Reading Time: 2 min Keeping users engaged on your website is vitally important, but Google says it doesn’t affect your rankings. I suspect they want it to, but they don’t have a good way to tie your site engagement to the rankings. The problem for Google is two-fold: If you have Google Analytics on your website, which captures many […]
Content
I write and therefore I know
Reading Time: < 1 min In a recent episode of the “Focus on This” podcast, host Blake Stratton shared something that I found very interesting. The topic was about journaling, and how it can lead to clarity. Blake took the idea of externalization and put it like this: Usually you think, “Oh, I know and therefore therefore I write,” it’s […]
Taking an idea from a car thought to a blog post
Reading Time: 2 min Seth Godin has said repeatedly that “writer’s block is a myth”. He said it’s really more like “I have a fear of bad writing”, as he explains in this short video: However, I tend to disagree. When I sit down to write, I’m not afraid of bad writing, but I often just don’t know where […]
Collective sharing versus collective building
Reading Time: < 1 min The internet is at an interesting place right now, where sharing is becoming easier than ever, but building is becoming more elusive. As people continue to run to Facebook, Twitter, TikTok and other platforms, they’re finding it increasingly easy to share content. That’s a not a bad thing, for sure. While I work to obtain […]
500 days of blogging
Reading Time: < 1 min When I started on this back in October of 2020, I was pretty confident I’d make it through the end of that year, and even 100 in a row didn’t seem too bad. However, 500 is a different animal and I’m pleased I’ve been able to keep it up this long. Because I don’t write […]
Internal linking is crucial for your website
Reading Time: 2 min When Google reveals a bit of information about how their search algorithm works, the words they use are very important. For example, last year Google’s Gary Illyes mentioned that website speed is a “teeny tiny factor” in ranking, which came as a surprise to many people. It’s very important for user experience, but isn’t a […]
You won’t be discovered, and that’s ok
Reading Time: < 1 min Years ago, many people desired to be “discovered”, particularly in industries like music. Make some great stuff, and then hope that the right person hears it and can vault you to stardom. Those days are long gone, but it’s ok. These days, with sharing so painfully easy, any great talent will quickly be shared and […]
More content doesn’t mean more traffic, except when it does
Reading Time: 2 min If you’re striving to get your site to rank higher in Google, you often hear two big things: Google loves more content and Google loves fresh content. Neither are necessarily true, though they’re not necessarily false either. For the sake of simplicity, let’s consider “more content” and “fresh content” to be the same thing. If […]
15% of all searches on Google are still brand new
Reading Time: < 1 min Over the years, Google has frequently shared that a large percentage of the searches on their site are for phrases they’ve never seen before. This is heavily related to search queries getting longer, which I first talked about 13 years ago and continues to progress to this day. As of right now, 15% of all […]
We remember what we create
Reading Time: < 1 min Over the years, I’ve discovered that one of the best ways to learn something is to try to teach it to others. In preparing to share a concept, I’m forced to learn more about it and break it down in a way that can be understood by others. The process of doing that has incredible […]