300% increase in traffic and 200% increase leads over six months

Actual client results

About the client: Orange County Counselor

Our client is an LCSW counselor in Orange County, CA.  She came to us with a problem: she was investing hundreds of dollars in pay per click advertising each month and she wasn’t sure if her investment was converting to business.

Over a 30 day period, we monitored her traffic and website conversions and learned that the pay per click strategy that her current PPC company was following was driving traffic, but that traffic wasn’t converting to revenue.

Lesson: Without adequate reporting, there is no way to connect the dots between your rankings, your traffic, and your bottom line.

After our test period, she engaged us for an ongoing SEO campaign.  Here is how we doubled her leads.

Choose the right keywords

When we form an SEO campaign, we choose commercial keywords: keywords that will drive qualified leads to your site–leads who will convert to clients.

With our counseling client, we researched two sets of keywords: “low hanging fruit” (good search volume and low competition that result in quick wins) and more competitive keywords to improve upon over a longer period of time.

Here’s what we found:

1. A quick spike in rankings as we got her on-page optimization in order (content, etc).
2. Some “turbulence” as we performed ongoing work with off-page optimization.
3. A trend toward ranking stability as her content and links became more consistent.

Tips: consistency is important.  A long-term strategy pays off better in the long run than short-term tactics.

Optimize your site

Our client’s site was tragically outdated.  Built on five-year-old technology, her site wasn’t up to standards for design (ugly sites kill conversions) or search engine accessibility.

We completely redesigned our client’s site and optimized her site content.  Here are a few of the quick wins we were able to achieve with our client:

• Navigation
• Internal links
• Meta tags and titles
• On page content

The results?  Better rankings, more stable SERP positions, and more conversions from visitors to leads.  If your SEO or PPC provider can’t provide hard numbers about your progress, it’s time to have “the talk.”  Let us know if we can help.

Create killer content

When our client signed on board, she already had a content writer creating great content for her site.  We worked with her writer to make sure that we were covering topics that matched her keywords and business goals and we optimized that content to help boost her rankings in search.

Not any content will do.  Search engines do a great job of promoting good content–and ignoring content that isn’t so good.   A couple of common mistakes that site owners make when adding content to their website are over-optimization (too many keywords in their content) and duplicate content (scraping articles from “article directories”).

Lesson: write naturally for your clients and the rankings will follow.  

Every great SEO campaign starts with great content.  If you’re not producing content for your site, get in touch with us to learn how we can create awesome content for your potential clients and convert visitors to leads.

On-page optimization is only 20% of the total picture

Without off-page optimization — link building, citation building, social signals — the best on-page efforts will never get you to rank in search.  Links are considered the “currency of the web.”  One good link from a reputable source can be the difference between the #8 position and the #1 position in search results.

Good link building is one of the toughest parts of a good SEO strategy.  A link builder’s life is a never ending process of finding authoritative websites, earning link placements on those sites, and creating awesome content that is worthy of links.

The best link sources for our client have been niche websites — either directories targeted toward therapists or local content.  Syndicating content to reputable sources has been a good strategy that has yielded good returns.

Try to avoid building links to directories that aren’t related to your website; it probably won’t ruin your SEO efforts, but it certainly isn’t going to help.  If you need help building links to your site, have a look at one of our SEO plans.

Our data-driven SEO strategy consistently produces rankings, traffic, and revenue.

When our clients come to us, they’re expecting to solve a problem.  They don’t need rankings.  They don’t need traffic.  They need revenue.

Let’s have a conversation about how we can help your business grow.  There’s no obligation — just a casual chat about your current marketing efforts.

We can help you answer the tough questions about your Internet marketing strategy.

1. Is my SEO provider producing results, or just burning up my budget?
2. Is my blog actually driving business, or can my time best be spent elsewhere?
3. Is my website’s design driving away customers?
4. Am I making some common SEO mistakes that I can solve with a simple tune up?

Click here to request a free consultation today.

Cleaning a site of malware is costly and time intensive, so we have put together this simple guide to securing your WordPress installation against attack.

1.) Keep WordPress files up to date

The number one cause of security issues with WordPress sites is outdated software.  More than 60 million sites use some flavor of WordPress, so if a hacker finds a vulnerability in one site, there is a good chance that the hacker can find the same vulnerability in many sites that are built using WordPress.

To combat this, WordPress regularly releases new features, bug fixes, and security updates for core WordPress files.  To keep your site secure, it is absolutely essential that you keep your WordPress files up to date.

We’ve previously shared a tutorial that shows you how to automatically update your WordPress files, plugins, and themes.  We use this plugin on all of our sites and our clients’ sites, and we highly recommend you to do the same.

2.) “Harden” your WordPress installation

Hackers identify which WordPress sites are vulnerable to attack by looking at a site’s source code to see if it is using an outdated version of WordPress.

There exists a suite of plugins that will help harden your WordPress installation and make it less vulnerable to the most common attacks.  We use Sucuri site monitoring on our clients’ sites, and they offer a free scanner/one-click hardening plugin for WordPress sites.  You can download and install the plugin here: http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/sucuri-scanner/

The free Sucuri scanner plugin will perform some basic hardening functions, including removing your WordPress version from your source code to make it harder for hackers to target your site.

Note: this plugin should only be used by experienced website administrators, as it makes permanent changes to your server configuration.  If you need help installing or configuring a plugin, please get in touch.

3.) Keep your login details secure

It goes without saying, but if someone gains access to your WordPress dashboard, they can wreak havoc on your server in an instant.  Wordpress gives access to your plugins, so anyone can modify code and gain access to your server.

We’ve had this happen.  It’s not pretty.

Hackers gain access to your account by using a program to launch a brute force attack on your password (which is the technical term for “guess a lot of different combinations really fast until they get it right”).  To prevent this, be sure to keep your login details secure and change your password regularly.

We recommend using a unique username for your administrator account.  By default, most WordPress sites use the username “admin.” This is bad news; a hacker needs both your username and password to gain access, and by default they have 50% of the information.

To change your account username:

1. In your WordPress dashboard, go to Users > Add new.  Create a new user account with a unique name.  Grant the account administrative access.
2. Log out of WordPress and log in to the new account.
3. In your WordPress dashboard, return to Users.  Delete the admin account.
4. Be sure to attribute the authorship of all posts and pages to the new administrator account.

Other tips

1. Avoid shared hosting accounts and “budget” hosting providers like Godaddy. You’ll save some cash by using a budget provider, but it will cost you more in the long run when your site gets hacked.  If you need to move your site away from an insecure hosting provider and choose a new hosting company, we offer low-cost WordPress migration services to help keep you safe.
2. Plugins can be terribly insecure. Because anyone can write and submit a plugin, it’s important to be careful in choosing a plugin for your site.  Do you have a question about a specific plugin?  Just ask–we’ll help.

What to do if you’ve been hacked

We use and recommend Sucuri site monitoring for all website owners.  The folks at Sucuri are pros at cleaning and securing sites that have been affected by malware.

The best offense against hackers is a good defense.  Follow the tips above and you’ll be far above the rest when it comes to WordPress security.

Have you had problems with malware or WordPress security?  Leave a comment below.

Novice website owners and veteran server administrators alike often forget to keep their WordPress installations up to date.  Fortunately, we have found a plugin that automatically updates your important WordPress files.

We use the Automatic Updater Wordpress plugin to keep our site and our clients’ sites up-to-date.  If you’re a WordPress pro, you can follow the link and install the plugin right away.  If you need some help, follow the simple instructions below.

How to install the Automatic Updater WordPress plugin to keep your site up to date

In order to install the plugin and keep your WordPress installation up-to-date, first log in to your WordPress dashboard.  In your dashboard, visit Plugins > Add New.

In the search box, type Automatic Updater.

Click the Install now button on the Automatic Updater plugin. Click “OK” to install the plugin, and then click the Activate plugin link.

That’s it!  Your WordPress installation will now be kept up to date.

A few notes:

1. You can customize the plugin with some advanced settings (e.g. enabling email notifications) by visiting Settings > Automatic Updater in your WordPress dashboard.
2. Premium plugins that require a license key may not be kept up to date.  We use the Headway theme framework to build our sites, and we need to update Headway manually.
3. Some updated plugins may not be compatible with your WordPress version and may cause problems with your site.  We leave email notifications on and check each site manually when a plugin or theme has been updated to ensure that the site still functions properly.  Be careful when installing third party plugins; they may cause issues!

Have you used the Automatic Updater plugin?  What are your favorite WordPress plugins?  Leave a comment for us below.

In the midst of the excitement of launching a new site, it’s entirely possible to forget some critical steps that can make or break a successful website relaunch.

In this post, we’ll address four of those mistakes and show you how to fix them.

1.) Not redirecting old pages to their new URLs

When launching a new site, the URLs of your content will likely change.  This is especially true when you update a static site (built with individual HTML files for each page) to a database-driven website built with a modern content management system like WordPress.

If your URLs have changed, and a visitor has bookmarked your site or arrives at your site via a link on another website, they will receive a “404 – page not found” error.  Put yourself in their shoes.  You’ve probably had this happen to you, and you probably immediately left the site to find the solution to your problem elsewhere.

Equally important, search engines assign a popularity score, like PageRank, to each page on your website.  If your URLs have changed, it’s important to let search engines know so they can pass the ranking to your new pages.

When you launch your new site, then, it’s critical to redirect the old pages to their new locations.  For example, if your about page was found at http://www.yoursite.com/about.htm and it is now found at http://www.yoursite.com/about-us, then you’ll have to redirect the old URL to the new.

The simplest way to do this is to add a line to your .htaccess file for each URL that has been changed on your site.  The code looks like this:

redirect 301 /old-page.htm /new-page

This automatically redirects search engines and visitors to the new URL of your website, and passes link value from the old page to the new page.  This is a pretty straightforward process for websites with only a few pages of content, but it can quickly become a monster of a project if you have a long-running blog on your site, etc.

Need some help making the transition from an old site to a new site without sacrificing your SEO value?  Let us know – we can help.

2.) Using the same title/description tags on every page of your site – or forgetting them altogether

Two common oversights when launching a website redesign are your title and description tags.  Depending on the content management system you’re using, you website may automatically generate title and/or description tags, but these are usually pulled from the content on your page and don’t specifically address the keywords that your page is optimized for.

When launching a new site, take the extra time to write a title and meta description for each page.  Keep your titles below 65 characters–after that, many search engines will shorten your title for you, cutting out some of your keywords and decreasing your click through rates from search engine results.   Meta descriptions work the same way, and you’ll want to limit them to 150 characters or so to avoid automatic shortening.

3.) Failing to install analytics software on your site to track visitors and conversions

Google Analytics is a free and powerful tool for measuring traffic and conversions.  Many marketers install an analytics package on their sites and then “set it and forget it,” rarely–if ever–checking the results.

Google Analytics includes conversion tracking features to help track sales, lead generation, and other business metrics.  By using goals creatively, you can track exactly which traffic sources are converting to business, and assign a monetary value for each visitor and each traffic source.  Spending a bunch of money on SEO, Adwords, or social media?  Goal tracking can help you monitor your return on investment.

For many clients in low competition niches – like local service-based businesses – we have found that the cost per visitor from organic search/SEO is significantly lower – and the conversion rate is significantly higher – than with pay per click advertising.

Not sure if you have analytics installed on your site?  Try our SEO Grader to diagnose and repair some of the most common website SEO problems.

4.) Not testing your site’s functionality before you go live

You have tested your site’s functionality, right?  You’ve clicked every link to ensure that it points to the right page?  You’ve tested your contact form, newsletter signup, or shopping cart?

Not testing before you go live can cost you thousands of dollars in revenue.  We recently launched a website for a client who produces $25,000 per week in online revenue.  A single broken link, or an extra half second of loading time, or a single missing image…  If any one of those factors caused just a 10% decrease in conversions, the client would have lost $2,500 in sales.

Always, always, be sure you test your site’s functionality before you go live, even if you’re a mom and pop shop or a solo pro offering your services online.

A brief website relaunch checklist

When you launch a new website, make sure you’ve done the following:

• Redirect your old page URLs to their new locations with a 301 redirect
• Write unique titles and meta description tags for each page on your site
• Install an analytics package on your website and ensure the tracking code is installed on every page.  Bonus: configure a goal funnel to your sales or lead generation pages to track conversions.
• Test your site’s functionality before you go live.  If there’s a problem, be sure to address it, even if it means delaying the launch of your new site for a few days while you fix the issue.

Need help improving your website?  Our SEO and conversion optimization services might be for you.  Get in touch and ask how we may be able to help.

This results in more indexed content – and more pages in Google’s index means more traffic.

In this article, we’ll show you how to create an XML sitemap on your WordPress website quickly and easily.

Installing and configuring the Google XML Sitemaps plugin

In order to create an XML sitemap on your site, we’re going to use a WordPress plugin called Google XML Sitemaps. You can download it here: http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/google-sitemap-generator/

Once you’ve downloaded the plugin, you can install the plugin via your WordPress dashboard by choosing Plugins > Add New. Alternatively, you can search for Google XML Sitemaps in the plugin directory and install straight from there. Once you’ve installed the plugin, be sure to activate it.

Build your sitemap for the first time

Once you’ve installed the plugin, browse to Settings > XML-Sitemap in your dashboard. Before your sitemap will be active, you’ll need to build it for the first time. In the upper section of the sitemap settings, you’ll see a link instructing you to build your sitemap.

Click it. Go ahead, we’ll wait.

Once you’ve done that, it’s all uphill. Your sitemap will be installed and your robots.txt file will be automatically updated to point search engines to your sitemap. Any time you create new content on the site, your sitemap will be updated.

Have you successfully installed a sitemap on your site? Leave a comment below and let us know.

There are three primary ways that your website could be blocking search engines.  In this post, we’ll walk you through each one and show you how to fix them.

1.) WordPress settings could be blocking search engines

If you’ve built your website or blog with WordPress, a common reason that your website may be blocking search engines is the Privacy setting within the WordPress dashboard.

To see if your website is inadvertently blocking search engines through WordPress’ settings, log in to your dashboard and choose Settings > Privacy.  If you would like search engines to index your site – and, in most cases, you do – your selection should be “Allow search engines to index this site.”  

Setting WordPress to “Ask search engines not to index this site” doesn’t guarantee that your website won’t be crawled.  Instead, it adds two methods for requesting that search engines not crawl your site.  For non-Wordpress sites, these are the two methods that may be used to block search engines manually, so you’ll want to check them, too.

2.) A “robots” meta tag could be blocking search engines.

Websites use “meta” tags to add additional information about the content of the page.  Found in the page’s header, meta tags convey information that may be relevant to search engines.

One of these meta tags is the “robots” meta tag.  This meta tag gives search engines instructions on how to interact with the page.  Here’s an example:

<META NAME="ROBOTS" CONTENT="NOINDEX, NOFOLLOW">

“Noindex” would instruct search engines not to add your page to its index.  ”Nofollow” would instruct search engines not to follow the links on your page.

If your intention is to make your website visible to search, you should ensure that you don’t have a noindex/nofollow meta robots tag.  If you do have this tag on your page and you’d like search engines to crawl and index your site, you should remove it from your source code entirely.  Since the meta robots tag defaults to index/follow, you don’t need to have a tag that specifically tells search engines to browse your site.

3.) Your robots.text file may prevent search engines from crawling your site.

Robots.txt refers to a simple text file that may be stored on your web server that, similar to the meta robots tag, gives search engines instructions on how to crawl and index your site.

To check for a robots.txt file, point your web browser to yourdomain.com/robots.txt.  If you get a 404/”Not found” error, you don’t have a robots.txt file, so it wouldn’t be blocking search engines.

If you do find a robots.txt file, the command that will instruct search engines not to explore your site is Disallow: /

Some content management systems, like WordPress, may add a Disallow code for specific directories on your site (such as your administration area, etc.), but as a general rule of thumb, if you see “Disallow” in your robots.txt file, there is a good possibility you may be blocking search engines.

Read more about the robots.txt file and its capabilities in Google’s webmaster resources.

Correcting site visibility problems

To correct these issues, you or your webmaster can simply log in to your website via an FTP connection and edit the offending files to solve the problem.  If you need some more help, please get in touch!  We offer reasonable SEO setup and maintenance packages for small- to medium-sized businesses.

eCommerce website built for search engine visibility and conversions.

Brand new medical info website designed to work as a content management system.  Developed a custom plugin to handle categories and content.

Redesigned site to improve user experience and offer signups for the client’s nonprofit tennis club.

Boosted traffic 50% in 60 days.  Ongoing SEO campaign for competitive keywords to boost traffic and conversions.