Fixing Business Listing Errors in Local SEO on Angie’s List Can Be Confusing

Dealing with local SEO issues like yellow pages tech support can be frustrating at times. That is a good reason to leave it up to the business listing correction experts, like us. It gets even more complicated when support staff are feeding their clients misinformation.

fix listing errors on angies listI believe that the tech support department of Angie’s List may be confusing their search engine terminology. I wrote Angie’s List to have them update the phone number in a listing for one of my clients recently. I followed up a few weeks later since I did not see the live listing data updated yet.

They replied saying that the listing had been updated. They also said that if you are not signed in to the website (as a member) and you are seeing outdated info (which they may have updated already), AND you found the page via a Google search, then it is a Google cached page that you are seeing. Huh!?! Continue reading

How To Make A Side-By-Side Competitor Ranking Report from a Linkdex Export CSV File

Before discovering this technique, I wasted hours copy/pasting client & competitor ranking data into it’s ‘proper’ place on a spreadsheet. Pivot tables save a LOT of time when working with ranking exports from Linkdex! See how it is done in a few short minutes with this video.

Turn this…

linkdex export

Into this… Continue reading

Orion Group’s Top 10 WordPress Plugins

WordPress PluginsIn the last couple months several people have asked me what WordPress plugins are the best, which do we use on our sites, and what each plugin does.  There over 31,000 plugins in the WordPress repository, and thousands of paid plugins and add-ons available on the web.  It can be hard to figure out what to use.  So to get started, here’s a list of our top 10 plugins that we use on our latest sites. Continue reading

Stop Sending Word Docs Via Email, Please! How to Use Google Docs to Write and Share

Whether you’re working on a simple project between three people or need to share a document with hundreds of people, the old standby of emailing a Word document isn’t such a great idea. With Google Docs being a much easier system, I encourage everyone to set up an account and use this method of document sharing. Google Docs allows you to “create and share your work online and access your documents from anywhere.”

image of Google Docs logoGoogle Docs enables you to create:

  • Documents (like Word)
  • Presentations (like PowerPoint)
  • Spreadsheets (like Excel)
  • Forms, or
  • Drawings

Continue reading

Every Website Visit Is A DROP In The Bucket, But It Adds Up To Internet Success!

When you log-in to your Google Analytics (GA) account to look at your web traffic, it may look very confusing initially. Google provides you with LOTS of data. There are several ways an internet user can find you, and Google has the analytics to track and show you how they got to your website. In GA, under Audience Overview, click on the arrow, and Google offers several built-in views that make it easy.

image of Google Analytics: Audience Overview

Google Analytics: Audience Overview: Built-In

Every visitor to your website is another drop in your traffic bucket. If you want to remember the main sources of traffic in Google Analytics, think “A DROP“. Now you don’t want to see a drop in your numbers, but this acronym will help you remember the four main traffic sources: Continue reading

Gain Reviews to Increase Your Google Places Listing Rank

It is one of my goals as a Milwaukee SEO consultant to help my clients’ websites appear on the first page of Google.   The introduction of ‘local’ results, with Google Places business listings thrown into top 10 search results has added an extra element to our optimization goals to achieve higher 1st page rankings.
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Internet Marketing Blogs: Our Top Picks

Below is a list of some of our Top Picks when it comes to what we think are the best Internet Marketing blogs/websites on the web today. You’ll find many of them helpful in many areas of Internet marketing including: content strategy, pay per click advertising, search engine optimization, web analytics, and general Internet marketing tips and techniques. Continue reading

How To: Create a Graph To Report Website Traffic Volume vs Keyword Rank Using Excel

As an SEO company, it is important to keep your clients up to date on their rankings and organic search traffic volumes.  I often use a graph created via Microsoft Excel to show our SEO clients the progress we have made in website keyword rank and the impact that the change in rank has had on the amount website visitors via organic searches in Google.

A report such as this could help to encourage your client to continue paying for search engine optimization efforts or perhaps increase their Internet marketing budget to allow link-building and optimization of more keywords.

Below is the basic process that I use to produce the graph that I include in the written report on traffic volume vs. keyword rank for an individual keyword using MS Excel. Continue reading

Build the Authority of Your Website With Social Media and SEO

Gone are the days of creating a website and leaving it as is. With the search engines being as sophisticated as they areSEO and Social Media today and online searches continuing to grow, actively managing your website and increasing its authority online is necessary in today’s business climate.

You need to take care of your website. Just like you would with your health or fitness, you need to actively manage your website so that it performs well and looks good at the same time. That’s the only way to get the top-notch results you’re looking for. Of course, that is more easily said than done. Continue reading