Website Promotion is not Voodoo

What’s the Difference Between White, Gray, and Black SEO Hats?

When I was starting out in SEO, I was so confused by what the best practices were and I remember at my first search conference a speaker (I want to say it was Matt Cutts but it probably wasn’t) started explaining the “hats”. There are three different hats a SEO can wear and each color represents how clean they are with their  search engine tactics.

Nice Hat.

White Hat SEO

One of the most important and oft-overlooked aspect of SEO is link building. Link building strategies are one of the simplest concepts, but most make it more difficult than it needs to be. For instance, Sage Lewis defines link building as, “The integration of useful elements into a whole Web site to allow for the accretion of links through natural means.” Sage obviously doesn’t follow one of the mottos I live my life by: Make things as simple as possible, but no simpler.

1. Why Local Businesses Can No Longer Ignore Foursquare

For some reason businesses are hesitant to jump on the social media bandwagon. It’ll never make sense to me because even if you don’t believe in its power, your customers do!  By simply adding a little prize for the mayor or a special for just checking in, you are almost guaranteed loyal repeat customers looking to catch a deal. It’s a game for these people! Make your business the board!

2. The Rise of SMB Reputation Management

Once again we’ve collected some handy links that we thought you’d find enjoyable and useful. Have a look and maybe you’ll get some ideas for what to do on Monday when the clients and customers start calling…

1. GoogleSpeak – “We currently do not support the location” = Banished?

As much as we love Google Maps… it’s got a long way to go until it’s a fully reliable business tool. It works perfectly for many, but some businesses end up with a problem-laden listing or market and just can’t seem to get it straightened out. If you’re a small business struggling to get your business details out there, you are not alone! Stay tuned for future posts on how to manage it!

I spent last week traveling including a visit to San Francisco for SMX Local Mobile.

All I’m saying is I don’t know why more of you weren’t there. As far as I’m concerned this was a big time win for anyone in attendance. I got some great tips from the speakers and an equal amount of good stuff from the attendees, some of which will be the focus of future posts.

I had the pleasure to sit on a panel with 3 really smart guys: Gib Olander , Michael Jensen

I just saw this – I’m sure others have written about it since its publication but I must have missed it somehow.

Finally, the document we’ve all been asking for!

Google has released the official Google SEO Starter Guide.

More to come when I have a chance to read it in depth.

All it needs is a reference to link-building like the old webmaster guidelines.

Return on Investment Through Call Tracking

Since I’m clearly not going to get to the proposals I had on tap for tonight I thought I’d go ahead and document a recent client experience I’ve been talking to a few folks about.

I’ve told this story a few times recently in support of our use of call tracking numbers.

There’s an old joke “Half of my marketing budget is wasted, if only I knew which half”.

At the risk of repeating myself, Miriam of Solas Web Design in her SEO Igloo blog has been engaged for a few weeks in an investigation of Local SEO culminating with a series of interviews. Miriam was nice to include me and most recently asked me to respond to some questions from the comments on one of her recent posts.

This is an answer both to Miriam and to current and future clients wondering about our process.

What this post will not cover:

• Managing offline conversion (I’m working on a case study for this)

Update:

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Most of our clients come by referral. Â We can help you too (and in most cases for much less than SEO Matrix).

We have spoken to a few SEO Matrix cold-call recipients and would love to speak with you too.

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Original post follows:

Pay No Attention to That Man Behind The Curtain: M-LAT, Medical Lead Acquisition Technology

I’ve mentioned before our current vertical focus on Cosmetic / Plastic Surgery.

I got a call from one of our clients who had attended a dinner in Los Angeles with 40+ of his colleauges in the LA area – “Doc-Hollywoods” he called them. As part of the dinner there’s a chance for vendors to present. At this one, the vendor was a company calling themselves M-LAT (Medical Lead Acquisition Technology).