Year: 2023

A few months ago, I asked you all to take a poll around if you have ever hurt a web site using spammy links to downgrade their rankings in Google search. The good news is that 66% of those who responded said they never tried to do so. But of those that did try, 59% said they were able to hurt a web site with spammy links and 41% said there were unsuccessful. We had 375 responses and 248 responded that they never tried doing this. But the other 127…

Read More

So let’s say you are a big fan of writing content with quotes or brackets but all of a sudden you learn about this thing called SEO [search engine optimization] and you become paranoid that your “SEO” won’t be “optimal” if you use brackets a lot of quotes or brackets. Why? Because maybe, just maybe, Google will think that “SEO” means something different than [SEO] or (SEO)? The question came up on Twitter and Pete Meyers from Moz answered it and John Mueller responded to his answer with a thumbs…

Read More

As if we didn’t already have enough to think about in any given SEO campaign, it is now imperative to separate and refine your approaches to mobile and desktop search. While mobile has become hugely significant over the last couple of years, this shouldn’t be to the neglect of desktop. Although SEO for mobile and desktop follow the same basic principles and best practices, there are nuances and discrepancies that need to be factored in to your overall strategy. Part of this is the keyword rankings: you won’t ever know…

Read More

On e-commerce sites, faceted navigation plays a critical role in allowing consumers to find the products they want quickly. Major sites normally offer a variety of filters (show a subset of products), sort orders (show products in different orders) and pagination (break long lists of products into multiple pages). From a search engine optimization (SEO) perspective, creating more pages that break out different aspects of products users might search on is generally a good thing. Offering more pages enables you to compete more effectively for the long-tail of search for…

Read More

Keyword classification is often the missing ingredient in SEO plans. Without understanding the reasons why people search, search engine optimizers will often misinterpret or improperly classify keyword phrases. How do we understand the “why” part of the optimization process? As search engine optimizers, we want to know as much as possible about our target audience so we can deliver the best search experience. To accomplish this, we address the following questions: Without understanding the reasons why people search, SEO professionals will often misinterpret or improperly classify keyword phrases. What are people…

Read More