Google Authorship Tips

Google released a FAQ on Authorship and some of the finer points of implementing it into the real world.

All About Spam

Chances are you have run into spam. Crappy text, crappy links for cheap viagra or Louis Voutton handbags, endless cycles of page redirects like a labyrinth. Google has a preference for dealing with things algorithmically, but there has always been a strong suspicion that Google took manual action to fight spam or to even ‘penalize’ […]

How To Add Google Authorship To Your Web Site

Kind of an old video, but here is a rel=”author” description and implementation as told by a couple of developers from Google geeking out over HTML 5 design standards. That markup needs to be added to a link to your Google+ profile from your site, and your profile needs to show that you are a contributor […]

If my site goes down for a day, does that affect my rankings?

Just a day? “I wouldn’t worry about that much.” You will get those messages from Googlebot time to time. What you should worry about is if your site experiences frequent outages, despite length, because you never know when your site could be trafficked do you? That would be incredible information to know. It’s poor user experience […]

Organizing With NationBuilder

It doesn’t matter if you are running for the US Senate, or if you are just trying to pass a local school levy, building an organization around an idea or a project isn’t easy. You need to raise money, stay in contact with your supporters, coordinate events, and organize your volunteers. The ease of which […]

CNAME vs A Record

CNAME vs A Record

CNAME records are used to identify multiple domain names that point to the same IP address. An A record points directly to an IP address. That should make perfect sense. But in case it doesn’t there is a video. Essentially a CNAME record is used when you don’t have access to a A record, like […]

If I have 20 domains, should I link them all together?

If they are brand related it’s not a bad idea to own multiple top-level domains, but if you are meaning to manipulate Google, duh, they hate that. Stop it. Keywords in domain names are being devalued because of that strategy. You could try to be clever and put your main service in your company name, […]

Free SEO Advice

Free SEO Advice

The best free seo advice I can give a small business that is looking to manage their own Internet presence is to focus on what you can control. You can’t control the next algorithm update. You don’t own your Facebook Page, Pinterest Account, Google Local Listing, Yelp!, or any of the social media sites. Owning a domain […]

Clicky Web Analytics

Clicky Web Analytics

Clicky Web Analytics is a good compliment to Google Analytics, their premium product may cause you to switch completely.

What Makes A Website Fast?

The easier question is, “why is this so slow?” But asking a question in a positive is worth evaluating on it’s own. The folks over at Visually did a nice infographic on page loading speeds and what makes a page loader faster than others. Compress images, javascript, and CSS, minimize http requests, and running up-to-date […]

How Does DNS Work?

Domain name service (DNS) takes domain names and converts it to the server’s numeric IP address.

Watch Out For SEO Scumbags

Fucki It, Just Buy Some Links Bill Murray

Dom Hodgson wrote a fantastic piece about some of the shady SEO practices that have lead many to declare “SEO is dead” or start calling themselves Inbound Marketers, Data Analysts or Internet Marketing Specialists. I don’t use that term lightly, it’s reserved for a special kind of person that puts peoples livleyhoods at risk. There […]

Web Analytics Options

Lord Kelvin

If you can’t measure it, you can’t improve it. The above quote is often attributed to Lord Kelvin or W. Edwards Deming. For our purposes, the attribution doesn’t matter as much as the sentiment behind it. It doesn’t matter if you are looking to improve your website, your car, your home, or whatever, without data there […]

Subdomains vs. Folders

Subdomains vs. Folders

Yes this does totally matter. Subdomains usually get treated as distinct websites by Google. Google Webmaster Tools are setup for this, Google Analytics also needs an extra step to track across subdomains, you get the idea. Matt Cutts is pretty clear that this shouldn’t be a decision that you labor over and it, whichever is […]