The subject of SEO seems to cause as much confusion today as ever, and many people are still asking the question, what do SEO companies really do?

During these strange COVID 19 times, one thing has become clear; on the other side of this crisis, we're all going to be more aware of digital business tools. The use of video conferencing has skyrocketed, and e-commerce has increased, and they are just two examples.

A good mate, Steve, asked me a question today about a previous blog post I'd written. I was talking about SEO, for a change, and he said the post made it sound like SEO wasn't cheap and it was far from guaranteed to work. His point was, if, as a digital marketing agency, we wanted to attract clients why would I be so brutally honest.

Julie explains in this video why doing clever stuff with keywords is not what SEO is all about. Google^TM wants to give its users the best possible experience, which means ensuring that they find exactly what they are searching for. For you, this means providing useful content that addresses their problems.

It's quite revealing that people still ask us if we can "place links" for them as in "where do I put links for link building?" I say it's revealing because it shows they're aware, at some level, of the importance of links - but at the same time the fact they think placing links will do the trick implies it's a concept they've not quite grasped. Let's discuss.

Thanks to our inbound marketing skills we're nurturing a business lead with a company in Canada. As we get to know each other they are sharing their experiences to date, in particular the things their current SEO company are telling them. Now we know people are confused about SEO from the number of people who visit our SEO explained page, but this stuff is priceless.

A recent post in a business forum I frequent asked the question, what are the best free SEO tools? The replies listed all the usual suspects so I threw something less expected into the mix. My suggestion? A text editor and your brain. Many moons ago I wrote a post titled The Best Free Link Building Software in fact if you search using the phrase best free link building software you'll see it ranks quite well and brings traffic to this blog daily.

Search Engine Optimisation constantly evolves, but this doesn't mean you need to constantly change your website to stay on the right side of Google. Rather it means the good guys are slowly winning out over the bad. Let me explain.

Most of us use Google every day and for many it can be a frustrating exercise trawling through irrelevant search results before finding what you need. Power users don't have this trouble, they know how to get what they need quickly by laser targeting their searches and here I'll show you, in plain English, how to do the same.

How Much Will It Cost?

Almost daily we get emails and phone calls from people asking how much it will cost to make their website No.1 in Google. Being on the inside looking out it's easy to be dismissive and roll your eyes in despair. However from the outside looking in it's a reasonable question to ask.

In a recent White Board Friday post Rand Fishkin of SEOMoz said it's time to start link earning instead of link building. Fox Ache! is that supposed to be news?

Digital Marketing and SEO As loyalty and brand awareness schemes take and increasingly digital and social media driven approach this is opening up a whole new world of opportunities for SEO's and digital marketers. SEO has long been a tool in a digital marketers tool box however it is often something which gets overlooked by many companies. The major problem with SEO is that many businesses and clients fail to understand the importance of SEO and so its often dismissed in its importance in favour of more traditional techniques and new buzz words such as Social Media.

I was driving back to our office in Aboyne last week when I was tailgated and overtaken by a van. The van belonged to a company called M&J Seafood, I know this because their lovely brand was written all over it. The van's registration was WR61 FSJ and the incident took place at 13:38 on the B976, I know, what a geek.

As yet another search quality update rolls out, this one called Penguin, the chattering classes have been busy discussing what to do about nasty Mr Google dropping their sites from the top ten rankings. I'm not Google's biggest fan but I can totally see where they are coming from and how, ultimately, they needed to do something dramatic.

With so many opinions, guidelines, rules, standards and always-changing “best practices,” the SEO game is a tough one to learn, especially if you’re learning it yourself. Following industry blogs like Search Engine Watch and Search Engine Land are one of the easiest ways to learn, but if you’re a novice, it can be a full-time job just navigating through the jargon. So, in plain and simple English, here are the top 5 common SEO mistakes business make too often and how to avoid them.