Expert SEO, PPC, and Google Analytics Articles for Growing Your Business

Do you know how to test your website speed? And why should you even care about it? TL;DR: Numerous studies show that website speed has a huge impact on user experience and conversion rates, and Google demands it for SEO purposes, too.  What is Website Speed? “Website speed” refers to the amount of time it […]

TL;DR: Content Marketing is putting “gas in the car” for SEO. Unless you have a nationwide or globally known brand, you simply can’t succeed in SEO without content marketing.  Introduction I’ve been telling clients for the past 15 years: If you “optimize” your site for SEO, meaning doing technical optimizations, keyword-optimizing meta tags and content, […]

A very common inquiry we receive is regarding just how problematic “duplicate content” is for SEO. This article aims to explain our particular interpretation of this common SEO consideration, including how the rise of AI-powered search (ChatGPT, Perplexity, Google’s AI Overviews, Claude, and others) has impacted this common challenge. TL;DR: There’s no “penalty” for duplicate […]

If you’re thinking about spending some of your marketing funds on ads to reach your target audience, you’ll want to spend your money in the right place in order to get the best results. As of 2025-2026, Google now processes over 16.4 billion search interactions daily1 and attracts approximately 275 million unique visitors in the […]

Introduction All studies are easy to manipulate, but SEO studies in particular are especially susceptible to flawed logic. Anyone can look at Google search results and find some patterns and correlations, but a purely observational study can draw dangerously inaccurate conclusions. Most studies in the SEO industry are of this nature, and many are poorly […]

This article has an associated webinar! Register here to watch it on demand. These days, most people are asking, “How much AI can I use in my content before Google punishes me?”  This is the WRONG question, and it completely misses the point. Google doesn’t explicitly punish AI-generated content; it punishes “hollow” content.  AI tends […]

Open source software is not owned by any corporate entity. Popular open source website platforms like WordPress and Magento are backed by massive, passionate communities — hundreds of thousands of programmers from around the world who contribute to their codebase every single day. The full codebase is available for editing, allowing for complete development flexibility. […]

Eight years later, this is still my absolute favorite SEO keyword research tool! I've updated our original review with my latest thoughts and added more about my favorite features.

For many years, business owners and marketing managers have had to try to steer clear of the many “snake oil” salespeople in the SEO industry, but this past year has spawned a new type of SEO scam artist to avoid: the “GEO Expert.” What is GEO? “GEO” is one of the many new terms being […]

There are different options available when it comes to choosing a CMS (content management system). There are two main types of content management systems: open source systems and closed source systems, also referred to as proprietary systems. When it comes to working with SEO companies, president of Pam Ann Marketing, Pam Aungst, believes that a […]

TL;DR: If you’re looking to block entire sections of your website from showing up on SERPs, using a disallow robots.txt file is the better choice. For individual page-level control, use the meta robots tag. Introduction Robots meta tags, or meta tags, are pieces of code that provide instructions to search engines for how to crawl […]

We’re wrapping up our blog series detailing each element of the page experience criteria Google will be adding to their search algorithms in 2021. We’ve already covered the first two Core Web Vitals: the page loading metric, Largest Contentful Paint (LCP), and the interactivity metric, First Input Delay (FID). Now, we’re diving into the final […]

In my last blog post, I discussed Google’s announcement that they’ll be adding page experience criteria to their search algorithms. This latest addition coincides with Chrome’s recently announced Core Web Vitals. According to Google, the Core Web Vitals metrics are designed to “provide unified guidance to quality signals that, we believe, are essential to delivering […]

In my first blog post for July, I summarized Google’s announcement for adding page experience criteria to their search algorithm. The next post in the series discussed probably the most important of Chrome’s three Core Web Vitals: the page loading metric, or Largest Contentful Paint (LCP). This time, I’m diving into the interactivity metric: First […]

When you think about SEO, the first thing that may come to mind is improving your ranking on search engine result pages (SERPs) by incorporating relevant keywords into your website that resonate with your target audience and customers. You may not immediately think about how having an SEO-friendly website design can impact how well your […]

What IS an Editorial Calendar? An “editorial calendar” may sound like a complicated thing, but in fact it is a simple tool that can make or break your blogging success. The term “editorial calendar” simply refers to a schedule of what you are going to blog about and when. It may cover several weeks, several […]

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is the key to making your business visible and searchable for your target audience. However, there’s more to SEO than the search element. Here’s what you need to know about investing in SEO for your small business and the benefits of SEO for your small business if you have an effective […]

The amount of new TLDs being added to the web is consistently growing. We’ve come a long way from being limited to the typical .com or .org; now imaginations can run wild with all the gTLDs available to register. Generic top level domains (gTLDs) can be an effective way to help your site stand out in […]

Sadly, our job as SEO consultants means that we often play the role of policing web developers, catching them in the act of doing potentially harmful things to their and our client sites. We’ve caught devs doing every stupid thing under the sun, ranging from leaving noindex tags present on live production sites to commenting […]

You’ve brainstormed and come up with the marketing plan for your business. You’ve built and launched your email campaign, paid ad campaigns, and social media campaigns. Now you’re tasked with tracking the ROI of your marketing efforts, but you look in Google Analytics and you can’t figure out how to identify your campaign traffic from […]

This past summer, we shared Google’s announcement that “page experience signals would be included in Google Search ranking.” This new performance evaluation is meant to ensure users have the best and most helpful search experience possible. Google did give plenty of advanced notice prior to the May 2021 rollout of this new experience evaluation — which combines […]

When was the last time you looked at your XML sitemap? What?!? You don’t REMEMBER?!? Omg, GO LOOK AT IT NOW!! Your XML sitemap is arguably one of the most important things to optimize for SEO. It tells search engines which URLs on your site matter, how often they change, and which ones you want […]

Google recently went out of its way to remind people about its guidelines on link schemes. Specifically, the reminder was targeted at individuals abusing guest posts as a means of acquiring a large number of inbound links. Submitting the same article to websites en masse is just one way to violate Google’s webmaster guidelines. In […]

Bad Actors Capitalize on Simple Website Flaws Believe it or not, U.S. government and university websites are being used to promote the sale of illegal drugs, and Google is letting it happen! Bad actors have figured out a clever way to capitalize upon the strong reputation of US government (.gov) and school (.edu) websites. On […]

Google Analytics’ bounce rate metric is defined as “the percentage of single page visits”. In other words, you could say it is the amount of times someone landed on a page on your website and left without visiting any other pages. The Google Analytics bounce rate metric reports on both the bounce rate of the […]

Google Ads conversion tracking is vital because it’s the most important collection of information needed for improving your Google Ads performance. Conversion tracking records how many conversions your site has received, the specific keywords that are converting, and the specific ad copy that is converting. When armed with conversion tracking data, you can improve the […]

Marketing strategies are key to any business’s success. For small businesses, developing the right digital marketing strategies is vital to their success. While it might be tempting (and convenient) to put all of your marketing spend behind one digital marketing promotion idea, it’s better to spread the wealth between different tactics. Small businesses need to […]

Pam Aungst of Pam Ann Marketing Speaks About The Importance of Author Bios There are a plethora of ways to get information on the web. Knowing whether this information is true or false, however, can be challenging. When users run searches online, they are met with thousands, sometimes more, results for articles that are related […]

If you’re a user of Google Analytics 4 (GA4), you’ve likely encountered the term “Google Signals.” In this FAQ article, we dig into the pros and cons of this GA4 feature and share our approach that we implement for our clients here at Pam Ann Marketing.  What is Google Signals? Google Signals is a feature […]

April 6, 2016 – Pam Aungst, Founder and President of Pam Ann Marketing, has been selected to be inducted into the 2016 Class of Jersey’s Best Marketing and Communication Professionals under 40. All inductees will be presented a personalized 2016 award at the Jersey’s Best Reception from 6:00-8:30pm on April 28, 2016 at Forsgate Country […]

Breaking news in the world of SEO: The Department of Justice has ruled that Google is indeed a monopoly. Video Why Was Google Declared a Monopoly? AP news reports, “A judge on Monday ruled that Google’s ubiquitous search engine has been illegally exploiting its dominance to squash competition and stifle Innovation.”The ruling says that Google […]

Unexpected SEO traffic drops can be challenging even for the best SEO experts. Therefore, if you encounter this issue, don’t be too quick to blame it all on an algorithm update. The list of potential reasons is long and requires deeper research. The most common are: technical issues content changes loss of inbound link equity […]

Yesterday, Google announced a new tool in the beta version of Search Console (a.k.a. “the new Search Console.”) It’s called the “URL Inspection Tool,” and claims to “help you debug issues with new or existing pages in the Google Index.” Google even goes so far as to make the bold claim that, with this tool, […]

Pam Aungst, President of Pam Ann Marketing, a New Jersey-based search marketing agency, was the recipient of the 2015 Morris County Chamber of Commerce Leaders in Business Award in the category of Small Business. The award was presented during the Annual Economic Outlook Luncheon, and recognizes the accomplishments of the agency since its establishment in 2011. […]

Pam Aungst, President and Founder of Pam Ann Marketing, was recently honored with a “Changemakers and Champions Award” for her contributions to mental health organization Newbridge Services, Inc. “As a strong advocate for mental health services, it has brought me great joy to provide pro-bono internet marketing services to Newbridge for the past two years,” […]

In April, my company celebrated 10 years in business. I can’t even begin to describe the level of gratitude that I have for achieving this milestone, especially because, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, “approximately 20 percent of small businesses fail within the first year. By the end of the second year, 30 percent […]

You finally made it! Your business website finally gets tons of organic traffic and converts well. You have put years of effort into your content, design, structure, SEO, UX, etc. Your visitors love your content, and you get good feedback from your users. Now your business is successful, and it’s time to scale. You and/or […]

When it comes to choosing a website hosting platform, we prefer working with WordPress from an SEO perspective. However, we understand that working with WordPress can seem intimidating, especially if you don’t have experience with building a website from scratch. That’s where page builder plugins come in. There are a number of page builder plugins […]

Google has a number of free testing tools that can be used to improve your site in various ways. There are some you may not even know exist – or, if you are aware of them, you may not know how to use them to the fullest. We want to help clear up that confusion […]