On my SEO Emails section (where I share helpful responses to commonly asked queries) I recently shared a not uncommon occurrence, where a site owner gets the SEO work delivered and then blames the work for causing problems with the front-end of the site. It’s actually very rare for that to happen. On-site SEO has [Continue Reading]
Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS) for SEO & Speed
Right, this is an interesting one. It’s technical, but has a very simple main recommendation (in large text, below). Google has started to include something they’re calling CLS in their ranking metrics. Essentially it means ‘how long before elements loading on the site stop moving around’, and their target is just 0.25 seconds. If things [Continue Reading]
Large Google Algorithm Update
We’ve seen another core update from Google to their algorithm. They usually make updates of this size a few times a year – not usually over the New Year period but this hasn’t exactly been a normal year by any measure. Bulk analysis of tens of thousands of sites has revealed which industries were affected [Continue Reading]
Case Study: Turning SEO work off
I had a client recently who (for reasons exclusively to do with the inexperience of their website’s designer) turned off one of the SEO plugins I had installed and configured for them. It happened shortly after I carried out an initial SEO overhaul on their site, so gives us a valuable insight into the effect [Continue Reading]
BERT is Google’s latest update
There’s been a number of news stories about the BERT update from Google. These were followed by a slew of other stories about how the previous ones were misleading. Let’s explain. If we go back several years to what was a very big announcement from Google – they turned on something they called RankBrain. At [Continue Reading]
Crawled – currently not indexed
This is a creative use of Google Search Console I’ve come up with for some easy SEO wins And it’s been working really well on all my testing sites. Google Search Console (GSC) is Google’s official stats system for organic search, and has the most useful data about your site’s ranking, visits, clicks, etc. They [Continue Reading]
Homepage FAQ structured data to improve your SEO rank
Using FAQs on your site to get extra traffic from search results Google loves a good Q&A, and they’re great for your search engine optimisation. This is an excellent technique that Google has been responding to very positively recently. It involves a fairly interesting type of structured data. Structured data is a series of tags [Continue Reading]
There are still plenty of SEO cowboys out there
I’m regularly amazed at the poor quality of SEO work I come across daily. And the attitude of the cowboys that do it is just shocking. I recently had an exchange with a potential SEO client. At least they thought they were a potential client. Before I begin I should point out about 70% of [Continue Reading]
Search Engine OptimiSation or Search Engine OptimiZation
SEO is SEO, but when you’re advertising the different forms of English can get in the way. I work with people all around the world, but there’s quite a bit more to achieving that than you might think. Being able to sell services around the world from the comfort of your own office is fantastic. [Continue Reading]
Backlinks are great for SEO but only if they’re legitimate
All off-site SEO basically comes down to is creating backlinks. Directory listings, local citations, they’re all much the same when it comes to it. Backlinks help if they’re legitimate – which means someone likes your site and has a proper reason to link to it. Any attempt to manipulate your own link profile goes against [Continue Reading]