Reading Time: 3 minOver the past decade, I’ve seen more and more blogs get rid of their comment section and simply say something like “go discuss it on Facebook”. I think that’s a bad move, at least in most cases. At a high level, it’s because I still think we need to take back our content. Taking back […]
Content
Building castles out of sand
Reading Time: < 1 minWhen it comes to building your presence online, you can build it out of rock or out of sand. Naval said it well on Twitter a few years ago after Alexander Cortes was kicked off of Twitter: Building a following on Twitter is building a castle out of sand, as the implacable tide shifts in […]
Users don’t click on your blog page, and that’s ok
Reading Time: 2 minYou’ve probably heard that having a blog on your site is a great way to increase traffic and awareness, and I wholeheartedly agree with that. However, most users that visit your site won’t go over and visit your blog page. If that’s the case, then why blog at all? Because it’s intended for everyone else. […]
Episode Zero
Reading Time: 2 minOver the past few years, it’s become popular for brand new podcasts to first publish an “Episode 0”, or something like “Introducing the xx podcast”. While introducing your podcast isn’t a bad idea, that’s not the real purpose of these initial episodes. Consistency is. The way they were built, with the exception of some shows […]
Too many internal links can be a problem
Reading Time: < 1 minWhen adding content to your website, linking from one of your pages to another can be a great thing! As I’ve mentioned before (and a great example of an internal link), Google ranks individual pages, not full sites. Internal links help Google move around your site and get a better feel for the structure of […]
Blogging isn’t a tech issue, it’s a fame issue
Reading Time: 2 minI’ve said on here quite a few times that most everyone should have their own blog, and they should use it as the central place to share their ideas. I still fully believe that, but a recent post from Manuel Moreale has me rethinking my perspective a little bit. Here was his main point: No […]
Substack for easier subscriptions
Reading Time: < 1 minIf you subscribe to this blog via email, you may have noticed a slight change in the format you receive, as I’ve recently moved the subscription part of this site to my new page at Substack. From your end, essentially nothing should be different. However, if you have your own blog or other content that […]
Google isn’t looking for tricks
Reading Time: < 1 minI’ve said for years that Google doesn’t really change the rules too often. Certainly we’ve seen a few major shifts in the last 20 years (SSL matters more, mobile functionality is huge, etc), but most of what Google looks for has been exactly the same — high quality content that your users find valuable. That’s […]
There’s room for your own island
Reading Time: < 1 minWhen people talk about the big companies online (like Google, Facebook, Amazon, Twitter, etc), it’s easy to think that they make up most of the internet. And while they’re indeed massive, they still only take up small chunks of space compared to the entire web. To help visualize this, Martin Vargic created a map of […]
It’s not about ranking first, it’s about ranking first for the right keyword
Reading Time: < 1 minMany people make it a goal to rank first in Google, and it’s not a bad plan. The problem is what you’re trying to rank first for. This is a common tactic that spammers use — they can promise you a #1 ranking as long as they don’t promise exactly what you’d be ranking #1 […]