Understanding how to budget for SEO services is a challenge business owners face when putting together their digital marketing budget. Often, I am asked to provide a flat dollar figure, that fits their budget. I answer that question with ‘Let’s meet and talk about your business, and goals’. Why? Because SEO prices depend on what services your business needs, the size of your business, local or international, content and a few other variables. While it is rather difficult to provide a flat rate, after our discussion you will have a better idea about the investment you need to make an ..read more

Undoubtedly in the last 10 months of 2020, the global pandemic has dramatically affected many local businesses across North America. Some have managed to shift their business model to sell their products online and others are struggling to figure out how to stay afloat. On the other side, many consumers have chosen the convenience of shopping locally, whether it is ordering food from local restaurants or walking to the local stores for everyday needs. While these conditions have opened up new opportunities for eCommerce, they have also created a huge demand for many local brands to optimize t ..read more

What impact will Apple Reviews have on local businesses? For many years Google Maps has been the leader in helping people search for local business, find directions, review products and services directly from the app and do much more. Local business owners who realize the value of local SEO have been paying attention, making sure they have a solid GMB profile and optimizing for the local pack. I must say that Google has made it easier for businesses by giving them a really good and easy to manage platform, Google My Business. Now Apple wants to claim its share in the local search, and one way ..read more

Why is it important to optimize images for visual search? Visual search has gained a lot of popularity in the last few years with the big players like Google, Bing and Pinterest, launching their visual search tools. While local brands and businesses ramp up their efforts to improve the quality of their product images on their websites and e-commerce platforms, the question of image size has become a hot topic. Does the image size matter for SEO? How does the size of the image affect the speed of the page? What does Google recommend? Use high-quality images Place them on a prominent spot on y ..read more

Google My Business Updates This post goes through frequent updates to reflect the most recent changes in Google My Business (GMB). I find that many local shops, business owners are unaware that there is a no-cost digital marketing tool at their fingertips that helps increase local search visibility, list their products and services, manage customer reviews and grow their business. How to update your Google My Business profile directly from search August 17-2020 update Google My Business is making it easier for small business owners to edit different sections of their profile directly from s ..read more

How home renovation brands can boost visibility in local search? The demand for home renovation companies, kitchen and bathroom renovation contractors have seen a significant increase during the pandemic. With the new work and learn from home reality, homeowners have faced the need to remodel their living spaces in order to accommodate this new lifestyle. This has resulted in more people turning to online search to find expert advice and cost-effective solutions to renovate their homes. In fact, over 93% of homeowners use Google search to look for a reliable and trusted contractor. Take a loo ..read more

Content quality could be why some pages are excluded in Search Console! Google search console (SC) is an indicator of how your website is performing and allows you to draw a lot of insights about what changes you need to make to rank better. One of the tabs in SC lists the excluded URLs. There are a few reasons why some pages may be listed as excluded, but some of them which are perfectly indexable, Google simply chooses not to index them!   As John Mueller said in Google webmasters, May 15 hangout session, the reason why some pages may not be indexed has nothing to do with the Google ..read more

Yes, it can. Read on.. Why do you need structured data on your website? No matter what business you’re in, at a certain capacity you will need to implement structured data or schema markup code on your website. The purpose of structured data is to help bots (machines) better understand what the content of your website is all about. The method of adding structured data depends on which platform your website is built-in. If your website is in WordPress and you are using  Gutenberg blocks, it will be easier as each block has its own structured data. Other excellent plugins to consider are ..read more

On Page SEO Tips On-page SEO with local focus is one of the most important steps, if your goal is to improve your local rankings. Just by making simple changes to your website you can increase traffic to your website and convert more visitors to potential leads. You can read more about some tips on how to increase website traffic, here. Let me refer to an actual customer case study, where just by following on-Page SEO best practices, the rankings for a specific keyword improved dramatically. I was recently working with a photography business client on website optimization for local search. A ..read more

E-A-T, Expertise, Authoritativeness, Trustworthiness Google updates their search algorithms frequently to improve end user’s search experience and make sure users find the best and most accurate piece of information that matches their search query. Every time there is a new algorithm update, some brand websites see drops in the rankings and visibility, and some brands are impacted positively! So yes, your website can really be affected, due to a Google core algorithm update. When that happens, you are most likely to turn to your SEO specialist to figure out how to get back on track, but inves ..read more