SEO and Digital Marketing

If you’ve ever sat in a meeting and not understood a word of what that person responsible for your website is saying, if you’ve ever thought “that doesn’t sound right” but not known what questions to ask, if you’ve ever stared at a graph or a report and realised that you didn’t know if it meant things were getting better or worse, if you’ve ever had that nagging dread that you’re handing money over to someone and not getting a return on it… this is the book for you.

Backed with over a decade of knowledge accumulated working on SEO, website design, eCommerce, and digital transformation across a wide range of industries, The Truth About SEO is the book that every business owner should have – and every SEO consultant should worry about.

What's Gone Wrong With Shopify?

It's been a while since I looked at Shopify. One of the darlings of lockdown, Shopify promised to make every Joe Schmo the next Jeff Bezos with an easy-to-use and powerful eCommerce platform at a rock-bottom price. No inventory? No problem! YouTube was awash with adverts from self-made millionaires who had made their fortunes drop-shipping products in from China and who now wanted nothing more than to share "their secrets" with you... for a price.

No more The Truth About SEO at The Truth About SEO

As part of my Big SEO Experiment, I've been getting rid of my now unused domains as I centralize content here at chrislynch.link.

DMCA request kills Moz in Google Search index

A little while ago I wrote about how easy it was to launch a DMCA (Digital Millenium Copyright Act) complaint against a website and how writers and other creatives could use this to get websites that were stealing their content removed from the Google index. (And, if you're not on Google, frankly you aren't anywhere...)

Did the web get to big for Google to Google?

In their article "Google Considers Reducing Webpage Crawl Rate", Search Engine Journal reported that Google may soon visit websites to look for new and updated content a lot less frequently than it currently does. It's an interesting article because none of the talking heads from Google really comes clean on just why they are considering this... but I think I might have the answer. I've definitely got a theory...

Google's John Mueller gives... Jurassic Park SEO Advice?

The Jurassic Park Test was one of the first pieces of SEO advice I wrote. It was one of the first chapters I wrote for The Truth About SEO and one of the first videos I recorded for YouTube. Here I am, all the way back in 2019 waxing lyrical about dinosaurs and their relevance to SEO... (God, I looked younger back then!)

Google lights blue touch paper on Page Experience for desktop

The clock is now officially ticking for any website developers who've been saying "Page Experience only affects mobile" to clients, with Google setting their deadline for when it will start to roll Page Experience into desktop search as a ranking factor. It's coming, and it's coming in February 2022.

Trust, Truth and The Truth About SEO

So, we're going to have a change of pace around here...

Why does Google Rank Plagiarism Over Original Content?

Another day, another answer that isn't an answer from Google's resident genie John Mueller. I'm pretty sure that in a previous life Mueller would have made an excellent soothsayer, fortune teller, or carnival psychic. There's just enough content for you to think you're getting answer... but in reality you're getting anything but.

Google reduces Featured Snippets/FAQs to two results

Google don't seem able to make their mind up on Featured Snippets and FAQs. At one point, they were everywhere, then they vanished for a bit, and now they're back - but curtailed to two results per query.

Keep Unique Content Above the Fold

Like the killer in an 80s slasher movie, The Fold just won't die. What is it? It's the invisible dividing line between what you can see when you first load up a webpage and what lies out of sight until you scroll downwards. Web designers used to obsess about the fold and what was, and wasn't above it.

DuckDuckGo’s Chrome extension blocks Google’s controversial new FLoC tracking technique

DuckDuckGo, the privacy loving search engine, has taken aim directly at Google's new FLoC technology with a Chrome extension that promises to protect your privacy by deactivated FLoC IDs.

How many links do you need? Well, over 65% of web pages have no backlinks at all.

I'm a firm believer that any statement that begins "A question I'm often asked is..." is usually a total lie. Nobody has asked you about that thing, people aren't even often asking you stuff, it's just a lead in to a topic you want to talk about.

Google really, really wants you to know that it sends more traffic to the open web every year. Really.

In an earlier post, I looked back to the furore that Rand Fishkin and SparkToro created when they claimed that two-thirds of Google searches resulted in no clicks in 2020. As I surf the web, I often share interesting links to my blog(s) as draft posts to come back to later and write up into a full post. Clearing through my backlog today, I came across this absolute gem from around the time of the ZeroClickPocalypse - Google's own Danny Sullivan taking the time out his schedule to publically call out the zero-clicks research and give Google's side of the story.

Google say: It's Fine if 30-40% of URLs in Search Console are 404s

Your website will throw a 404 error if someone tries to go to a webpage that isn't there. Also known as "broken links", 404s are generally considered to be bad for SEO.

Is Google killing Featured Snippets?

I've made no secret of my dislike of Featured Snippets. This week there was some good news that maybe, just maybe, Google was turning back the clock and dropping Featured Snippets from search.

Why Long Title Tags Are, and Aren't, an SEO problem

I always find it interesting when Google let out little nuggets of information that either confirm or debunk long held beliefs in the SEO industry. (It's important to remember that the vast majority of what we call "best practice" in the SEO industry is really belief - we have so few facts to go on most of the time!)

Google Says Total Number Of Links Is Completely Irrelevant For SEO

For approximately the three thousand and forty-seventh time, Google have said that counting the links coming into your website is pointless. The total number It's a question, and answer, we'll over twenty years old... so why are people still asking about this?

Is a decentralised Twitter the future of social media?

Governments have been playing catch up with technology for as long as I can remember, the statute book taking more time to write to than a 3.5" floppy disk. But they are catching up and after the Cambridge Analytica scandal, Brexit, and Trump in the Whitehouse legislators are keen to ensure that social media companies come to heel and start exercising some control of the information being spread through their platforms.

Google: Duplicate Content is Not a Negative Ranking Factor

The reaction of the average SEO to duplicate content is pretty much the same as Bella Lugosi's reaction to some open curtains and a wonderful sunrise, but it's actually not quite a big a problem as you might think. For once, I'm going to tell you to put a little faith in Google and the other search engines to be able to tell good duplication from bad duplication.

A prediction on search, Apple, and 2021...

Prediction: Apple's rollout of "Ask App Not To Track" is the opening volley of a war with online advertising providers. Apple has been quietly building a search engine for years; it is preparing to disengage from Google and start to provide its own search & ads platform.