Interns are great! Who doesn’t love free labor and the ability to influence a young professional’s path in the working world? The problem with interns, however, is that they’re not traditional employees and only around for a short period of time. Some businesses get so caught up in having extra hands on deck that they give them the wrong kind of responsibilities.

Link building services can be a mess sometimes. Trying to scourer the web for quality links without falling into black hat schemes or trying to acquire bogus links can be a challenge.

So many people out there are looking for the quick, cheap and easy fix. Most small business owners understand that in their industry the quick, cheap fix doesn’t always end up as the easy fix. It usually means going back and doing the job again, purchasing better quality or even in the long run, losing business. In essence, the job takes longer, costs more money and is harder on everyone.

As the ongoing “keyword not provided” issue is getting a lot of attention and Google is withholding more and more information from marketers, you might be asking if it makes sense to even think about how to add keywords to a website. Will keywords continue to be useful moving forward? Will we have any shot at knowing what is working and what isn’t as we head into 2014 and try to sort out what online marketing looks like?

Ever regretted a picture you uploaded to Facebook? Or a tweet you tweeted on Twitter?

Well, you’re not the only one and California legislators have taken note. Under Bill 568, Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr and similar social media platforms will soon be legally required to remove content or information posted by the user, if they request them to do so.

Before you get really excited, there’s a catch here. That magic digital “eraser button” is only available for minors. Dang it, right? I guess adults will have to remain responsible with their online posting.

It comes as no surprise that Google has released yet another algorithm update. This time it’s named after a more dynamic species, the Hummingbird, and rightfully so, because its aim is to provide you, as the searcher, more dynamic results.

Here’s the big question many small business owners are asking, why is social media important to their internet marketing strategy? Most people think that social media is a place where all the crazy teenagers post party pictures, tell people their problems or gossip about ex-boyfriends for attention. Yes, this is true, but have you thought about what social media could do for you as an adult businessman or woman? Have you thought about how many of your customers are on social media accounts like Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest and LinkedIn? Have you decided that since you’re not techie enough that you’re going to stay out of the online social sphere?

It seems that October is a little more frightful than expected, as most of you may have heard Google has made a major algorithm update called, “The Hummingbird Upate.” However Google didn’t stop there. It has also admitted to blocking 100% of search query data in Google Analytics, meaning you will no longer see exactly what keywords brought visitors to your site. What does this all mean for your website and general SEO services for small business? For small businesses paying for SEO services there is no need to worry, as long as your SEO agency is performing services with Google’s advice in mind:

Yep, and here’s a few numbers to show it...

“If we could just get more customers, all our problems would be solved!”

Well...although most business owners understand more customers don’t solve all your problems, getting more customers for your business is what brings in the revenue, keeps your doors open, your people employed and your business growing.

So, what lead generation techniques are the most effective? 

If you're reading this then you are probably wondering what did Google do again. 

Well it took away a major piece of reporting from all of us in regards to how you evaluate your company's effectiveness in the Google Search. You and I can no longer see what keywords people are coming to our site from. Whether you are a small business or large one or somewhere in between this impacts you. If you are monitoring these things on your company website then you rely on this data to make informed decisions and adjust your SEO strategy.  If you aren't monitoring these things then you need to. Google is the most important source of traffic in any succesful online strategy for any size business.