Category Archives: SEO Tips

In SEO The Scum Always Rises

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In SEO The Scum Always RisesIt’s no wonder that the SEO industry like many other online industries is marred with the underhanded and unscrupulous offers of rotten people. These people and their allies ruin the bunch with their Black Hat tactics, a term used for illegal practices. Millions of people fall prey to their scams and trying to shut them all down is next to impossible. It’s been a battle from day one but fortunately there are things you can do to protect yourself and avoid these scammers.

First and foremost, use trust, but verify. Don’t take any SEO company’s word that they’re the best and honest. You have to do your homework and verify their claims. Many have ways of masking or creating positive data about themselves, but it’s all a veneer that can be easily pulled back. The major problem is that many of these companies are located in areas around the world where criminal activity is not only rampant but is government supported. There are SEO mills, sweatshops, where people work under the shadow of organized crime groups, forced to scam their way across the web and SEO is one of those areas. Once you catch one for crooked activity, they just shut down and start all over again. Getting their local law enforcement to intervene is impossible because those cops are on the take.

Some of the scams range from duplicating your website, changing content for their advantage, outright theft, sabotage, and more. Anything you can think of, these scammers will utilize and you need to be on your toes.

Always check the company’s background data. How long they’ve been operating. If they’re incorporated you may find trouble in finding how old they really are because people shelve corporations and as they age they sell them and people use them for criminal purposes. Look to see if there are companies in your particular region. Especially companies that have offices that you can stop by and visit. Any SEO company that scared to let you stop by for a visit has something shaky going on. Checking customer reviews is one thing, but they can be faked.
You want a SEO company that will walk with you hand in hand all along the way and not make ridiculous promises that no one in their right mind could believe nor provide.

If that isn’t bad enough, the honest website owner and marketer has to deal with frivolous lawsuits from competitors trying to dominate a market or even a prominent keyword search term. There are also companies that will sabotage your site with bad reviews and links to your site from their own cache of banned or illegal sites making yours look like a partner in crime.

This is where evil contracts come into play. If yo don’t understand the terms of a contract, even just one small word, do NOT sign it. Rotten contracts are what get people trapped in a never ending cycle of them undermining you at every turn. There are some very technical terms regarding ways they lie and steal which is why you need to study what SEO is and communicate with other customers on social media and message boards. Those venues are where you’ll find the in detailed information that can guide you through.

SEO is a major money maker on the web and the reality is that there are people out there that will always try to take advantage of the public and that’s a reality of the human species. Letting your guard down will lead to mistakes and errors that can cost you dearly and with SEO you can’t afford the negative side of it as the web can be unforgiving when it comes to a bad reputation.

Image credit: http://www.ibsi-us.com/our-services/web-design/flash-graphics/ IB Systems graphic development

Knowing The Value Of Backlinks

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Knowing The Value Of BacklinksNot too long ago, websites were being punished for having too many backlinks, but this was due to the earlier trend of websites rising to the top of the search engines because they had a bazillion backlinks. Well since that’s no longer the case and severely penalized, smarter and more effective ways of acquiring and utilizing backlinks takes center stage.

You must realize that the present trend is that Google will look at your backlinking profile and judge whether your site is legit and worthy of higher ranking.

Of course some people will use what is referred to as Black Hat techniques which is basically cheating and using various technologies to get the upper hand. As soon as one new Black Hat technique hits the webwaves, Google’s experts will devise another way to countermeasure those unscrupulous efforts and the game begins anew. It upsets the market now and then but honest webmasters and the search engine pros are in there swinging to get things as honest as possible.

Google wants their surfers to get quality content via their links. Quality means retention and not rejection. Surfers who keep running into spammy or criminal sites when they click on the top search engine rankings then they’ll look for greener pastures. That would mean less ad revenue and brand name power overall. Those old enough to remember how Yahoo lost their edge because Google provided a better venue.

So how do you get the boost in rankings via backlinks and not get into trouble? Here are a few more things to follow.
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Build great content that is on a site that is well constructed. Great content with the proper anchor texts that are clearly understood, diversified, and containing one or more keywords is essential. Waste nothing and leave nothing to chance. As you build up quality content like copy, pics, videos, then you can post some of it on social media sites without being hit for spam. People who like that content will engage with it and push it to the fore. The shared content should have a link back to your site and the more people share it on their blogs, social media pages, the more diversified and lively your site will look. Be careful as when Google sees a massive amount of backlinks they’ll get suspicious, however, if your site features something exclusive or proprietary and brand name data, then they’ll see it as a boost in popularity and not some spammy linking farm.

This means getting those authority site backlinks. Links from companies, professionals in the niche, fan bases, news sites, that people turn to to get the latest and best info regarding the niche your website focuses on, makes your site look like one that is of importance and value. When this happens you’ll be on your way to a more upwardly reputable SEO success.

Overall there are several other factors but these are the basics. These are the prominent ways to keep tabs on. When applying these approaches keep a keen eye on your statistics to see what is working and why. Then you’ll have a better map to guide you through.

Getting Ahead With Your Local SEO campaign

Posted on by · 3 min read

Getting Ahead With Your Local SEO campaignIt can be tough. It can be a real nose to nose fight, but those local SEO results are as valuable as gold itself and you cannot afford to let your competition get the better of you. This may call for good old fashioned, old school ways of negotiating with clients and potential clients, but it also means you’ll get that brick and mortar clientele along with your online ones.

Local SEO is often underestimated by webmasters and marketers. They get lazy or ideological about SEO, thinking that one way solves all problems. It doesn’t. SEO is now a teeth gritting, eyes blazing field of expertise that gets more scientific every step of the way. Not only that but it also calls for old fashioned ways of pulling in the clients, even if it means hitting the sidewalks and roads to reach clients and chat face to face.
The art and skill of personal presence to enhance SEO is what marketing and sales have been built on since the beginning of commerce. People used to meet in person or over the phone but a good handshake was still part of the deal along with a lunch or dinner. Salespeople used to have to resort to all sorts of tactics just to get a client reeled in. The more powerful and wealthy the client was, the more goodies and goodwill has to be lathered on. It took skills of personality and presence because some clients had egos to feed. Knowing just what to say and when to say it called for panache.

Today, although it seems you can get things done faster online, it always isn’t the case with local SEO. You’re dealing with a limited yet valuable market and you’ve got to take advantage of everything you can get your hands on.

First, make sure your website is local SEO friendly. You’ve got your contact and location data on each page and if possible in all your copy and photo, video, and graphics tags. This is important as your content will be indexed in separate categories on Google and your local data will be part of it. Once you’ve analyzed and applied the right corrections, the next step is to fine tune your inbound and outbound links. Make sure they’re relevant to your business and get those inbound local links from high profile sites like local commerce or sports teams, radio stations, even holiday municipal events.

Next is to beat feet over to the various stores that can link to you from their sites exclusively or offer bonuses and discounts exclusively through your site. This calls for visiting and handshaking and maybe even a cup of coffee or two. Make the company feel like they’re getting the bargain for little or no effort. This way they’ll incorporate your site links in their updated copy on blogs and even on social media posts. See if they’ll allow you to take pics and videos of your friendship or even those special people who make that company run. You’d be surprised at how much traffic a popular person can pull in. For example, let’s say you’re trying to get that hard earned inbound link from a top company in your locale. You notice an old timer working there or some extra jovial person. Ask if they could go on video explaining the benefits of using that company’s goods and services and plaster that video with description and tagging with your contact and location data in it. People will then share and like that video on social media and you’ll have gained dozens of inbound, organic targeted traffic.

It’s not that this is a new approach, problem is people, marketers especially have forgotten what made marketing and advertising what it is today, hands on and friendly relationships. Getting that high traffic, authoritative link from a local company’s site makes your site look like one of value to the surfers in Google’s eyes, and your position on the search engines should rise accordingly.

There used to be an old advertisement slogan from AT&T that said, “Reach out and touch someone.”, well that’s how some things are done nowadays as well. There’s no harm in exercising your personal negotiating skills with your local SEO campaign.

Taking The Best Advantage Of Citations For Local SEO

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Taking The Best Advantage Of Citations For Local SEOCitations are those posts of information regarding your site that people post on directories. They’re like mini reviews about your website and business that allow for surfers to find you when they query search engines. These citations are far more valuable as they may seem, and there are ways to gain the upper hand, especially for local SEO.

You’re going to have to do some work to maximize the value of the citations about your site. Find as many as you can and triple check them for accuracy. It’s not always a matter of having lots of citations as it is in having accurate citations. Having the wrong name and location or phone number and other contact and descriptive information can ruin your chances of getting maximum efficiency in search traffic, especially that treasured targeted organic traffic. If someone is surfing for your site, let’s pretend here that your site has query data for “Joe’s Aquarium Supplies in Los Angeles, California, 123 ABC Street” and the citations have “Joe’s Aquarium Store in California, ABC 123 Avenue” instead, then you can see the damage being done. Surfers are getting your site’s name right but the address is all wrong. This could be due to a typo in your promotion or some other site goofed up. Either way these things have to be corrected and depending on the volume, it could take a while.

You’ll need to do some backtracking to find out where and when the error occurred and get to work immediately on correcting things. Of course this means the tedious chore of contacting each site to edit the info that you can’t and they may or may not be reluctant to do so depending on how difficult it could be. If it appears that things will be difficult, then respond to the citations themselves with the correct information. At least the correct information will appear next to the incorrect data.

The same goes for the products and services you provide. You can get far on synonyms, but only so far. Descriptions and lists of your products and services has to be correct as well. If you’re lucky enough to have an advertisement jingle that accompanies your promo, all the better. People like to post popular jingles to commercials they like, especially on social media. If you do have an audio video commercial with a jingle, make sure it’s posted on all the social media video sites and in those ads, announce the correct products and services as well as contact and location info. Never leave anything to chance. Establish your ground and keep it.

Precise information in those citations could mean the success or failure in this area of SEO. As you gain more fans make sure to bring to their attention that if they mention you in any citations to include the info you provide for them. Do this especially if you have a mailing list. Sometimes people get lazy or drunk or are in a rush and while posting info about you and your business site, they make mistakes. Getting them to correct them is just too much of a task, but you can at least try.

Remember, citations are just part of the arsenal you have to improve your local SEO rankings. Don’t underestimate their value nor shirk your responsibility in making these citations as accurate as possible.

Holding Your Course With Your SEO Goals

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Holding Your Course With Your SEO GoalsAll the tricks and tips, tactics and techniques one may use for their SEO campaigns won’t mean jack squat if one doesn’t keep an eye on the prize and a solid hands on the helm.

What we’re talking about here is both planning and discipline. Focus and sanity. Knowing what you can and should do under any circumstances. If you plan properly you’ll be able to remedy any situation that rolls up on you.

First of all, combining your SEO strategies with your SEO friendliness. Both are important and shouldn’t conflict with one another. It can be done relatively easy and you shouldn’t try to bulldoze your way through, just take some time to analyze things objectively and sanely. This means having a knowledge or the technical end of SEO and the social and entertaining end of SEO. Basically a combination of the science of SEO and the art of SEO.

One might think that SEO doesn’t deserve to be listed as a science or an art, but in effect it does deserve such classifications.

It takes a lot to get the technical grip on SEO to make those SEO strategies work. It takes insight, innovation, creativity to make SEO friendly sites. There’s some style here and making a marriage between the two is the goal. Once that’s done, your efforts should be more simple.

Next, is knowing what Google and the other search engines want. That’s simple enough because the fundamentals of a successful site haven’t changed much and are applicable to one’s mobile SEO efforts as well. This means a well laid out website that has enough relevant and significant information regarding your business niche. Here is where staying focused comes into play.

Knowing what your audience wants and needs is the first stage. Providing that via text, video, pics, graphics, is the next phase. The final phase is combining all of that into a coherent site that gets the attention of the search engines to such a point that it ranks high for the keywords, keyword phrases, and keyword groups.

That’s the basic approach and sane one. Mobile calls for a bit more as its still new ground but growing at an alarming rate. There are tools at Google to help out and more on the way but with Google upgrading their algorithms and applying new software without notice, they can upend one’s SEO efforts considerably and this is why being thorough with the basics is most important.

Remember, all the bells and whistles may make your site look good, but without sound balance between technology and strategy you’ll end up in trouble. Things like Flash and other visual apps might not register right with the search engines. What does is HTML text and that should be applied everywhere applicable. All objects should have that alt text to them with no spelling errors. That text had better contain relevant words and phrases to the site’s niche too. Especially where blogs are concerned, you’ve go to understand that blogs on a website boost that site’s traffic immensely. Statistics prove this out and that blog should be updated regularly and any pics or videos presented have to be titled and tagged relevantly.

That’s all it takes to have a balance between SEO strategy and SEO friendliness. Knowing the tools and techniques and technologies behind them all isn’t that difficult even for newbies. It’s when you get unfocused, confused, your eyes getting too big for your belly, do you end up in trouble.

So buckle down and stay focused. Keep those eyes on the prize and keep sailing on.

Getting Local SEO Done Right

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Getting Local SEO Done RightLocal SEO is of far more importance that most people realize. Far too often the data from location incorporated with SEO techniques can make or break a website regarding Google and search engine rankings. Getting Local SEO right isn’t that much of a challenge, but you’ll have to use some sound application and industry skills.

Local SEO exploits the location of the website’s content. A dog grooming shop in Brooklyn, New York, would have the keywords that contain the location and the zip code and anything related to that area that can be used with relevance. If you neglect to put your location data where applicable on your site, including videos, pics, copy, graphics, then you’re just putting a hole in your boat.
First things first, look over your site to make sure it’s professionally put together. All the bells and whistles of a website don’t mean jack to search engines. What matters is professionalism, relevance, quality, and if you don’t start off at these then you’re a lost cause. You’re representing a location, you want to capitalize on this. Just location alone can send immense amounts of traffic from surfers who didn’t know your store or website existed. People from your location will feel team proud of you and mention you on social media. Those well tagged videos, pics, and graphics will go a long way and gradually push your site up the search engine ladder.

If you’re going to represent an area, location, region, then do so with quality content. Your site might be about dog grooming in Brooklyn, NY, but Brooklyn is huge. It’s all of American history rolled into one. These landmarks, celebrations, events, can all be incorporated into the site and become part of the search engine landscape and your brand will be associated with positive local things and increase your search engine presence.
Link building is something to be done very carefully. Google will penalize for outdated or bad inbound and outbound links. You’ll want certain, relevant local inbound links and you want to breakdown your outbound links to local sites in the right categories. For example, if you’re posting on your blog about a parade in Brooklyn, then you would link to some official site of that parade. You would capitalize on it by taking pics of the dogs you’ve groomed that were shown off at that particular parade. You would post videos and pics that are well tagged with your location and contact data. It’s real, relevant content that exploits locality thus making it Local SEO.

Of course, you must make sure your title tags are optimized with your location. Don’t let those slip past you because Google ranks by pages, not by websites. The pages you create with the right Local SEO will be seen, indexed, and vaulted by Google.
When all your ducks are in a row, you then register with Google. This way Google doesn’t have to patchwork your site together. You’ll be starting off on the right foot.

Overall, Local SEO is indeed a more specialized form of SEO, but its importance can never be understated.

When To Cut Bait With Your SEO Provider

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When To Cut Bait With Your SEO ProviderIf you’ve hired a SEO provider to do your SEO chores, you’re spending a good amount of money to do so and expect some ROI of considerable notability. Sometimes the subject of SEO is so complicated that clients like yourself can get lost in the sauce of what is going on. There is hope, however, in determining if the SEO firm you’ve hired is worth the money or you need to cut bait with them.

First of all, all the talk in the world means nothing. Statistics are the primary proof you need to know if your SEO campaign efforts are paying off. Not necessarily indicated in sales and conversions, but in basic organic traffic and other valuable metrics that you can analyze and use to your advantage.

A SEO firm is going to educate you regarding the basics so that you’re not left in the dark along the way. They’ll make sure you understand the realistic goals regarding budget and time to see results. It’s not an overnight success thing, but a methodical process by which sound fundamental principles are adhered to so that guaranteed foundation building success can be established. Now and then in those rare cases a client’s products and services go viral thus producing a bonanza in traffic and revenue.

You need to have access and learn how to study your site’s statistics and go over them with your SEO firm. The minute you see something out of the ordinary you need to ask questions and get things straightened out. If your SEO firm gets shaky or standoffish for any reason, you need to cut bait.

Quality content from the marketing end of your SEO firm has to be mandatory. Quality content is just about everything. Search engines and the public know rotten content when they see it, and if your SEO firm is using hack writers, you’ll find out quick enough as you’ll end up being penalized by Google and then you’re in a whole new world of hurt. Graphics, cartoons, videos, are all the rage now as they’re constantly being shared on social media. Your SEO campaign has to have these items and well described, and tagged. Poor quality art won’t get listed well nor shared and reviews by surfers and customers will beat you down. Demand to know who and how your SEO firm creates the content. If they hesitate one iota, it’s better than even money they’re using some hacks from a dungeon in a foreign country who are being paid with bread and water.

One more thing to lookout for are bad inbound links. An old trick is to have links to your site from nothing more than linking mills. They’re useless sites whose sole purpose is to send useless traffic to your site to make the search engines think your site is of some importance. This old trick is dangerous. All it does is associates your site to these disreputable sites and opens the door to penalization from the search engines.

Overall, it’s up to you to police your SEO provider. You need to have a hands on approach and do the due diligence necessary to make sure they’re doing their job and you’re doing yours. If at anytime you feel something is amiss, cut bait, it will save you much time, money, and misery.

Looking At Today’s Backlinks In SEO

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Looking At Today's Backlinks In SEOBacklinks have been a valuable asset in SEO and it has had its ups and downs. In the old days certain tactics and strategies worked admirably, but today, those procedures might get you penalized by the search engines. Here is why we need to look at the value of what backlinks are and how you can better be at an advantage.

First of all you need to do some evaluation of your website. If you have backlinks coming in that aren’t beneficial then you’re in jeopardy. What the search engines are looking for now are backlinks that come from relevant sites, sites that provide organic traffic, and sites who have authority and good standing.

If you’re getting links coming in from a backlinks network like a web-ring, you need to get busy cleaning it up right away. These sites used to be useful but are a clear sign to Google and the other search engines that you’re just trying to gain advantage unfairly and providing the surfers with less than valuable content. These kinds of inbound links might be on websites no longer monitored or maintained and that calls for some real work. If you can, get them removed, if you can’t, well here’s to hoping.

Backlinks that come from sites or relevance that are of kindred niches, is far more important. They provide organic traffic that means surfers are actually looking for what your website has to offer. They won’t have to dig around to find something of value, the organic link takes them to what they’re looking for. Google sees this as important and that your site is providing a service to others. Get as many of these kinds links as possible but do so in ratio to the following variables of authority and good standing.

Sites that have proven themselves to their niches and are popular gain what is called authority and good standing, and trust. This level of character carries a huge amount of value. They’ve proven themselves over time to be trustworthy and ethical. To be linked to from them adds your site to that level. People who trust the authority site will see that the site trusts you. It’s a platform that means you’ve somehow earned that accolade and that will turn into lots of organic traffic and boost your chances of sales, leads, and conversions. It’s the best backlinks strategy you may want.

Don’t even think of coming up with or applying black hat tricks to your backlinks strategies. Google’s SE algorithm is getting better by the day. The old adage of “honesty is the best policy” is going to be the hallmark of SEO from now on. It thus behooves you to analyze your site, every site that is linking to you and get busy optimizing things so you look good in Google’s eyes.

So it’s not a matter of how many backlinks you have anymore, it’s a matter of relevance and authority, and trust. Without these you’re just asking for trouble. Just one major penalty and you could spend months or years getting your reputation and standing back. That’s why you use an SEO professional who can manage and fix backlinks. They usually know the tools to resolve the really tough problems.

Remember, backlinks are like testimonials are to one’s character. Getting the good ones means you’ll be looking good across the board.

SEO Is Becoming A Full Time Job

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SEO Tips: SEO Is Becoming A Full Time JobIn the good old days, keyword stuffing, links, and spam were a great way to get your site listed in the search engines and the search engines loved these kinds of sites. It became an industry with all sorts of variations to a theme. Nowadays, however, those tactics aren’t the goldmine in SEO like they used to be.

Nowadays you’ve got to work for your rankings. You just can’t depend on backlinking or keywords anymore. You have to have your site mobile friendly, update quality content, have social media presence and interaction, email lists, advertising, proper design, page speed, accessibility, knowledge graph, local SEO, globalization and more.
You’ve got to incorporate all these options and it calls for lots of work and maintenance. Not like the old days where you could slap up a website with some bells and whistles, keywords and keyphrases, backlinking and let it ride.

Not any more.

Now you have to expand with promotion via social networking. Not just Facebook either but a presence on just about all the social networks and the small but growing ones. Of course Google wants you to use as many of their venues as possible and that helps your rankings as well, and they supply lots of free tools for webmasters and digital marketers.

Your site had better be mobile friendly as mobile computing is expanding at alarming speeds. So is voice search. Those two alone are the future of computer interaction as people are shying away from traditional laptops and desktops. All your data has to be properly structured as well. You have to make your site easy to access, load fast, easy to navigate, have lots of valid and relevant backlinks, copywriting that is nothing short of fluid and superb, videos and pictures well tagged and described and all of that with your location prominently mentioned in every post, email, ad, and whatever, especially with your social media marketing.

It’s becoming a 24 hour job to operate a website nowadays if you want to rise up to the top positions on Google. Professionals who do SEO are finding it much more frustrating and time consuming but only these professionals get the super top results. They have to do 5 times the amount of website analysis they did just a year ago and even then, Google’s updates and the rise of other trends can throw these experts off guard.

Categorizing Your Website For SEO Efficiency

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Categorizing Your Website For SEO EfficiencyOne of the biggest battles you’ll have to go through regarding your SEO campaigns are knowing that you need to know where you stand regarding SEO and the major areas you need to be applicable with it.

This means, primarily, the first step which is the region your site’s keywords and keygroups and keyphrases cover. There is local SEO for companies confined to a specific area. Your site should have your location displayed prominently in every area of your site from writing to photos to videos. Not only that but your email lists and other communications. If your site caters to a national base, then you need to emphasize it in your copy, titles, pics, videos, etc.. If people don’t know that they can order your goods or services from their locations, you’re losing out on traffic, customers, and revenue. Now, if you have a global market which most affiliate marketers have, you need to emphasize it as well. Not only do you need to show your location in your site’s copy, pics, vids, and communications, but in social media as well. This will show up in the search engines so that people who are looking for what you have can find you and order.

Making friends with the big boys. This is the practice of becoming allies with the big sites that sell the same products and services you have in your niche. This takes skill and good character while communicating. You’re looking for links from such sites on a default basis but also on a direct basis especially through social media. Larger sites sometimes will mention or link to a smaller site for specific reasons, usually because the smaller site has something to offer. When this happens it’s for your betterment and makes you look more authoritative. See if you can make friends with the big sites by visiting the industry forums, joining their email lists, or peppering their social media pages with compliments and very brief explanations of your company so that others can see you’re both in the same business but not competing.

Check your site for technical issues. Does your site have spelling errors? How about untagged pics and videos? Do you have error pages popping up when people clink links to your site? How fast does your site load? Do you have a ridiculous amount of pop-up menus? People hate pop-ups and nag screens. Clean your site up. Start from the top tot he bottom and if you’re not the webmaster, don’t try to do a job that you’re not trained for. Let the professionals do it.

Is your site tech friendly? This means are you using the latest technologies so that your site is being accessed by the public? One primary thing is making your site mobile friendly. Mobile is the largest of the upcoming platforms and will be outdistancing desktops and laptops very soon. If you’ve not gotten around to making your site mobile friendly, you had better get your gear in order and do so immediately. Google has free tools to help webmasters at this so don’t waste time.

Finally, every science has fundamental principles. The same goes with SEO, the problem is that SEO encompasses many sciences and procedures that can change drastically at a moment’s notice, and if you’re not on top of things you can be left in the dust.

Don’t be left in the dust, get your SEO game hat on now.

Please Contact our Office through our Website at https://www.localseojacksonville.biz or Call directly our Offices at 904-425-9679.  You will speak to an actual SEO professional, who is well experienced and trained in all matters of SEO and web marketing.