SEO & Marketing articles

SEO & Marketing 170 The best SEO plugins for WordPress and how to choose one An SEO plugin gathers, in a single panel inside WordPress, the technical settings that help search engines...
SEO & Marketing 242 Being found on Google: Business Profile, Search Console and the basics Having a website is not the same as being found. They are different things, and the second does not happen by itself...
SEO & Marketing 207 E-mail marketing: doing it properly without burning your domain E-mail is still the channel that returns most per unit of money spent - and also the one where it is easiest to ruin...
SEO & Marketing 201 SMS marketing: Sender ID, the rules here, and how to write one that works SMS has an advantage no other channel has here: it reaches everybody, without depending on internet access, an...
SEO & Marketing 182 What Yoast SEO is, and what it actually does Yoast SEO is a WordPress plugin that gathers, into a single panel, the technical settings that help search engines...
SEO & Marketing 187 The first Yoast SEO settings to get right Yoast runs perfectly well badly configured, and that is what fools people: it looks done. These are the settings...
SEO & Marketing 173 Frequently asked questions about Yoast SEO The questions we get asked most about Yoast, with short answers. Hardly any of them are about the plugin: they are...
SEO & Marketing 221 Yoast SEO Premium and AI+: what they add, and where to buy them Yoast SEO has a paid version called Premium, and a set of artificial-intelligence features sold as AI+. They are...
SEO & Marketing 214 Getting your site indexed in Google Search Console, step by step Search Console is the free tool you use to tell Google the site exists, hand it the list of pages, and find out what...
SEO & Marketing 153 Facebook and WhatsApp show the wrong preview of your site You changed the site, shared the link, and up came the old title with the old image. Sometimes an image you never...
SEO & Marketing 109 robots.txt and sitemap.xml: what they do and how to check them They are two small files that speak to search engines, and it is very common for one of them to be wrong without...
SEO & Marketing 72 301 redirects when you change a page or a domain You changed a page’s address, deleted an article or switched domain. Anyone holding the old address (in a bookmark,...
SEO & Marketing 74 Google Analytics: setting it up and what to look at first Google Analytics tells you how many people visit the site, where they come from and what they do there. It is a...
SEO & Marketing 88 Structured data and rich results: what they are and how to add them Structured data is a block of text, hidden in the page, that tells search engines what the page is: a product, an...
SEO & Marketing 91 Why your site does not show on Google: a checklist “My site does not show on Google” can mean very different things. Google may not know it, may know it and have set...
SEO & Marketing 78 Checking that Google can see your site Opening the site in your own browser does not prove Google can open it. Google’s robot arrives from outside, is not...
SEO & Marketing 78 How to appear in near me searches when you have a local business When someone types “near me”, or a service plus their area, Google decides using three ideas it publishes itself:...
SEO & Marketing 79 How to find the words your customers type into Google Write the site with the words customers use, not the words the business uses. You do not need paid tools to find...
SEO & Marketing 96 How to write a page title and meta description that get clicked The title and the description are your page’s advert in Google’s list of results. The title says what the page is;...
SEO & Marketing 87 What a good page URL looks like, and how to change a bad one safely A good page address is short, in lower case, with hyphens between words, and says what the page is:...
SEO & Marketing 101 Internal links: how to link your own pages so nothing stays hidden Internal links are the links from one page of your site to another page of your site. They do two jobs: they take...
SEO & Marketing 93 Alt text and file names for images: what to write, and what to avoid Alt text is a short phrase that describes the image to those who cannot see it: screen readers, slow connections...
SEO & Marketing 95 Mobile-first indexing: what Google checks on the phone version of your site For some years now Google has stored and judged mostly the phone version of your pages. It is called mobile-first...
SEO & Marketing 84 A blog that brings visitors: topics, structure and how often to post A blog brings visitors when each post answers a question someone types into Google, better than what is already...
SEO & Marketing 67 Backlinks: which links help, which hurt and how to earn them honestly A backlink is a link from another site to yours. Google treats them as a recommendation: if serious, related sites...
SEO & Marketing 103 Crawl errors in Search Console: 404, soft 404 and server errors, one by one In Search Console, the Pages (indexing) report lists what Google tried to read and could not, or read and decided...
SEO & Marketing 95 The canonical tag: duplicate pages, www or not, and which address Google keeps The same content can open at more than one address: with and without www, on http and https, with a slash at the end...
SEO & Marketing 82 How to remove a page from Google results: noindex, removal tool or password It depends on what you want. For the page to stop existing, delete it and make it return 404 (or 410). For the page...
SEO & Marketing 107 Site in several languages or countries: hreflang and avoiding duplicate versions If the same site exists in Portuguese and English, or in different versions for different countries, Google needs to...
SEO & Marketing 92 Google Analytics or Search Console: which one answers which question Both are free, both are Google’s, and they are easily mixed up, but they answer different questions. Search Console...
SEO & Marketing 100 UTM links: finding out which campaign brought each visit A UTM link is a normal address on your site with tags added at the end saying where the person who clicked came...
SEO & Marketing 102 Building an e-mail list legally: consent, sign-up forms and unsubscribing A good e-mail list is built with people who asked to be on it, knowing what they were signing up for. It is the rule...
SEO & Marketing 104 Sharing on social media so it brings visits to your site Social networks are not a replacement for the site, they are a shop window that leads people to it. What you post...
SEO & Marketing 80 Landing pages: what goes on one, and why it is not your home page A landing page is the page a person arrives at after clicking an ad, an e-mail or a post, and it has a single...
SEO & Marketing 83 Online ads explained: search ads, social ads and how to start without wasting money Paying for ads brings visits for as long as you pay, unlike SEO, which takes time but stays. There are two main...
SEO & Marketing 95 Reviews and reputation: how to ask for them and how to answer the bad ones Reviews are the first thing many people read before contacting a business. They have two parts: getting more genuine...
SEO & Marketing 85 Will changing hosting hurt your Google ranking? No, as long as the site keeps answering, with the same addresses and the same content. Search engines do not rank a...
SEO & Marketing 90 Redesigning a website without losing your Google traffic A new site on top of an old one loses visitors when the pages Google knows disappear, change address without notice,...
SEO & Marketing 95 What happens to your Google ranking when your site goes down? A short, rare outage usually leaves no mark: Google tries again later. What weighs is the long or repeated one: if...
SEO & Marketing 68 How to promote a new website: a first-month plan with no ad budget A new site has no visitors because nobody knows it exists, and Google does not know it yet. The good news is that...
SEO & Marketing 24 A favicon for your site: where it goes and why it does not update The short answer: the favicon is the small icon shown on the browser tab and in bookmarks. In WordPress you set it...
SEO & Marketing 41 A coming soon or maintenance page without hurting your Google ranking The short answer: they are two different cases. For a short maintenance on a site that already exists, return the...
SEO & Marketing 52 Website statistics without Google: Matomo on your hosting, or Plausible on a VPS The short answer: to know how many people visit your site you do not have to hand the data to Google. Matomo does...
SEO & Marketing 54 Photos for your website: where to get them legally and what to credit The short answer: an image you find on the internet is not free just because it is there. For your site, use photos...
SEO & Marketing 64 Google Tag Manager and tracking pixels: adding them without slowing your site The short answer: Google Tag Manager is a dashboard where you keep, in one place, the tracking codes of your site...
SEO & Marketing 48 Is your website accessible? Six checks anyone can do The short answer: an accessible site is one that also works for people who do not see well, cannot tell colours...
SEO & Marketing 47 Popups and banners on your site: when they help and when Google punishes them The short answer: a popup that covers the content as soon as the person arrives from Google, especially on a phone,...
SEO & Marketing 62 What goes on your home page: five things a visitor looks for in the first ten seconds The short answer: whoever lands on your home page decides within seconds whether to stay. They need to find, without...
SEO & Marketing 72 Writing your About page: what to say, what to leave out and how long it should be The short answer: the “About us” page is one of the most visited on a site, because someone deciding whether to...
SEO & Marketing 70 Do you need a website if you already have Instagram or Facebook? The short answer: social networks are great for being seen and talking, but the page belongs to whoever runs them,...
SEO & Marketing 55 Colours, fonts and a logo for a small business website: simple rules that avoid a messy look The short answer: a site that looks careful does not need a designer: it needs few choices, repeated consistently....
SEO & Marketing 62 Making money with a website: the honest options, and what each one asks of you The short answer: a website does not make money just by existing. It makes money when it helps you sell something to...
SEO & Marketing 66 Before you publish your website: a ten-point launch checklist The short answer: the day the site goes live is the worst day to find out the form does not work. These ten checks...
SEO & Marketing 55 A contact page that gets used: what to put on it The short answer: the contact page is the one a customer who has decided looks for before buying. If they do not...
SEO & Marketing 44 Writing a FAQ page that answers real questions The short answer: a FAQ page is only useful if it has the questions customers really ask, not the ones the company...
SEO & Marketing 40 Good photos for your business with just a phone: six simple rules The short answer: a recent phone takes photographs good enough for a website, if the light, the background and the...
SEO & Marketing 42 Showing prices on your site: when to publish them, when to show a starting price and when to ask for a quote The short answer: publish the price whenever you can: someone who does not find it usually leaves, or assumes it is...
SEO & Marketing 47 A helpful 404 page: what it should say and how to check it works The short answer: the 404 page is what a visitor sees when the address does not exist. A good one says so clearly,...
SEO & Marketing 56 Counting what visitors do: events and key events in Google Analytics The short answer: knowing how many people visited the site says little. What matters is how many did what you want:...
SEO & Marketing 45 Breadcrumbs on your site: what they do for visitors and for Google The short answer: breadcrumbs are the small line at the top of a page that shows the path: Home > Products > Chairs...
SEO & Marketing 50 Query strings explained: what comes after the question mark, and what it changes The short answer: everything after the ? in an address is the query string: name=value pairs separated by &, up to...
SEO & Marketing 59 The slash at the end, capital letters and index.html: one page at several addresses The short answer: to a browser and to Google, /contact, /contact/, /Contact and /contact/index.html are four...