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Posted by MiriamEllis What a lot can change in just a few years! When I wrote the original version of this post in January 2014, the local SEO industry didn’t have quite the wealth of paid tools that now exists, and many of the freebies on my previous list have been sunsetted. Definitely time for a complete refresh of the most useful free tools, widgets, and resources I know of to make marketing local businesses easier and better. While all of the tools below are free, note that some will require you to sign up for access. Others are limited, no-cost, or trial versions that let you get a good sense of what they provide, enabling you to consider whether it might be worth it to buy into paid access. One thing you may notice: my new list of local SEO tools offers increased support for organic SEO tasks, reflective of our industry’s growing understanding of how closely linked organic and local SEO have become. Now, let’s open this toolkit and get 2018 off to a great start! For Researc...

Posted by dohertyjf Editor's note: We originally published a different article by mistake due to an oversight and a valuable lesson in the dangers of copy-paste; you can see it live here . We truly apologize for the error. If you’re an agency owner or solo consultant, you’re probably constantly thinking about getting new clients. And we’re inundated in this industry with too much advice around new marketing funnels, new marketing ideas, and "one weird tricks to 10x your traffic overnight." But something we don’t talk about enough is what you do when you actually convert that person into a real contact on your site. I’m not talking about “a lead” here, because that word is used widely in our space and has come to mean everything and nothing at the same time. A lead could be an email address and it could be a long-form submission telling you everything about their needs, as well as their budget and their birth city. What I’m talking about here is a marketing qualifie...

Posted by dohertyjf I remember when I first went out on my own to build my business. Because I planned to bootstrap the product into existence, I needed to pick up some consulting work to cover my own bills before I felt comfortable taking time to build my product. I had a sizable group of peers that I contacted to let them know that I was no longer with my last company and was looking to bring on a few new clients. Within a week, I had to stop taking introductions because I was so busy! If you’re a brand-new freelance consultant, this post has some goodies for you. I have other friends who are purposefully freelance consultants with no current plans to scale beyond it. In fact, they’ve resisted these opportunities because they enjoy what they're doing so much, and are able to charge a premium for it. This post will help you out. Some of my friends are at a different stage. They’ve worked for themselves for 3–4 years or longer now and are growing an agency beyond themselves and...

Posted by randfish Many of us rely on the search volume numbers Google AdWords provides, but those numbers ought to be consumed with a hearty helping of skepticism. Broad and unusable volume ranges, misalignment with other Google tools, and conflating similar yet intrinsically distinct keywords — these are just a few of the serious issues that make relying on AdWords search volume data alone so dangerous. In this edition of Whiteboard Friday, we discuss those issues in depth and offer a few alternatives for more accurate volume data. Click on the whiteboard image above to open a high-resolution version in a new tab! Video Transcription Howdy, Moz fans. Welcome to another edition of Whiteboard Friday. This week we're going to chat about Google AdWords' keyword data and why it is absolutely insane as an SEO or as a content marketer or a content creator to rely on this. Look, as a paid search person, you don't have a whole lot of choice, right? Google and Facebook com...

Posted by randfish For the last decade, I've made predictions about how the year in SEO and web marketing would go. So far, my track record is pretty decent — the correct guesses outweigh the wrong ones. But today's the day of reckoning, to grade my performance from 2017 and, if the tally is high enough, share my list for the year ahead. In keeping with tradition, my predictions will be graded on the following scale: Nailed It (+2) – When a prediction is right on the money and the primary criteria are fulfilled Partially Accurate (+1) – Predictions that are in the ballpark, but are somewhat different than reality Not Completely Wrong (-1) – Those that got near the truth, but are more "incorrect" than "correct" Way Off (-2) – Guesses which didn't come close Breakeven or better means I make new predictions for the year ahead, and under that total means my predicting days are over. Let's see how this shakes out... I'm not nervous... Yo...

Posted by MiriamEllis I love a mystery… especially a local search ranking mystery I can solve for someone. Now, the truth is, some ranking puzzles are so complex, they can only be solved by a formal competitive audit . But there are many others that can be cleared up by spending 15 minutes or less going through an organized 10-point checklist of the commonest problems that can cause a business to rank lower than the owner thinks it should. By zipping through the following checklist, there’s a good chance you’ll be able to find one or more obvious “whodunits” contributing to poor Google local pack visibility for a given search. Since I wrote the original version of this post in 2014, so much has changed. Branding, tools, tactics — things are really different in 2018. Definitely time for a complete overhaul, with the goal of making you a super sleuth for your forum friends, clients, agency teammates, or executive superiors. Let’s emulate the Stratemeyer Syndicate , which earned lasti...