Category: search engine optimization
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Does Content Length Predict Traffic Generated?
Alexiy asks, “What is your opinion: To maximize success with content, is it best to stay consistent with the length (how many words) and medium (blog vs video) or provide a variety for your audience?” Opinions without data are irrelevant, so let’s look at the data to make this decision. I took a sample of…
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Disrupting Cumulative Advantage in SEO
Mark Schaefer wrote up a very thoughtful analysis of an SEO framework I did recently, and he pointed out that cumulative advantage (both the sociological concept and the title of his new book) makes life difficult if you’re competing against a well-established competitor in SEO. But is all hope lost if you’re David and you’re…
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SEO 101: How Google Crawls, Indexes, and Ranks Content
There’s been quite a bit of confusion about how Google works when it comes to the process of indexing and ranking our websites, so I thought I’d take a few minutes to lay out the process as best as we know it. Much of this information comes directly from Google’s technical teams – developer interviews,…
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Understanding How Google Works for SEO
Mark writes in, "I am really struggling with the efficacy of search for most businesses. More than ever, the odds are stacked against us. 1) Some search is leaking out through Siri + Alexa 2) Most Google search (51%) is now "kept" by Google 3) You’re irrelevant unless you are in the top 1-3 slots.…
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2020 Rewind: AI and SEO Applications
Welcome to 2020 Rewind! In this series, we’re taking a look at the year that was and the wonderful shows and podcasts that had me on as a guest this past year. A fair amount of the time, I’d rather read than listen, but podcasts, live streams, webinars, and videos were how we made media…
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You Ask, I Answer: Creating Content for Search Engines?
Stephanie asks, “Should I be creating content for search engines or people?” With the advent of modern, AI-driven SEO, this is largely the same thing. Transformer-based natural language processing makes writing for people and writing for machines much closer, thanks to the way machines understand and predict. Models like BERT now understand sentences and paragraphs,…
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You Ask, I Answer: Who is an SEO Expert?
Masha asks, “What does it really mean to be an SEO expert? Considering the depth and breadth of SEO, is it even possible to be an expert on all aspects of SEO?” It depends on how we define SEO itself. SEO, or search engine optimization, is all about optimizing our digital properties to be found…
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You Ask, I Answer: Understanding BERT’s Role in SEO?
Tara asks, “With the confirmation of BERT’s role in search ranking as Google DeepRank, could you explain more what this means?” BERT is a model, which is like saying it’s a blender or a frying pan. It’s how BERT is used that impacts our understanding of its SEO impact. BERT is great at: – classification…
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You Ask, I Answer: How To Check Mobile Friendly Website?
Sasha asks, “How do you check if your website is mobile-friendly?” There are four different, easy ways to check: The Mobile Friendly Test for a single URL Search Console for site-wide checks using the mobile usability tests Search Console for site-wide mobile Core Web Vitals Google Chrome Developer Tools to check the UX Watch the…
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You Ask, I Answer: Difference Between Digital PR and Traditional PR?
Elizabeth asks, “What’s the difference between digital PR and traditional PR?” This is in reference to a set of techniques promoted by search engine companies to focus PR outcomes on SEO. In reality, there isn’t and shouldn’t be a difference. If you’re doing public relations well, the outcomes are the same. There shouldn’t be a…
