Back in 2014, I originally published this post. I had been already working in website design and SEO for ten years and I was painfully aware of the need for digestible content. In the last six months, my husband Jason has been digging into the genetics of alpacas (we're alpaca farmers) and his world has been filled with terminology that includes words like alleles, genotype, phenotype, and DNA sequencing. As he learns more, he wants to share this knowledge with the alpaca community. He ... Read More
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The Trials and Tribulations of Hiring a Website Developer
I originally posted this article back in 2016 and I pulled it to dust it off today because I am currently working with two SEO clients who have hot messes of websites. These companies have tried multiple website developers and SEO agencies, only to be left with hacked up websites with no website traffic, conversions, or ROI. It's buyer beware and sometimes I feel like digital marketing is the wild west of technology. Your website is an important part of your business. If 2020 taught us ... Read More
Cooking Up SEO Worthy Content
A few years back I was holding an SEO mastermind session and one of my students compared SEO and content marketing to baking chocolate chip cookies. Boy was Lorraine right! Content marketing is a lot like cooking. Both are extremely rewarding and both require skill, patience, and passion. I've long said SEO was a strong combination of art and science, which totally aligns with cooking. Many people believe that blogging differs from copywriting the same way your home-cooked meal differs ... Read More
Align SEO Efforts with Your Target Market and Today’s Search
Earlier this month I had the pleasure of speaking at WordCamp US in St. Louis. WordCamp US is the largest WordPress event in the United States, so it was quite an honor for me to be asked to present an extended workshop on SEO. As soon as I was invited to speak, I knew exactly what I wanted to talk about. I wanted to walk attendees through the identification of website personas, I wanted to help them ask the right questions about their target market and offering, and I also wanted to teach ... Read More
Chrome to Begin Blocking Web Page Elements With Mixed Content
It seems I'm always on my SSL soapbox and it feels like most people just are not listening. Every time I do a website audit or bring on a new SEO retainer client, one of the first things I check is the health of their SSL implementation. It's one of my first steps, because about 95% of websites are doing it wrong. Every time I talk to a client about the health of their SSL implementation, they question if it really matters. My standard replies include: Google has been preaching the need ... Read More
Web Savvy Marketing Celebrates a Birthday and 10 Years of Success!
In the summer of 2009, I founded Web Savvy Marketing. I've often joked about being the accidental entrepreneur, because I didn't plan on ever working for myself, running an agency, or doing anything I've done over the last ten years. I grew up as the ward of the state of Michigan, very poor, and in a small rural town. As I was graduating high school, I knew I needed to figure out my life, because post-graduation I didn't really have a place to live. I never had career aspirations or any lofty ... Read More
Are You Getting What You Need Out of Your SEO Retainer?
Time and time again I talk to companies who pay for a monthly SEO retainer, but can’t actually tell me what their digital agency is doing for their money. Let me start by saying this is wrong. Actually, let me scream it from the top of a building – this is really really wrong. If you are paying a freelancer, consultant, or agency for SEO work, you should know exactly how they are spending their time and your money. Sadly, this is rarely the case and it gives the entire SEO industry a bad ... Read More
The Yin and Yang of SEO and PPC
I am pretty opinionated about SEO and PPC. I've been a longtime advocate of SEO and I've traditionally steered well away from PPC. But I'm not older and wiser and I see the writing on the wall. Search is shifting, Google is becoming a lot more greedy, and most companies cannot exist with SEO alone. Up until this last year, I would have told you PPC is "cocaine for marketers" because money is spent in hopes of a quick high and zero long-term value is derived. I view SEO as just the opposite. ... Read More
Mapping Keywords to Website Personas
Website persons can be an intimidating subject for most people. Bring keywords into the mix and the conversation can become utterly scary for some. I like to take the scariness out of website design and SEO, so I recently performed a training webinar that used Winnie the Pooh and his friends to talk through the process of mapping website personas to keywords. If you'd like to watch the full sixty-minute webinar, it is available below. If you don't have time for that much education, feel free ... Read More
GDPR and WordPress: Why You Need to be Concerned
The web is abuzz about GDPR and it's something that website owners cannot ignore. While GDPR is focused on websites servicing the EU, in reality, virtually any website, anywhere in the world needs to be concerned about this ruling because so many of us cater to people worldwide. The struggle with WordPress is not the implementation, but WordPress' user base. While WordPress provides superior CMS support for users from solopreneurs to enterprise organizations, the vast majority of WordPress' ... Read More
Are You Ready for the New Google Analytics Data Retention Policy?
Google has a pretty big change coming to Analytics in late May and website owners need to be prepared. Google Analytics now has a feature called "Data Retention Controls" that will give account holders the ability to set the amount of time before user-level and event-level data stored by Google Analytics is automatically deleted from Google Analytics’ servers. When you log into Google Analytics, you'll see a notification bar as follows: These new data settings will officially go into ... Read More
The Entrepreneur’s Guide to Today’s SEO
The landscape of SEO is constantly changing. Excelling at search engine optimization means understanding what modern SEO is and what needs to be done to remain competitive in search. Small business owners and entrepreneurs need to stay vigilant and adapt to this ever-changing SEO environment. If they fail to do so, they will be left behind in search and they'll fail to truly capture all the web has to offer. This week I held a free training webinar for the iThemes community. In this ... Read More
Optimize Your WordPress Website With Yoast SEO Plugins
I've been a longtime user of the free Yoast SEO plugin and I've been starting to utilize more and more of their premium extensions. I'm not alone. Over five million WordPress website owners use Yoast SEO too! But are these users truly helping their SEO? In most cases no, but it's not the plugin's fault. I would estimate that 95% of my SEO or website audit clients have the Yoast SEO plugin installed, but the implementation is far from complete and the actual on-page SEO usage is haphazard ... Read More
Google’s Mobile-first Indexing is Here
After a year and a half of testing, Google has finally started migrating websites over to mobile-first indexing. Yes, friends, it is here. But don't panic. The sky is not falling and search will go on. So what is mobile-first indexing? In Google's latest release they define it as the following: To recap, our crawling, indexing, and ranking systems have typically used the desktop version of a page's content, which may cause issues for mobile searchers when that version is vastly different ... Read More
Coming on March 20th: A Technical SEO Summit for WordPress Developers
It seems like everyone is building WordPress sites. With 30% market share, WordPress has become a powerful solution for website designers, programmers, and consultants. But are these websites being built for SEO best practices and will they actually bring in search traffic? The answer to that question is a disappointing one. In most cases, WordPress websites are being built without SEO in mind and critical elements are being left out of the design and development process. As one of my ... Read More
Continuing Education Opportunities for Your SEO Journey
SEO is a journey and not a destination. I truly believe this is the case and I try very hard to do my part in providing ongoing training opportunities for website owners, marketers, and developers. Last year I produced a lot of SEO education opportunities and I would like to do the same this year. While I don't think I can keep the same pace, I do have lots of great continuing education scheduled for 2018. I'd love you to join me for one of these great training events. Upcoming SEO ... Read More
Ranking in the Constantly Moving World of Search and Modern SEO
There are days when I feel like search engine optimization is moving faster than I can digest and I’ll never be able to stay up with modern SEO techniques and the constant changes brought forth by Google. We’ve experienced so many shifts in search that I know I’m not alone and many people feel overwhelmed as website owners and marketers. I’ve been working in internet marketing for over fifteen years. When I started with SEO it was common practice for webmasters to hide keywords in white text ... Read More
A Look Back at 2017
I feel like 2017 was flown by in an instant. It doesn't seem like much time has passed since I sat down to write about 2016's year in review. The funny part is while I feel as though it's been an uneventful year, it was anything but quiet. I look back at the activity list of 2017 and I realize, a lot did happen. I was just too mixed up in the craziness to recall any of it. I like busy. I'm not one to sit all day and watch TV or spend time curled up with a good book. And honestly, I haven't ... Read More
Best Option for Website SEO: WordPress, Squarespace, Wix, Weebly, or HubSpot COS?
Until recently, I hadn't thought much about website SEO and which website builder was best for supporting search engine optimization efforts and best practices. I'm a WordPress girl after all, and in my head, WordPress is the only option. But recently, my private Facebook group has received a number of questions asking about SEO and how Squarespace, Wix, and Weebly compare against WordPress. While I provided some initial thoughts on each post that arrived, I knew I needed to dig in further ... Read More
Best Podcasts for Entrepreneurs and Small Business Owners
This year I've rekindled my love for podcasts. It started when I began listening to ZenFounder and only increased once I found Entrepreneur On Fire and Online Marketing Made Easy With Amy Porterfield. As I push through my gym visits and long car rides, I've truly come to love plugging into a podcast and listening to smart people talk about the things I love. With each episode, I've found my desire to listen only grows. This has been great because podcasts have helped me power through a number ... Read More
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