Newfold Digital has acquired Yoast, the WordPress SEO Plugin. Yoast is currently installed in at least 12 million websites worldwide. Newfold Digital is a leading web presence solutions provider, and their brands include Bluehost, CrazyDomains, HostGator, Network Solutions, Register.com, Web.com, and others. I use the Yoast WordPress plugin on this site, as well as many other sites and client sites that I work on. [Read more…]

The Dallas/Fort Worth Search Engine Marketing Association, an organization I helped found back in 2004, is holding it’s annual State of Search conference November 4-5, 2019. I’m the conference Chair this year–and it’s being held again at the famous Gilley’s Dallas, just south of Downtown Dallas. [Read more…]

There’s a job opening for a CMO (Chief Marketing Officer) at Travoom, a site that bills itself as a “social network and marketplace for bucket list travel experiences”. But, if you’re a US-based SEO expert, then I wouldn’t bother applying for the job. Apparently, according to their recent job listing on Zip Recruiter, their next CMO must “be an international SEO/SMO expert” because the “US SEO so called experts are crap”. Their words, not mine. [Read more…]

On Tuesday, March 19, 2019, I will be doing a Reddit AMA (Ask Me Anything) via the SEMRush.com Subreddit. This is an opportunity to literally ask me anything. I’ve chosen the topics of SEO Audits and Domain Names as well as chickens and goats. But seriously, if you have a question about performing an SEO audit on your website or your client’s website, feel free to ask. I’ve been doing SEO audits for 10 years now. [Read more…]

Back at the beginning of this month, October 2018, I upgraded the version of PHP that the web server was using. It upgraded it from PHP 5.6 to PHP 7. I had received a few warning/messages, that starting in December that there was some software on the server that wouldn’t be supported. So, I needed to upgraded to a more recent version of PHP. I went ahead and upgraded all the sites I host on this server to PHP 7. And after that, you’ll never guess what happened. Here’s a screenshot from my Google Analytics for this site: [Read more…]

From natural disasters, to hacked websites, banned websites, and unexpected life events, a crisis can certainly cripple your small business overnight. Google’s PDF titled Digital Tools and Resources to Help Your Business Prepare for a Crisis is a good start when it comes to preparing for a crisis. They list several things that you should do, several of which involve Google’s services: [Read more…]

Sellers Playbook and Exposure Marketing Company, along with its owners, have been charged by the US Federal Trade Commission and the State of Minnesota with running a large business opportunity scheme. [Read more…]

The United States FTC (Federal Trade Commission), in coordination with the Better Business Bureau, has charged nine people and corporations based in Canada and the United States with operating a company that made unsolicited telephone calls to small businesses and other organizations demanding that they pay for unordered directory listings, SEO services, or website design and hosting services. [Read more…]

The United States Federal Trade Commission (FTC) has charged three people and nine businesses with bilking over $125 million from thousands of consumers. The internet marketing scheme, called MOBE (My Online Business Education) aka My Own Business Empire, claimed that the business education program would enable people to start their own online businesses and earn substantial income. The defendants claimed to have a proven 21-step system for making substantial sums of money quickly and easily from internet marketing, which they promised to provide to those who join their program. [Read more…]

What exactly is GDPR, and if you have a US-based business with a website, why should you care about the upcoming deadline of May 25, 2018? I recently talked to a few businesses, and they didn’t know anything about it. And, they’ve never heard of it. As someone who is involved daily with digital marketing and search engine optimization of websites, I have to tell you that if you’re an EU-based business then you’ll need to comply with the new GDPR regulations by May 25, 2018. If you’re not in the EU, then you actually should care about it, as it will have an affect on your website–at a minimum, your Google Analytics data. [Read more…]

Gravityscan, the website security scanner service, is shutting down. Scheduled scans will continue to run on a set schedule and Gravityscan badges will continue to show on Pro websites through March 8, 2018. [Read more…]

Author Jon Bishop, former Director of Growth at Heap, has published 18 hours of Digital Marketing training over at Springboard. This appears to be a great way to learn the basics of digital marketing if you haven’t had any formal digital marketing training. [Read more…]

I am currently working on a unique project with domain names that requires me to crawl hundreds of thousands of URLs. Essentially, in this particular project, I have a list of domain names. Let’s say, around 100,000 domain names. What I want to know, for this project, is which domain names are actually being used for live websites, which domain names are being redirected, and which domain names are registered only (they don’t have hosting set up). [Read more…]

A group calling itself the Lizard Squad is sending SEO Agencies and Digital Marketing Agencies threatening emails, which sound very much like blackmail. The emails, being sent to SEO and Digital marketing agencies’ public email addresses, claim that a negative SEO campaign has been started against their website and their clients’ sites. If a certain amount of Bitcoin is not sent, they will continue the negative SEO campaign, as well as DDoS attacks on the agency website and their client websites. [Read more…]

As of March 14, 2017, Dmoz.org, the Open Directory Project, will no longer be available. The word on the street is: DMOZ shutting down. If you go to the site’s home page, you’ll see the message from the editors: [Read more…]

Unfortunately, there are still people out there, like Domain SEO Service Registration Corp., who feel that they can get away with offering “search engine submission” services. The fact is, there is absolutely no need to submit your website to the search engines; most likely they have already crawled your website (especially Google). So rather than paying for a “submission” service, you need real search engine marketing services, a service that I provide. [Read more…]

Mike Dillard, a “leading authority” on attraction marketing, internet marketing, and personal branding within the “network marketing” industry, is suing James Stein, owner of ArticlesProductions.com. Dillard claims that he and his companies have been defamed because Stein’s web site ranked higher in the search results for certain keywords in the Google search results. [Read more…]

Imagine that you just lost your job and decided to start your own business. You have heard that you can make money online, at home, in your pajamas. So, you go on over to Google and search for “work from home opportunities” or “make money online”. What do you find? Probably something like this: [Read more…]

Alexa is a subsidiary company of Amazon.com typically known for its rankings of websites. The Alexa Toolbar collects data on the web browsing behavior of those who have it installed. That data is then used for its rankings of the top 500 websites and showing traffic details of sites like mine. [Read more…]