SearchLab’s Blog of Awesomeness

Knowledge bombs to help you learn more about Local SEO and PPC

Suds and Search 63 | Aleyda Solis, Founder of Orainti

May 20, 2021 Mark Bealin Best Practices, Digital Marketing, Search Engine Optimization, Suds and Search

Also available as a Podcast:

My guest on this week’s episode of Suds & Search is Aleyda Solis, founder at Orainti. Aleyda was awarded the 2018 European Search Personality of the Year at the European Search Awards.

Aleyda is a popular conference presenter and frequent keynoter. She has presented at over 100 conferences in 20 countries presenting in both English and Spanish. For my money, she is one of my favorite presenters in the industry. You may have heard her present at SMX, MozCon, Pubcon, Women in Tech SEO, and Brighton SEO as well as many, many other places.

Aleyda is the creator of the popular newsletter SEOfomo. When she launched it, SEOFomo took the SEO industry by storm. I’ll ask Aleyda a little about the Newsletter during our conversation.

Google Ads introduces account Monthly Spend Limits

Mark Irvine Best Practices, Digital Marketing, Google Updates, PPC Advertising ,Google Ads, PPC

Google Ads Monthly Spend Limits
Google Ads has a lot of exciting new features, insights, and offers plenty of ROI to excite most marketers. But of course, Google Ads has costs too and fewer marketers get that excited about planning out a budget, and historically Google hasn’t made that process any easier. Where most businesses plan their advertising budgets on a monthly basis, Google Ads complicates this process with its daily budgets on their campaigns. Since 2017, Google Ads further complicated budget management by allowing each campaign to spend up to twice its daily budget on any given day.

So, your monthly advertising budget? Divide that budget into a dozen or so different campaign budgets, then divide each of those budgets by between 28-31 days in a month, and then cross your figures, count the weekends, holidays, and pray that Google hits those budgets consistently without overspending every day. If that math equation has you nervous, then you already know the feeling of managing your PPC at the end of the month as you nearly make or break your budget.

SEO presentation: How to show up in local searches

May 18, 2021 Greg Gifford Best Practices, Digital Marketing, Google My Business, Local Search Tuesdays, Local SEO, Reputation Management, Reviews, Search Engine Optimization

In this week’s video, I share my recent SEO presentation from a Better Business Bureau webinar. It’s longer than my usual weekly video – about 45 minutes – but it’s packed with awesome info about how COVID has changed customer behavior and how businesses should adapt to the change. I outline a Local SEO playbook for 2021, so you definitely don’t want to miss it!

Suds and Search 62 | Jono Alderson, Manager of Special Ops at Yoast

May 13, 2021 Mark Bealin Best Practices, Digital Marketing, Search Engine Optimization, Suds and Search

Also available as a Podcast:

My guest on this week’s episode of Suds & Search is the amazingly talented Jono Alderson, Manager of Special Ops at Yoast.

Jono has been one of the leading figures in SEO for some time now. He is a frequent keynote speaker, blogger, and educator. You may have heard Jono present at MozCon, SearchLove, SMX, and the Inbounder.

Optimize for how customers actually search

May 11, 2021 Greg Gifford Digital Marketing, Local Search Tuesdays, Local SEO, Search Engine Optimization

In this week’s video, I explain the importance of optimizing for how customers actually search for you. Businesses and marketers tend to use specific industry jargon, but most of the time, customers don’t use the same terminology when searching for the products or services a business offers. If you optimize for the jargon, but customers are using different terms, you’ll miss out on showing up in the right search results.

Suds and Search 61 | Kevin Indig, Director of SEO at Shopify

May 6, 2021 Mark Bealin Digital Marketing, Search Engine Optimization, Suds and Search

Also available as a Podcast:

My guest on this episode of Suds & Search is Kevin Indig, Director of SEO at Shopify. Kevin is a popular conference speaker, blogger, educator, and podcaster.

A shortlist of conferences where you might’ve heard Kevin present includes Brighton SEO, Advanced Search Summit, AdWorld, and SMX Munich.

Online review responses and HIPAA compliance

May 5, 2021 Hannah Borchik Best Practices, Digital Marketing, Local SEO, Reputation Management

The Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996 (HIPAA) is a federal law that prohibits the disclosure of protected health information (PHI) without patient consent. PHI is defined as “health information that can be used to identify an individual” and includes data related to a patient’s medical or physical condition, and identity. HIPAA extends to online review management, and since responding to reviews is essential to a healthcare organization’s online reputation, healthcare marketers must follow HIPAA guidelines when crafting review responses. Below are best practices to consider when handling online reviews, and some examples of HIPAA-compliant responses.

Best practices for HIPAA-compliant review responses

Avoid a HIPAA violation by following these quick tips:

Have an internal plan. Collaborate internally to develop review response policies, including identifying who will be responding to reviews and creating templates that can be customized for positive and negative reviews.
Protect PHI in your response. Remove all detail about a patient’s diagnosis, treatment, condition, and visit, and do not confirm or deny them as a patient.
Respond broadly. Stick to general responses like, “Thank you for your feedback” or “Thank you for taking the time to leave us a review.”
Take the conversation offline. Give the reviewer the opportunity to further discuss their comments by providing them with a phone number or email address for your office or patient experience team. This also helps prevent further online conversations that could violate HIPAA.

Keeping these tips in mind, below are some real examples of review responses that either violate or follow HIPAA guidelines.

Why rank tracking isn’t a good SEO success metric

May 4, 2021 Greg Gifford Best Practices, Local Search Tuesdays, Local SEO, Marketing Analytics, Search Engine Optimization

In this week’s episode, I share some insight into rank tracking in SEO – and why it’s a horrible way to judge SEO success. You don’t hire someone to do SEO to get you to rank, you hire someone to get you more traffic and leads. It’s all about growing your bottom line, and rank trackers don’t mean squat to your bottom line…

Suds and Search 60 | Eric Enge, Principal at Perficient

April 29, 2021 Mark Bealin Digital Marketing, Marketing Analytics, Search Engine Optimization, Suds and Search

Also available as a Podcast:

My guest on this week’s episode of Suds & Search is Eric Enge, Principal at Perficient. Eric is one of the most recognizable faces in digital marketing. He is a frequent keynote speaker, a prolific writer, blogger, researcher, teacher, and entrepreneur.

Eric has won numerous awards. In 2018, he was named Search Personality of the Year by the Drum Search Awards. In 2016, he was awarded Search Engine Land’s Landy Award for Search Marketer of the Year and he also won US Search Awards Search Personality of the Year in 2016.

Eric is the lead author of the book The Art of SEO, a 900+ page book that is frequently used as THE textbook for learning SEO.

What do Google My Business impressions really mean?

April 27, 2021 Greg Gifford Digital Marketing, Google My Business, Local Search Tuesdays, Local SEO

In this week’s video, I share some easy-to-understand examples that help clear up the confusion around Google My Business impressions. Learn what the different impression types actually mean and when they’ll be counted – watch the video for all the details!