Recently I was asked by a customer questions pertaining to page and domain authority.

I knew the end picture of where the customer was aiming and trying to arrive at was a website with increased organic search rankings and traffic for a long list of keywords.

Keeping that at the forefront of each interaction with the customer, I set out to help this customer understand the nuances of page and domain authority as it relates to SEO in general and organic search rankings.

Of course, both page and domain authority can be easily defined and explained.

However, the murkiness around both becomes obvious for those owning websites trying to obtain and sustain both.

Do-it-yourself SEO, also known as DIY SEO, is one of the most popular phrases tossed around in small business as it relates to small businesses bootstrapping their own SEO efforts.

It seems like every few months I field an email or phone call where a small business has had some sort of prior experience with an SEO professional or agency.

Sometimes they are looking to perform their own SEO in house, or they want to discuss and understand whether their small business should perform DIY SEO or hire an SEO professional or agency.

Typically, their reason for calling me is to have Kickstart Commerce to perform a free SEO audit of their current website.

They either heard from another Kickstart Commerce customer of our free SEO audit service offering, or they were performing a DIY SEO or small business SEO services search online and found one of our website or blog search results.

I realize that offering free SEO audits are somewhat an opportunity for companies to try and take advantage of the offer, especially when they hide the fact that they are looking to perform DIY SEO.

For some, their hope is that I will give away the SEO farm without them having to pay one dime, while others are willing to pay Kickstart Commerce to perform audit findings and without much disagreement for pricing at all.

But today, I’ll share with you an experience that happened not too long ago with a company that had champagne taste on a sprite budget.

In short, this customer that wanted sound SEO and all the SEO trimmings, but was not willing to pay for the results they wanted.

This is the question that most small business owners, desperately looking to increase their website traffic, want to know before they buy website traffic.

As it pertains to the web, most of the time, some would say the shortest path to success, fortune and riches is to buy website traffic.

Today I’ll share with you what signs to look for when you go to buy website traffic.

We’ll briefly cover how adhering to those signs can provide for an effective experience, and more importantly, a profitable experience that does not negatively impact your search rankings but increases search rankings.

Once touted as the holy grail of SEO, ranking an exact match domain could put you on the map to receive instant search rankings and increased traffic for your website.

Often composed of highly competitive and costly keywords, exact match domains could help you get and keep an edge on the competition without much effort in terms of content.

Just the simple fact of an exact match domain containing keywords was enough to rocket a website to front page search rankings.

Hundreds and thousands of exact match domain websites popped up overnight and exact match domains were strongly commanding search rankings across major search engines.

Deceptive exact match domain ranking sniffed out

But like previous SEO advantages that were deceptively used to rank, Google launched an exact match domain update targeted to lessen the preference of exact match domains in comparison to non-keyword specific domains.

However, the EMD update, as often referred too nowadays, would not penalize the ranking of an exact match domain if the website met and adhered to sound SEO ranking factors as other websites per Google’s SEO Guidelines and Policy.

Good, bad or ugly: The endless exact match domain arguments?

In recent years, there is much good, bad and ugly conversation to be had about whether or not exact match domains still rank well in search engines.

There is the camp that says ranking an exact match domain has lost its step and way in search engines.

They consider exact match domains as archaic as dinosaurs and as ineffective as the US Postal service.

Others to argue and say exact match domains are still the greatest thing since sliced bread when used according to search engine SEO policies.

Regardless of which camp you belong too, I think it’s safe to say that owning an exact match domain still provides value and an advantage over a domain that does not contain keywords.

Today’s post, I’ll attempt to address some exact match domain concerns while giving insight to one of my latest exact match domain experiences.

What is considered performance-based SEO? There is much talk about what pay for performance search engine optimization (SEO), also known as performance-based SEO, and what it is not.

Today I want to outline and discuss what performance-based SEO is not in comparison to true and authentic white-hat, performance-based SEO.

I will help you identify disadvantages of deceptive performance-based SEO.

You will able to identify, comprehend and understand what to be on the lookout for when SEO companies or consultants try to pass gray-hat or black-hat SEO as performance-based SEO services.

Just when you think you have the perfect name for your business or you think of the most perfect domain name, you find out that the domain is registered.

Start over, surely not? Don’t let a domain name being registered get you down, especially if a website has not been developed on the domain.

You may or may not know it, but there are many ways to go about landing the perfect domain name to build your business on. One of the most common ways to land the domain name of your dreams is buying it via an expired domains auction.

As luck would have it, sometimes domain owners forget to renew their domain names or purposely don’t renew their domain names for a multitude of reasons.

Nevertheless, one domain owner’s misfortune in losing a domain name can be your luck in finding and buying the expired domain name.

Today, I’ll discuss a few things you’ll want to consider when finding and buying expired domains. The entire process of finding and buying expired domains can be a rollercoaster experience to say the least.

Nevertheless, with persistence and patience, you can end up with the domain of your dreams finding and buying it as an expired domain. Let’s get started.

Every so often, I either receive an email, phone call or have a conversation with a potential customer or customer about the pitfalls of moving web pages from sub directories to the top directory of the website.

Unbeknownst to some, your web architecture is a vital part of your search engine optimization (SEO) effort and content in addition to creating unique, value-add content that focuses on customers first and search engines second.

When designing or redesigning your website, it is imperative to understand how web architecture, including URL structure, can positively and negatively impact your website’s potential to highly rank in search engines.

Today’s post will try to shed light on SEO advantages and disadvantages of not planning your web architecture to be SEO-friendly or changing your web architecture without considering the SEO impact.