While it is convenient to speak of “the Google algorithm” there is no single Google algorithm. Google has tried to explain this time and again. Even if you only consider the ranking system Google uses many algorithms. If you restrict the…
Most of the listings (well over 90%) in every query’s search results never receive any clicks. While people constantly argue that you should rank 1st for your targeted queries, most people never click on the 1st result. Search engine marketing isn’t…
What’s the first thing you do when you evaluate a Website’s SEO problem? Now go find a Web forum where someone just asked for help with an SEO problem and give yourself 10 minutes to find the problem. You don’t…
What would cause a continued gradual week by week decline in search referral traffic after a major Google algorithm update has supposedly finished? This is a real question I found on the Web, asked by a frustrated Website owner who…
If there is a single “staple” function or service offered by the search engine optimization industry, it has to be the Website audit. Everything begins there. When a company takes on a new SEO provider, the first thing the provider…
Fundamental search engine optimization never changes. You only have three things to work with: content, links, and measurement. Content should come first. Links and measurement should come together. People who are impatient or who lack faith in the quality of…
Google updates its search system 10-15 times a week. Bing updates its search system maybe 10-20 times per month. Unfortunately Bing is less open about how its search engine works, but we can be sure of one thing: Bing does…
There are many discussions about search engine optimization on social media: you’ll find them on Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, and more traditional Web forums. The most popular SEO bloggers are essentially running discussion forums in their comment sections, too. It’s easy…
Crawl management is integral to search engine optimization. And yet crawl management is so poorly explained by the Web marketing community that many sites mismanage crawl. What should be one of the fundamental areas of search engine optimization has been…
What makes an SEO technique “advanced”? That’s a question I ask myself every year. A lot of the “advanced” methods I first shared ten years ago, while still relevant today (because good SEO doesn’t change), are so widely used now…
I should create a “Bad SEO Advice” category and collect all the articles I have written about it through the years in one place. There are days when I am tempted to go back and “update” old articles about bad…
Googler Gary Illyes declared that unless otherwise given a name by Google ALL of their search “updates” will be referred to as “Fred”. He was joking but, honestly, I like that. Some years ago I wrote a brief article titled…
