by Ross Barefoot | Sep 19, 2020 | Google My Business, Local Search, Search Engine Optimization Training |
Wow! So much has changed with Google My Business over the last few years… What started as a fairly simple, if clunky, tool to allow local businesses to update Google about their basic information has morphed into another one of Google’s Mega-platforms....
by Ross Barefoot | Aug 11, 2019 | Content Marketing, Search Engine Optimization Training, SEO |
Google’s Changes Have Every SEO on Edge It’s been a wild year in the Google-verse. If you follow some of the most diligent SEO reports, such as Marie Haynes and Barry Schwarz, you know how hard it is to keep up. It seems as if every week Barry and Marie...
by Ross Barefoot | May 22, 2019 | Misc, Online SEO Training, Search Engine Optimization Training, SEO, Workshops |
“We as a company spend a lot of time thinking about search engine optimization, or SEO.” That telling statement is from a fairly recent blog post by Googler Sean O’Keefe. O’Keefe is a data scientist at Google and wrote about how Google markets its own websites to,...
by Ross Barefoot | Sep 12, 2018 | News, Search Engine Optimization Training, SEO |
Updated 9/21/18 For those of you who knew John or Marlene, or who were blessed by what John did in his life, here’s your chance to honor his memory in a practical way that will, in turn, be a blessing. Please consider this prayerfully....
by Ross Barefoot | Apr 15, 2018 | Search Engine Optimization Training |
Those clever chaps at Google are at it again, filling our in-boxes with emails talking about General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) and their own Google Analytics Data Retention. There’s a whole lot of techno-privacy babble going on, and so it was our job to...
by Ross Barefoot | May 16, 2017 | Search Engine Optimization Training |
Search Engine Optimization, or SEO, sounds pretty niche-specific, doesn’t it? If you’re a business administration person, it might sound as specialized as it is obscure. SEO is like “front-end user interface developer”: techy and incomprehensible at the same time....
by Ross Barefoot | Jan 25, 2017 | Google Analytics |
Google Analytics is the most common tool available to measure your website’s Key Performance Indicators (KPI), something we always urge our workshop students to pay close attention to. No wonder. GA is free, powerful, and, at a basic level, easy to use. As a...
by Ross Barefoot | Dec 28, 2016 | Search Engine Optimization Training, SEO Training, Workshops |
SEO is Challenging Enough, Try it When Things are Always Changing Changes are constantly occurring in the world of SEO and digital marketing. Moz publishes a widely watched list of known Google SEO algorithm updates here, and they show 10 announced or suspected...
by Ross Barefoot | Dec 1, 2016 | News, SEO Consulting, Technical SEO, Workshops |
Who better to consult with you on your digital marketing than the folks who’ve been teaching SEO to students around the world for more than a decade? We’re coming up hard on 2017. Time doesn’t just fly, it’s supersonic! Here I am starting my...
by Ross Barefoot | Nov 11, 2016 | Adwords, Keyword Research, Search Engine Optimization Training, Technical SEO |
How Google Stripped Away Search Volume Data for Thousands of Users – And How You Can Get it Back “Oh Google, what have you done now?” – Google Forum comment As you can see from the sampling of user disapproval above, Google unleashed a veritable firestorm of criticism...
by Ross Barefoot | Sep 6, 2016 | Technical SEO |
Google Wants Us to Jump Through Hoops. Again. Sneak Peak: What this post will cover Why 150 million AMP pages is not that big of a deal 2 Examples where it would have been smart NOT to be an early adopter of a Google initiative A possible course of action in a world...
by Ross Barefoot | Aug 30, 2016 | Technical SEO |
Digital Marketers: Get Ready for Yet Another TLA* in Your Lexicon: AMP (*TLA: Three Letter Acronym) Sneak Peak: What You’ll Find in this Post What Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP) Are Who is Behind the AMP Project How AMP Pages Affect Search Results Development...
by Ross Barefoot | Apr 11, 2016 | Events, Search Engine Optimization Training |
Stay Current With SEO Training or Risk Becoming Hopelessly Out of Touch Stop and answer this simple question: Do you have an interest in how Google’s changes affect your website’s success? If your answer is “no,” don’t bother with the...
by Ross Barefoot | Mar 15, 2016 | Rant, Search Engine Optimization Training |
Bloggers Pay Attention: New “Should-ing” and Finger Wagging from Google Google has now given bloggers more guidance on how to treat backlinks to sites that have sent them any merchandise for free. According to Google, the “best practice” to...
by Ross Barefoot | Feb 22, 2016 | Adwords |
The latest change to the layout of SERPs (Search Engine Results Pages) has big implications for both paid and organic search For the last couple of weeks it’s been obvious that Google has been in an experimental mood (so what’s new, right?). Some search...
by Ross Barefoot | Feb 12, 2016 | Search Engine Optimization Training, SEO |
Get used to working within a team, because SEO has become a multi-disciplinary field Ah, for the good old days of SEO! Those days when you could stuff some titles, tweak some keyword density, build a bunch of directory links, and wait for the rankings to climb....
by Ross Barefoot | Feb 5, 2016 | Local Search, Rant |
Always be doubtful of academic papers with names like: “Knowledge Vault: A Web-Scale Approach to Probabilistic Knowledge Fusion.” Be even more suspicious if the paper lists 9 – yes 9 – authors. That paper had to do with Google’s...
by Ross Barefoot | Nov 20, 2015 | Content Marketing, Insights for Search, News, Search Engine Optimization Training, SEO |
If you know what my headline is talking about I’m going to save you the suspense. This post links to the recently released, hush-hush, spiffy new, 2015 Google Quality Rating Guidelines in PDF format, with extra chrome. Except Google is no longer trying to keep...
by Ross Barefoot | Sep 16, 2015 | Search Engine Optimization Training |
Hiding in the Shadows of Penguin Let me start out this post by saying that I am about to describe what I believe to be a case study in negative SEO. However I don’t have the “proof in the pudding,” “the smoking gun.” In other words I...
by Ross Barefoot | Jul 16, 2015 | Search Engine Optimization Training, SEO, Workshops |
How to Cope with the Skyrocketing Cost of Professional Search Engine Optimization (SEO) I’ve been in the SEO business professionally since 2002. Since I measure Internet years the same as dog years, that means I’ve been around the world of search for...
by Ross Barefoot | May 5, 2015 | Search Engine Optimization Training |
If you’re a regular visitor to SearchEngineAcademy.com you’ve probably already noticed our new look. Our web design and development team has been working long and hard on giving the Search Engine Academy website a badly overdue update. Our priorities in...
by Ross Barefoot | Feb 13, 2014 | Content Marketing, Duplicate Content, News, SEO |
Google Update off the Port Bow! Ahoy, SEO mateys, but today we have a twisted pirate’s tale to tell; thar be a story of a ship that went off the edge of the world and came back to tell ye about it. Arghhh. (Why the pirate accent? I don’t know…too...
by Ross Barefoot | Nov 25, 2013 | Rant |
Why Was My (Google) Account Disabled? You have entered a birthday indicating you are not old enough to have a Google Account. The above snippet is from a Google help document. You can find it here. I say it’s a “help” document, but when you’re...
by Ross Barefoot | Oct 4, 2013 | Google Analytics, Google Webmaster Tools, News, SEO |
The Keywords Have Fallen! The Keywords Have Fallen! Or is That an Acorn on My Head? Chicken Little must have worked in Search Engine Optimization. While the real world is heavily focused on the typical fiscal squabbles of government and the prospect of (heavens,...
by Ross Barefoot | Jul 19, 2013 | Misc, SEO |
A Hundred Ways to See a SERP Internet marketing is becoming bewildering. I just reviewed a very interesting slideshare presentation by Peter Meyers over at Moz called “Beyond 10 Blue Links: The Future of Organic Ranking.” Unless you’re an SEO...
by Ross Barefoot | May 29, 2013 | Misc, Rant, SEO |
I recently read a very good article by Jayson DeMers over at Search Engine Land (How Much Should You Spend on SEO Services? May 13, 2013). I think he gave a good and comprehensive set of tips about shopping for SEO consultants. The part of that equation I’d...
by Ross Barefoot | Apr 23, 2013 | Local Search, SEO |
Local Search Can be a Frightening Place “But I don’t want to go among mad people,” Alice remarked. “Oh, you can’t help that,” said the Cat: “we’re all mad here. I’m mad. You’re mad.” Local Search is a...
by Ross Barefoot | Apr 19, 2013 | Local Search, Misc, SEO |
Google Gets Confused Just like the Rest of Us Local Search is a strange place, but one thing seems to be clear: One of the single most important factors in Local SEO is something you might hear cryptically called “NAP Match” or “NAP...
by Ross Barefoot | Jan 25, 2013 | Google Webmaster Tools, Misc |
This Search Engine Optimization Utility can Sometimes be Read Incorrectly Intended audience for this post: Beginning users of Google Webmaster Tools Main Takeaways: Google Webmaster Tools can sometimes give warnings that can be ignored You sometimes have to be patient...
by Ross Barefoot | Jan 3, 2013 | Article Marketing, Content Marketing, Events, Rant |
Google Panda has insured that content creation and SEO have become inseparable, but this post is not going to encourage you to create simply more content. Instead it is designed to help you do more with content you are already creating. In Brief Who this article is...
by Ross Barefoot | Dec 31, 2012 | Insights for Search, Local Search, News, Press Releases, SEO, Workshops |
Our Search Engine Academy SEO workshops are going to be reflecting as much change next year as the world of search did this year. 2012 is almost wrapped up and put away, and once again it’s been a year of dramatic change in the world of search. Google’s “Penguin”...
by Ross Barefoot | Aug 21, 2012 | SEO, SEO Blogging |
SEO Content creation: it ain’t literature, that’s for sure. (By the way, when I use the acronym “SEO” with content, you should probably read it like this: “Search Engine Optimized Content.”) During our SEO workshops one of the...
by Ross Barefoot | Aug 10, 2012 | Google Analytics, SEO |
Google Analytics data is wonderful; Google Analytics account management is maddening. (If reading is not your thing, I’ll be covering these topics in an upcoming webinar (unless you’re reading this after August 22, 2012, in which case a recording of the Webinar should...
by Ross Barefoot | Jul 6, 2012 | Local Search, Mobile Marketing, SEO |
Have you noticed? Mobile Search Optimization is becoming increasingly critical in the online world. In case any of you have been wondering about the impact and importance of Mobile Search, and what to do about it, this article should bring you to some very clear...
by Ross Barefoot | Jun 29, 2012 | Google Analytics, SEO |
Sometimes I feel like I’m having a stroke. OK, so Website analysis perhaps doesn’t deserve that kind of melodrama. After all, I can’t really know what it feels like to have a stroke, since I have never had one (wait…I don’t think...
by Ross Barefoot | Jun 12, 2012 | SEO, SEO Blogging, WordPress |
“How to SEO Your Business Blog” was the topic of our Webinar Wednesday just about a month ago (May 9, 2012 to be exact). Thomas Petty and Nancy Wigal of the Search Engine Academy interviewed Tom Williams, Founder of Innogage, an SEO-centric, collaborative...
by Ross Barefoot | May 8, 2012 | Misc, SEO |
Web analysis is an area of tremendous frustration for me. I’m definitely a left-brain kind of guy. I’m not proud of it, I’ve sought counseling and intervention, but try as I may to dwell in the nirvana of warm and fuzzy I prefer a world of concrete...
by Ross Barefoot | Mar 2, 2012 | Misc, SEO, Workshops |
SEO training is a topic that my friend Bill V. knows absolutely nothing about. But as a facilitator with The Alternative Board he knows business and what works. One of the adages he always hammered into my head was “hire for character, train for skill.”...
by Ross Barefoot | Feb 3, 2012 | News |
Search Engine Academy training is expanding into the Rocky Mountain West. That’s where I come in, since I run the newly christened Rocky Mountain Search Engine Academy. I first encountered the Search Engine Academy in its original incarnation as Search Engine...
