Richard Cummings

Director of SEO, Social Media, and Web Content Development at The SEO System
Richard Cummings has been practicing online marketing for many years and has setup and optimized hundreds of WordPress sites.He founded The SEO System to provide SEO, social media, and online marketing services and software to businesses.
value of inbound anchor text

SEO & Inbound Link Anchor Text: Does inbound anchor text still matter?

value of inbound anchor textThe question that we are going to look at today is this: Is inbound anchor text still relevant when it comes to SEO best practices?

We know that it used to be. As you’ll see below, the volume of inbound links using specific anchor text was such an influencer, and yet so easily manipulated, that it threatened Google’s entire business.
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Richard CummingsSEO & Inbound Link Anchor Text: Does inbound anchor text still matter?
local search marketing seo

Google Places SEO: 8 Proven Ways to Dominate Google Local in 2018

local search marketing seoDo you want to dominate your Google local places search results in 2018? Then follow the 8 SEO steps listed below and you will beat your local competition!

Many businesses, especially small businesses, think that achieving first-page organic search results (as opposed to paid-for AdWords type results) is a near impossibility.

But the truth is, for local businesses, success in the organic results is now more achievable than ever. With a little SEO ingenuity and knowledge of how Google places SEO works, you’ll always have the upper hand on the competition.

Businesses simply need to understand how the local search results work and that is what I am going to explain in this article:

How to win in the local search results by understanding how the local search results work. Click To Tweet

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Richard CummingsGoogle Places SEO: 8 Proven Ways to Dominate Google Local in 2018
social media challenges for small businesses

10 Reasons Businesses Fail at Social Media…and How to Not Be One of Them!

social media challenges for small businesses

How Small Business Succeed on Social Media…and How They Fail!

Small businesses consistently fail at social media. True or False?

If you answered “true”, you are correct. Small businesses setup social media accounts and are then victims of their own great expectations.

The bottom line is this:

Social media won't work for your small business if you don't know how to work it! Click To Tweet Read More

Richard Cummings10 Reasons Businesses Fail at Social Media…and How to Not Be One of Them!
virtual offices search engine results

Warning: Virtual Offices in Google My Business to Succeed in Google Local Places

virtual offices search engine resultsIf you intend to create a virtual office to include in your Google My Business profile to maximize your Google Places SEO positioning, you may want to reconsider.

A client of The SEO System in St. Louis recently asked me if he could succeed in Google local places in other cities by establishing virtual offices in those cities.

The question surfaced because he had noticed his competition having some success by establishing a virtual office in that location and then, rather quickly, getting a Google local listing for that location.

But, what may seem like a good idea at first, is not.

While establishing a virtual office and including that in your Google My Business profile to game the search engines may provide some short term gain, it will produce dire consequences for your business in the long run.

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Richard CummingsWarning: Virtual Offices in Google My Business to Succeed in Google Local Places
small business brand building

Small Business SEO: How to Build Website “Authority” & Brand Awareness

small business brand building

Small Business: How To Build Your Online Brand

Let’s not mince words:  Small business SEO got a lot harder in the last few years.  Google updated their algorithms to favor authoritative brands and you have very little immediate chance of competing in any competitive niche.

Want a prime example of this?  Simply do a Google search for “Small business SEO”.   Ideally, who should compete for this term?  A small business, right?

Nope. The first result, 5 Ways Small Businesses Can Compete With Giants in SEO, comes from Entrepreneur media.  Check out their LinkedIn profile, which currently lists 1,832 employees.  And this does not even factor in the hundreds of guest authors that write for them, one of whom is Jayson DeMers, who wrote the article.Read More

Richard CummingsSmall Business SEO: How to Build Website “Authority” & Brand Awareness
online buying habits

Who Buys Online in 2018?

online buying habits

Who Buys Online?

Who buys products online in 2018?

This is a question that is too infrequently asked by people who try to sell online.

If you have a product that you are trying to sell online, it makes sense to first determine if your targeted audience is one who actually buys products online.

First, you absolutely need to find out if your product caters to those who buy online.

Secondly, to be an effective online advertiser, you need to know your advertising audience exactly! This will save you money and drastically improve the amount of people who actually buy your product.

But, how do you find this out?

In an article entitled “The surprising facts about who shops online and on mobile“, Cooper Smith attempted to find out the answer to this very question.

This topic was further researched in-depth in an article entitled The 19 Ecommerce Trends + 147 Online Shopping Stats Fueling Sales Growth in 2018 by Tracey Wallace.

The conclusions in these articles may surprise you.
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Richard CummingsWho Buys Online in 2018?
lifestyle marketing ideas

Lifestyle Marketing: I’m awesome so check out my web content!

lifestyle marketing ideas

Lifestyle Marketing: Is it for you?

Lifestyle marketing has become one of the hot new terms.

And, when you think about it, this makes sense. After all, who has the most Twitter followers? Is it some online marketing whiz? Some tech genius who knows how to master and perhaps manipulate social media and the search engines? Absolutely not!

It’s Katy Perry, Justin Bieber, Barack Obama, Taylor Swift and these other 96 people.

So, perhaps, instead of researching valuable Twitter Business Tips, you should just go out and get yourself the latest fashionable sunglasses and then show pictures of how hot and successful you are!Read More

Richard CummingsLifestyle Marketing: I’m awesome so check out my web content!
wordpress seo sql injection

WordPress SEO Vulnerable To Attack!

wordpress seo sql injection

WordPress SEO by Yoast Hacked

A security vulnerable has been discovered in the extremely popular WordPress SEO plugin, WordPress SEO by Yoast. This vulnerability potentially opens your WordPress site to a blind SQL injection attack. To remove any potential threats, you should upgrade the WordPress SEO by Yoast plugin to version 1.7.4 or higher immediately.
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Richard CummingsWordPress SEO Vulnerable To Attack!
Submit Post to Google WebMaster Tools

How Do I Get My Web Content Indexed Immediately in Google [2020 Updates]?

Submit Post to Google WebMaster Tools

Many content creators want to have their web content indexed immediately in Google. 

This is possible…if you know how to do it.

And, today, I’m going to tell you exactly how to get your new and updated web content immediately indexed (including new 2020 updates where I teach you How to Use Fetch As Google in the New Google Search Console).

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Richard CummingsHow Do I Get My Web Content Indexed Immediately in Google [2020 Updates]?
sulia shuts down

Sulia: Another Social Media Content Curator Bites The Dust!

sulia shuts down

Another Social Media Network Shuts Its Doors!

Sulia, a business that had raised $10 million dollars in funding and sought to be another type of social media content curation service, officially shut down in October of 2014.

It wasn’t but two years ago that Mashable called Sulia “The Hottest Social Network You’ve Never Heard Of” and Forbes hailed Sulia as the fast-growing subject-based social network. With all this hype, later that summer in 2013, Sulia received an additional $5 million in funding.Read More

Richard CummingsSulia: Another Social Media Content Curator Bites The Dust!
social media analytics

Predictive Analysis & Your Business: A “Targeted” Lesson

When marketing and big data analytics merge, the ability to predict behaviors can be downright eerie.

social media analytics

Predicting Customer Behavior

In this article, we will take at how retailing giant Target used predictive analytics to determine if a customer was pregnant and how your company can follow the same principles to identify, predict, and influence customer behavior.

An irate father enters a Target story demanding that they stop sending his daughter promotional information about pregnancy products.

“She’s just a teenager,” he exclaims. “What kind of business are you running? Please stop this nonsense of sending adult material to my young girl!”Read More

Richard CummingsPredictive Analysis & Your Business: A “Targeted” Lesson
HTML/CSS W3C Validation of Authority Sites

HTML & CSS Validation Statistics for the 10 Biggest Websites In the World

HTML/CSS W3C Validation of Authority SitesAre you fretting that your website does not pass HTML and CSS Validation with flying colors? Never fear…take some solace in these HTML & CSS validation scores of the 10 most popular websites in the world.

As you will see in the chart below, none of the top 10 websites in the world passed both the HTML and the CSS test. Kudos go only to Wikipedia for passing the HTML validation and to the Chinese website Baidu, the only site that passed the CSS validation (to be fair though, the homepage tested hardly contains any information). Read More

Richard CummingsHTML & CSS Validation Statistics for the 10 Biggest Websites In the World

Web Administration: No Permission to Create SubDomains

Question: Hi there. I just tried to create a sub-domain of my domain and I received a message that said: “There was a problem creating the sub-domain: You do not have permission to create subdomains of the server’s hostname.“. I have pasted the exact error message below:

creating subdomains error

The Error Message

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Richard CummingsWeb Administration: No Permission to Create SubDomains
Post to WordPress from Cell Phone

Publishing to WordPress from your Android Phone

Question: Is there a way that I can publish to my WordPress blog from my Android phone? The reason I ask this is because I have become accustomed to talking out my posts instead of typing them and it would be great if I could do this for my WordPress posts :-). Currently, I talk out the post in my gmail and then email it to myself and copy and paste it to my blog but it would be really great if I could post directly to WordPress from my Samsung Android phone.  Many thanks in advance!  Lucy, Denver, Co

android-wordpress

WordPress for Android: Post to WordPress from the Park or Anywhere

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Richard CummingsPublishing to WordPress from your Android Phone