About Blacksmith Local SEO

Our History with SEO

It starts with a lot of mistakes. Mistakes that turned into wasted time and money. After running 4 of our own international tourism websites, we were hit with a Google Core Update. It stopped our growth in its tracks. We’d created efficiencies in inventory, built social media channels with tens of thousands of followers, earned international press coverage and won some pretty incredible awards in the process. But seemingly overnight, it was no longer enough.

What we hadn’t planned for were search engines changing the rules. Changes made in an effort to be great at what they do. In hindsight, this was wildly naïve on our part. You can’t blame the Search Engines - for years online marketers were gaming their systems, and creating poor, and often irrelevant search experiences.

• When Google prioritized original content our cross-platform duplicate listings lagged in the absence of canonical tags. We didn’t know any better.

• When Google made the move to indexing only mobile-friendly sites, our antiquated approach, built for a desktop experience, sank like lead boots in the Hudson River. We failed to anticipate the speed at which mobile devices would become research tools.

• When Google said search speed is increasingly important, our years of archived high-quality media and the custom API that fed the consumer sites struggled to keep pace. We didn’t appreciate that Google is in the business of serving more volume per bandwidth and that we were bad for their business.

In order to keep our traffic up, we had no choice but to spend more and more advertising money just to keep the status quo. We didn’t realize the growing importance of SEO best practices and need to stay current. It became unsustainable.

It didn’t have to be this way, however. In hindsight, when we designed our first sites we thought we had the right team in place. We had years of product and marketing experience plus decades of web-development resources at our disposal.

What we didn’t have, was an SEO specialist to make sure decisions flowed in line with the science, art, and psychology of ‘search’.

The chance to save a business from making the same mistakes we did, and benefit from our training and hard lessons learned, is a task we’re up for.

Our Tools

‘They say tools do not a craftsman make’. Solid sentiment, however, tools sure can make it efficient, and it’s worth noting that not every tool is created equally, either. We rely on a variety of tools and resources to help take the guesswork out of optimization, stay up-to-date with best practices and upcoming changes to both algorithms and feature sets.

We’ll spend anywhere from 6-10 hrs a week reading white papers, listening to SEO podcasts and connecting to peers in the SEO industry. Our nerd-like passion for all things search makes us relevant and reliable. Here are some of the tools we use to keep us current.

• For client-facing SEO audits, we like SEMrush

• For day-to-day all-around use, we like Ahrefs

• For good, and often ‘hiding in plain sight’ keyword analysis, we like kwfinder

• For people-based inspiration and news, we like to follow Marie Haynes and John Mueller, and Tommy Griffith

• For staying on top of all things Google and technical, we follow the Google Webmaster Blog

Our Favourite Sectors

It starts with a love of search, but the tip of our arrow is best pointed in the sectors we’re passionate about and with values, we can get behind.

We want to help local businesses stand tall against the commercial threats posed by Big Tech, and their increasing demand on sales commissions. In many cases, getting your own customer can save you 20-30% in margin. Local SEO can play a big role in reducing both advertising and commission expenses.

If you are in tourism & hospitality, building & trades, local retail and eCommerce, outdoor & nature, and online services & education, we want you to know that we’re particularly interested in helping you out.