Jenny Halasz
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Jenny Halasz

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About Jenny Halasz

Jenny Halasz is the President of an online marketing consulting company offering SEO, PPC, and Web Design services. She's been in search since 2000 and focuses on long term strategies, intuitive user experience and successful customer acquisition. She occasionally offers her personal insights on her blog, JLH Marketing.

Jenny Halasz's latest articles

PPC

Decoding GoogleSpeak

There's often a lot of confusion surrounding quotes made by Google representatives, but there doesn't have to be. Columnist Jenny Halasz discusses how to effectively analyze and interpret such statements.

Google algorithm updates

An Open Letter To The New SEO Generation

SEO is almost 20 years old. Can you believe it? There’s some argument about when the practice started, as well as when the term itself was coined, including a failed patent attempt from 2007; but most industry old-timers put the birth of SEO at around 1995. So, after almost 20 years, what do we have […]

Bing SEO

A Marketer’s Guide To Using Regular Expressions In SEO

Regular expressions (regex) are one of the most powerful tools we have in our SEO arsenal,  but they’re incredibly intimidating! Here are some tips and tricks from one SEO to another that I hope will help you dip your toes into the powerful world of regex. I must begin with a disclaimer: I’m not a […]

Link building

The Marketer Identity Crisis. Where Are The SEOs?

Online marketing is dazed and confused. Not in the “dry herbs” style, but in the deer-in-the-headlights style. Or maybe both… to each his own. To begin with, I must state that I am an old curmudgeon by online marketing standards, having been in the field for over 14 years. I identify myself as an SEO […]

Google

The War On Links

In case you didn’t notice, we are waging a war over links. Some would say that SEOs are at war with search engines, but I disagree. Search engines and SEOs have a symbiotic relationship; and without meaning to, we’ve killed the value of the link. The link, once a simple connector from one site to […]

Google

Manual Spam Action Revoked! A Case Study

Checklists of how to get out of a Google penalty abound. Five things you should do, five things you shouldn’t do, etc. But the number one thing you shouldn’t do is ignore it. I want to tell you the story of a two-year long penalty, the steps we took and how something we never thought […]

Content

5 Not-So-Common Reconsideration Request Errors

I’ve been struggling with a particularly difficult link cleanup project lately. On the occasion of my 100th reconsideration request (4th for this particular client), I thought it might be helpful to share five not-so-common problems that you might run into during your own link cleanup project. [Editor’s note: Since this post was originally published, it’s […]

SEO

5 “Foundations” Of SEO That Were Torched In 2013

The basics of SEO haven’t changed much in the last 15 years. If you followed the mantra of creating good content and obtaining quality links, they still haven’t changed… or have they? Here are five SEO “foundations” that were absolutely torched in 2013. If you are still counting on any of these, stop now and […]

Google Ads

Google Enhanced Campaigns: What We’ve Learned So Far

At SMX East yesterday, during the Google Enhanced Campaigns: What We’ve Learned So Far session, a collection of the best and brightest PPC professionals came together to discuss insights and lessons learned from Google’s “new” approach to managing ad campaigns. Larry Kim from Wordstream was the most positive on the pro-enhanced campaigns side. He reminded […]

SEO

How Search Engines Work — Really!

For those of us in SEO (or aspiring to be), there are a lot of little details that fill our days. Server architecture, 301 redirects, 404 errors, title tags, and various other things. Sometimes, we forget to sit back and figure out what it all means. Add to that the fact that most SEOs were […]

Google

Demystifying Link Disavowals, Penalties & More

Findings from a recent Google Webmaster Hangout on Air (video) demystify link disavowals, penalties and more. Read on for the official word from John Mueller, Webmaster Trends Analyst from Google and friend to webmasters everywhere. First, Some Background Last month, I introduced Five Steps To Clean Up Your Links like A Techie. The commenters on the […]

Content

Five Steps To Clean Up Your Links Like A Techie

You’ve been in business for many years. You may have done it all on your own, or you may have enlisted the aid of unscrupulous SEO “services” to built links for you. Either way, you may be wondering whether you need to conduct a link clean up. This column contains a five-step process outlining how […]

Bing SEO

Google’s PR Problem Is Bing’s Opportunity

Google has a PR problem. No, I don’t mean PageRank. I’m talking about the original definition of PR – Public Relations. And, it’s maybe less Public Relations than it is Webmaster Relations. You see, Google hasn’t done a good job of balancing content about problems with content about successes and improvements. They haven’t really needed to — with 70% […]

Content

The Informational Content Advantage

You may have heard that content is king, but the truth is that informational content is king. It’s estimated that approximately 50-80% of search queries are informational in nature (pdf). Most websites have very little informational content on them, preferring instead to focus on driving a conversion. These websites are missing an excellent opportunity to […]

SEO

7 Steps To Kicking Off A New Content Strategy

Have you ever had a formal content strategy for your website? Are you considering a website refresh? During the process of website redesign is the perfect time to renew your content marketing approach; we’re leading several of our clients through this right now. As they’re all at various stages and have various requirements for the […]

Analytics & conversion

7 Secrets For Dealing With Quality Score

I’m back to writing my own controversial thoughts this month; although, if you didn’t check out the interview I did last month with Andrew Goodman and Matt van Wagner, you should, those are smart guys. Since I was thinking about PPC and how incredibly mixed up and difficult it has become, it seemed like a […]

Google

Have Keywords Stopped Being A Proxy To The Customer?

It’s said that keywords are a proxy for a customer, right? So let’s talk about the customer. Schema this, canonical that, and black and white zoo animals… if you don’t have a search expert on payroll, you’re already behind the Joneses. I get emails like the one below all the time, this one being from […]

Content

11 Things To Ask Yourself When Optimizing Content

A client asked me the other day why we were optimizing his software for Los Angeles, when he’s located in Raleigh, NC. In explaining the reason to him, I realized that a basic guideline for optimizing pages is long overdue. I’ve developed the following flow chart and explanation in response. Theming Content The first question […]

Bing SEO

The Difference In Keyword Research For SEO vs. PPC

Often when I complete a keyword research project for a client, they ask me about keywords I may not have included, or they want to know what the relative competition on the keywords looks like. This happens often enough that I thought I would remind everyone that while research for SEO and PPC can go […]

PPC

Three Free Keyword Research Tools

One of the hardest things to do in keyword research is to uncover related keywords. With that in mind, the tools I’m reviewing today all help identify related keywords that you may want to search in more detail. These tools are not a substitute for detailed keyword research like I talked about in my first […]

Content

Keyword Research Tool Review: Google AdWords

Keywords are important. I’ve heard from several potential clients recently who have talked to other “professionals” who told them keywords are no longer important for SEO, and that good content is all you really need. Here’s the thing. Keywords are language. They’ll always be important because words are how we communicate with each other. So […]

Content

Time To Reap What You’ve Sown From Keyword Seeds

If you’ve been following the series on Keyword Seeds and Keyword Research over the last couple of months, I’ve been writing about how to perform really good keyword research through a series of tactics that I call the “Keyword Seed Method”. Don’t bother to go look that up in Google, as I think I’m the […]

PPC

How To Develop A Keyword Plan

Since last time, you’ve been busy growing your keyword seeds into little seedlings, using those handy Excel tricks I wrote about. You’ve likely got thousands of keywords now, and may have no idea what to do next. If you’ll forgive me, I’ll continue the planting analogy for categorizing and mapping keywords. It seems appropriate, with […]

Content

Tips For Growing Keyword Seeds With Excel Formulas

Have your seeds germinated yet? Last time, we talked about keywords as “seeds” of ideas; a single keyword to represent an entire keyword cluster. Now it’s time to make our seeds grow. Using the example of Artisan Construction Services again (thanks!), we’ll walk through the process that I use to grow a single seed. In this […]

PPC

The Keyword Research Rabbit Hole

A few weeks ago, I wrote about how to use your first meeting with a client to understand their business and collect information that could later inform your keyword research. Now, you’re back at your desk and wondering what to do with all that information. To begin with, you should have three lists of keyword-types […]

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