by Thomas Petty | May 30, 2016 | Search Engine Optimization Training |
You may have heard the term “landing page” and wondered what that actually means. In online marketing, it’s important to think about landing pages, and how they function on your website. But before we get into that, let’s step back just a tiny... 
by Thomas Petty | May 18, 2016 | Google Analytics, SEO Training |
Before I explain, I want to invite you to attend a free webinar next week. Free Webinar: How to Use Google Analytics to Make Effective Marketing Decisions – 4 Steps All Marketers Should Take, But Probably Aren’t Wednesday, May 25 11:00 a.m. Pacific/2:00... 
by Thomas Petty | May 10, 2016 | SEO |
A few weeks ago, I got an email from a web consultant whose client was sent an offer to buy a keyword rich website domain name (at an inflated price in my opinion). She wanted to know if her client should jump on it and buy the domain, and would it help her show up... 
by Thomas Petty | Mar 4, 2016 | Google Analytics |
It’s a given that if you’re doing any type of marketing, especially online marketing, that you measure it. You probably already have Google Analytics installed (or at least you should), and maybe you even look at the data here and there. That’s... 
by Thomas Petty | Feb 23, 2016 | Search Engine Optimization Training |
Google’s been messing with local search of late. Now there are only three listings in the local search results, and they’ve pulled back from Google Plus and moved everyone over to Google My Business. It’s frustrating because it’s really not... 
by Thomas Petty | Nov 5, 2015 | Search Engine Optimization Training, SEO |
Recently a colleague of mine sent me an e-mail about one of his clients (this is an excerpt): “The marketing manager of one of my customers, based on his experience, is suggesting to use hidden text “white fonts” to introduce additional KW and... 
by Thomas Petty | Sep 11, 2015 | Local Search, Search Engine Optimization Training |
If you haven’t noticed, in the last few days Google has put some significant changes into local search that may make you happy or not so much. For many years, Google has experimented with a variety of ways of presenting local search results – those... 
by Thomas Petty | Aug 14, 2015 | Google Analytics |
I bet that if you’ve gone into Google Analytics either on your own website or a client’s, you’ve seen that you get a significant amount of referral traffic from strange sites like semalt.com, buttons-for-websites.com, and others. To get there, go... 
by Thomas Petty | Jul 31, 2015 | SEO |
I teach internet marketing workshops several times a year for SCORE, which is a terrific nation-wide free business counseling service. I volunteer as an instructor, and my classes are in the San Francisco Bay Area. During the three-hour workshop, I try to give current... by Thomas Petty | Jul 18, 2014 | Events, News, Pay Per Click, SEO |
It’s been a while since I last held a webinar, and I’m totally excited about this one. Have you taken one of our SEO training workshops and need that one question answered that you forgot? Have you been practicing your SEO skills on a client’s... by Thomas Petty | Jan 31, 2014 | Content Marketing, Local Search, Mobile Marketing |
I get asked a lot about how businesses can be found online by their customers. What SEO tactics or online marketing strategies should they undertake? So-called brick and mortar businesses – those that have a store front or a physical location for people to... by Thomas Petty | Dec 10, 2013 | SEO |
There is a lot of talk about SEO being dead. Is it really? Well, certainly the sands of SEO have shifted significantly recently with Google’s Panda, Penguin and Hummingbird. The interesting thing to me, however, is that even though we all talk about it ALL the... by Thomas Petty | Dec 8, 2013 | SEO, Web Design |
These days, it’s pretty easy to get a good looking website launched and on the ‘net. That’s a good thing. As I talked about in The Truth Is, No One Cares About Your Website, obsessing over the minutiae isn’t a productive use of your time,... by Thomas Petty | Dec 2, 2013 | SEO, Web Design |
Wait a minute, is that correct? As a web and internet marketing consultant, why on earth would I be saying such a thing? Isn’t the web and your web design the crux of your customers’ experience before they ever pick up the phone and call you? Isn’t... by Thomas Petty | Nov 11, 2013 | Content Marketing, SEO |
Blog Post Update (2013-11-15) You can watch the entire webinar online. The Sand Keeps Shifting Back in the wild west of the early days of SEO and search marketing, things were pretty simple. Throw a few links and a few keywords in your copy or meta tags, and life was... by Thomas Petty | Nov 6, 2013 | News, SEO, Workshops |
Author’s note: Be sure to read through to the end to find out about an upcoming opportunity. Search engine optimization or SEO has changed forever. Back a few years ago, many of us spent a lot of time trying to figure out the secret sauce – “The... by Thomas Petty | Aug 27, 2013 | Content Marketing, SEO, SEO Blogging |
I’ve been doing online marketing, internet marketing, search engine optimization (SEO) – whatever you want to call it – for a long time now. It seems like it’s just a part of me to think about how websites affect the search engines, like... by Thomas Petty | Jul 21, 2013 | Events, Workshops |
Back in May, I wrote an article called SEO Tactics versus SEO Strategies. In it, I described a fundamental problem with online marketing: There is SO much to do to get found online, it’s difficult to know where to start. How do you put together a comprehensive,... by Thomas Petty | Jul 16, 2013 | Content Marketing, Local Search, Mobile Marketing, SEO Blogging |
Recently, we were working with our church on their online presence. We decided to put a full-blown internet marketing plan in place. Why on earth would a church need a marketing plan? They don’t sell anything, and don’t really need to market to anyone,... by Thomas Petty | May 12, 2013 | News, SEO, SEO Blogging, Workshops |
Internet marketing is truly a double-edged sword. There are SO many free or nearly free tools out there that allow us to create amazing systems fairly easily. WordPress is one such tool. Download their free software, drop a theme (design) on top, and boom,... by Thomas Petty | Dec 24, 2012 | Content Marketing |
If you’ve read any of David Meerman Scott’s books or his blog, Web Ink Now, you’ll know that rule number one in getting people to follow you is: “Deliver content your readers love!” Everything else is secondary. Create raving fans of your... by Thomas Petty | Sep 27, 2012 | Book Review, Content Marketing, Meta Tags, SEO, SEO Blogging, WordPress |
Even though we teach it, SEO isn’t everything for online marketing. I was reading an article in Inc. Magazine today, and the CEO of Fab.com, Jason Goldberg’s business goal is as follows, “If we make people smile, lots and lots of money will follow... by Thomas Petty | Sep 11, 2012 | 301 Redirects, Duplicate Content, Link Building, Mobile Marketing, SEO |
I wanted to relate a couple experiences I had recently, and hopefully this will help you too. It seems that mobile websites are all the rage these days, with WordPress plug-ins and even whole services built around mobile sites. SEO is a considering factor too, but... by Thomas Petty | Jul 3, 2012 | 301 Redirects, Link Building |
What is a 301 redirect? If you’ve done any type of SEO training or read anything about SEO, it’s likely that you’ve come across references to 301 redirecting. It’s easily misunderstood so I’m hoping to clear it up in this series of... by Thomas Petty | May 18, 2012 | 301 Redirects, Events, Google Analytics, News, SEO |
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MtgIalDV-pE[/youtube]Hopefully by now, you’ve figured out that you need to have an analytics program like Google Analytics installed on your website and blog to track the traffic coming into your site from: Direct traffic... by Thomas Petty | May 9, 2012 | Link Building, SEO, SEO Blogging, WordPress |
Here at the Search Engine Academy, we teach people how use proper techniques to search engine optimize their content and get listed on the search engines like Google. None of this is theoretical, it’s what we use in our own work too. Many of us who are... by Thomas Petty | Nov 30, 2011 | Link Building, SEO Blogging |
One of the lessons that we discuss at length in our SEO classes is that blogging is so critical for all businesses. I had one of my students tell me last year: “I don’t see anyone in my industry blogging, so I shouldn’t blog either, right?”... 