Greg Ichshenko

Calgary SEO expert and digital marketing specialist,
developing advertising strategies for businesses of all sizes

(403) 308-5949

greg@to-the-top.ca
1509 14 Ave SW, Calgary,
AB T3C 0W4

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    What Is Google Ad Grants?

    Nonprofits bring this question up more than almost any other. Not because it is complicated. Because most organizations have never heard it exists.

    Google Ad Grants gives qualifying nonprofits $10,000 per month in Google Ads credit, the sort of account our Google Ads management handles. Free search advertising on Google. No payment required. Compliance keeps it running.

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    How to Optimize Google Ads: Practical Tips for Better Performance

    Accounts in trouble follow patterns. Budget draining on irrelevant searches. Your ads showing to people who were never going to buy. Conversions flatlined despite weeks of spend. Identifying which pattern applies to your campaigns is the starting point for any serious Google Ads optimization work.

    To-The-TOP! has been running paid search accounts since 2007. This is a practitioner’s breakdown of the changes that move performance fastest, and the common mistakes that keep accounts stuck month after month.

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    How Much Keyword Difficulty Is Good for SEO?

    Under 30. That’s the number most new sites should chase when hunting for a workable keyword difficulty score. Established sites with real backlink history can push past that, sometimes into the 50s. Score above 60 and a different fight starts, one against domains that have spent years building authority.

    Clients ask this question constantly at SEO Company To-The-TOP!. A keyword difficulty number by itself answers almost nothing. It only means something next to the actual site trying to rank. A five-year-old domain with two hundred referring links reads that number completely differently than a brand-new site launched last month.

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    What’s the Best Franchise SEO Agency for Multi-Location Businesses?

    No single agency wins that title for every chain. Site count changes the job. So does who actually controls the website, corporate or the local owner. Ten cities need something different than two hundred. A franchise SEO agency that handles a regional pizza chain well might drown managing a national fitness brand’s three hundred gyms.

    That answer frustrates people searching for a shortlist. A ranked top-five feels easier to act on. Reality doesn’t cooperate that neatly here.

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    What Does Keyword Mean in a Job Application?

    A keyword in a job application is a specific term — a skill, job title, software tool, qualification, or industry phrase — that a hiring manager or an Applicant Tracking System (ATS) scans for when reviewing resumes. Applications that contain the right keywords pass initial screening; those that do not are often filtered out before a human ever reads them.

    The term “keyword” in job applications works the same way it does in search engine optimisation: just as search engines scan web pages for relevant terms to determine what the page is about, ATS software scans your resume for terms that match what the employer specified in the job description.

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    SEO Copywriting for Humans

    No matter where or how you publish content, having a good copy online can help your website tremendously. The modern world focuses on communicating online for the most part. This is why online businesses are starting to see how SEO copywriting can help them grow their company and get to the top of their market.

    Search engine optimization (SEO) should always focus in part on copywriting if it is going to be successful. Good copy will catch the readers’ eye and be of interest to them. It will make them want to read and then act on what they read. That is why good copywriting involves using wording that persuades your audience to follow through with your desired action, such as buying your goods and services. (more…)

    IPv4 vs IPv6 in Canada: Why the Internet’s Quiet Overhaul Affects Your Business

    Discover how the shift from IPv4 to IPv6 is reshaping Canadian business, website performance, and search engine optimization. Learn practical strategies, real-world insights, and expert advice from Calgary SEO Company To-The-TOP! and Greg Ichshenko to future-proof your online presence.

    Let’s be honest – when someone starts talking about IPv4 and IPv6, your eyes might glaze over. Another tech jargon soup, you think. But here’s the thing: this isn’t just a nerdy debate about numbers. It’s about whether your website stays visible to customers in a world where the internet’s very foundation is changing. And in Canada? We’re right in the middle of this shift, whether we realize it or not.

    I’ll admit, I didn’t take it seriously either – until a client’s site suddenly dropped off Google’s first page last year. Turns out, their hosting provider had botched the IPv6 rollout, and their mobile load times tanked. That’s when it hit me: this protocol stuff isn’t abstract. It’s the difference between thriving online and becoming digital roadkill.

    IP Addresses: The Internet’s Postal System Is Running Out

    Think of IP addresses like postal codes for the internet. Every device – your phone, your smart thermostat, even that questionable Wi-Fi-enabled juicer – needs one to communicate. IPv4, the system we’ve used since the 1980s, has about 4.3 billion addresses. Sounds like a lot, right? But here’s the problem: we ran out. Years ago.

    How’d we manage? Workarounds. Lots of them. Network Address Translation (NAT) lets multiple devices share one IP-like cramming a family of five into a studio apartment. It works, but it’s messy. Connections get slower. Analytics get fuzzy (more on that later). And for businesses? It’s like trying to run a delivery service with half the addresses missing. (more…)

    What Is a Local Listing in SEO and Why It Matters

    An online record of a business. That’s a local listing, stripped down. Its name and address, published somewhere Google trusts, plus a working phone number.

    Google Business Profile. Yelp. Apple Maps. Dozens of other directories. Each one counts as a local listing.

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    What Is Keyword Mapping? An SEO Explains the Process

    A Calgary flooring client came to us in 2021 with nine blog posts chasing the same phrase. Hardwood installation. Every post nicely written. None of them ranking. Google kept swapping one URL for another in the search results, week after week, so no single page ever built momentum. That is the exact problem keyword mapping exists to solve.

    SEO Company To-The-TOP! has been mapping keywords for client sites since 2007. The process has changed less than people assume. Tools got better. The core decision stayed the same: one keyword group, one page, written down where everyone can see it. This guide covers what is keyword mapping, why it matters, and how we build a map in practice.

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    Does Hosting Location Affect SEO?

    Yes, hosting location affects SEO. Not directly. Google has never confirmed server location as a standalone ranking factor. The real path runs through speed. Geographic relevance plays a part too, and both of those move rankings plenty. A client at SEO Company To-The-TOP! once switched from a US host to a Canadian one for exactly this reason. Nothing else on the site changed that month. Rankings still moved within weeks.

    Correlation is not proof on its own. Enough cases like that one stack up across enough sites, though. The pattern is worth taking seriously. Especially for a local business chasing one country’s search results, not a global audience scattered everywhere.

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