I know what it is like to be a reluctant entrepreneur. Back in 2014, when I first started thinking about Starling Bank, if anyone had told me, “Ah, so you are going to be an entrepreneur,” I’d have said, “Absolutely not.” I was similarly reluctant to use the word “founder.” Growing up, I always believed … Read more
The B2B marketplace has evolved rapidly in recent years due to various global factors, with the pandemic and economic turbulence being the top drivers. As a result, there has been a notable change in both marketer and buyer priorities in recent years. Speaking with our clients and partners, I have observed that in 2024, marketers’ … Read more
Google’s Gary Illyes confirmed at a recent search marketing conference that Google needs very few links, adding to the growing body of evidence that publishers need to focus on other factors. Gary tweeted confirmation that he indeed say those words. Background Of Links For Ranking Links were discovered in the late 1990’s to be a … Read more
Social media influencers are prominent figures. They dominate the online world and social apps we use daily to become household names. Social media platforms have elevated individuals around the world to reach an audience of millions, with YouTube, Instagram, TikTok, and X (formerly Twitter) all boasting users in the tens of millions – and in … Read more
Recently, there has been a lot of discussion about Ad Strength in Google Ads, including debate about its value, how it works, whether it plays a role in the auction (it doesn’t), and how to think about it in your accounts. Like almost everything in paid advertising, there’s nuance to Ad Strength. No, it’s not … Read more
Whether you are new to paid media or reevaluating your efforts, it’s critical to review your performance and best practices for your overall PPC marketing program, accounts, and campaigns. Revisiting your paid media plan is an opportunity to ensure your strategy aligns with your current goals. Reviewing best practices for pay-per-click is also a great … Read more
In a Google Office Hours podcast, Google’s Gary Illyes answered a question about 404 Page Not Found errors that coincided with a drop in rankings. Fake External 404 Errors There are probably many reasons for 404 errors created by bots. One reason for those error responses could be that they are originating from automated scanners … Read more
Google’s John Mueller answered a question about a WordPress site that was completely deindexed from Google Search after changing to a different web hosting platform. Mueller’s answer shows where to start investigating the reasons why that happens. Dropped From Index After A Site Migration A submitted question to the Google Office Hours podcast related that … Read more
Programmatic advertising has been a buzzword in the marketing industry for quite some time. But what does programmatic actually do? And how does it differ from traditional display marketing? Programmatic advertising is a perfect realm where precision meets automation, and where your ads reach their perfect audience – almost as if by magic. Gone are … Read more
Google’s John Mueller answered whether having two sites could negatively affect search rankings. His answer is surprisingly applicable to different ways of interpreting the question. Can Having Two Sites Affect Rankings? A person submitted a question to Google where they wanted to know if having two sites could negatively affect their rankings. The question as … Read more
Google’s Gary Illyes answered if switching web hosting platforms could result in a negative outcome for rankings and SEO. It’s a reasonable question because migrating a site to a new web host involves multiple technical factors that can go wrong and have an immediately negative effect. What Does Changing A Website Host Entail? Changing web … Read more
WordPress powers hundreds of millions of websites, but it is not the only content management system (CMS) option. There’s a diverse marketplace of publishing platforms for those seeking alternatives. This review provides an overview of 25 leading alternatives to WordPress across key website categories. We explore user-friendly website builders like Wix, Squarespace, and Weebly, which … Read more
Meta’s AI assistant, powered by the new Llama 3 model, will now incorporate real-time search results from Google and Bing. This integration marks a step forward in AI assistant capabilities and their potential impact on the search industry. You can access Meta AI within Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp, Messenger, and the newly launched Meta.ai desktop experience. … Read more
The internet is constantly changing, with websites appearing and disappearing and information being added or removed constantly. This makes it hard for people who study and analyze the internet or businesses to control their online appearance. It’s easy for things to get lost or vanish entirely. But there’s good news! There are web archives, like … Read more
WordPress security scanner WPScan’s 2024 WordPress vulnerability report calls attention to WordPress vulnerability trends and suggests the kinds of things website publishers (and SEOs) should be looking out for. Some of the key findings from the report were that just over 20% of vulnerabilities were rated as high or critical level threats, with medium severity … Read more
Searchers who expect a website to always be available may be disappointed to encounter a 503 status code. However, brief downtime is perfectly acceptable. During the April edition of the Google Search Central SEO office hours, a question was raised about the potential impact of intermittently serving 503 “Service Unavailable” status codes. Gary Illyes, a … Read more
Mozilla has implemented a performance upgrade to its Firefox web browser that could translate into faster website load times – welcome news for SEO professionals and their clients. The technical details involve moving certain tasks, specifically decompression of gzip and brotli content, away from the browser’s main processing thread. While this might sound complex, the … Read more
Google has ended support for the video carousel (limited access) markup documentation and the associated rich results because after testing the structured data they realized that it wasn’t useful at scale. Site publishers who use this specific structured data don’t necessarily have to remove it, other search engines may find it useful. However, Google won’t … Read more
