The fjblog

A little over a year ago, our Digital Strategy team's reporting operations were in a bit of a funk. Our ongoing reporting, especially for our clients running digital ads, was taking too much time, but we didn't want to deprive our clients of their valuable data and analytics. This funk didn't last long – we quickly discovered Google Data Studio, and it solved our reporting issue almost immediately. With Google Data Studio, we said hello to dynamic data visualizations and goodbye to lengthy decks with tedious screenshots.

Latent semantic indexing (LSI) – it sounds like something that requires a computer science degree, but it's a concept you're likely already somewhat familiar with. It's what makes search engines smart enough to deliver answers to your questions, even when the questions consist of only a one or two word search query. This post will cover what LSI is, why it's important, and a few ways to "play nice" and use LSI to your advantage.

For a number of years, the topic of search engine optimization has been synonymous with meta tags. Misuse and overemphasis on the role of certain meta tags has ended up causing confusion for those outside the SEO community in recent years. Case and point: there are still many websites that "stuff" meta tags with targeted keywords in hopes that they'll skyrocket in the organic search rankings – this may have worked long ago but does not anymore. This post covers how and why, in the modern day of SEO, meta tags might not be as important as you once thought.

Marketers hear about the importance of content to search engine optimization (SEO) about every day, but just how important is it? We have a clear answer for you: it's the single most important aspect of SEO. We at fjorge were shown its importance first-hand when we saw our Website Maintenance Plan page go from ranking #10 to #1 to #8 for the keyword "website maintenance plan", all in the span of nine months.

What is 'Fred'?

On Thursday, March 9th, SEMrush’s Sensor recorded a 6.9 out of 10 volatility rating, leaving many in the SEO community on the edge of their seat. While Google has yet to disclose any official news on an update, site rankings across the web have noticed movement ranging from mild to drastic in search engine results pages (SERPs). Many sites saw their visibility increase greatly; others received substantial negative momentum.

Google continues to reward websites that provide desired user experience to visitors and punish websites that don't. This often times involves factors more technical than optimized keywords and on-page content. Each update to the PageRank algorithm is designed to display search rankings in a way that answers users queries in a faster and more accurate way than ever before. This means that the user experience aspects of SEO like site speed and site security are becoming more important with each update. With that being said, poor or nonexistent website maintenance can have potentially catastrophic effects on your site's SEO. The good news is that these pitfalls can be avoided rather easily. Much like cars, websites require ongoing maintenance to run at peak performance, and an ongoing Website Maintenance Plan can keep your website running fast and reliable at all times, and stop security breaches before they happen.

If your business depends on eCommerce, you can't leave anything to chance on your website. You need to create the best user experience possible in order to turn visitors into customers. While you know your eCommerce company better than anyone, maintaining a website can be a complicated and ongoing process. Here are four common mistakes that you could be making, and how to avoid them.

You don't need to be a technology expert or web developer to optimize a website for search engines. While some technical aspects of SEO are important, there are a lot of things anyone can do to make a website more visible. Search ranking algorithms change, but the quality of content has always been at the forefront. This is because, when it comes down to it, search engines exist to answer our questions, and we cannot forget that. Here are four tips that will allow you to use the power of content to rise up your search rankings.

Whether you're engaging in paid search, display advertising, or drip email campaigns, your goal is to drive traffic to your website. You worked hard on your website, and while it is built well, it still requires ongoing maintenance. Website maintenance is necessary to make sure your visitors are always having pleasant online experiences when they navigate to your site.

Another week, another major announcement by Google that will make analysts everywhere happy. Google just announced support for Calculated Metrics in Google Analytics, which will allow you (if you are using Universal Analytics, which you should be at this point...) to create new reporting metrics that are derived from other metrics.