Meet Our SEO Specialist – Wendy Salzman

Posted on September 2, 2019January 24, 2024 by Robin Renee

Loebig Ink Team Member: Wendy Salzman

Wendy Salzman didn’t set out to become an SEO specialist. In fact, it was her husband, Kenny, who first took an interest. Brian Loebig and Kenny Salzman network together as the current president and vice-president of BNI Capital Business Alliance. When Kenny took on a project and discovered search engine optimization wasn’t for him, he thought it might be something his wife would be good at and enjoy. Luckily for her and the Loebig Ink team, he was right!

Wendy grew up in Montgomery County and attended the University of Maryland where she studied Special Education. She utilized her degree well; after college she became a Special Ed teacher and for 17 years instructed children with learning disabilities. In time, she sought something new and different. When a mathematics position became available, Wendy began teaching sixth grade math, which makes up the rest of the 35 years she has been in the classroom. An important focus of her teaching is conceptual learning, which helps students understand why a solution makes sense rather than relying on simple memorization.

Being a teacher with an interest in technology and a love of learning new things makes Wendy a natural at SEO. She enjoys writing metatags and meta descriptions. The process is somewhat like a puzzle. It requires taking a great deal of information, putting it together, fitting it into a small space, and making sure it all makes sense. She especially enjoys making changes on the back end of a website, and in a short time, seeing the measurable, positive results.

Wendy enjoys binge watching a TV series now and again, and she likes some quiet things like baking and crossword puzzles. But more often, she’d rather be active. She meets her sister-in-law for a 4 – 5 mile walk almost daily. If the walk isn’t on the schedule, she’s likely to be found doing an at-home workout from Beachbody.com. The T25 workout is one of her favorites. Also a big sports fan, she likes to follow the Nats and the Caps.

The most important thing of all to Wendy is family. She has been married for 31 years and has two children – a son who is 25 and a daughter, 28, who will be married at the end of the year. As a very driven and hard-working person, Wendy envisions a future in which she gives herself a little more permission to relax. She hopes to retire from teaching soon and to make time for more sunshine, beaches, and overall relaxation. A recent family trip to Colorado serves as inspiration to take it easy, travel more, and enjoy the simple things in life.

Learn more about our SEO services and request that Wendy work on your website SEO project!

New Hosts of LinkedIn Local MoCo!

Posted on August 30, 2019February 29, 2024 by Robin Renee

Visit our new website at www.LinkedinLocal-Moco.com!

Brian Loebig and Tamika Smith are happy to announce that they will be the new hosts of LinkedIn Local MoCo! What is LinkedIn Local MoCo? LinkedIn Local is an event geared toward helping LinkedIn members get to know one another in real life. The local meetups happen all over the globe. “MoCo” stands for the recurring event that brings people together in Montgomery County, Maryland. Brian and Tamika will take over hosting duties for Business Consultant and LinkedIn Strategist, Kelly Leonard.

During small business consulting sessions and public speaking engagements, Brian frequently points out LinkedIn as an incredibly useful tool for making business connections and seeking career opportunities. LinkedIn Local MoCo gives it the personal touch. The purpose of the no-pitch, no-selling meetup is to unite people beyond their profile pics, catchy headlines, and company names to connect, collaborate, and build community in real time. Attendees are united around the common belief that with authenticity, respect, and collaboration they can unlock doors to prosperous, sustainable living.

LinkedIn Local MoCo events happen throughout Montgomery County Maryland at co-working spaces, business offices, non-profits and other venues. We serve wine, cheese, and networking, followed by a keynote speakers or a panel discussion. Previous speakers included Laverne Franklin-Jones of LFJ Fashion Styling Services with a topic entitled “Elevate your style: Making a statement without saying a word.” The session explored why personal style matters in business, how image affects your bottom line, and more.

Howard University graduate Tamika Smith hails from Miami, Florida and Nassau, Bahamas. She is the current Weekend Host on WAMU 88.5, American University Radio, where she also reports on various local issues from politics to the environment. She began her career at NPR’s Tell Me More with Michel Martin and at Radio One as a national news anchor for Keepin’ It Real With Al Sharpton. Brian Loebig launched Loebig Ink as a full-time web consulting business in Richmond, VA in 2010. Now centered in Silver Spring with a wider scope and clients nationwide, Loebig Ink works with an ever-expanding team of social media, SEO, web and graphic design professionals. Brian credits his entrepreneurial ambition to his executive master’s degree experience at Marquette University.

Brian is excited about this new opportunity to meet more great people who are doing business in Montgomery County. Keep an eye on the Loebig Ink calendar for LinkedIn Local MoCo , other appearances, and Loebig Ink-sponsored events.

Meet Our Lead SEO Manager

Posted on July 31, 2019September 1, 2023 by Robin Renee

Loebig Ink Team Member: Robin Renée

Robin Renée met Loebig Ink founder Brian Loebig over a decade ago when Brian was seeking singer/songwriters for a coffeehouse he booked in Philadelphia, PA. The two stayed in touch over their shared love of music. When Loebig Ink began to blossom into the full-time web design, social media marketing, and SEO agency it is today, Robin was ready to come on board as a subcontractor.

There are many facets to managing the growing number of search engine optimization projects that Loebig Ink handles, and Robin takes care of keeping the varied tasks in balance. Some days focus on the beginning research steps of an SEO project for a new client. Sometimes the focus is on writing metatags to be added to a website just before the final setup steps. Often her day involves overseeing project managers’ SEO work and keeping track of dozens of ongoing SEO projects that monitor and improve search engine visibility for our clients over time. In addition, Robin researches and writes blog posts and newsletters for LoebigInk.com as well as Brian Loebig’s other websites, CriminalThinking.net and TheInkBlog.net.

Robin is a graduate of Rutgers University where she studied Biochemistry and English. Her eclectic resume includes time as a Senior Microbiology Lab Technician, entertainment writer for several Central New Jersey newspapers, music columnist, ghostwriter, and art model. She has toured the U.S. as a performing songwriter and her recordings include In Progress, All Six Senses, Live Devotion, spirit.rocks.sexy, This., and the single, “All I Am.” Her music can be found on CDBaby, Pandora, Spotify, and elsewhere around the web. Other interests include fitness, vegetarian cooking and occasional mead-making, new wave music fandom, activism, catching up on Unknown Secrets of Internet Marketing, and getting to the beach as often as possible. Her current passion project is serving as a co-host of The Leftscape podcast.

Robin Renée enjoys serving as Lead SEO Manager on the Loebig Ink Team. She finds that search engine optimization entails using creativity, consistency, logic, and sometimes a little bit of intuition — a combination that keeps it interesting and facilitates a good right brain-left brain balance. You can learn more about Robin Renée on her website, www.robinrenee.com.

How much money are you leaving on the table?

Posted on July 31, 2019January 24, 2024 by Robin Renee

Client Corner: Oberfeld Coaching

How often have you blamed the economy, the weather, clients, bosses, or someone outside of you because of your current monetary situation?

Let’s face it; from time to time, all of us feel we are at the mercy of something outside of us. But if that were truly the case, everybody should be suffering when the economy takes a nose dive, right? But many people don’t. So, what’s their secret?

The answer is it’s in their MINDSET.

Consider this quote from Abraham Hicks, the teacher on the Law of Attraction:

“What anyone else has or does not have has nothing to do with you. The only thing that affects your experience is the way you utilize the Non-Physical Energy with your thought. Your abundance or lack of it in your experience has nothing to do with what anybody else is doing or having. It has only to do with your perspective. It has only to do with your offering of thought. If you want your fortunes to shift, you have to begin telling a different story.” — Excerpted from Money and the Law of Attraction

The key, as Abraham states it, is to tell a different story, but before you do that, you need to get really clear about your old story.

Take action: For the next seven days, pay attention to every thought you have about money. Observe these thoughts impartially. Write them down either online or in a journal.

Such thoughts could be “I’m afraid to spend because money feels tight,” or “I have money, but I have to work extremely hard to maintain it.” Be truthful with yourself because you can’t change what you don’t know.

After 7 days, read your entries to see what patterns lay behind the thoughts you habitually tell yourself. The messages you tell yourself will faithfully deliver what you repeatedly say to yourself. That translates into money you leave on the table because of lost opportunities that you talk yourself out of. Limiting thoughts impact your behavior. This behavior limits your success. Thoughts of abundance, conversely, bring limitless success!

Naheed can be reached at Naheed@OberfeldCoaching.com.

Want to learn more about how to step into your full potential? Check out her website at www.Oberfeldcoaching.com.

Author’s Note:

Naheed Oberfeld is a Success Strategist and she helps you achieve your financial goals by maximizing your earning potential. Do you have more to accomplish in your career or business but don’t know how to get there? Are you feeling overwhelmed by the fast pace of life? Naheed uses a mind-body technique known as EFT/Tapping that has helped her increase their business by 400%, clients get more fulfilling and higher paid jobs, reduce stress and overwhelm, and accomplish their dreams and desires. After all, if life is a journey, my role is to help you enjoy the ride!

Naheed and Loebig Ink, LLC founder, Brian Loebig, share a passion of making the world a better place through joyful service, one client at a time. To help us achieve that goal, they collaborate in one of the world’s largest networking groups for entrepreneurs and consultants, Business Networking International (BNI). Naheed is also a client of Brian’s and he has personally experienced the benefits of her service and can attest to the powerful changes she makes in people’s lives through thought-provoking questions, guided imagery, and business coaching accountability!

Level Up Your Visibility with Rich Snippets

Posted on June 25, 2019January 24, 2024 by Robin Renee

If you’re at all familiar with search engine optimization, you know the importance of getting the most out of your basic metatags. Your H1, H2, title tag, and meta description for each page are important factors to increase site visibility. However, your optimization doesn’t have to stop there. You can set up your web pages so that they are poised to have search engines display extra information called rich snippets. In the example below, the ratings line, not shown in a standard search result, is a rich snippet.

The What and Why of Rich Snippets

The ratings on the third line above is only one example. What are some of the other factors rich snippets can highlight? If you offer products, rich snippets can highlight information about what you sell including the name of the item, price, and special offers. If you are a musician, a reference to a song title, lyrics, or recording may show up as a rich snippet. The name, cuisine, and hours of a restaurant, a recipe, details about an upcoming event, or biographical information may all become rich snippets.

Why strive for rich snippets? Because rich snippets, sometimes known as rich results, increase web visibility in several ways. The most important behind-the-scenes function is that the coding used to indicate the information highlighted in rich snippets “speak” directly to search engines. As Google or another engine crawls a website, context and meaning may not always be clear. For best ranking results, you will want to have a website that is informative, user-friendly, and obvious about its purpose to readers and search engines alike. Adding extra, specific coding called schemas are like a beacon to search engines broadcasting, “Hey! This is the contact information for a blues club!” “This is a page about a popular politician!” or “These are the dates of the county fair!” These content clues help search engines to categorize and rank content. The visual aspect of rich snippets draws the attention of internet users resulting in a higher click-through rate (CTR). It’s an all-around win for SEO.

The How-To of Rich Snippets

Now you have a sense of what rich snippets are and what they do. How can you get them to appear online in relation to your website? Technically, you can’t. It’s not possible to guarantee that Google or other search engines will add a rich snippet to a search result for your website. You can, however, add the code to send those loud-and-clear signals that make rich snippets more likely. For that, use structured data, also called schema markup.

First, decide which elements on your website you’d like to highlight. Schema.org lists all the codes used for schema markup. You will need to add the code to your website. Try using Google’s Structured Data Markup Helper, which can assist you in finding the appropriate codes for your content.

To mark up the name and address on the Loebig Ink contact page, we went to the Structured Data Markup Helper, chose “Local Businesses” as the data type, and submitted the page URL. Once the markup helper opened the Loebig Ink page, we highlighted each page element individually and chose the nature of that element from a drop-down menu.

After indicating the name of the business, city, state, and postal code, we clicked “CREATE HTML,” and added the resulting code at the top of the text area of our contact page in edit mode and clicked “UPDATE.”

Voilà! The Loebig Ink name and address on our contact page now have structured data. That information will now be more likely to appear on search engine results pages (SERPs) in an eye-catching position to attract more calls and clicks. Take a look at your web pages, decide on the content you’d most like to highlight, and get some structured data working for you. There may be some very helpful rich snippets in your future.

Learn more about our SEO services, which can include rich snippet development!

Best SEO Bloopers! Things NOT to Do

Posted on April 23, 2019July 21, 2025 by Robin Renee

Updated June 22, 2025

So you think you’re ready for SEO?

In a previous article we took a look at the top SEO questions that clients ask. We are always pleased to help our clients understand the concepts behind our search engine optimization process, as well as the specific steps we take to make improvements. The only stupid question, as the old adage goes, is the one left unasked. There is one big question we would like to put forth for you to consider as you develop your website for greater visibility: Are you ready?

You may be hearing from all corners that you need SEO, and we agree! But first, make sure you don’t wind up making any of the “best” SEO bloopers! Break down the “Are you ready?” question to see whether or not the time is now.

SEO Blooper #1: Keyword Stuffing

How up-to-date are you on best SEO practices? Some techniques that may have worked years ago are no longer valid and in fact, could land your website at the bottom of the search pile. One of those poor techniques is keyword stuffing. This mistake uses a target keyword or slight variations on the keyword too many times. Reading the same words over and over again that are obviously there for Google rather than people makes for an annoying and frustrating user experience. And ironically, Google doesn’t like it either.

Instead of stuffing keywords into your text, use natural keyword integration for stronger content that is good for SEO and pleasant reading for humans. The current advice on keyword use is to go with 1-2% keyword density, i.e., use the target keyword no more than once or twice per every hundred words. Most importantly, use your judgment. Strong, clear writing that is appealing to readers is the first step. Then be sure that the target keyword appears naturally for best results.

SEO Blooper #2: Complete SEO… Immediately Rewrite Web Pages

Sometimes when we speak to a new client, they have very defined ideas about the keywords they would like to target for high ranking on their website. A vital question that at times has not yet been answered is this: Does the site have content that focuses on and uses those keywords? If so, some or all of the client’s suggested keywords will likely turn out to be strong choices. If not, our research will find the best contenders. Another, broader question that needs to be answered is “Is the website about what you want it to be about or will you soon be inspired to change everything?”

It is a helpful attitude to want your website to be the best it can be at all times, even if you intend to change it at some point in the future. But if you’re planning a major overhaul, it is best to wait until afterward to get into the details of SEO. If you choose keywords and optimize pages based on current content in one week only to change emphases and make major edits and rewrites the next, you will lose the time, energy, and money you just put into your SEO. Choose your direction, write the content, add some compelling media, then optimize your site for the best value.

SEO Blooper #3: Optimize for Services You Don’t Offer

Here is a specific question to help you nip the “change everything” impulse in the bud. Do your services pages reflect the services you actually offer? It may sound like a strange question, but it is an important one when determining your readiness for SEO. Businesses do change; you may have stopped offering some services and have begun others. Are those changes reflected on the website?

It is a waste of time and energy to optimize pages that refer to an older or different version of your business if the services shown are not what you do currently. Research to determine the best keywords for your website will largely be based on current content, so it is important to review it and make sure it’s good to go. Avoid confusion and high bounce rates by aligning your web content to what you really offer, then move ahead to SEO.

SEO Blooper #4: Complete SEO… Decide to Change the URL

Is your web address the one you really want? Is it easy to remember? How many other sites link to you at your current address? These are all questions to ask yourself before embarking on SEO. Your web address, or URL (Uniform Resource Locator) should be clear and succinct. You may choose your name or the name of your business. You may choose a URL that describes your business and location as a keyword does, such as plumbingatlanticcity.com. A very long and complicated web address is not ideal. Since this is “where you live” on the internet, give it a lot of thought early, change the address if need be to something simple and memorable, and build from there.

A change of web address can be detrimental to SEO if no steps are taken to reach out to people whose sites link to you. It is essential to have them update their links as much as you are able. It is also important to review all internal linking within your site to update to the new URLs. Use a plugin such as Simple 301 Redirects to ensure that if someone tries to access your site via an old link, they will get to the new page rather than find a broken link to nowhere. Changing your web address is a big deal, but if you must do it, take care of it before embarking on a major search engine optimization effort.

SEO Blooper #5: Complete SEO… Immediately Move the Business to a New City

How long will your business address be at its current location? Because of the continuing importance of local SEO, this factor counts for a lot. If you own a florist shop in Tallahassee, you will want to use the city name in conjunction with your keywords to signal to Google not only the relevant and useful nature of your web content about floristry, but also where you are located. It would be counterproductive to put in the time and effort to optimize your website for Tallahassee only to relocate to Orlando soon after.

The better bet would be to research keywords for the new location before the move. The isearchfrom.com tool is useful to explore Google search results as if you are in another location. Find the keywords that bring up the strongest results for the new city, pair them with the new location, and optimize your pages for those terms. After the move, your website will already be working for you.

SEO Blooper #6: Begin SEO… Decide to Forego All Local Modifiers

You dream big. You don’t want to be tied down to a single place on the map when your products can and should be enjoyed worldwide. Are you ready to do some work that may, at first, seem counterintuitive? The use of local modifiers sometime proves confusing at first. It’s easy to imagine that if someone sees the name of a single city or small town, that they would be deterred from your site. The truth is, it is important to get the people to your web page in the first place. Because of Google’s emphasis on local search, associating your business with its primary physical location will help raise the profile.

Be aware that mentioning in your metatags that your company is based in Washington, DC, San Francisco, Silver Spring, or Kalamazoo will not make your offerings seem limited. Everyone is based somewhere. Using the other available space in your metatags, you can make it clear if your business is done online, if you have multiple locations, or if you travel around the world. Even with this knowledge, some people still opt to limit the use of local modifiers to a few pages such as the Home, About, and Contact pages. When few or no local modifiers are used, an aggressive campaign to create new content and an ongoing SEO strategy is an absolute must. Overall, it’s best to get over the fear of limitation and allow local modifiers to do their job in making your site more visible.

SEO Blooper #7: Keywords Fall Slightly in Rankings… Change Keywords

Finally, remember that search engine optimization is in a constant state of flux. Are you impatient? Like a skittish investor who sells on the first day a stock dips, it is possible to change course with SEO too soon. SEO, at its best, is a longer-term strategy for success. Don’t ditch your investment!

Search engine algorithms change frequently. One of your main online competitors may add new content allowing them to temporarily surpass you in visibility. You may post an authoritative article that puts you on Google’s page one. Soon after, you may experience a technical snafu that gives you a lower ranking.

But a dip in visibility for a keyword doesn’t mean it’s time to throw in the towel. To the contrary, it’s time to take a look at the page where the keyword used to rank higher. Was there a change in content? Is there a way you can rewrite the metatags for that page to be more effective? Could it just be a search engine anomaly that will resolve itself in a week or a month?

Give your SEO time. There will be changes in your ranking. Find ways to increase and adjust your content to make it better. Resolve any tech issues quickly. As long as you see positive momentum toward visibility over longer periods of time, even with ups and downs, you are on the right track.

Be sure of where you want to reside (on the web and in the world), solidify your content, and stick with your keywords and local modifiers over the long haul to avoid these five common SEO bloopers!

Loebig Ink is a small business consulting firm
fueled by coffee, creativity and music to provide
SEO, web design and social media solutions.