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 […]
Websites
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 […]
Digital marketing doesn’t need to lead to digital sales
Reading Time: 2 minIf you have an online store, some degree of digital marketing is essential to drive traffic and sales. On the other hand, don’t feel like digital marketing is futile if you don’t have way for visitors to transact business online. At the end of the day, marketing isn’t just about sales, but about conversions. Not […]
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. […]
Page Experience is becoming more important to Google
Reading Time: 2 minFor the past few years, Google’s “page experience” update has essentially been used as a tie-breaker. If you have features such as HTTPS on your site (which you should), or your site loads quickly (as it should), those weren’t huge ranking boosts. In fact, Google confirmed back in 2015 that HTTPS was essentially just a […]
Why did my website traffic drop?
Reading Time: 2 minI posted a few days ago about a simple change that some websites can make to cause a huge jump in traffic, and the resulting screenshots from Google Analytics show what that looks like. But what if the opposite happens? What if your traffic dips, and you need to figure out why? Google recently published […]
The magic checkbox
Reading Time: 2 minI wrote yesterday about how you should work hard not to confuse Google, and one of the things I mentioned in there was to “make sure your site isn’t doing something stupid“. While that could mean a variety of things, there is one thing that rises above pretty much all of the others, and it’s […]
Just don’t confuse Google
Reading Time: < 1 minI’ve written about Search Engine Optimization on here quite a few times over the years, as there’s a lot of details involved in it. From a high level, though, there’s really just three things: Make sure your site isn’t doing something stupid. Produce great content. Don’t confuse Google. I’ve talked a lot about the first […]
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 […]
We are nimble, not fast
Reading Time: 2 minGrowing up in Michigan in the 90’s, I was a big fan of Barry Sanders. While the Detroit Lions were always the pits, Sanders was fun to watch. If you’ve not seen him play before, you can see some amazing highlights here or check out this quick gif: Along with those great clips, though, I […]