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Guides and answers on online visibility, reviews, listings, SEO, social media, advertising and websites.
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Behavioral Signals
Behavioral signals are how Google reads the way people use a page: time on page, clicks and return visits. Here is what they are and how to improve them.
Citation Signals
Citation signals come from your business name, address and phone number on directories and review sites. Learn why consistent citations help local rankings.
On-Page Signals
On-page signals are the content, structure, keywords and user experience of a page. Learn how Google uses them to judge relevance and quality.
Personalization Signals
Personalization signals tailor search results and website content to a user, based on location, history and past visits. Learn what they mean for your business.
Social Media Signals
Social media signals reflect how a page is shared and engaged with on Facebook, LinkedIn and other platforms. Learn how they relate to search visibility.
Google Business Signals
Google Business signals come from your Google Business Profile, reviews, citations and links. Learn how Google uses them to rank local businesses.
Link Signals
Link signals measure the quantity and quality of links pointing to your website from other sites. Learn why quality links build ranking and trust.
Review Signals
Review signals come from how many reviews a business has, how recent they are, their rating and sentiment. Learn how they affect local rankings.
Getting Started with Reputation Management
The bottom line, the world has changed drastically in the last 18 months and doing the business the same old way we always used to do it just isn’t an opti
Getting Started with Social Media Marketing
The social marketing software makes leveraging the huge audience of social media platforms into a gigantic lead pool. You can do in minutes what most firms
16 Website SEO Musts for a Higher Search Ranking
Search engines strive to create the best user experience possible, providing the most relevant, useful information based on the user’s search terms. If the
Blue Market Website Launch Checklist: 12 Essential Steps to Setting Up Your Website
Thank you for creating a website on Blue Market!
The Basics of Online Advertising
How does online advertising help a local business grow?
Why Your Website Needs an SSL Certificate
Have you ever noticed that some website URLs start with HTTP while others start with HTTPS? Maybe you’ve noticed a tiny lock icon in the top left corner of
3 SEO Tips to Improve Your Keyword Research
Have you heard that improving your SEO will help you get found online more easily? You’ve probably heard that implementing keywords into the content on you
What are Listings and Why Do They Matter?
Listings are an online summary of essential information for your business that serve as a powerful tool to help customers find you online and in real life.
6 Reasons Your Local Business Listings Need to Be Accurate
As a business, how likely is it that potential customers will come through your door? The whole point of an online presence is to entice customers into you
How to Respond to Negative Reviews
Believe it or not, the same premise applies to negative review response as it does to positive reviews. How you respond to a negative review impacts not on
How to Respond to Positive Reviews
A good or bad reputation can mean the difference between a business thriving and expanding, or closing their doors for good. In the digital age, a business
How to Perform a Local SEO Audit for Your Business in 12 Steps
Businesses on page 2 of the SERP might as well not exist.
5 Reasons You Need Instagram for Your Business
Instagram has entered the territory of “must” rather than “nice-to-have” when it comes to social marketing for businesses. There are a few key reasons why
30 Digital Advertising Statistics for Businesses
While the world of online marketing has expanded far beyond paid advertising, advertising still plays a very important role in generating revenue and busin
An Introduction to Digital Advertising Metrics
Choosing the right digital advertising metrics to track and measure is crucial to your campaign’s success. If you aren’t tracking advertising efforts corre
Understanding and Optimizing Your Website Speed
Page speed is the amount of time it takes for the content on a website’s page to fully load. In a world where people have come to expect instantaneous resu
Critical Data For Online Business Listings
If you want to rank well in local search, you need consistent NAP data, website, hours, and more across all major listing directories. This is essential fo
What Social Media Monitoring Can Teach You About Your Business
Have you ever been at a party and caught a person or a group glancing at you while whispering covertly?
How to Engage Your Audience Through Social Media
Is your social media falling flat? Don’t sweat it; many hours have gone into perfecting the use of this not-so-secret weapon. Facebook, Google+, Twitter, P
The Dos and Don’ts of Customer Service
Everyone can recall a time when they’ve received excellent customer service. Whether it was the clerk who was extra helpful or the hotel staff who went abo
The Complete WordPress SEO Plugin Mastery
SEO is the key to conquering the internet, and as the digital climate becomes increasingly saturated, it is becoming more important than ever to make sure
Blogging for Fun and Profit: How to Build your Business Blogging Skills
So, your business has decided to take the leap into the blogosphere. Great! There’s no shortage of reasons why blogging can benefit your business. However,
5 Steps To Becoming an Instagram Sensation
300 million—the number of people on Instagram every single day. Businesses are taking advantage of Instagram by using it as a resource to gain popularity a
55 Stellar Statistics for Websites
Welcome to the most comprehensive collection of design, functionality and content stats for websites.
How to Reach Your Audience With Digital Advertising.
Digital advertising comes in many different varieties, including display advertising (those web banners next to your favorite Youtube videos), sponsored ad
Improving Your Local Search Ranking With Data Aggregators
Data aggregators run the world. The world of local search, any way. Data aggregators supply information to major search engines like Google, which means th
Why Your Business Should Want More Reviews on Review Sites
The importance of responding to customers online could not be more prevalent as reviews continue to grow more than ever before. Aside from the fact that re
Copyright Online and Fair Use in Social Media
With the online world being dominated by images, what do you need to know as a business owner when it comes to copyright laws?
7 Social Media Tactics for Businesses That Struggle With Social
A strong social media presence is one of the best ways to be heard, and businesses are no exception to this rule. Forget the doorstep; there’s a whole worl
How to #Hashtag
The facts are in: if you are not using hashtags, you are missing out! With a tweet with hashtags being 33% more likely to get retweeted , these handy hasht
What is Digital Advertising and Why Does It Matter?
Digital advertising is the process of using internet technology to deliver promotional advertising to consumers. Digital advertising encompasses promotiona
3 Tips to Make Your Website Actually Useful
Gone are the days of a “form over function” internet. Where once the simple novelty of seeing a business online, in any fashion, was often enough. Now, tod
5 Easy Tips to Climb Search Rankings
We’ve compiled five easy tips that businesses can use to climb search rankings with speed. We aren’t saying that you’ll appear at the top of the search res
5 Reasons SEO is Essential for Website Success
SEO, or Search Engine Optimization, is a term you’ve most likely heard before. As digital marketing continues to rise, so does the contest for web visibili
Creating the Perfect Social Post
What makes for good social posting, anyway? In order to craft the perfect social post, we need to take a look at why people follow businesses in the first
Digital Customer Service: the 10 Cornerstones
Customer service is about solving the problems of your customers. Now, companies have to manage customer service across multiple channels. When people have
Facebook Advertising vs. Boosted Posts
On the surface boosting content on Facebook seems like a pretty straight forward transaction. The more dollars you spend, the more eyes see your message. W
Get Listed on the Local Search “Big Four”
You may not be aware of it now, but it’s likely that your business has suffered at the hands of incorrect business listings.
How to Avoid Having an Ugly Website
Websites are important for every business. In today’s digital age, having accessible online information is crucial for success. Just having a website isn’t
How to Use Paid Ads to Grow Your Facebook Following
So, you’ve got your Facebook Business page setup and you’re posting regularly. You’ve even got some likes and shares. That’s great! But why stop there? Wit
Quality Over Quantity
Businesses don’t always know what they’re getting into with social posting. Most turn to outsourcing because they don’t have the time to get to know the pr
Tips for Providing The Perfect Customer Experience
Amazing customer service may seem like a lot of extra work on a short-term basis, but it does improve your brand image and goodwill, which means a lot in t
What is Content Marketing and Why Does It Matter?
In the heyday of traditional marketing, attracting and retaining customers was an intimidating task for local business owners to accomplish, especially whe
What is Programmatic Advertising?
The advertising world is full of jargon, and new phrases are always popping up. One you may have heard in the past couple of years is “programmatic adverti
Why is Social Media Important?
Since the early 2000s, social media platforms have revolutionized the way people connect with one another. Today, there are 2.3 billion active users of soc
Business Website Essentials
Telling a small business owner to “assume the perspective of your customer” is one of those classic easier said than done problems. It’s not for lack of tr
What is Online Reputation Management?
A business’s reputation used to be what they said about themselves in their advertising and the reach their customers had via word of mouth. Now, consumers
What is SEO and Why Does It Matter?
Search Engine Optimization—or SEO—is a term that may sound scary at first, but is simple when you break it down. It’s the process of optimizing your online
Top 10 Review Websites to Get More Customer Reviews On
In the table below, U.S. Ranking, % U.S. Traffic and Average Monthly U.S. Traffic (unique visitors) data are sourced from Alexa. Businesses should strive t
Review Management Best Practices
68% of consumers trust reviews more when they see both good and bad scores (Econsultancy, 2012). Customers are more review savvy and can spot when things l