DigitalCast

If you want to add more languages to your site, you may consider automatically translating your content. While Google likely won't penalize you for it, it's probably not a good idea. See full show notes at: https://digitalcast.org/podcast151

Starting in December, Google Chrome will begin to start blocking mixed content. If you've not tightened that up yet, things on your site might start breaking. See full show notes at: https://digitalcast.org/podcast150

Google makes hundreds of small updates to their search algorithm each year, but their newest one is one of the biggest we've seen in a while. See full show notes at: https://digitalcast.org/podcast149

Links pointing to your site will never expire in the eyes of Google, but may become less valuable over time. See full show notes at: https://digitalcast.org/podcast148

Google's John Mueller caused quite a stir recently when he asked why agencies often don't show their mailing address on their sites. See full show notes at: https://digitalcast.org/podcast147

Along with the hidden XML sitemaps, many sites publish an HTML sitemap to help their rankings. Google says it doesn't help. See full show notes at: https://digitalcast.org/podcast146

There are a number of reasons you might want to change your web host, but if you do it correctly it won't affect your Google rankings at all. See full show notes at: https://digitalcast.org/podcast145

There's been much debate over the years about whether or not you should include dates in your URLs; Google says it does't really matter. See full show notes at: https://digitalcast.org/podcast144

The nofollow attribute has been around for about a decade, and was fairly simple to understand, but it just became a lot more nuanced. See full show notes at: https://digitalcast.org/podcast143

Depending on the nature of your site, setting up structured data for it could be important. Even if you do, though, it won't directly impact your rankings. See full show notes at: https://digitalcast.org/podcast142

A new study has shown that the way many blogs are set up may be making a major mistake that is impacting their rankings. See full show notes at: https://digitalcast.org/podcast141

This one might be surprising to some, but is very simple. The amount of traffic your website gets is not a ranking factor to Google. See full show notes at: https://digitalcast.org/podcast140

For about 15 years now, people have discussed the idea of a Google sandbox for new sites, but Google insists that such a thing doesn't exist. See full show notes at: https://digitalcast.org/podcast139

There's been much debate over the years about whether or not you should include dates on your content, but ultimately Google encourages it. See full show notes at: https://digitalcast.org/podcast138

We've talked before about the importance of alt text on images, but if you use an image as a link it's even more important. See full show notes at: https://digitalcast.org/podcast137

If you have a bunch of content on a page, Google will hopefully index all of it, but it will consider it as a single page of text, not as separate pieces. See full show notes at: https://digitalcast.org/podcast136

Google has over 200 ranking factors, but the number of words on a page isn't one of them. See full show notes at: https://digitalcast.org/podcast135

We all know that inbound links, pointing to your site, are generally good for your SEO. But how about outbound links? See full show notes at: https://digitalcast.org/podcast134

A recent survey from Adobe shows that 48% of consumers have used voice search for general web queries, and the number keeps going up. See full show notes at: https://digitalcast.org/podcast133

Google is once again beginning to look at the author of content to influence rankings, but they admit it can be hard to tell who is really the author. See full show notes at: https://digitalcast.org/podcast132

It's something you likely don't think about often, or even really notice, but Google says to be consistent with whether or not you put a slash at the end of your URLs. See full show notes at: https://digitalcast.org/podcast131

There have been theories over the years that old domains (or perhaps new domains) get some kind of ranking boost. Google says it's not true. See full show notes at: https://digitalcast.org/podcast130

If you follow search engine news at all, you've likely heard of TF-IDF. But what is it? See full show notes at: https://digitalcast.org/podcast129

Google often likes fresh content, but it depends on the context of each search query, and updating your posts to seem more fresh isn't going to help you rank better. See full show notes at: https://digitalcast.org/podcast128

Many website caching tools including options for minifying HTML and CSS. Does it help? Google says yes. See full show notes at: https://digitalcast.org/podcast127

If you're migrating a site to a new domain or CMS, the final step of the migration should only take about a day — if you do it correctly. See full show notes at: https://digitalcast.org/podcast126

Do people browse the blog category listings on your website? Probably not, but that's ok. See full show notes at: https://digitalcast.org/podcast125

We talk about XML sitemaps on here fairly often, and they're a good thing to have, but they have no direct impact on your search rankings. See full show notes at: https://digitalcast.org/podcast124

We all know that alt text can help your images rank in Google, but that text can also help the page itself rank a bit higher. See full show notes at: https://www.mickmel.com/podcast123

According to a recent study, 49% of all Google searches are now "zero-click", meaning users are getting the answer they need without having to click on a single result or ad. See full show notes at: https://www.mickmel.com/podcast122

For years, Google Search Console has allowed you to set your "preferred domain". With the new version, though, that option is going away. How will this affect you? See full show notes at: https://www.mickmel.com/podcast121

Google typically finds websites through backlinks or XML sitemaps, but can it find them other ways as well? See full show notes at: https://www.mickmel.com/podcast120

People talk about website authority scores quite a bit, and I use them from time to time myself, but Google has made it clear that they have no such official metric. See full show notes at: https://www.mickmel.com/podcast119

XML sitemaps are a great way to help inform Google about the content on your site, and there are many great WordPress plugins to help with that. Soon, though, XML sitemaps might be part of WordPress core. See full show notes at: https://www.mickmel.com/podcast118

Sometimes Google likes to point things out that are obvious yet need repeating, so we'll help repeat them here; links and title tags still matter. See full show notes at: https://www.mickmel.com/podcast117

When you do a search on Google, there are times when the first page is filled almost entirely with results from the same site. With their latest update, Google is working to fix that. See full show notes at: https://www.mickmel.com/podcast116

Google has said before that having SSL on your site is a "light-weight ranking" factor, and that continues to be the case, but Google seems to be pushing a bit harder on it now. See full show notes at: https://www.mickmel.com/podcast115

Adding text to the alt attribute of an image is a great way to help vision-impaired users (and Google) understand what the image is about. However, removing it can be ok in some circumstances. Sort of. See full show notes at: https://www.mickmel.com/podcast114

The most common way to let Google know about new content on your site is by using XML sitemaps. However, some folks have started using Google's indexing API to push new content to Google, but that's likely not a good idea. See full show notes at: https://www.mickmel.com/podcast113

Google has been slowly rolling out their mobile first index, and will continue to roll it out on existing sites, but starting July 1 all new sites will automatically be indexed mobile-first. See full show notes at: https://www.mickmel.com/podcast112

Companies have struggled over the years about whether to create one website for their entire business, or separate ones for different pieces. In most cases, Google stays stick to one. See full show notes at: https://www.mickmel.com/podcast111

While it's certainly important to have a solid presence on Google My Business, a recent study shows that people put much more trust into a company's website. See full show notes at: https://www.mickmel.com/podcast110

How often does Google makes adjustments to their algorithm? In 2018, there were over 3,200 changes, or nearly nine per day. How much do they all matter? See full show notes at: https://www.mickmel.com/podcast109

I'm a big believer in backups. For client sites that our agency manages, we take 2-3 backups of every site, every day, if not more. However, when my computer crashed last week, I got up and running on a new one with no loss of data — and no real backups. How did that work? See full show notes at: https://www.mickmel.com/podcast108

At WordCamp Atlanta a few weeks ago, I got into a discussion with some other folks about RSS, and was surprised that many weren't familiar with it. It can be very valuable, so let's explore that a bit. See full show notes at: https://www.mickmel.com/podcast107

Whether you realize it or not, spammers are likely stealing your content and reposting it on other sites across the web. That's certainly not a good thing, but can it affect your rankings? See full show notes at: https://www.mickmel.com/podcast106

It's thought that there are roughly 200 factors in Google's ranking algorithm, so if you're trying to track your progress on just one of them, it may be impossible to do. See full show notes at: https://www.mickmel.com/podcast105

This is something Google has said for years, but they're making sure we hear it again; if you use Google Ads or Google Analytics, that's great, but it has literally no direct impact on your rankings in the main search engine. See full show notes at: https://www.mickmel.com/podcast104

The blockquote tag in HTML can be a useful way to pull content out of your posts to highlight it for readers, but Google has said that text in a blockquote isn't treated any differently than other text on your page. See full show notes at: https://www.mickmel.com/podcast103

If you've ever looked at the URL for your Google My Business page, it's ugly. Google is now rolling out a way for you to get a nice, clean URL for it, including an easier way to get reviews. See full show notes at: https://www.mickmel.com/podcast102

In many cases, the pages on your site that rank well in Google aren't your home page; they're internal pages that are focused on a particular topic. But what happens when the home page outranks an internal page that deserves it more? See full show notes at: https://www.mickmel.com/podcast101