My initial attraction toward SEO and the web was largely that it was like a new and parallel world that bypassed many traditional gatekeepers. I wrote an ebook which originally had inconsistent formatting and it was riddled with spelling and grammar errors. I learned to write by writing poorly and often while reading great [...] Continue reading →

Google, Google, Google For well over a decade Google has dominated search to where most stories in the search sphere were about Google or something on the periphery. In 2019 Google generated $134.81 billion in ad revenues. When Verizon bought core Yahoo three years ago the final purchase price was $4.48 billion. That amount [...] Continue reading →

This year is a rather easy year to be depressed. ;) COVID-19, fearmongering media, polarized hyper-charged social media, mass unemployment, lockdowns that killed exercise routines and social connections, loss of hope / purpose / meaning, a guy who stuck a gun in the belly area of a pregnant woman overdosing on fentanyl shortly after he [...] Continue reading →

Late Funnel SEO Profits Before the Panda update SEOs could easily focus almost all their energies on late funnel high-intent searches which were easy to monetize without needing to put a ton of effort into brand building or earlier funnel informational searches. This meant that SEOs could focus on phrases like [student credit cards] or [...] Continue reading →

Links = Rank Old Google (pre-Panda) was to some degree largely the following: links = rank. Once you had enough links to a site you could literally pour content into a site like water and have the domain's aggregate link authority help anything on that site rank well quickly. As much as PageRank was [...] Continue reading →

To Teach, One Must Learn One of the benefits of writing is it forces you to structure your thoughts. If you are doing something to pass a test rote memorization can work, but if you are trying to teach someone else and care it forces you to know with certainty what you are teaching. [...] Continue reading →

Historically cloaking was considered bad because a consumer would click expecting a particular piece of content or user experience while being delivered an experience which differed dramatically. As publishers have become more aggressive with paywalls they've put their brands & user trust in the back seat in an attempt to increase revenue per visit. [...] Continue reading →