The Counselors Concierge

08/07/2025

[Tech Tip Thursday]

While a vast majority of us are scrambling to keep up with AI, and its implications for us as both marketers and professionals, Google's Gary Illyes made a statement that AEO and AIO are 'baked into' Google's SEO modeling.

Yes, SEO is flat, and AEO/AIO, as well as GEO, give it dimension, but it seems this is one less thing with which we need to be overly concerned.

Google's Gary Illyes confirmed that AEO or GEO is not necessary. Standard SEO is all you need to rank in AI Search.

07/20/2023

[PSA Privacy Updates]

This is an email we received today from iubenda, which is the Italian company I use for generating online privacy policies for websites. Good information, all in one place. Disclaimer: There are links to iubenda in the copy, but this is not an affiliate post, nor am I personally or professionally affiliated with iubenda in any way.

4 MUST-KNOW IN DATA PROTECTION & PRIVACY LAW
NEW US PRIVACY LAWS ENFORCED FROM JULY 1ST, 2023 →
California's CPRA, Colorado's CPA and Connecticut's CTDPA are all enforced from July 1st. If you target users in these states, you likely have to comply with them. Our new features will help you meet these requirements in no time.

EU AND US STRIKE DEAL ON DATA TRANSFERS →
There's a new agreement for personal data transfers between the European Union and the United States. It's called the EU-US Data Privacy Framework, and it will allow EU companies to resume using the services of US companies that self-certify to the framework.

GOOGLE ANALYTICS 4 HAS REPLACED UNIVERSAL ANALYTICS →
Starting July 1, 2023, Universal Analytics properties has stopped processing new data. To maintain their website measurement, Google encourages its users to make the switch to Google Analytics 4. As stated by the company, this new version does not log or store IP addresses, and it includes privacy controls such as cookieless measurement, and behavioral and conversion modeling.

NORWAY TEMPORARILY BANS BEHAVIORAL ADVERTISING ON FACEBOOK AND INSTAGRAM →
Further to the fines imposed on Meta by the Irish Data Protection Commission, the Norwegian Data Protection Authority has now ordered Meta, the parent company of Facebook and Instagram, to stop showing users in Norway personalized ads. The ban will last at least three months, starting from August 4.

02/19/2023

[SEO Sunday Pro Tips]

I've been reviewing a few of the website requests made by group members and two things struck me.

First, 'about' is a stop word. A 'stop word' is not an SEO thing, it's a computer language thing. When a programming routine (in this case, the indexing algorithm(s)), hit a stop word, they literally stop processing and move on to the next subroutine. So, when you use About blah-blah-blah in your Page Titles or URLs, you are hamstringing your indexing. With that in mind, stop using 'about' on your About page. It is the one and only time your name should be your keyword, appear first in your Page title and be your URL.

Secondly, if you change a URL, you need to introduce a redirect pointing from the old URL to the new URL, otherwise your users will encounter a 'Page not Found (404)' error.

In WordPress, you do this by adding the adding the Redirection plugin. Over the years, we've found this to be the most stable and reliable.

In SquareSpace, you can find URL mapping (redirects) under Settings>Advanced>URL mappings.

12/18/2022

[PSA | Severe WordPress Vulnerability]

A number of different security platforms, including WordFence and WP Toolkit, are reporting a server-side vulnerability in WP.

The vulnerability, first reported in 2017, but recently being more vigorously exploited, allows hackers to change a domain name in a ping back, effectively pointing the originating domain to a different location.

There is no direct fix, but you can protect yourself by making sure you have WP v6.1.1 installed on your website. The earlier version of WP are vulnerable.

There are other mitigation suggestions, but it involves digging around in the WP core files, and you should do that unless you an experienced coder/programmer.

10/08/2022

[Smart SEO Saturday]

One of the more difficult pages on which to put together an effective SEO profile is the Contact page.

Recently, we've been including the No Surprises Act (NSA) language on the Contact pages of sites we're building, as well as sites we've already got in place, to help the page meet Google's 'content density' requirement.

Content density refers to the number of words on a page and the minimum for Google, as well as the other 22 indexing engines is 300. As the NSA language far exceeds that, it's possible to (1) meet the SEO requirement, (2) meet the NSA mandate and (3) inform the client of their rights.

05/22/2022

[PSA | Switching from Universal Google Analytics to G4]

In July 2023, Google will shed its Universal Analytics (UGA) and move to its G4 Analytics. While that seems like a date far in the future, but it’s right around the corner.

If you use Google Analytics, and you should, you should be making the change from UGA to GAG4 sooner rather than later. You don’t have to delete your UGA profile, and shouldn’t, but adding the GAG4 property to your GA account is essential.

It’s important to understand how central Google services are—particularly Google Analytics—to online presence, in terms of everything from SEO to Google Ads. GA, integrated with Search Console, impacts the quality of your Google Ads (optimization score), and also influences how Search Console and Tag Manager interact with your website. Google services are integrated—even enmeshed—not siloed, as most people perceive.

GAG4 is bit more opaque than UGA, so there’s a learning curve—shocking. As is consistent—and has been for decades—what’s perceived as ‘better tech’ by techies means less ease-of-use and more what I like to refer to as ‘black box’ for the rest of us. Some of these change has got even me watching tutorials and doing research.

This post is an admonition to action. I’ll follow it up with more pragmatics about how to use GAG4 in future, in particular with regard to keep your metrics clean, and not skewed by unwanted traffic.

05/12/2022

When Donna founded The Counselors Concierge, she did so based on four very clear principles—honesty, integrity, transparency and financial responsibility to the client, current or prospective. That is how she lived her life—don’t lie, show up, be real and pay your bills—and these are the pillars upon which she built this agency.

With that in mind, we are always honest with our clients. If you come up with an idea, and it’s a bad idea, we’re going to tell you. If we feel we can’t support something you’re doing, we’re going to tell you. When we do any work for you, you will never be left in the dark. If you reach out for services and we feel it’s a waste of money, we’re not only to tell you, we will not take your money.

To that point, we get daily requests for SEO/SIO work and Google Ads, which we turn down. In fact, we turned down three such requests just today, and it’s not even 11AM ET. This is where the integrity piece comes in—while some agencies are happy to take your money, we are not going to set up a Google Ads campaign that will fall flat because your website won’t support it or you don’t meet Google prerequisite requirements.

What we will do is coach you on creating a fertile ground for your success—then we will, of course, take your money and set up a Google Ads campaign or SEO/SIO framework that will kick *ss, because that’s what we do.

The point of this sort of rant is we’re on your side, not ours. Our mission is your success.

03/26/2022

[Emergency Alert for Google Chrome Users]

Update Your Browser ASAP!

Google confirms an emergency Chrome update as attackers strike

03/20/2022

[Switching to GA4 from Universal Analytics]

Google will begin sunsetting Universal Analytics — the previous iteration of Google Analytics — next year.

All standard Universal Analytics properties will stop processing new website data beginning July 1, 2023, and 360 Universal Analytics properties will stop processing new hits on October 1, 2023. Most of us use Universal Analytics. After those dates, you’ll be able to access your previously processed data in Universal Analytics for about six months.

What does this mean for you?

If you are using Universal Analytics, you need to create a new GA4 property as soon as possible. If you have created your Google Analytics account before October 2020, you’re likely using Universal Analytics. You can determine this by checking your property ID.

• Log in to your Google Analytics account.
• Select the Admin option (the little gear icon) in the bottom of the left-hand dashboard menu
• A modal (pop-up) will appear that lists all your GA accounts
• Universal Analytics property IDs start with UA, and end with a number (UA-#########-1).
• Google Analytics 4 property IDs have only numbers (#########).

Do I have to do this?

The short answer is, yes, if you are using a Universal Analytics property with an ID starting with UA and end with a number (UA-#########-1). If you are using a Google Analytics 4 property, which has only numbers (#########), no action is required.

How do I do this?

For once, Google is making things easy! When you log in to the main dashboard, there is a prompt at the top of the page, explaining what’s happening, with a link to a Setup Assistant. The Setup Assistant will gather the appropriate information from your existing GAU (Google Analytics Universal) property and set you up.

Note: If you don’t the modal describing the change, once you log in to your account, select Admin (the little gear) at the bottom of the left-hand dashboard menu, and you can access the GA4 Setup Assistant at the top of the center dashboard column.

Finishing touches

Don’t forget to add the tracking code tag information for the new GA4 account to your website. The tracking code tags for the two properties are different.

03/07/2022

[PSA | Disapproved Google Ads]

Many of you use Google Ads as part of your overall marketing strategy, whether you do it yourself or have hired a pro (recommended). Nothing is more frustrating than having ads or ad sets disapproved, because of restricted words violation(s).

Examples of restricted words are addiction, addiction treatment, substance abuse, substance abuse treatment, DUI, DUi treatment, dual dx, etc. These restrictions can be attributed to the Medic Update applied to the search algorithm in August 2018, which requires anyone offering addiction treatment in the US registered treatment center, and certified through Google, to do so.

Now, for the newest challenge. The restricted words algorithm has recently been updated to be reciprocal. With that in mind, ads get disallowed not only because restricted words are being used in the ads, but because they are also being used on the website to which the ads point. A further difficulty lies in that, it’s not just the content on the page to which an ad points, but pages using restricted words that are associated with the original page.

For instance, if an ad for ‘Help Coping with Anxiety’ goes to an Anxiety Treatment page, and that page has links to page using restricted words, the ad(s) and ad set(s) for that page will be disallowed, despite there being no restricted words on the Anxiety Treatment page. In other words, the algorithm applies the restricted word rule, not only directly, but also by association, which is why the ads having nothing to do with addiction or addiction treatment end up being disallowed.

The solution, however painful, is to remove all references to restricted words from the website, whether they are linked to ads or not.