Category: Search Engine Optimization

Search engine optimization doesn’t call for much in the way of due diligence. After all, the optimization process only requires that you improve your performance. As the search environment grows and becomes more sophisticated, more complex, the opportunities for optimization increase across every active Website. Hence, you’re more likely to ignore some really basic stuff because it’s just not sexy or interesting. Here is a quick rundown of things you should be doing but probably are not. Analyze Your Site Search Query Data Site search is the step-child of Website navigation. Most people throw a Google Custom Search Engine on their sites and forget about it. Problem with that solution, however, is that the free version doesn’t tell you much about what people are searching for. If you’re going to use a site search tool you should get the most out of it. People use site search because they cannot find what they are looking for. Another way to look at this is that people cannot find what they are expecting to find when they land on your Website. Put a decent site search tool on your site that reports all your queries to you and you’ll have a rich […]

I receive a lot of questions from people about SEO. Many of the questions are naturally of a very personal nature — about specific Websites, rather than general topics. Still, once in a while some interesting questions arise out of conversations I have with clients, or they pop up in my email, or they just bring in random traffic to the blog. Here is a selection of questions people have been asking over the past few months along with my answers to them. How Complex is Google’s Algorithm? What we think of as “Google’s algorithm” is, in fact, many algorithms — probably on the order of several hundred or several thousand, depending on how far from the search box you want to dig into the Google system. In computer science an algorithm is a set of instructions that are intended to provide precise guidance on how to execute a specific task. An algorithm might be used to return today’s date in a special format. An algorithm might be used to conjure up a relatively unique number for use in a database. An algorithm might be used to store data on a hard drive (or a group of hard drives). The […]

SEO tools are the much beloved First Children of the search engine optimization industry. It’s hard to find someone who doesn’t have a favorite tool, a list of favorite tools, or who doesn’t have some anecdote about some SEO tool. Sooner or later everyone tries one or more tools. Many people fall in love with them. We turn to tools to save time, money, and frustration. Every tool vendor tells you they are solving a problem and giving you a critical advantage. Every tool tutorial is trying to sell you something. It’s the tutorials, reviews, and recommendations you have to be most skeptical about because people who write them are often looking for links, leads, or commissions. I can’t give you an unbiased review of SEO tools. I have enjoyed using some and I have often said that I think most suck. So here, instead, is my checklist of types of tools and what you should expect of them. What I hope you take away from this post is an innate sense of sketpicism. Just because 100 people write “Great post! I love this tool!” doesn’t mean they know what they are talking about. All the endorsements in the world […]

For people who are asking “what is the reason not to show cache of a website”, here is a brief rundown of possible explanations. Someone left the following comment a week ago. I have tried twice to send an email to the person but their mail service says the mailbox is unavailable. Normally I would leave matters at that but this question comes up from time to time so I thought I would write a brief article about it. To the original commenter, I hope you see this. Your site should be fine. This is off-topic, but I was wondering if you could lend me some of your SEO expertise. My website is not cached in google. The homepage and all inner pages are indexed, but none of them are cached. I was wondering if this affects whether my website is sent organic search engine traffic. Also, can you think of a few possible causes off the top of your head as to why my pages are not cached. My blog has some settings checked like “no archive.” I changed this and a few other settings yesterday, so I’ll have to way to see if that’s what’s going on. I […]