How to Rank in the Local Pack Across Your Entire City (Study)

I did some Local SEO research on how to rank in the Local Pack across your entire city, not just from your office location. It was published on the AttorneySync blog today. Here’s the gist of the study: Often a business will spot check their rankings in the Local Pack or organic to get an idea … Read more

Why is Buying Links a Problem?

Early last week, Jon Christian dropped a story about Jayson Demers promoting his own clients with links he dropped into Forbes, Entreprenuer, Inc and others. There was shock and horror from people outside of the digital marketing industry. Look at how a portion of the public (and our President) currently treats reporters and journalists. Add … Read more

Why Don’t Newspapers Link Out?

 via GIPHY (Hey look! A link) (Updated 7/9 with email examples) Linking Policies are Stupid Let’s chat about the stupidity and inefficiency of newspapers linking policies. Recently, I’ve picked up a few new larger clients who tend to get a good amount of positive press. Hooray! Being the opportune link builder I am, I … Read more

How SEO’s Can Take Advantage of Increased Meta Descriptions

sanfranpi

Google Increases Meta Description Length 

I’m usually late to the “SEO’s break the news” game. Sometimes because I don’t see the tests (changes) happening right away, but mostly because I don’t blog about changes right away. I’ve got other shit going on. There are plenty of articles and whiteboards out there already about what an increase in meta descriptions means. I’ll break it down quickly, but I’m more interested in how Digital Marketers can take advantage of this change.

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Review Snippets in the Local Pack

Analyzing Review Snippets in Local Pack

Review Snippets in the Local Pack 13
Review Snippet in 2nd listing

Recently, I’ve been noticing more and more review snippets in Local Packs. Local SEO people have been discussing the new additions to the Local Pack, though there hasn’t been much discussion on what triggers the snippets. I analyzed 6 different niches and hundreds of searches to determine what, if anything, is triggering review snippets to show in the Local Pack. Below is what I found.

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Pubcon 2017 Las Vegas

Las Vegas Pubcon 2017

Las Vegas Pubcon Pros & Cons

Last week I had the awesome opportunity to attend Pubcon in Las Vegas. I’ve been in the industry long enough to know what Pubcon is about but had yet to make it out to a conference. I was very much looking forward to everything it had to offer. Below are what I found to be the pros and cons of this years Pubcon Las Vegas.

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How To Contact Google My Business

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Ways to Contact Google My Business

I’ve been working in Google My Business on a day to day basis for several years. One of the most frustrating things for me has always been Google’s lack of support and communication when you really need help. I understand why Google doesn’t offer much in the way of customer support, though some guidance would have been nice back in the day.

Over the years, Google has slowly begun increasing their support for small businesses in Google My Business. They have help articles, forums and increased phone support, though the quality of the phone support can be debated. As with everything Google does, the avenues you choose to contact GMB support has changed. Below are the three easiest ways to contact Google My Business if you need help:

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Fighting For Minimal Clicks

brian-barwig-fighting-for-minimal-clicks

The Fight for Less Clicks

I’ve been thinking about this for a while and wanted to get some thoughts to paper, especially since I’m nowhere near my 1 post per month I anticipated doing at the beginning of the year.

I recently read 3 terrific articles – one from Gyi, one from Andrew Shotland at SEL and another from Jon Henshaw on Medium  – and they got my mind buzzing. Google has never really been one to give away free traffic and make things easy for SEO’s. Back in the wild west of SEO, there were ways to game the system and rank a website, though G was always cutting down easy ways to rank, attempting to get people to buy Adwords and penalizing websites. The same continues today at an even more rapid pace, as easy loopholes get shutdown, more ads are placed and there is less real estate in the SERP.

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Google Adds “People typically spend” in Knowledge Graph

  People Typically Spend X  Minutes Here This weekend, I noticed a new feature in the Knowledge Graph. With all the changes/testing Google does on a regular basis, I decided to reach out to Barry Schwartz and Mike Blumenthal to determine if they had seen this new feature before. Turns out they had not. New … Read more