Not too long ago, I had a conversation with a prospective client. He was the marketing director of a relatively well-known supply company. One of his employees had asked me to speak with him about SEO. Here's how the conversation went (names have been changed...).

"#1 rank for any keyword in 7 days!" . We've all come across ludicrous promises like this one from time to time when researching search engine optimization tactics and services, right? We know it's impossible to fulfill such claims while maintaining a sense of site content-integrity. 

Every page-owner or website contributor out there wants to know that their content attracts views.  Understandably, most writers wouldn't write if they weren't sure that people were, in fact, reading their material. That being said, understanding the traffic that comes to your site is critical to your sites success.

PageRank has been around for a while now. It's in the Google toolbar; it's in the Firefox browser toolbar; it's just there. Because it's there, we have a tendency not only as search engine optimizers but also as web surfers to believe that the PR is the end-all-be-all of page authority.  Let us be clear: it is not!

Looking ahead to 2013, much of the Internet marketing buzz is circulating around local search. This is great news for local small businesses, because it means that the small guys can finally get some love from search engines!  One of the best ways to ensure that local customers and businesses recognize your brand is to focus on local online business listings.