“McDonalds? Haven’t they served like 50 trillion people and counting from all over the world… or some ridiculous number like that?”

247 billion is the actual number, still impressive. Since there are only around 7 billion people in the world on average each person eats at McDonalds about 35 times. Of course not everybody eats at McDonalds, so of the customers who do regularly eat at McDonalds the number is likely quite a bit higher than 35 times.

The point is McDonalds doesn’t really need new customers, not like you need new customers. So why go local?

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Link Spam is a term used for a large number of irrelevant links to a particular site for the purpose of increasing search rankings in Google. For example, if you own a Deli and your website has backlinks from blogs about shoes, forums about working out, a site about popular baby names, whatever the case may be, not only are you not really targeting your customer, Google is doing everything they can to make sure all that work you put into getting all of these random links results in your page being ranked even lower.

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Unless you work for Google, do SEO, or are really on top of your marketing, you probably haven’t heard of Panda. It’s the most recent evolution of the Google web crawlers—those things that decide where your website is going to show up in a search. Learning just a little about these changes can give you a huge advantage over your competition.

How will understanding Panda give me an advantage?
You’ll have a better idea of who to hire for your online marketing and SEO
You’ll know when they are marketing the right way online, and when they are still using strategies based on older optimization models (which are no longer as effective).
And for those with a limited budget, you will be able to do more of your marketing and optimization in-house the right way, saving a whole lot of money.

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Authority is one of dozens and dozens of factors search engines use to determine a web page’s placement online. And humans sort of look at authority the same way. If you have it, people and search engines both take you more seriously. Here are 5 ways to increase your business’s authority in the eyes of search engines and humans alike.

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1.  Mobile browsers buy something within 1 hour—well 70% of them do. Which is a whole lot more than your laptop or desktop browser. Why? Because mobile searchers are on the go, they’re doing something, they want something. It’s not always easy typing a search on that little keypad and looking at things on that smaller screen (though it may be getting easier), if they are doing it they have something specific in mind.

2. 116 million in the U.S. own a smartphone. And that number is growing. Soon, just as many people will have a smartphone as have internet access of any type.

3.   4 out of 5 consumers will use their smartphone at some point to decide whether or not to buy something. If they are using their smartphone to look at your product or service, and all they find is your competitor, then they are probably going to buy from your competitor. Remember, 70% of them are taking action on that search within an hour.

4. Within the year mobile internet usage is expected to overtake desktop internet usage. Internet speeds on mobile devices has been increasing, and since everyone takes their smartphone with them everywhere anyway, it makes sense they would be searching more often from that device.