the playbook
Plain-English answers on SEO, lead generation and social media for businesses that want steady inquiries, written from what we do for clients and for our own products.
seo
Doorway pages: why mass landing pages get deindexed
Doorway pages are near-identical pages built to rank for similar queries. Why a thousand landing pages backfire, how to test a page, and how to clean up.
How long SEO takes for a new site
A new site usually shows first movement in 8 to 12 weeks. What counts as movement, what slows it down, and how to judge progress before results arrive.
Technical SEO audit checklist for a marketing site
A technical SEO audit checklist for a live marketing site: crawl and index checks, redirects, canonicals, speed, schema and security, in the order to fix them.
What an SEO agency should report every month
A monthly SEO report should show pages indexed, impressions, positions, clicks and which pages produced inquiries, plus what changed and what comes next.
social media
Follower count vs reach: what to measure on social
Follower count is a weak goal. Reach among the right audience, saves, shares, profile visits and inquiries show if social works. How to track them.
How much social media management costs, and what's included
Published data puts a social media retainer at about $2,000 to $5,000 a month. What drives the price, what should be included, and how to compare quotes.
Which social channels a B2B company actually needs
Most B2B companies need two or three social channels, not six. How to choose them by where your buyers already pay attention, and what to do with the rest.
lead generation
Lead attribution for small teams: track every lead's source
Lead attribution for a small team: tag links with UTMs, capture the source on every form, log it in one tracker, and review which channel produced sales.
What a monthly lead floor is, and how to set one
A monthly lead floor is a minimum of qualified leads per month, with a stated remedy if missed. How to set one from real data and spot an empty lead guarantee.
Retainer vs commission: how to pay a marketing agency
Retainer, commission or a hybrid? What each agency pricing model rewards, who carries the risk, and how to choose by cash flow, lead quality and tracking.
What is a qualified lead? A definition for your contract
A qualified lead is a person or business that asked for what you sell, fits who you sell to, and can buy it. How to write that down so everyone counts the same.
more
Marketing website checklist: what to get right at launch
The day-one checklist for a marketing website being built: page map, urls, search basics, speed, forms, tracking, content, ownership and launch day.
Questions to ask before hiring a marketing agency
Nine questions to ask any marketing agency before you sign, on results, ownership, terms and reporting, with what a good answer and a red flag sound like.
Who owns your accounts when a marketing agency leaves
You should own every account an agency touches. What to check you own, how to check today, what a clean handover looks like and what to put in the contract.