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You may have heard of this phenomenon. It can happen anywhere, to anyone at all with a reviewable presence, whether it’s on Facebook, Yelp, Google, Bing, Steam, Amazon, or even somewhere else. A review bomb, or review bombing, is when the internet turns against you.

One very interesting thing about SEO is the science that happens behind it. Whether it’s psychologically crafting content in a way that makes people click (i.e. clickbait), or it’s understanding how people navigate a page, understanding usability and the flow of any web page is important to crafting your perfect optimization approach. We were excited to read about this study by Nielsen Norman Group which tracked user eye movement on the search engine results page (SERP). A few years back, it was common to have ten blue-link results in a list. That required customers to read and examine what they…

Have you ever gotten a piece of mail, or an email, that looks like this?

If you communicate with a hasOptimization staff member regularly, you may have noticed that we recently added pronouns to all of our email signatures. You may be wondering why that is…and don’t worry, I’ll get there. First, though, I’d like to give you some background. What IS a pronoun, anyways? A pronoun is a word which stands in for a noun. It would be a little odd if you used someone’s name every single time you referred to them: “Jennifer has gone to Jennifer’s car to get Jennifer’s jacket because Jennifer is cold”. Strange, huh? “Jennifer has gone to her…

hasOptimization is proud to announce the launch of a new website for drain cleaning and unclogging service provider Dash Drains. Dash Drains is located in NH and serves NH, though has a partner in MA who operates in MA. This business owner came to us looking for help building their very first website. They needed a basic website which says what they do and how to contact them. We were happy to help! After providing the business owner with a few solid themes to choose from, we then went into modifying the colors, putting the logo into place, and making…

Did you know that a 5-star rating on Google My Business is not actually the best star rating for your business? It’s something we’ve been saying for a long time, but this time we’ve got a report to prove it! A study conducted by Uberall determined that businesses who had 5-star ratings on Google My Business suffered from less conversions than businesses with less than a 5-star average. For this study, Uberall compared data from 64,000 third-party managed business listings for the first half of 2018 with the first half of 2019. The Sweet Spot While we can understand why…

I “rebranded” myself in August of this year, announcing my name change (it’s Logan now!) to my family, staff and clients. And the world, of course! It went better/smoother than I’d expected, and the brand stakeholder (that’s me!) is delighted with the results, all of which is pretty much the best you can say of any rebranding effort. Now, two months out from the announcement, I’m reflecting on that rebranding as I watch my friend and colleague Amanda rebrand her business. Rebranding a business is, as I said in my original post, very much like rebranding yourself. You must identify…

The short answer: YES! Ready for the long answer and the proof? While browsing a Facebook group the other day, I was surprised to hear that a poster commented saying something along the lines of “no one wants to read a blog”. This shocked me, but at its essence, it told me that this poster (and everyone agreeing with them) had convinced themselves that blogs have no value, and therefore give no value, which means that people shouldn’t spend time on them. This comment couldn’t be further from the truth.

As Google sunsets programs such as Hangouts and Google+, we may find some of the better features managing their way over onto our new platforms like Google My Business. We’ve already seen posting on Google My Business happening, now we’re seeing a new feature: short names. What is a shortname? “Short name” is just a fancy word for “username”, the same way you would have a username on Twitter or a page slug on Facebook. Google My Business is giving you the opportunity (much like we were able to on Google+) to choose your own short name. What does it…

We’re really excited for the new year, and we know you are too! That’s why we’ve compiled this quick video with some stats of what we’ve done for 2018 and what kind of absurdity we’ve been up to!