Reading Time: < 1 minAs time has gone on, and our search engine patterns have changed, a big new trend is beginning to emerge: people are using Google for branded searches more than ever before. Put another way, people are searching for “Nike” instead of “best running shoes”, or “GreenMellen” instead of “web design companies in Atlanta”. People are […]
Websites
Users with disabilities are visiting your website
Reading Time: < 1 minIt’s getting increasingly difficult to track how users are finding your website, but there is one thing I can guarantee — users with disabilities are visiting your site, and you should be prepared to serve them accordingly. I was talking with a (now former) client a few years ago, urging her to do more work […]
The WordPress drama shows why WordPress remains the best choice
Reading Time: 2 minOver the last few months, the WordPress community has been a bit of a mess. The short version of the “mess” is that Matt Mullenweg (the man behind WordPress) is not happy with WP Engine (a major host of WordPress sites) and it’s causing a lot of fallout. My friend Aaron has a great timeline […]
97% of web pages get zero traffic from Google
Reading Time: 2 minThings are changing quickly when it comes to getting your site to rank well on Google. A big one, as I shared a few months ago, is that 64% of visitors that use Google never end up visiting a traditional website, instead getting the answer from Google itself or from a related Google product (Maps, […]
The evolution of websites
Reading Time: 2 minThe internet is changing rapidly, thanks to big shifts in social media and the ongoing wave of AI. Websites have largely remained the same in recent years, staying strong as the home for every business on the internet. I don’t think that will be changing anytime soon, but the nature of the sites themselves may […]
Creating “zero click” content
Reading Time: 2 minAs I mentioned a few weeks ago, a growing problem with Google is the number of “zero click” searches on there — searches that don’t lead to another click, because Google answered the question for you. It’s generally a good thing for users, but it’s a bad thing for companies wanting to get more website […]
The majority of Google searches don’t lead to websites
Reading Time: 2 minIt’s a trend that has been growing for years, but the number of “zero-click” searches on Google continues to grow (where a zero-click search is one where the user doesn’t ever click through to a website). In a recent post on the SparkToro blog, Rand Fishkin points out that in 2024 only 360 of every […]
All of your old Google Analytics data will vanish on July 1
Reading Time: < 1 minIn the last move of Google’s weird switch from “Universal Analytics” (“UA”, the Google Analytics that everyone has used for years) to “Google Analytics 4” will happen in just a few weeks. For those not familiar with this, Google Analytics is software used to track information about your website visitors, and Google made a massive […]
There’s still a world outside these walls
Reading Time: 3 minFor those of you over 40, you can likely still remember the “good old days” on the internet, back when people set up their own places to visit, rather than relying on a handful of huge companies trying to lock your attention inside of their walls (which is very likely how you found this post). […]
Blogs are still among the highest-ranking pages
Reading Time: < 1 minWhile it’s been well-established that users don’t click on the “blog” page for most sites, having those posts can still be incredibly valuable. The purpose of most blogs (not this one) are to drive people to the website via Google search, and then lead them to the pages that matter (registration, purchase, etc). For those […]