I’ve written other posts about hiring SEO firms: How to hire good ones. How to hire bad ones. But an update’s in order: Questionnaire for an SEO agency Start each agency you interview with 10 points. Add or subtract as indicated. Ask yourself: How did this firm get in touch with you? They cold-called or [...]

We’re all talking a lot about content and social media these days. But visibility boils down to technical SEO: Ensuring that search engines can easily find and categorize every page of your site. These are the top 4 I look at first when I’m auditing a site: 1: Check server response codes You can use [...]

Pin It “The reports of my death have been greatly exaggerated.” -Mark Twain It’s been said that SEO is dead. It’s been said a lot, actually. But no, this is not another dumb, disguised, fake controversy “death of SEO” linkbait article. No. This is a fun, full-disclosure, zero-controversy death of SEO linkbait article. Now that you’re done [...]

If you missed today’s webinar, “SEO: 50 tips in 50 minutes,” you can get the slides here: SEO: 50 tips in 50 minutes View more presentations from Ian Lurie And, if you don’t mind giving us your e-mail address (mwahahahahahahahaha) you can get the entire recording, here: http://webinar.portent.com/webinar-vid-request/ While the Portent team and myself may [...]

When I wrote these exam questions, I have to admit, I didn’t think about publishing the answers. It seemed kind of… wrong. But then I thought about the havoc wreaked if all kids had the teachers’ answer keys (obscure Simpsons reference there). And I smiled in a way that makes my family nervous. So, the [...]

I’m working on a set of SEO test questions at my company. The objective: Figure out each SEO analyst’s strengths and weaknesses, then tailor training to them. I thought I’d share a few. They’re supposed to start off pretty easy and get more difficult: TRUE or FALSE or BOTH: The ‘nofollow’ attribute is good for [...]

Google Search Plus Your World builds organic search traffic, big-time. Say what you want about the evil-ness of the whole thing. It’s a huge opportunity, and you need to capitalize on it now. The background I’ve been working for several weeks, researching what seems to get your Plus profile showing up in organic search results—also [...]

Is your business locally owned and operated? Do you only target specific states, cities, or neighborhoods? If so, you’re hopefully working hard on your website and web presence. That’s great! We love local businesses at Portent, and we’d like to help you out. Here are 3 quick and easy steps that you can take to [...]

Search engine results have changed dramatically. Today, which websites get top rankings depend on very different signals than in the past. So much so that what we once considered the whole of SEO is now only a small portion. Here are some of the factors affecting search engine optimization today. On-Site SEO On-site SEO includes [...]

Would you be surprised to learn that I’ve been writing Google Search+ recommendations and how-to guides for Portent clients this week? I plan to share my findings here on the blog, but before I dive into the new stuff I feel that it is important to cover some old ground first. Have you laid a [...]