What Works Blog

Smart Strategies to Boost Local SEO and Win Customers Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is the practice of optimizing your website so it appears prominently when people search on Google for topics relevant to your business. Some businesses sell products nationally or internationally, so their actual business location is more or less irrelevant to Google. However, Google understands that many in-person […]

Essential Elements of a Winning Digital Marketing Strategy for Service Businesses Creating a comprehensive digital marketing strategy for service-based businesses requires a multi-faceted approach.  You don’t need to do all of these things to succeed although some (like Brand Marketing, Strategy and Websites) are non-negotiable if you want to excel. Below are the critical elements that should be considered for […]

Direct Response vs. Brand Advertising: Discover the Best Strategy to Grow Your Law Firm Are you curious about which type of advertising can drive better results for your law firm—direct response or brand advertising? Let’s dive into the key differences, benefits, and challenges of each to help you make an informed decision. Direct Response Advertising – The Instant Gratification Guru […]

The 2024 (and beyond) SEO Playbook for Service Businesses Curious how to approach SEO for your service business?  Look no further – we’ll lay out all the basic elements for you in prioritized order… Google Business Profile Your Google Business Profile is arguably the most visible element you’ll have in Search. What’s more, because it’s heavily influenced by the searcher’s […]

Digital Marketing Must-Reads: April 2024. The most insightful online marketing posts we’ve read in the last few weeks. An Introduction to Google Tag Manager The more data we can gather when it comes to our sites, the better. Using Google Analytics is a great place to start, but using it alongside Google Tag Manager is even better! Angela Petteys goes […]

The most insightful online marketing posts we’ve read in the last few weeks. What Is a Pillar Page? SEO Content Pillars Explained One effective strategy to stand out is by leveraging pillar pages, which serve as comprehensive resources covering core topics. With these strategies from Brody Hall, you can enhance your SEO efforts, engage readers, boost rankings through internal linking, […]

A Brand campaign is when you set up an ad to run in Google Search for when people search for your company name. If you’re lucky, your website might already show up first in Google Search when somebody searches your business name. In this case, there’s no particular need to run a Brand Campaign. However, in some cases like the […]

Curious to know if your competitors are running Search Ads and, if so, what they are saying in their ads? In 2023, Google launched their Ads Transparency Center at https://adstransparency.google.com To see your competitors’ ads, just go to the Transparency Center and paste anyone’s website URL or business name into the All Topics search field and you’ll quickly see if […]

In 2020 Google Launched their Advertiser Identity Verification program. In short, they wanted to crack down on folks using false identities for their ads and make sure that all the ads running were legitimate and trustworthy. Currently, you’re able to set up a Google Ads account without verification, but there are several ads features that you can’t use until you’re […]

The most insightful online marketing posts we’ve read in the last few weeks. What Belongs on Your Local Business’ About Page? This article goes over 13 different elements you can include on your local business “About Me” page that can help you get the best “About” page in town. Dive into H1 tags, visual stories, how to instill trust, and […]

Once you’ve created a great service page, it’s critical that people (and Search Engines) can actually find the page. This is where Search Engine Optimization (SEO) comes in. SEO can be extremely complex, but in this case it’s pretty simple. We just want to make sure that your page is organized in a way that Google can find it. The […]

In our Service Pages post we’ve already discussed why it’s critical that you create individual service pages for your most important services. Before we even look at what should be on your individual services pages, let’s discuss your services summary page. It’s quite possible that you offer a lot of different services and that many of them will be much lower priority.  […]

A lot of websites have a single page where they highlight all their services on the one page. While this may be okay if you get most of your business through referrals and traditional sales activities, it just doesn’t work if you want to win new clients through Google. You have to remember that if somebody does find you through […]

The most insightful online marketing posts we’ve read in the last few weeks. What to Do With Aging Local Business Content: Review, Update, and Re-promote! If you have been creating and posting new content for a while now, chances are you have some content that is outdated. Some of it, however, you may be able to reuse! Miriam Ellis goes […]

Confused by the vast array of confusing abbreviations around Search Marketing? Don’t feel bad – even people within the industry get confused! Let’s look at the 3 main areas of Search Marketing and clear them up! SEM – Search Engine Marketing Although sometimes used to describe PPC (below), Search Engine Marketing is the overall practice of improving your results in […]

The most insightful online marketing posts we’ve read in the last few weeks. What is Google Analytics? From Basic to Advanced Insights Since you have found your way to our blog, chances are at some point you have heard of Google Analytics. If you aren’t in the industry however, you may not have had the chance to do a deep […]

Blogging is awesome. Sadly, a majority of small to medium sized clients we work with get near-zero traffic to their blogs. There can be a number of reasons for this but, assuming you’re writing great posts that appeal to your market, one of the biggest reasons for a failure to launch is a lack of links. There are two types […]

The fact that you can create a Google Ads account and have ads running in about a half hour makes this a very valid question, why you should consider paying for an Ads Management company to manage your ads? The answer is simple: A skilled and responsible company will add more value to your ads account than what it costs […]

The most insightful online marketing posts we’ve read in the last few weeks. A Beginner’s Guide to Google Search Console If you have ever done some work on SEO chances are you will have come across the Google Search Console. The Google Search Console is a great tool for monitoring and troubleshooting your site’s presence in search results. However, like […]

The most insightful online marketing posts we’ve read in the last few weeks. What Is Bounce Rate, and Does It Matter in 2023? Bounce rates are an important metric when looking at how people are engaging (or not!) with your site. Zach Edelstein explains what exactly bounce rate is and why it is important in this accessible article. Edelstein also […]

The biggest reason most advertising doesn’t work is that people use the wrong type of advertising for the goals they have or the phase of the buying cycle their audience is in. Fortunately, you don’t need to make that mistake! Your first step is to fully understand what phase your audience is in and what they’re doing! There are 3 […]

The most insightful online marketing posts we’ve read in the last few weeks. People Don’t Read Online—They Scan. This Is How to Write for Them It’s important to know how to optimize online content for reader engagement in an era where users tend to skim rather than thoroughly read web articles. Rita Kind-Envy looks at different eye-scanning patterns and the […]

In recent years, content marketing has been a real marketing industry buzzword. However, a majority of companies doing it are wasting their time and efforts pumping out a mediocre “weekly post.” Most companies are getting little value from doing it (and providing little value through it!). This is especially true in an AI environment where “okay” content can be pumped […]

Our founder, Robert Cooper, joined Simon Kingsnorth on his “For The Love of Marketing” podcast to look at how to make your Google Ads convert. Watch the episode below to hear Robert share his insights and strategies on how to create Google Ads campaigns that drive real results. From targeting the right audience to crafting compelling ad copy, you’ll learn […]

The most insightful online marketing posts we’ve read in the last few weeks. Improving or removing content for SEO: How to do it the right way SEO is more than just regularly posting new and relevant content, sometimes you have to go back and update or remove old content, but how do you know what to remove and what to […]

The most insightful online marketing posts we’ve read in the last few weeks. How to Get More Local Business Reviews from Travelers Does your business benefit from tourists? Getting them to write reviews can be a difficult, but extremely beneficial, thing to do. Miriam Ellis looks at why travelers don’t write reviews and highlights the importance of asking customers for […]

Want to get more Search traffic? Consider employing some techniques that your competitors might not be doing (or, at least, not doing a great job at). Assess Your Competition To see how likely you are to rank for certain topics and see which competitors are showing up for the keywords you want to rank for, use a tool like Moz […]

The most insightful online marketing posts we’ve read in the last few weeks. 26 Ways To Increase Organic Traffic Organic traffic refers to traffic that finds your website through unpaid search engine results. By increasing your organic traffic, you can not only enhance the quality of your visitors but also establish credibility and trust, giving you a competitive edge over […]

The most insightful online marketing posts we’ve read in the last few weeks. Google Announces 8 New Top Level Domains Including One For Lawyers Google has released 8 new Top Level Domains (TLDs) as an alternative to the more traditional .com, .net, and .org extensions. These include .esq, .phd, .prov, and more. Roger Montti looks at highlights and benefits of […]

Ever wish you could understand how Google sees your site and find out if any of your pages have issues? You can! With the Google Search Console Pages report you can: Before you get started, you’ll need to install Google Search Console on your website. Once you install it you’ll have to wait a day or two for Google to […]

It is critically important to understand how your site is performing in Google and know if there are any serious site issues. Luckily, you can get this information straight from the horse’s mouth using Google Search Console. Google Search Console is free, so you’d think everyone would use it, but that’s not the case. Only a small percentage of folks […]

Curious whether you’re better off investing in Search Engine Optimization (SEO) or Sponsored Search Ads in Google? Here’s a typical search result (broken out side by side for visibility): Also, a caveat with either approach is that in a competitive industry it’s not enough to just “do SEO” or “do Ads” – you need to do them really well to […]

The most insightful online marketing posts we’ve read in the last few weeks. Link Farms: What Are They and Why You Should Avoid Them Adam Steele provides a deep but comprehensible look at the black hat SEO technique that is used to manipulate search engine rankings.  Link farms are a network of websites that link back to each other in […]

Google Search Optimization – Does it Make Sense For You? Succeeding with SEO can be challenging and, if your industry is too competitive, may not be actually worth undertaking (beyond implementing the important baseline SEO best practices). Fortunately, you can find out BEFORE you start if you’ll be able to succeed (and it’s actually quite easy to find out). Watch […]

Your Google Business Profile (GBP) is the top asset you can leverage to show up in Local Search. What’s more, few companies fully flesh out all features of their Profile, even though it’s very straightforward to set up. As well, because it’s location-specific, even the smallest companies can often compete effectively against the biggest firms. Join us as we run […]

Curious about all the elements of Google Search and where your best opportunities are? Read on to learn about each component of Search as we go through seven of the areas that might impact your results. Here’s a glimpse of a typical Google Search results page: Here are some insight on each individual area: 1 – Google Local Services Ads […]

Client Snapshot: The Executors Pick a niche and get really good at it. As an agency owner and instructor, I’ve literally given that piece of advice hundreds of times. However, I can count on one hand the number of companies who I’ve seen fully “execute” on that strategy. The Executors is one of those companies. Having seen the need in […]

Waypoint Counselling is a company run by George Bielay and Anne Fuller.  Research shows that having the right “fit” is the strongest predictor for success with a counsellor and sharing your challenges requires comfort, trust and a great connection. Fortunately, Waypoint Counselling is available for BC residents to help ensure those elements by helping make sure people find the right […]

The What Works team started working with Waypoint several years ago when we were still working as the JumpStart Web division of PlusROI Online Marketing.  It’s been an honour to watch them grow these past years, particularly as we overcame a few challenges along the way. Background: When Waypoint originally approached us they were still relatively new and didn’t have […]

While Raintown Dog Training excels at teaching “man’s best friends” they are also skilled learners and put a huge value on their own training. After graduating from the Alacrity Digital Marketing Boot Camp they came to us for additional help in further refining their Google Advertising and advanced SEO. Background: As a startup company breaking into an established industry, Kris […]

Dog ownership has risen to an all-time high in recent times, creating a huge need for training services and Raintown Dog Training has stepped up to the challenge. Launched in 2020 out of the founder’s desire to see more science-based dog training, Raintown has been going through the challenging process of setting up and growing a business in a time […]

Engagement Summary: Bloom Technical WhatWorks started working with Bloom Technical in the months before our official launch and we’ve been pleased to be able to help generate measurable return on investment for them. Background: As a relatively new company, Bloom Technical wanted to expand their advertising reach and develop new prospects without breaking the bank and within a fairly tight […]

Company Feature – SR&ED Pioneers: Bloom Technical SR&ED (scientific research and experimental development) tax incentives are a big deal in Canada, allowing firms who invest in research and development to claim tax credits of almost two thirds of the staffing costs of this research. Not surprisingly, these claims can get quite complex so a whole industry of SR&ED Consultants has […]