I’ve been a marketing consultant for the better part of 35 years. Today, I work with Consulting Success® as their Head of Growth. Both in my consulting work and as part of the world's leading training organization for growth-minded consultants, including coaches and expert advisors, one of the most common questions we get is, “How ..read more

Something a lot of marketers tend to ignore these days is branding. SEO experts are just as much to blame. In fact, branding is an often overlooked component in SEO. In the ever-evolving organic visibility landscape, establishing a strong and enduring presence requires a strategic focus on branding. Throughout my career, I found that building ..read more

Written by Michel Fortin. Originally published on seoplus.com. Table Of Contents 1. Mobile usage 2. Privacy laws 3. Machine learning The loss of historic data The time to switch Exporting historical data Analytics across platforms In March 2022, Google announced that it will sunset its near-ubiquitous Universal Analytics, or what we know as Google Analytics 3rd generation. The reaction from the Internet marketing community has been quite fierce, but the chance that Google will retract from its position is highly unlikely. Why such as drastic move? While surprising, this announcement wa ..read more

Written by Michel Fortin. Originally published on seoplus.com. Table Of Contents Weighing Keywords For Relevance TF-IDF is Still Important But Problematic Three Things Keywords Fail to Consider 1. It ignores the keyword’s meaning. 2. It ignores the keyword’s importance. 3. It ignores the keyword’s purpose. Switching From Keywords to Entities What’s The Idea Behind Entities? Why Tracking Keywords is Losing Ground Topics: The New Keywords Topical Research vs Keyword Research Topical Clusters and The Future of SEO For ages, search engine optimization (SEO) was all about keywords. They ..read more

A client had five different websites, all of which had separate blogs and articles. Their websites were closely related with many commonalities and overlapping topics. My advice was to merge everything and bring all the content under one virtual roof. Consolidating websites is often considered a best practice among SEOs, and the only time it doesn't make sense is when each site's intended audience and subject matter are completely distinct. After the consolidation, it created an exponential effect when combined with fresh content. The increase in traffic from consolidating everything not only ..read more

Special Announcement I'm incredibly excited to announce that I've taken on a new challenge. I'm the new Director of Search at seoplus, a full-stack digital marketing agency that's also a Google Premier Partner, Facebook Partner, and Shopify Partner. With a growing team of 40 in-house specialists at their head office in Ottawa, Ontario, seoplus+ has clients around the world in a wide variety of verticals. Their specialty is SEO, local SEO, and PPC campaigns. Their track record is impressive, too, successfully creating millions of dollars in revenue for their clients and winning multiple awards ..read more

Table Of Contents As an SEO professional, I'm not a big fan of building links or, better said, chasing them. I know; this is one of the most utilized methods in SEO. Most SEO experts out there talk about building backlinks as immensely important to SEO. They're 100% right. Links are important. But building them can be a risky business. Google's John Mueller outright said that most attempts at building links are unnatural and despised by the search engine. Asking other websites to link back to yours seems a little sleazy to me. Granted, there are ways to do this ethically, of course. But it's s ..read more

Table Of Contents It was a busy week in the SEO world. Google updated its algorithms at the beginning of February, and I had a full plate working with my SEO clients. Part of this algorithm update is passages ranking, which is now live in US and only affecting a small percentage of searches. Passages ranking is where you can rank based on passages instead of the entire page. It's no different from the way it ranks pages currently. However, the benefit is that Google can understand subtopics better and serve pages for more relevant queries. This is a major plus for many plastic surgeons, as mos ..read more

Table Of Contents I'm often asked by aspiring marketers: “What's the most important marketing skills to learn? Is it SEO? PPC? Analytics? Copywriting? Video? PR? Social media?” Or, “What should I learn first?” Surprisingly, it's none of those things. In my 30-year career as a marketer, from copywriter to SEO, from traditional media to digital, I have found one skill that trumps all of them. With this one skill, everything else follows naturally. Before I tell you what it is, let me share a brief story. Problem-Solving is a Balancing Act When I was young, I used to rollerskate a lot. Not inline ..read more

Table Of Contents A client asked for my opinion on domain names as ranking factors. Specifically, she asked if Google pays attention to domain name keywords and the choice of domain name extension (such as .com). Here was her question, redacted for obvious reasons: “I have not decided on a name for my practice. I'm wondering if I should register a unique brand name, my name (drjanedoe.com), or a generic but keyword-rich domain name (cityplasticsurgery.com). But before I spend the money to buy a premium domain name, I'm wondering whether there is any benefit or disadvantage to using a .doctor ..read more