Elmo Lombard

Of the many different content management systems and web publishing platforms I’ve done SEO for, WordPress is the most popular. Blogs, company websites and web shops run on WordPress. Designers are fascinated by its versatility and the range of adaptations possible with it. Users love its simplicity and effectiveness. It’s a simple blogging system that needs little or no knowledge of coding, website design or other technical details. Nearly 25% of the world’s top 10 million websites — including TIME, Mashable, Marketing Land and Search Engine Land — are built on WordPress. But being easy to use, WordPress also [...]

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) has come a long way since the time that search engines were not able to read all the content or track user behavior on a website. In the last 7 years, Google introduced a few changes in the way its algorithm handled searches. The focus on mobile friendliness and the blocking of black hat backlinks are but two. But in the last few years Google invested heavily into understanding user search behavior. People searches changed and so Google adapted to it. In the past, a user search would look something like this: “Good Italian restaurant [...]

Marketing. Most business owners feel this is a grudge spend. If you manufacture something you are able to calculate exactly how much it cost. This is easy to do because all the data is available. If someone were to offer you an alternative price for the raw material, you can quickly calculate the cost difference it will make on your bottom line. But how do we know if our Marketing is working? Our turnover has grown with 24%, but was it due to inflation, better proposals, harder working reps or was it the result of an effective marking campaign? [...]

Did you know that the total online spend between business and consumer in South Africa was R11,5 Billion in 2011? According to a study done by World Wide Worx, approximately 150,000 SME’s in South Africa would not be able to survive without their web presence. With SME’s accounting for about 7.8-million jobs in South Africa, this means as many as 1.56-million jobs would be in jeopardy were it not for the internet. For today I want to focus on every business that sells products and I have just one question: Can I buy your products online…and can I use [...]

Your marketing is wasteful. I’m 99% sure. Majority of businesses engage in busy work, a charade that we use to make ourselves feel good about it. We do things that clearly don’t drive any results, why? Because we ought to do something, right? Direct mail campaigns with zero return on investment, and we keep going and wasting money. Expensive trade shows with no leads or customers, and we keep attending. Blog posts and other lead magnets not generating leads, and we keep writing them. Einstein said it best, “Insanity: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting [...]