Matt McGee is SEO Manager at Marchex, a search and media company in Seattle, Washington. He's guided successful projects for clients of all sizes and budgets, with special emphasis on traffic acquisition via organic rankings. Matt is a speaker at the Search Engine Strategies conferences, and writes about online marketing at Small Business SEM. He's a frequent contributor to several SEO/SEM forums, and is a moderator for the Small Business Ideas Forum.

Diversity: Good in Life, Good in Search Marketing

by Matt McGee    June 18, 2007

Judging from the discussion that takes place at many Webmaster / marketing forums and mailing lists, you'd be excused if you thought Google was the only search engine on the web. But if you're in the "Google is all that matters" camp, I think you're making a potentially dangerous mistake....

Make Your PDFs SEO-Friendly

by Matt McGee    June 12, 2007

A couple years ago, a client was launching a new product -- but they weren't the only company doing so. One of their main competitors was launching the same product, sourced from the same manufacturer. The product didn't have much search history. It also didn't have much competition for the relevant keywords....

Making the Case for SEO to Small Businesses

by Matt McGee    June 4, 2007

As search marketers, we're too deep in this stuff to bother questioning the value -- of course it's a good investment! But the small business owner isn't deep in it, doesn't quite understand it, and doesn't know what she's going to get in exchange for writing that check. So, how do you sell SEO in these situations?...

Small Businesses and the "Wow" Factor

by Matt McGee    May 30, 2007

First impressions are important for everyone doing business online, but maybe more so for small businesses that don't have the benefit of name recognition and consumer trust. That desire to make a good first impression, though, often leads the small business owner down the wrong path. They decide their home page needs some pizzazz, or a "Wow! factor", as I've often had it described to me....

The 4 Most Underrated Pages on Your Web Site

by Matt McGee    January 29, 2007

In this article, I’ll introduce you to the four most underrated pages on -- or not on -- your web site. These are the pages you’ve likely underrated, not realizing their ability to accomplish those two important goals: acquiring traffic, and converting it to customers....

Breaking Out of Google’s Supplemental Index

by Matt McGee    December 21, 2006

Google's supplemental index is essentially a backup database of web pages. When Google can't find an adequate supply of matching pages in its main index (where you want to be), it'll show pages from the supplemental index (where you don't want to be). You can tell a supplemental listing very easily: look for the phrase "Supplemental Result" in green text on the bottom line of your Google listing....

8 Simple Steps to Make a Page More "Local"

by Matt McGee    December 11, 2006

We don't know much about the local search algorithms in use at Google, Yahoo!, and MSN. We do know, however, that local SERPs use a different algorithm than the main SERPs – a location-based algorithm. So if you're a small business that relies on local search traffic, it's a good idea to make sure search engine crawlers have a good sense of where you're located....

What’s on Your (Site) Menu?

by Matt McGee    November 3, 2006

One of the barriers to converting is poor usability, and that often takes the form of hard-to-use navigation. This is especially true on small business sites, which are often created by someone on staff, or someone on staff’s son or daughter; in other words, by a non-professional....