One fake negative Google review appears, then an email threatens many more unless you pay for a “review monitoring service.” That’s extortion. This 2025 alert explains how the scam works, why you shouldn’t reply to the review or the email, why you should never pay, and how fake reviews can get removed.
When the economy slows, marketing is often the first budget to get cut. This 2025 post makes the case for staying visible instead, with low-cost ideas like supporting local non-profits or teaching a class through your library or chamber, and a reminder to show your experience, expertise, authority and trustworthiness.
Free trials you can’t cancel, surprise fees at checkout, pre-checked boxes and buttons that say “No thanks, I hate saving money.” These are dark patterns, and laws like California’s CPRA and the EU’s GDPR now restrict them. Here’s how to spot them when you shop online and how your business can keep them off its own website.
A good-looking website still has to get visitors to act. This guide covers setting clear goals for your site, the awareness, consideration and decision stages a customer moves through, common sources of friction like slow pages and long forms, personalization, and using analytics and feedback to see where people drop off.
Wild Iris designed the official logo for Evergreen’s 150th anniversary, working alongside the Evergreen Chamber of Commerce. Here’s how the design came together around Evergreen Lake, the surrounding mountain peaks and the town’s namesake evergreen trees, with colors drawn from the forests, the lake and the mountains of a town whose history goes back to 1875.
Big agencies often build websites from the same template, whether the client is a medical office, a ranchland realtor or a pool equipment store. Here’s what that one-size-fits-all approach costs industry-specific businesses in SEO, usability, compliance and brand identity, and what to ask an agency so your website is built around your customers.
If a marketer guarantees sales or promises page one of Google overnight, be wary. This post covers the warning signs of a marketing con, why your domain and social media accounts should always stay in your name, and the questions to ask (plus a small first project to try) before you sign a bigger contract.
This December 2024 post covers the FTC’s then-new rules on online reviews, which ban buying fake reviews, hiding negative feedback and undisclosed incentives, with penalties up to $51,744 per violation. It explains what that means on Google, Facebook and your own website testimonials, and how to clean up old reviews and ask for honest ones.
Keyword research often means scrolling through thousands of spreadsheet rows. Wild Iris built a free tool that plots your SEMrush or Ahrefs keywords by search volume and difficulty, so you can filter out the junk, spot targets you can actually win and export a clean list or PDF. Your data never leaves your browser.
A website farm in another state or country doesn’t know your town’s landmarks, events or the words your customers search for. This 2024 post compares that approach with hiring a local web developer: real photos instead of recycled stock images, local SEO, face-to-face support, and a site that can grow with your business.
Business owners call us in a panic after losing access to their social media accounts, and recovery isn’t guaranteed. This checklist covers free steps to prevent that, from keeping ownership of your business accounts and turning on two-factor authentication to having two admins and never sharing a verification code.
Setting aside just 2 to 3 hours a month for marketing can save you time and money. This guide walks through SMART goals, content themes, choosing channels and posting frequency, tools as simple as Google Calendar or pen and paper, batching your content and checking analytics, with a three-month commitment to get you started.
You don’t need unlimited resources. You need to make the resources you have work harder.
Or call (720) 526-3636. The first consultation is free.
