One of the great things about the internet is how you learn how to use it better by using the internet.

Yup.

But given how much information there is out there, it can be nice when someone curates it for you and just gives you the best of the best.

Here are the go-to internet marketing resources we’ve used to learn the trade and that we heartily recommend to others. Bookmark this page because we will update it as we find new ones.

(more…)

How Google Works

If Google’s algorithm is proprietary, how do SEO professionals know what factors can help a business optimize for top rankings in the search results? There are a couple different ways.

We can:

• Look at Google’s filed patents, including the initial patent that described how PageRank works.
• Follow Google’s own SEO recommendations from their webmaster guidelines, their blog, and videos Google releases about SEO.
• Review the results of case studies and experiments conducted by some of the companies that offer SEO tools and tips. (See video and post below).
• Refer to experience with clients we’ve seen achieve top rankings. We see local Wisconsin companies jumping to page one in the results by step 4 of The Phases of SEO for a Local Business.

Here’s a talk I recently gave at PechaKucha Madison on this subject. It’s a neat format, 20 slides in 20 seconds apiece, that forces you to be concise.

(more…)

Why ask for Google reviews and how many should I have?

Five (UPDATE: Three) is the magic number when it comes to reviews on your Google Local or Google My Business (GMB) page. That’s because once you have 5 reviews, Google shows your star rating visually to potential customers on Google Maps and in the result page 3-pack. Something about seeing stars just makes a person want to click and check out that business.

Not having those stars when other businesses do just makes it look like you’re lacking somehow. And you are, really, because you should regularly be using social proof (like testimonials and reviews) to sell to your future customers. Anybody can say their own company is great, but new customers are more likely to believe your past customers.

How do I get more reviews on Google?

So how do you encourage your customers to leave you reviews on Google? There’s no obvious link URL like there is for your main website.

Fortunately, someone has made it easy by creating a tool. Check out how it works in our YouTube video here.

(more…)