I've often given the advice that you shouldn't have multiple websites. The exception: when you should have separate websites When does this advice that you should always have one site, and …
2x search traffic with content organization
The case is for an interior design ecommerce site with three phases of work, with each seeing a significant corresponding lift. And it's almost all relevant to experts serving audiences with …
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The SEO fix
-or- how not to get massive traffic and what to do instead The idea that SEO is something you can "fix" is a bit of a myth. I describe the three types of SEO work and a brief exercise you can do …
Website audit with ScreamingFrog crawl data and Neo4j
This is a nice peek into how powerful graphs are for site audits and how these capabilities are coming along for those interested in content audit + ongoing recommendations service. I'm chipping …
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Prioritizing internal redirects to fix
I spent about 20 hours trying to figure out how to properly load some crawl data into a graph database over the past two weeks. Once I hit bottom and gave up, I got the answer within 5 minutes of …
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Solving SEO crawl report issues
Automatic crawl report tools generally give a dump of data. The better ones will seek to prioritize critical issues over items worth further investigation but generally you end up with a dashboard of …
Multiple sites, subdomains, and other bad decisions
I'm designing a content audit with ongoing recommendations product. I'm looking for sites to help inform and direct what that looks like. Because this is a beta, I'm pricing it at $500/month. If …
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Thinking through a better content audit process
The way site audits are typically done hasn't changed much in the past five years. New and better tools come out, but they still seek to analyze the same things: content and links as it relates to …
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Making internal linking easier
Yesterday I spent a couple minutes looking for an old post to reference. My headings weren't clear. Wordpress site search wasn't cutting it. A site: search in Google wasn't surfacing it. Couldn't …
Content quality [cheatsheet]
If you never read another article about SEO or advice on how to optimize your site for search, this is what I would want you to know. The way SEOs approach understanding SEO is based on: what …
Privilege and ethics in SEO
I follow a lot of people I look up to on Twitter. With few exceptions, it's a delicately curated list of people I respect the most in (mostly) marketing/design related fields. But, and I'm not sure …
Quick tips to improve internal linking for WordPress sites
Half the internet runs on Wordpress. So the common issues that arise with having a Wordpress site are pretty widespread. Wordpress was originally designed to be a blogging platform so content …
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SEO is snake oil.
In the mid 1800s Southeastern Chinese migrant workers came over in droves to work on the Transcontinental Railroad. They brought a variety of Eastern medicines over, including snake oil. After a …
How low traffic is your fault
I've been feeling bad for experts with low traffic on their content. The solopreneurs beaten down by tech monopolies and overfunded startups with quarterly inbound marketing budgets bigger than …
Your SEO regimen
In a previous email I shared the two basic phases to SEO: initial and ongoing work and in that email focused on initial phase. I've been working through why SEO doesn't work for experts and what we …
Social versus search for content visibility
In response to a recent email around objections to doing SEO like the high amount of uncertainty or not having the resources, Bob Lalasz of Science+Story shared another common objection he hears from …
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The two phases of SEO
SEO, as it's currently approached, doesn't work for experts. There are two phases to approaching SEO: initial and ongoing. Today we'll go over the initial phase. This is a one-off that typically …
“I don’t have the resources to do SEO”
There's a host of reasons most experts do not do SEO. We covered a first reason of uncertainty, but it's more than that. The know-how, the time, the team, the budget to hire an agency, whatever it …
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Dealing with uncertainty in search.
Things that work for one site are tanking traffic on another. There are no more "best practices." There is no list of things anyone can tell you to do for guaranteed or even predictable …
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Part 3: The new SEO best practices
Many "best practices" have come under threat as more and more "wins" do not hold across sites. They are situational, not reproducible. That lack of portability means there is no free lunch. Most …
Part 2: How influence is measured on the web
How did Google blow all other search engines out of the water almost overnight? PageRank. You've heard of it. It appears to be one of the most influential innovations in information retrieval and …
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Part 1: Why understanding “search” matters
This is part one of a series on demystifying Google for audience-first content experts Why understanding "search" mattersWhat PageRank actually isGoogle search engine (a brief history of …
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Actually, CDNs are probably bad for image SEO
In doing some work for a client, all their Jetpack stuff was configured for images to load via i2.wp.com or some variation (Jetpack seems to be a go-to for offshore Wordpress dev resources of which …
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Steps toward being more strategic with your content
When you go from writing content on instinct to planning content with a strategy, a bunch of questions will pop up to create resistance to the new approach. Inevitably you'll want to know: what …
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