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
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
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
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
Embracing the Google Knowledge Graph
The Google Knowledge Graph was first introduced in 2012. Since then it has diversified in the types of data presented and it has greatly expanded in usage. It now dominates search results and many people don't even know what it is. The Knowledge Graph can sound really intimidating, but it really isn't that scary. It's a huge database of the people, places, and things that are popular in the world around us. But that isn't the cool part. The cool part is Google understands how those ... Read More
The Shifting World of SEO in 2016 and 2017
In 2016 I fell back in love with SEO. I truly did and I didn’t even notice it happening until late in the year. A large part of this transformation was because I saw an increasing need to help people understand what SEO is and why it matters. I spent a great deal of time coaching, educating, and working on SEO consulting projects. As I think about how SEO changed in 2016, I realize part of my regained love for SEO was due to the fact that 2016 was a unbelievable and crazy year of SEO ... Read More
What Google’s Mobile-First Indexing Means to You and Your Website
This month Google made a major announcement on the future of search and stated it would break away from the traditional desktop search index (aka database of websites and blogs) and move to a mobile-first search index. Google indicated this shift was coming at industry conferences, but made the change official with an article on the Google Webmaster Central Blog on November 4th. In the announcement Google stated: To make our results more useful, we’ve begun experiments to make our index ... Read More
What Matters in Today’s SEO
Two weeks ago I wrote a blog post about SEO lies and misconceptions. As a follow up to that post, I recently visited WP Tavern's WordPress Weekly podcast and chatted with Jeff Chandler and Marcus Couch. We discuss a number of topics surrounding SEO including what’s changed in the past five years, the purpose of SEO plugins, common misconceptions about search engine optimization, and the amount of effort involved in obtaining real, long-term results. As Jeff stated, I was on fire and ... Read More
Benefits of Customer Reviews You Can’t Ignore
Are the benefits of customer reviews and recommendations worth the risk of exposure? They are and there is a lot of data to prove it. Allowing product reviews and displaying client testimonials have a direct impact on a website's lead generation efforts and an e-commerce site's product sales. And guess what? Custom reviews can also help with local SEO efforts. That's a whole lot of goodness that shouldn't be ignored. I want you to be a believer, so let's explore each scenario in a little ... Read More
Learn WordPress With These 20+ Training Courses and Resources
When I picked up my new SUV last summer, the dealership tried to give me a quick overview of the dashboard and options available. They had me for the first five minutes and then I completely lost interest and just wanted to drive off into the sunset with my fancy new ride. Sadly that training failure isn’t an isolated experience for me or anyone else. For training to work well, the trainer needs to be knowledgeable, structured, patient, and have the ability to apply their skills to ... Read More
Building a Marketing Strategy Based on Data
Having access to accurate marketing data is powerful. It helps you make better business decisions because you have a clearer picture of your business, your target market, and your ability to attract new customers. With real data you have power. This is because you are creating a marketing strategy based on something tangible and not based on a passing idea or a whim. This month I had an opportunity to speak at WordCamp Chicago. While we were in the Q&A part of my presentation, I was ... Read More
Digging Deeper Into WordPress SEO Tools
A few weeks ago I published an article about maximizing SEO efforts in WordPress. I had promised a follow up post to cover additional features like automatically populating meta titles and descriptions, configuring the permalink structure, integrating Webmaster Tools, and creating XML sitemaps. Today we're digging deeper into WordPress SEO tools and covering all those additional SEO goodies. Don't worry, I won't go so far into each topic that I lose you. We'll go just deep enough to get your ... Read More
Setting Up Google Authorship in WordPress
Google authorship is not new, although I find many people (and companies for that matter) are completely unaware of its existence. While us WordPress nerds jumped on the authorship bandwagon quickly, normal people know little about it or the benefits Google authorship offers. Trust me when I say Google authorship is highly beneficial. I know this because I’ve had clients tell me it made a difference and it encouraged them to retain Web Savvy when they were seeking web design services. One ... Read More
Friday’s Marketing Roundup: Good Reads for April 11th
Greetings from CaboPress! This week's marketing roundup comes to you from sunny Mexico. I am down at the ever so beautiful Fiesta Americana Grand Los Cabos. My journey south started Wednesday as I flew into Dallas, Texas to see Genesis colleague and friend Carrie Dils. I was gifted with a great day with Carrie, which is a huge treat for me because we live on opposite sides of the country. On Thursday I departed Dallas and flew into Cabo to attend an event called CaboPress that was arranged ... Read More
Friday’s Marketing Roundup: Good Reads for March 14th
Happy Friday! We're back again with a quick update on this week's interesting articles on WordPress, SEO, social media, and usability. It's been a bit of an action packed week, so I have a few more links that normal. The WPwatercooler continued to mix up education and entertainment for online viewers on Monday and two days later Sucuri further educated and protected the world of CMS with an excellent article on recent brute force attacks. On Thursday Carrie Dils launched out a new Genesis ... Read More
Friday’s Marketing Roundup: Good Reads for January 24th
Last week the world of WordPress was busy talking about acquisitions and funding announcements. This week we were all discussing the bomb Matt Cutts dropped on guest blog posting. Okay, I’m calling it: if you’re using guest blogging as a way to gain links in 2014, you should probably stop. Why? Because over time it’s become a more and more spammy practice, and if you’re doing a lot of guest blogging then you’re hanging out with really bad company. - Matt Cutts on January 20th While I could see ... Read More
Friday’s Marketing Roundup: Good Reads for January 10th
Happy Friday and happy 2014! We're looking forward to another exciting year in the land of internet marketing. With all the changes that occurred last year, 2014 looks like it will be an adventure. This week was a busy news week. Product updates were released for Genesis and Gravity Forms, while a new WordPress app framework called AppPresser arrived. On the search side of things, Google shakes up the blogger community by wiping away many of those pretty author images in search and Yahoo ... Read More
Friday’s Marketing Roundup: Good Reads for December 20th
Happy Friday! It seems everyone is settling down the for the holidays and the internet is slowing to a crawl. Before you head off to that holiday event, take a moment and check out our list of interesting blog posts, news and articles. Our content this week includes a variety of articles from best practices to reviews of SEO changes in 2013. I think my favorite posts are those that talk about my beloved WordPress community. Carrie Dils writes a raw post about her year in 2013 and Matt ... Read More
Friday’s Marketing Roundup: Good Reads for November 22nd
Happy Friday! It's that time to review this week's interesting blog posts, news and articles. Our content includes a variety of articles from DMCA notices to design best practices for a website's home page and landing pages. We've also thrown in a video from Matt Cutts and some great goodies on Schema. If you're interested in getting involved in the WordPress community face to face, we've included a list of upcoming WordCamps and the live WordSesh event. So without further ado, the ... Read More
Friday’s Marketing Roundup: Good Reads from the Week Ending November 15th
Ok I'll admit it - we've been really bad at providing our marketing roundups lately. I've been busy and we've been launching new themes and new client websites. For that I apologize and I'm going to try and get back into the habit of writing our roundups each Friday. I've changed the format up a bit and added in a new section for generic goodness. Sometimes the best articles don't have to be about WordPress or SEO. Sometimes they can just be about business. After all, business is what keeps ... Read More
Web Savvy Marketing
TwitterYoutubeFacebookLinkedinGoogle +