One of the terms thrown around a lot in SEO is anchor text. What is it, and why does it matter? When you click on a link, it can take you to another page. The link itself is a signal that Google pays attention to. All of the links on the web form an interconnected … Read more
Your website needs content – it’s as simple as that. I’m only going to focus on written content for the purposes of our discussion here. Five pages are just not enough to have an impact in search. Google has many facets to its algorithm, and one of them has to do with expertise. If your … Read more
Too many small businesses think that SEO is not worthwhile. You’ve probably typed lots of searches yourself and clicked on thousands of links to websites from companies of all sizes, from enterprise all the way down to one person, writing blog posts at their kitchen table. I talk about SEO a lot, and for this … Read more
Analysis after the call Sales calls with prospects or even existing clients can get complicated with enormous amounts of information being exchanged. This can be compounded when there are members of your own team who have participated. Perhaps they were there to learn or more often, they needed to gather technical information and provide responses … Read more
Forecasting opportunities This is a very common sales terminology. As a business development person, or even an entire team, begin building up a quantity of leads and prospects during the sales process, these opportunities are often referred to as a pipeline. Similar to oil production and transportation, they are in motion and on the way. … Read more
Keep your sales reps trained and up to date Everyone is busy, but in the sales world time is money. What this means is that business development people maximize the hours of the day to increase their income. Not only will they resist yielding parts of their schedule for anything not directly related to income … Read more
Ways that business development people get paid For those new to sales, you will see all sorts of different compensation plans offered by marketing companies. These are created as incentives and are intended to motivate sales reps to bring in as much revenue as possible. The structures can sometimes get complicated as there are often … Read more
The essential sales tool for any marketing agency Aside from email and your online calendar, a Customer Relations Management (CRM) software solution is probably your most important software purchase for your team. Most business development people view the use of CRM as tedious and time-consuming. However, seasoned representatives appreciate the necessity of this software and … Read more
The transition from business owner to sales manager As any small web design or marketing agency grows from being a single freelancer to small team and beyond, at some point there will come time when the owner will need to bring on a sales rep to assist them with bringing in new business and/or to … Read more
If you are going to be in sales, you need to know the jargon To fully immerse yourself in sales it is useful to have a reference for some of the more common and lesser known terms in the industry. Whether you are in a sales meeting or around the water cooler, you are likely … Read more
A sales training exercise When looking to coach your employees you will likely find the most effective exercise to be role playing. This activity can be in a one on one or in a group setting where each person takes a turn at the exercise and allows the other team members to watch and learn … Read more
Marketing Agency Sales Process The first step in learning any craft is to familiarize yourself with the basics. With this, all of your strategies and skills can be directed and utilized at the proper time. While similar to marketing, their is enough difference to the sales process that it requires it’s own steps. In learning … Read more
Categorizing accounts and prospects Marketing and sales departments have for years qualified clients and their target market through the attribution their size. The industry utilizes terms to identify them and it is very common to see them referred to in news, blog articles and marketing materials to easily convey this to the reader. There is … Read more
A versatile and lucrative specialty For most people, sales is a career like almost any other. For me, it was a very big opportunity. Years ago, outside of the trades, there were very few lucrative jobs available to someone who did not have a college degree. Everyone talks about a glass ceiling and I definitely … Read more
Stop just giving away PDF’s – There is a better strategy If you’re currently uploading PDFs to your website, it’s time to reconsider this practice. While Google may index PDFs and display them in search results, there are several drawbacks to relying on them for SEO purposes. Limited Optimization: PDFs aren’t as easily optimized as … Read more
The phone room Years ago when businesses were trying to increase sales, they would hire appointment setters who would make cold calls over the phone for lead generation. This was considered one of the least glamorous of jobs and because of this, managers would assign the least desirable rooms in a building and preferably with … Read more
Managing the customer relationship While sales positions can take on numerous names within organizations, this particular term has usually referred to a person responsible for existing customers rather than developing new business. This title should not be confused with a role such as project manager. They generally are focused on: New business development teams are … Read more
Content or Backlinks I am ftne asked about this. The question and even the dollar amount can vary, but essentially people are trying to get to the heart of “what is the best way to spend my SEO budget?” Now I can’t give a simplistic answer to such a vague question, because that would just … Read more
Understanding Google’s Evolution When people talk about toxic links, they are describing backlinks from other websites to pages on your website that have a negative effect on your rankings. In reality, this isn’t really a thing anymore and here is why. There was once a time when links were the ultimate currency of SEO. Every … Read more
This year, Target has revealed their toy selections from their mascot, Bullseye. We have created an easy to download flyer to print or review. This Document is meant as a reference only. Don’t miss out on this years Black Friday Deals. You can also find their top toys list directly on their website, Target.com Click … Read more
The theme this year is Holiday Dash For the past few years, Amazon has been mailing out a printed toy catalog for the holiday season. For those that know about it, it is often highly sought after. It is the must have wish list of the season and is full of lots of fun activities … Read more
Amazon Native Ads Issue This post is not for learning how to use this tool. If you are looking for a tutorial on that, use this link here. This post is intended to help with a specific issue that occurs with Amazon Native ads. The Amazon Affiliate program recommends using their code in conjunction with … Read more
Here is a free content idea tool The marketing community has had a favorite online tool called Answer The Public. While this is a paid service, they do provide a free use and that is the feature I would like to focus on here. Sales people who work for agencies do not always have easy … Read more
Serp robot is a quick and easy SEO tool for checking results If you are a salesperson in a digital agency, you don’t always have access to the multiple tools that your entire marketing team has. What I’d like to show you today is a free SERP checker. SERPROBOT provides a free tool that immediately … Read more
A quick case study on HARO reporter requests Each weekday, HARO publishes 3 emails with requests from journalists and content creators from numerous publications. For those of us that are looking to be sources for these reporters, we wait with anticipation for these editions (this is how they label them) that go out every morning, … Read more
Understanding marketing for SAAS companies While every industry can claim that marketing is different for them, SAAS does have a unique position within the online space. When looking at the behavior of purchasing and the buyer journey involved, you will likely not find any other marketing roadmap that includes as many touch points. This is … Read more
Digital Conference for Marketers and Business Owners Here in Raleigh We’re proud to support the this year’s Internet Summit (now called Digital Summit), taking over the Raleigh Convention Center this September 19 – 20, 2022. Join us and thousands of your peers — and digital gurus for the latest digital marketing trends and practices from … Read more
Walmart Christmas Catalog Some people just like having a physical, printed catalog around at Christmas time. This year it is 56 pages front to back and guides you with some of the most fun and have-to-have gifts. Brand name toys and games along with stickers and even a neat Scan & Shop Feature. This years … Read more
Networking Events for Small Businesses in Raleigh and the Triangle Small businesses definitely have had their challenges over the last two years. This has required a lot of creativity and hard work from business owners and they should definitely be given a lot of credit. While the way many conduct business has shifted from curbside … Read more
Reviews are one of the easiest things for your customers to provide and still one of the marketing wins that businesses struggle with. It is not that they don’t want to say nice things, but they are busy and it is never top of mind. This will help them by taking away some of the … Read more
Where would we be without our friends. Since they were so gracious to offer to help you out, here is a simple step by step tutorial that will take 30 seconds of your time to invite friends on Facebook to like a business profile page. Inviting Facebook friends from desktop Step 1: Find the page … Read more
Just what are they and how do they get used If there is one term that gets thrown around more than any other in marketing it is the term keyword. The improper usage in everyday discussion will often cause me to grit my teeth. I do not fault people who genuinely do not know what … Read more
Updated blog since first published to include results at bottom. For the last few years I have been very frustrated with GoDaddy and their unwillingness to provide SSL certification to sites on a website at no or at least a reasonable fixed cost. The only option they had were paid SSL that you had to … Read more
It is impossible to discuss marketing trends that are occurring right now without referring to Covid. This one event has had more impact on our industry than any other in the last twenty years. It has been transformational and without putting to fine a point on it, it has changed the way businesses conduct marketing. … Read more
Over time you will find a need to remove a URL on your website from Google’s search results. It can be for any number of reasons. But most often times it is because you accidentally indexed content that belonged behind a paywall. Or maybe a website has been hacked and numerous, useless URL’s have been … Read more
Just like any industry trade, marketing departments and agencies need tools. Luckily there is a wide variety to choose from online. Some SEO professionals have paid tools and often aren’t even sure why. Over the years we try them and collect them and once in a while review the company credit card and try to … Read more
Improve Ranking of Bubble Pages How do I make them appear on the first page? All of that trouble and to be so close. Such is the life of an affiliate marketer. When a page is close to driving traffic from achieving the top results of organic rankings, it can be frustrating when it is … Read more
Setting up your GMB Listing is the Key To Ranking for Local SEO To get started you need a Gmail account. Google My Business (GMB) is one of the easiest and fastest ways to tell Google the name of your business and ultimately about your website. This profile is free from Google and gives you … Read more
SEO and 301 Redirects You have launched the new website and over the last few days traffic has taken a nosedive. Your analytics looks like a graph from the Dow Jones on a very bad day. The web design firm assures you this always happens with a new website and that it will recover better … Read more
As with most of us in the industry, we collect domains like baseball cards and work with many client domains in a mixture of hosting, email and sometimes redirecting entire domains for SEO purposes. I was recently troubleshooting an issue in this last scenario and ran across a new practice that GoDaddy has put in … Read more
How To Increase Authority For Your Website Since search engines cannot determine on their own what a useful or quality search result is, they rely heavily on factors in addition to the actual written content on pages. While they crawl every page on the web that they can discover, they also find it useful to … Read more
The Correct Spelling of the Word: ecommerce How is this word that has been around for almost 30 years now, actually spelled? Over the years there have been plenty of variations by many sources to settle this question. Let’s check out some of the old reliable sources then. Webster’s Dictionary is always a great go-to … Read more
Can I learn SEO on my own? If you are starting out and want a job in marketing, or have a small business and need to have a better understanding of how search engines work, then you should know that hands on practice is the easiest way to learn SEO. With the continually changing state … Read more
Whether a company gains a new partner or feels the need to rebrand themselves, many businesses from time to time choose to change their name and/or the domain of their website. While updating your website, marketing materials, and even the sign on your building can often be top of mind, some details for digital marketing … Read more