About one year ago, last August 2014, I moved this site from HTTP to HTTPs, and several weeks afterwards I updated the status of traffic, page views, and time on site. Several weeks after moving I some pretty good results, which I believe was a result of my moving from HTTP to HTTPs. A year later, let’s look at what I’ve accomplished over the past year, and if we can tell if it was worth it to move. [Read more…]

As a US Brand Ambassador for Majestic.com, you probably already know that I’m a big fan of their product, and use it on a daily basis. And as I use it, I am always coming up with new, innovative ways to use the Majestic data. It’s not just about seeing what links are pointing to your website. You can, for example, use Majestic to analyze your disavow file before you submit it. Here is why you would want to do that, and how to review your disavow file. [Read more…]

Wow, how times have changed. The search engine optimization industry has changed. And I bet it will continue to change and evolve as it has been over the years. Did you know that half of the search engine optimization techniques that were used only 5 years ago (maybe even 3 years ago) are now considered to be spam? Most of those SEO techniques are now listed in Google’s Webmaster Guidelines as being unacceptable. The are grounds for an algorithmic penalty or even worse: a manual penalty from Google. [Read more…]

Today, as I was browsing the web for some Super Bowl XLIX Advertising insights to post here on my blog, I came across one of the advertisers’ websites, Papa John’s. While looking at the Alexa What’s Hot page this afternoon to see what everyone on the web is viewing right now, I noticed something interesting: the entry for Papa John’s home page includes an index.html file in the URL. [Read more…]

There is nothing about Negative SEO in Google’s Webmaster Guidelines. Are you surprised? Well, I am, and I am not. After a review of Google’s Webmaster Guidelines, from what I can tell, there are no actual references to the practice of Negative SEO. The guidelines all point to issues related to your website–but there are no references about doing something to your competitor’s websites that would cause their website to lose search engine rankings or get penalized.

I was talking last night with Brian Reagan from the Better Business Bureau in Dallas, and he asked me if there is anything in the Google Webmaster Guidelines regarding Negative SEO. If there were references to Negative SEO, then the BBB could theoretically point these out to their member companies reminding them of it. But, after a thorough review of Google’s Webmaster Guidelines, I do not see any specific reference to Negative SEO, and I don’t see any references that would even remotely insinuate that there could be a manual action placed upon your website for doing something to your competitor’s website–such as Negative SEO. [Read more…]

The Google cache date on most web sites have now been updated, after having not being updated for over a month. This is a rather significant update, I think, as normally the Google cache date is typically updated on a regular basis. But in the past few weeks, it had not been updated in over a month. [Read more…]

It appears that many Google cache dates are showing that they are about a month old. This is odd behavior, as typically for most websites that are active, the Google cache date in the search results will only be a few days old. Or, it typically would be updated either the previous day or within the past few days. [Read more…]

Last week, on September 26th, I presented at the Little Rock Tech Fest, held in Little Rock, Arkansas. The topic was SEO for Web Developers or simply SEO for Developers. The site UserGroup.TV was there, and recorded just about all of the presentations and put them online. If you weren’t at the conference, or were unable to see my session, then you can watch the video right here on the web. [Read more…]

Ever since I’ve started using Wordfence here on my site, which has been at least for a year or so now, I have been a big fan. I use the paid option, and am very happy with it. But since I’ve been making major enhancements on the site lately, like upgrading the site from HTTP to HTTPS, and starting to use Cloudflare, I’ve seen improvements all around.

Today, though, I decided to test out the Wordfence Performance Setup option, called the Wordfence Falcon Engine, which apparently is supposed to increase the performance (load time) of your pages by 30 to 50 percent. Seriously? Up to 50 percent faster load times with this enabled? Even for an HTTPS site? I thought I’d give it a try. [Read more…]