UpBuild

Values-Driven Technical Marketing

Blog

SEO for a Site Redesign

by Leave a Comment

A website redesign is a significant inflection point in the lifecycle of a domain. As you begin planning for a redesign, it is going to be essential to have an SEO expert ‘in the room’ to ensure that SEO is at the forefront throughout the entire redesign process. The UpBuild team has been through countless site redesigns, being brought in at the start of the planning process for some and the final weeks before launch during others. We can say that hands down, the former option is far more ideal and efficient, eliminating the need for dreaded rework and inevitable launch delays.

Q: In an ideal world, when should you bring on an SEO partner for your new site redesign project?

[Read more…] about SEO for a Site Redesign

Filed Under: SEO

Being a Digital Nomad at UpBuild

by Leave a Comment

This past September, my girlfriend and I decided to leave Chicago winters for good and find ourselves a new home. So we packed our car with all our belongings, including our dog Morris, and began our year-long cross country road trip. We got rid of our apartment, sold our belongings, and secured Airbnbs along the way. Making this trip happen took a lot of effort, but let’s make no mistake, our ability to go on this adventure was made possible by one thing: remote work.

[Read more…] about Being a Digital Nomad at UpBuild

Rich Results, Poor Test

by Leave a Comment

Google’s announcement a few weeks ago that they’re phasing out the Structured Data Testing Tool in favor of a new, totally insular successor called the Rich Results Test definitely didn’t add any smiles to my summer.

The key difference between the tools is that this new one will not validate any structured data entities unless and until those entities drive rich results in Google Search. In other words, Google is deprecating a standards-based tool in favor of a results-based one, a change which, despite their predictable efforts to frame it as an “upgrade” (🥳), carries the message that structured data shouldn’t matter to you unless they generate rich results for your website in Google Search — that is, unless your search traffic can benefit directly from them today (and with all due thanks to Google, of course). Ask not what you can do for the semantic web; ask what the semantic web can do for you.

[Read more…] about Rich Results, Poor Test

Filed Under: SEO

Can My SEO Keywords Be My PPC Keywords?

by Leave a Comment

SEO and PPC are two closely aligned channels: they both focus on optimizing for keywords in order to drive traffic and conversions from search engine users. However, the strategies and tactics for each are wildly different. At UpBuild, we know what we’re experts in (technical SEO, web analytics, and digital marketing strategy) and what we’re not (PPC, among many other things). We’re always happy to partner with our clients’ PPC vendors to align on overall marketing strategy, but periodically a client will ask for our help crafting their PPC campaigns, and we’ll have to explain that since it’s not our field of specialty, we can’t really provide the kind of expert guidance that they need.

One question we often get from clients as they’re shopping for PPC consultants, or attempting to build their own in-house PPC campaigns, is “Can’t we just plug our list of targeted SEO keywords into Google Ads and go from there?” We get this question frequently enough that I thought I’d explain our thinking on this topic in more detail.

[Read more…] about Can My SEO Keywords Be My PPC Keywords?

Mindful Email Management

by 1 Comment

Strategies for disconnecting when work and home are the same place

This post is about disconnection as a critical component of a healthy work-life balance. More specifically, I’d like to use this post to advocate strategically disconnecting from email, and to share some ways in which I accomplish that. At a moment in time where — for most of us — work and home are literally the same physical space, occasionally disconnecting from email and then strategically re-engaging with it on our own terms can be mentally beneficial, emotionally supportive, and improve our work output and results.

[Read more…] about Mindful Email Management