The Linchpin Blog

Did you know 86 percent of people in the U.S. trust small businesses, but only 55 percent have the same level of trust in big business? As reported here, this Pew Foundation survey sheds a favorable light on the earnings potential of today’s small businesses. However, competition for consumer dollars...

Don’t let any digital marketer tell you they can guarantee you Google rankings, or that they know exactly how Google ranks web pages. We as SEO professionals don’t know the full scope of ranking factors, or the exact nature behind what causes one page to rank above another. At...

If you want to see better results in today’s online marketplace, it’s vital that you use targeted content. In fact, leads who are nurtured with targeted content show a 20 percent increase in sales opportunities. The way in which you segment your customers will vary, depending on the industry. However,...

It does not take a tech-savvy person to notice mobile phones are the future home of Internet users. They go everywhere with us even to the bathroom. They are connected to families, friends, and engrained in our lives. They make traveling a breeze, turn comparing prices into an easy...

You have a great website. It has a modern design, provides a great user experience and has a solid information architecture strategy. It’s quick, SEO Friendly, packed with great content and yet it’s still not delivering the amount of leads or sales you want. Why? It doesn’t have good...

With the digital marketing space moving at a rapid pace, having an outdated website can have a negative impact on your business. Two question we often hear from businesses we consult with about digital strategy, is “Do I need a website redesign to compete or rank better?”, or if we recommend...

When searching for an agency to create a website for your business, it can be challenging knowing which companies create great websites, and which will create you a website that will detract from your brand. There are many different types of website design firms and each have their benefits and...

Depending on your experience, blogging may or may not seem like a daunting addition to a small business marketing strategy. You may even be wondering if your small business needs a blog to be successful online. This article offers blogging tips for small businesses to get you started and...

Content marketing is a powerful and widely adopted strategy that can have many positive effects on building your small business’s brand. Benefits include; growing website traffic from local SEO rankings; increasing sales; and earning high-quality links to help you get top google rankings. Sadly, many small businesses face challenges...

There can be any number of reasons why your website traffic dropped suddenly and significantly. This can be an issue with something as simple as your analytics code being removed accidentally after a website update, or something more severe such as your website being penalized by Google. There are...

There is movement happening in the design world, one which begs designers to put aside their own aesthetics and create with the user in mind. This movement pushed UX, or user experience, to the forefront of design, especially web design. Previously, websites were created at the whims of a...

There are many SEO agencies and SEO consultants who do shady SEO, and don’t come close to measuring up to our standard of how we feel SEO should be done, and what defines a best-in-class SEO campaign. The challenge is that most businesses don’t actually know what a well-defined and...

Most websites lose SEO traffic at some point. This is usually do to a poorly executed transition plan or website redesign, hiring the wrong SEO agency, or even the website being hacked. When traffic loss happens it can feel like a personal attack on your website from Google and...

Every wonder why small business website design seems to be behind the times? As the Internet landscape evolves, good website design has become a key factor to all businesses from startups and small businesses, to brands and large websites. Large businesses boast iconic images and initially unknown brands are...

A logo is a big part of the marketing that represents a company or brand. The logos of the most recognizable brands are memorable, while also being simple and easy to recognize. Think of your logo as a beacon that helps users find and recognize your small business brand....

Knowing where to focus your time and energy and avoid SEO mistakes when it comes to executing local SEO strategies and advanced tactics that will have value and drive rankings, traffic, and conversions is key to building a long-term strategy to grow your online business. Below you will find...

Every couple of months Google rolls out an update that targets websites that are not providing user-value, or that are trying to manipulate the search results with spam tactics. Google is usually pretty quiet about the changes they make to their algorithm – for obvious reasons – however, the...

So your site has been de-listed from the search engines or your rankings have drastically dropped. You’re losing money, you don’t know why Google would do such a horrible thing to your website. The time has come to submit a reconsideration request to Google to explain your situation. Below...

There are many keyword research guides that outline the best way to determine keywords for your website or choose keywords for a SEO campaign. Many of these guides tell you to use both free and paid keyword tools, whose primary output is search volume – aka they find popular keywords....

Anyone who owns a business or designs and manages a website knows that your job is never done. Because there are always new strategies that can be put in place to improve your website’s usability, visual appeal, traffic generation, or conversions, your website needs to be treated like a...

Web designers looking to make beautiful webpages must utilize tools to get cutting-edge results. Wireframes are an excellent tool for web designers to conceptualize a prospective website layout without dedicating excessive amounts of resources to a preliminary design. Many designers have utilized wireframes since the inception of the Internet....

With the vast amount SEO tips and tactics found on the web, it can be difficult for small businesses trying to learn how to do DIY SEO to cut through all the clutter and find sound advice. Below you will find a list of SEO basics, and the 9...

With the evolution of SEO and the Googlebot Persona, SEO has become more inclusive of other disciplines and relies on team members across a company or agency to work together to drive quality traffic that deposits the user-type onto the page that best satisfies their intent. Defining the metrics...

We’ve all clicked on a link in Google and come to a website that was either outdated, slow to load, or was poorly designed. How did it make you feel? Probably frustrated, like the business was not trustworthy, or worst case [for the business] you went back to the...

Keyword research can make or break your SEO campaign. Choosing the wrong keywords can cause a drop in quality website traffic and/or cause user frustration; but choose the correct keywords and users are happy, quality traffic increases, and leads and sales grow. Much like other SEO strategies, keyword research...

If your wondering how to increase tee time bookings, sell more more pro shop products and branded merchandise, increase events and corporate outings at your golf course or country club, this article is for you. If you have worked with us, you know we are avid golfers. We are...

Website design for manufacturing and industrial companies has traditionally been an afterthought. The companies we have spoken with assume that just because they’re not selling directly to consumers (what most consider B2C), their website didn’t matter. Every business has a consumer, whether products are sold directly, or through a distributor....

Knowing where to focus your time and energy when it comes to executing SEO tactics that will have value and drive rankings, traffic, and conversions is key to building a long term strategy to grow your online business. Below you will find the 10 most overrated SEO tactics that...

We work with a variety of companies to help them increase rankings, traffic and conversions; as well as partnering with digital agencies to help them provide best-in-class SEO services to their clients. One of the initial questions we ask, is how are you measuring SEO success and what data...

If you’re going to take the DIY SEO route or just want to monitor how your SEO company is doing, there are tasks that should be completed each month to ensure your website stays optimized and traffic continues to increase. As a follow up to our do-it-yourself seo article we have put together...

Thinking of Taking Your eCommerce Business International? With broader internet availability, buyers, including those that patronize your website, will have better access to businesses all over the world. One of the most exciting ways an eCommerce company can expand a business is to establish itself in the international marketplace....

As much as we feel that every company needs a great SEO consultant to help guide their search engine optimization strategy, we have also become realists, knowing not all companies have the passion/belief in the strategy – as we do. With that said, some try to do SEO themselves...

One of the biggest challenges of running a church is connecting with your regular attendees and reaching out to new people. While a lot of churches try to get the word out there through word of mouth, it’s just not enough. It’s important to have a strong online presence...

According to Cengage Learning, television advertising still rules when advertisers make media purchases. Approximately 40 cents of each dollar spent on advertising derives from TV advertising. Television advertising enables marketers to reach local and national viewing markets. The largest share of TV advertising revenue is generated by businesses or...

It’s hard to believe, but the end of 2016 is already here. If there was one thing that became painfully clear for some SEOs, it was that mobile optimization is no longer optional. With mobile usage now representing 65 percent of digital media time, Google has been making changes...

Industrial companies are not thought of as digitally savvy marketing companies. This is because industrial companies have traditionally hunted for new business via referrals, trade shows, and trade publications. Let’s face it, most of these companies have their marketing and sales teams stuck in the 80’s and don’t know...

There’s a ton of data showing that using images in blog posts, on your website, and on social media can increase engagement. But why? Is there scientific proof behind these claims? The answer is yes. Have you ever wondered how to choose the best images for your blog or...

With 66% of small business owners saying that finding new customers is a top concern, owners and marketing teams need to be strategic with their marketing dollars, and avoid spend them on strategies and small business marketing packages that don’t add value to acquiring customers. As a small business,...

Every company is unique and needs a distinctive website design exemplifying the company’s values. It’s not enough for a company to just have a web presence, but corporations should be looking for high performing websites. Web design for corporate websites should communicate a company’s goals in an attractive and...

When a small business experiences growth the owner has the option to open more locations, or to franchise the business and allow others to gain some ownership of additional sites. In general, franchises look at two different avenues to grow their business. Growth by sales and growth by recruiting...

Millennials are also consumers, with their purchasing power exceeding $200 billion dollars by next year. Naturally, this leads many companies to wonder how they can attract more millennials and cash in on their cash. Millennials, unlike Baby Boomers and Gen Xers, have a unique set of needs and wants...

SEO for startups and even brands is often viewed as behind-the-scenes manipulations and trickery by many companies who don’t understand what SEO actually is. SEO involves a series of ongoing core strategies and actions you’ll need to implement to make your website rank better, and position your brand in front of your...

With most marketing campaigns the devil and success lies in the execution and furthermore the details of the execution. Below you will find the follow up infographic to our “Best Days to Post on Facebook by Industry“, titled “Facebook Wall Post Cheat Sheet to Increase Interaction”. This Facebook Cheat...

For golf aficionados, there’s nothing more exciting than golfers playing. The sight of the golf course arouses the thrill and anticipation. This, coupled with digital photography, drone fly overs, and golf course videography can deliver some wonderful photographic opportunities that can be used on your golf course’s website and...

Personas are used by some of the leading brands around the world to help guide their web design choices and marketing touchpoint strategies. Creating personas will help you understand your website’s visitor, how they’ll utilize your website, and the types of information they need most to support their buying...

As a small or local business, ranking in the Google Local SEO results and on Google Maps can give your website traffic and conversions a boost.  As more people search on their mobile device, getting a better ranking in the local Google results and on Google map listings will...

Over the last 3 years we’ve been designing infographics for clients, we’ve learned alot about succeeding with infographic design. When done correctly Infographics increase user engagement metrics such as page views and time-on-site, build brand awareness within a targeted audience or customer type, and earn links that can increase website rankings...

SEO Web Design is a way of designing and developing websites to make them search engine friendly. Making a website SEO friendly means the search engines can crawl each page on the website efficiently, interpret the content effectively, and index it in their database. Once indexed, they can then...

There are many strategies that go into creating a new website and launching it properly. But many times website owners, web design companies, or digital marketing agencies don’t understand how to relaunch a website properly.  They don’t know they need to have an SEO transition plan and strategy in...

Redesigning and relaunching a high ranking website is not an easy task. There are many ranking factors to manage, and missing just one of them can impact SEO and rankings. We explored a few of the tactical and site-specific reasons why your traffic dropped after your website relaunch, so we wanted to look...

Ever wonder what the best days to post on Facebook are? Or maybe you’re wondering if your B2B company, B2C company, or industry is different from other industries? The infographic below breaks down the best days and times to post as they relate to industry type. The Facebook graphic...

When we explore SEO at a macro level, there are two parts every SEO campaign should include to give it the best chance of increasing rankings, traffic, and conversions. These two parts are on-site or on-page SEO, and offsite SEO. In this post, we are going to explain the basics...

There are common Httacess 301 redirect rules that I find myself searching for each time I build a website for a client or help with a website relaunch transition plan. So I thought I would create a resource that I found helpful where I could gather all the common...

Ever wonder if there was a cheat sheet for Twitter that would help you increase engagement or drive traffic (in parallel to your local SEO or  Enterprise SEO campaign) to your new website design? Things such as how many hashtags you use, how long you should make your tweets,...

When working with both large brands and local small businesses we often get asked, “What are the SEO best practices for internal linking?” or “Do internal links boost SEO rankings?”. Simply put, yes they can boost rankings, but there are caveats. Below you will find SEO best practices for internal...

There has always been controversy and miscommunication around the topic of Adwords and its impact on SEO rankings. At least once a month we have a call with a client who says ” I heard that you can pay Google and they will increase your rankings.” or “We use...

Have you ever wondered how your industry compares to others in regards to email marketing benchmarks? Our clients who are embarking on email marketing campaigns often ask us what they can expect for an average email open rate, CTR, and bounce rate. Our typical response is that those email metrics vary...

With the rise of social media and its integration across teams and strategic approaches, both in big business and within agencies, the question often arises, “Does social media affect SEO rankings?“. This question is sometimes over-generalized by data that shows a correlation between popular social media content and high...

Nobody knows the extent of SEO ranking factors that Google uses to rank a website well in their search results. As Google puts more emphasis on a website’s experience, user metrics are becoming a hot topic in the SEO world. Becuase of this we often get asked the question,...

So you’re trying DIY SEO, or maybe you hired an SEO company or consultant to do SEO for your business. It’s been three months and your traffic, leads and sales have not increased. You start to wonder why your SEO isn’t working, maybe SEO doesn’t work for your business,...

Have you ever wondered how Google ranks blog posts, or if there is an SEO blog post checklist and best practice guide to help you create great content your users would engage with and Google would rank on their fist page? It’s no secret that creating great content for...

Google’s SEO tagging best practices, and the website tags they value have changed dramatically over the last decade. When I first started doing search engine optimization almost ten years ago, there were a ton of SEO Tags that were added to a website to help it’s content to become more...

With more than 60 million photos added each day to Instagram by over 200 million monthly active users, it is getting harder to stand out amongst the crowd of loyal posters, and get more followers. The good news is that engagement is rising quickly. Currently there are 1.6 billion...

It’s no secret that mobile usage is steadily increasing, and creating a mobile optimized website is no longer a “nice to have”. Consumers increasingly rely on the mobile web to research and make purchases, which makes it more important than ever for companies to have an effective mobile presence...

Not a day goes by that I am talking with a local or small business owner and I mention they need to do link building to earn links for SEO. To which they respond, “How do I get links to my website? Will we need to hire a link...

I often get asked if there are SEO secrets to doing good or great SEO and ranking quickly. Many people view SEO as voodoo or magic, but in reality, most SEO strategies boil down to 4 basic elements for increasing Google traffic; user experience, crawl ability, being contextually relevant,...

As Buffer outlines, in their article “Why is Facebook’s color Blue.”, they state that over 90% of our assessment of a product is made on color alone, so it makes sense that color should be considered with care for every design decision, particularly on websites. How Do I Select an...

Have you ever visited a website and became frustrated because you couldn’t find the information or product you needed? Did you try and use the primary navigation and find that it was not intuitive, or the product you were looking for was not in the category or place you...

So you’re a business owner who needs a website designed and created and you’re wondering how much it costs to create a great website. You might even wonder what your options are for building a high-quality mid-market B2B, B2C, eCommerce, or Small Business website that your users will love,...

With any of our SEO campaigns, we will need access to your Google Analytics and Google Search Console Account , formerly Google Webmaster Tools, to help us analyze the current state of your website. Some B2B and B2C companies have multiple domains in each of these accounts and want...

One of the most challenging parts of Digital Marketing is accurate data analytics. It’s easy to launch a Campaign without a solid, clear measurement strategy. For example, I could set up a Facebook account, add in a credit card, write garbage copy, throw a stock photo of a family,...

So you are evaluating an SEO company for a new project and as you are talking to them about their strategies, you hear some things that make you wonder how ethical they are, if they are doing black hat SEO tactics or using black hat SEO software, and how...

Adding product reviews to your website is a great way to help users in their decision process, as well as increasing your rankings and diversity of keywords your website shows up for in Google. But the big question is, how do you add reviews to your website, or more...

Any business who is trying to increase high-value traffic or conversions needs to be hyper-focused on their analytics. This includes reporting on metrics such as how traffic is coming to your website, where it’s coming from (referral traffic), and which traffic is converting best. The challenge is that there...

So you were sold a shiny new website design with a new architecture built on user data and customer journey information – which is awesome since Google loves great experiences. But did you come up with a transition plan to minimize the risk of traffic loss and do website...

Association websites range in size, from big city chamber of commerce websites to local neighborhood associations trying to market the local businesses in the neighborhood and drive growth. But no matter the size, they all must contain the following 14 items to help drive membership, traffic, and provide valuable...

Google uses backlinks to help determine what a website or web page is relevant for, and how authoritative a website or web page is for a specific topic – both contributing to what keywords Google will rank the website for. What is a backlink? A backlink, or also known...

So you are thinking about creating some new content for your website and have asked a few people about how to optimize the content. I’m sure you have heard about the basics of optimizing content for SEO. But there are many things that most SEO or content creation companies...

Ever wonder if you should delete old content or just let it live on for eternity? I have heard people say that you should never delete old content, and that’s just not true. Part of any good content strategy should be performing a ROT analysis on your content set....

So you are about to publish a new blog post or page on your website. You are hoping that Google likes your page enough to rank it, and users like your content enough to share it and link to it. Below you will find some SEO basics and on-page...

Are you a company that is trying to get ahead in a social media world? Are you looking for new ways to advertise your brand and stretch it across multiple platforms? Are you a startup that wants to saturate the market with your message in creative and fun ways...

We have all been confused with the Google search results, causing ourselves to ask, “Why don’t I rank in Google?”, and inevitably the question, “how does Google rank websites?” or “How does SEO work with google?”. We as SEO’s may not know all the reasons a website ranks within...

People ask why we like Simon Sinek so much, maybe because he aligns with our own beliefs about the direction businesses should take, or in his words, “he believes what we believe”. Maybe it’s because we are an endorser (non-paid) of his business and marketing methodology and thus want...

Came across this video about motivation that really spoke to me and my mentality – good or bad. There have been days I arrive at Starbucks or a similar coffee shop to get my morning tea at 6am (which is my usual daily routine) and before I knew it,...

This is not going to be the traditional type of post where I write about SEO, Content, Infographics, or Web Design, but instead a look back at what I have learned from my father about managing and leading people. Preface My father grew up in Ridgewood, NJ. His father...

The Agile Method is a particular approach to project management that is utilized in software development. This method assists teams in responding to the unpredictability of constructing software. It uses incremental, iterative work sequences that are commonly known as sprints. Agile Process and Method Overview Below you will find...

This post is more of an observation than a data driven SEO article as we usually post on Linchpin SEO, but I think it holds some weight when it comes to SEO in general for big companies. The Quote The post will be centered around the following quote by...

I was recently asked by a client if they should create a microsite for a product set they were adding. This question really made me think about the value of microsites for SEO and branding purposes and if microsites for SEO were good or bad. What is a microsite?...

I get asked weekly about URLs and the value they have from an SEO standpoint, or if a business should pick an exact match domain over the one you will need to establish as a brand. We have all been told that keywords in the URL hold some weight...