Why are we still believing these 5 big SEO myths in 2023?
Busted! Here are the 5 biggest SEO myths to banish from your 2023 marketing strategy, and help your business reimagine your digital effectiveness.
5 digital content marketing trends to watch in 2023
From economic storms ahead, to AI content on the rise – here’s what you need to know for successful digital content marketing trends in 2023.
How to Launch a New Business Website Without Hurting Your Search Engine Rankings
Don’t punt on that new website forever. Yes, you can launch a new website without destroying your search engine position.
Why is blogging a part of digital marketing?
Is blogging still an important part of your overall digital marketing plan for your business? It should be
Should You Manage Your Own Website Project?
You can manage your own website project. Right? Or can you? In my professional experience, these three factors are the most common culprits for failed internally managed website projects.
Quick and Dirty SEO Primer for Bloggers
If you’re a blogger, you probably already know that SEO (search engine optimization) is an essential part of getting your blog posts “out there” and in front of your readers. But in my experience, bloggers don’t get the full picture when it comes to putting together the pieces for optimal search engine performance. Some bloggers rely too heavily on page views or ad clicks. Others employ keywords to a detrimental degree. Many don’t even bother to research keywords before starting a blog post. When it comes to getting your blog noticed, you need to make SEO work for you. And to do that, you need to coordinate your editorial efforts to unite around a singular goal: reaching your audience and converting them to loyal customers. I promised this would be quick and dirty, so let’s go. [text_with_frame id="368c1dbfefba91dceb946d322e0e86bc" content="‹¨›p‹˜›‹¨›em‹˜›If you find this article helpful consider giving it a share‹¯›nbsp;‹¨›/em‹˜›?‹¨›/p‹˜›" line_color="rgba(0,0,0,.07)" text_font="body" heading_font="heading" animation="none" animation_speed="2" animation_delay="0" __fw_editor_shortcodes_id="e6852c2dacc162bc8c34ba646905e841" _fw_coder="aggressive"][/text_with_frame] The Quick: SEO is based on complex algorithmic logic. You can’t “trick” your way into a favorable SEO ranking by using those easy, ridiculous tips you find on blogging sites that promise you can make six figures blogging in x number of days. This includes tactics like: Asking for page views from random people in Facebook groups Asking for ad clicks from the same people Keyword stuffing Filling out a form that promises distribution to some number of search engines Neglecting site design and mobile optimization Stop using these tactics. They won’t boost your SEO. But they will: Skyrocket your bounce rate Bloat ad click numbers and make you lose out on future campaigns with reputable companies Make you look like a horrible…
Holy Cross Lutheran Church
"Our organization recently contracted with Rystedt Creative to update our website. They did a great job recommending upgrades and handled the work for us. Also, because we are a non-profit, they took into consideration our limited resources for their pricing structure. We really appreciate the quick turnaround time too!" - Pastor Tom Zucconi, Holy Cross Lutheran Church Holy Cross Lutheran Church is a congregation in the Lutheran Church Missouri Synod located in Dallas Texas. The congregation is currently ministering to both English and Spanish speakers of all ages through their worship services and varied programs. Holy Cross has a WordPress powered website that their staff thought could use some improvements. We worked closely with Holy Cross' staff to help them determine what about their website could be improved and what impact they could expect each improvement to have upon their online reach. Holy Cross took advantage of a free consultation call, a free website evaluation, and our free website self-evaluation tool throughout their staff decision making process. (By the way, these free resources are available to you as well. Contact us to receive your free consultation call and website evaluation.) Ultimately, Holy Cross asked us to make numerous improvements to hcdallas.org. We assisted Holy Cross by... Replacing their slider plugin Holy Cross Lutheran Church has a full width slider just below the header of their home page. They use this slider to make various announcements. Their original slider was powered by their WordPress theme. The default slider caused the page to “jump” when slides had different heights. We switched hcdallas.org to Slider Revolution, recreated their current slides using Slider Revolution, and provided them with an introductory walk through of the…
Renewed Strength Personal Training Studio
Renewed Strength Personal Training Studio is a local fitness and training studio that was concerned about a competitor's position in Google search engine results pages (SERPs). In certain searches this other fitness coach was also ranking on page one or even above Renewed Strength Personal Training. Yet their competitor's website is poorly designed compared to Renewed Strength and the services they offer are limited. So why were they still ranking well? SEO on Wix Renewed Strength contacted us to ask if we could evaluate their Wix powered website and determine what could be done to improve their search ranking. We evaluated both Renewed Strength's website and their competitor's site and then provided Renewed Strength Personal Training with a four step plan for improving their ranking. Structured Metadata One of those steps was implementing robust structured metadata on their webpages. Renewed Strength's website was using barely any structured metadata and thus not taking advantage of the local SEO benefits available when you provide your business data in this format. The studio decided that this step, in particular, was one they wanted us to take on. Navigating Wix's Limitations However, Wix limits what kind of metadata can be added through their admin panel (eg no Open Graph tags). Yet structured metadata works as long as it is inserted into the header of your web pages and Wix does allow you to insert custom code into the headers. So we got crafty! We evaluated what metadata Wix was already implementing (only two tags), coded unique metadata for every page of Renewed Strength's website, and added that code to their Wix pages using an alternative method in the Wix admin panel. With this and…
Do Keywords Still Matter in Search Engine Optimization (SEO)?
What keywords are you ranking for?You want your website to rank for words and phrases that your ideal customers are using in their search queries.Some online marketers still advocate for a high percentage of the words on any page containing the key words or phrases you are attempting to rank for. Other online marketers are touting a new era of interconnected topical and contextual ranking methods that utilize keywords more deftly.This has led many businesses (and organizations) to question whether or not keywords still matter in their SEO strategies. Psst! Keywords still matter for SEO... but shouldn't be used quite like they were in the 2000s. https://www.youtube.com/embed/lNk7n_V3uqM What's a keyword anyway? A "keyword" or "key phrase" contains the idea or topic your content is about. If, for example, you run a cleaning business and you write a post about best window cleaning methods some of the natural keywords for that content may be "clean", "windows", "wash", "how to", and others. Hopefully, if your content is well written, many of these keywords would show up in close proximity to one another within the same sentence to make up a few "key phrases" or "long tail keywords". If your content is naturally using keywords that your target market is searching for you have a higher chance of driving organic search traffic over time. Effective keywords are, essentially, the topics and ideas on the minds (and screens) of both your business and your ideal customers. The obsession with keywords Search engines still primarily crawl text when determining what your webpage is about. (That's why lengthy well-written content still matters online). Consequently, at one time, the most important part of your SEO strategy was…
What’s the Ideal Blog Post Length?
Blog posts are an essential part of your marketing strategy. But when you’re developing your editorial schedule, it can be a challenge to target the ideal blog posts that your readers want to see. As you balance post types, topics and authors, you need to also consider your blog post lengths. But does length really matter? In short, yes. Blog post length is important for driving new customers to your site and to boost your SEO rankings. Aim to vary your blog post lengths to keep content fresh and make your site look like it’s run by actual humans sharing useful information. [text_with_frame id="368c1dbfefba91dceb946d322e0e86bc" content="‹¨›p‹˜›‹¨›em‹˜›If you find this article helpful consider giving it a share‹¯›nbsp;‹¨›/em‹˜›?‹¨›/p‹˜›" line_color="rgba(0,0,0,.07)" text_font="body" heading_font="heading" animation="none" animation_speed="2" animation_delay="0" __fw_editor_shortcodes_id="e6852c2dacc162bc8c34ba646905e841" _fw_coder="aggressive"][/text_with_frame] Want to mix it up? Here are the top blog post lengths you should aim for: Short (300-600 Words) Short blog posts offer information quickly and concisely. Your readers can be in and out without dedicating any significant time to your post. While this might sound like a bad thing, in a day and age where readers have shorter attention spans than ever, it’s actually not. When writing short posts, aim to cross the 300 word threshold – anything shorter works against your SEO – but keep it below 600 to maintain brevity. A lot of marketers still think that the 500-800 word “essay” post is best, but when everyone’s doing it, no one stands out. Don’t blend in with the crowd. Long (1,000-2,000 Words) Long form blog posts are very popular right now, and for good reason. They give your readers more than a bit of information to whet the whistle and they are…