They say that anything worth doing is worth doing well, right?

But they also say you should work smarter, not harder.

When it comes to SEO, both sayings are true.

You want to make sure you’re putting in a solid effort, taking time to find the right keywords, and setting yourself up for success.

But that doesn’t mean you need to spend countless hours of your day doing it.

Keyword research is a particularly important component of SEO, and you should be completely dedicated to finding the right keywords for your site.

By using the right tools and research strategies, you can make that happen in less time than you think.

This won’t be a comprehensive guide to keyword research by any stretch of the imagination.

But hopefully, you’ll see that keyword research doesn’t have to be cumbersome to be effective.

Here’s what to do to really boost your keyword research in less than 30 minutes each day. [click to continue …]

Before you start, building a business seems simple enough. You’ve got a great idea and a little bit of support.

Add a lot of hard work and you can make your dream a reality.

What could possibly go wrong?

As it turns out, quite a lot.

I’ve built several successful startups over the years and one of the most valuable lessons I have learned is that it is vital to have a team of smart people in your corner.

You need a developer, an SEO, a social media manager, a writer, a salesperson, and the list goes on.

When we look at a successful company, we tend to only see the figureheads – one or two quirky founders in sweatshirts and tennis shoes.

What you don’t see is the team that helped them get there.

And many times that team includes a least a few freelancers.

Here is the thing: you can’t be good at everything.

Take me, for example. I have never been a good salesperson. Give me a bunch of data and I can tell you anything you want to know.

But sales? Not my thing.

I tried it once. I was a Kirby vacuum salesman for exactly one summer.

I sold one vacuum that was later returned.

The thing is, I don’t need to be a good salesperson.

What I need to know is how to hire good salespeople.

The same theory applies to hiring SEO freelancers. [click to continue …]

You built a website, but nobody’s visiting.

It happens to the best of us.

Just building a website isn’t enough. You need to get it listed with search engines and attract organic search traffic.

Regarding traffic, more specifically, you need Google search traffic.

Google accounts for nearly 78% of all organic search traffic according to Smart Insights.

What I’m going to show you today are some easy SEO fixes that can boost your search rankings on Google.

They’ll work on other search engines as well, but focusing on Google is the way to win.

Let’s get started. [click to continue …]

It seems like search engine optimization (SEO) is constantly shifting.

Every week, there’s a new secret hack or growth tactic that promises amazing SEO results and rankings.

And there are countless components to consider with SEO:

Fix your page speed, get more links, find better keywords, produce better content, build up on-page optimization and off-page optimization.

The list goes on and on, so what deserves the most focus?

You simply don’t have enough time to do all of these tasks every day.

And not all of them deliver the same results or impact.

But you need SEO for your business to thrive.

SEO is one of the best ways to drive more consistent, relevant traffic that converts.

And SEO has an incredibly high ROI when compared to marketing channels like PPC or outbound marketing.

So what do you do? How do you simplify something as complex and diverse as SEO?

Thankfully, there are a few different ways to net the most results.

You can simplify SEO and still take advantage of inbound traffic that helps grow your business.

And narrowing your goals and methods to just a few tactics can help you focus your time and efforts on the tasks that matter.

Here are five ways to simplify SEO once and for all.

[click to continue …]

When you open up a tool like Google AdWords or Google Analytics, hundreds of metrics greet you almost immediately.

And I’m just going to be honest right up front: most of those metrics are totally pointless.

They don’t tell the full story of how people are interacting on your site.

They can’t explain whether people are converting or not.

Even your favorite SEO tools like Alexa, Ahrefs, and Moz will have metrics that just aren’t very helpful in the grand scheme of things.

Most platforms have dozens of metrics that don’t help you (beyond making you feel good).

This doesn’t mean that all metrics are unnecessary, though.

You do need some of them to gauge success and know that your work is paying off.

So what do you do?

Thankfully, hiding behind that wall of vanity metrics are a few that you can use to track your success.

These are metrics that should be the markers of all that you do with online marketing.

And they mostly center around the most important metric for any business:

Generating a positive ROI and bringing in the profits.

Focus on those and forget the rest.

Here are four SEO metrics to ignore like the plague (and what to measure instead). [click to continue …]