Confessions of an SEO®

Today I wanted to explore the impact of SEO on the brain - specifically the chemical known as dopamine - I found an article of an interview of Dr Anne Lempke, Chief of Stanford University's Dual Diagnosis Addition Clinic.  https://www.theguardian.com/global/2021/aug/22/how-digital-media-turned-us-all-into-dopamine-addicts-and-what-we-can-do-to-break-the-cycle Believe it or not, this relates t...

It has been a while since I did a Facebook mailbag topic and I know this one is something MOST SEO's have experienced. And I share about three more ACTUAL situations where clients tried to help and offer some suggestions to business owners who want to help but aren't sure what actual help to your SEO team looks like. I mentioned the Crawl or No Crawl daily broadcasts on Youtube that I started when...

The new testing site is indexing like gangbusters!  Finally I can answer the question that the initial test format was trying to answer - IS GOOGLE INDEXING simple html and rendering javascript! We're back in business. And I'm having fun once again. I talk a little about what I call "SEO as a sport" which is fun and a longview revenue producer. And every day a short youtube video is published...

Well, this topic turned on it's head this week. In this latest episode, one of the original seo testers and longtime tester, Carolyn Holzman talks about her epiphany in seo testing. Learn about the latest on the testing indexation project in light of a new testing environment and set up of the test. And now Carolyn is broadcasting on youtube daily with short updates from the server logs on the cha...

In this episode I talk about the lack of a systemized and universally accepted method of learning how SEO works and why it hurts us when we don't have one. If we know how SEO works, we know what to do when things go amiss. Mainly, we need know how GOOGLE works - and then we can be more informed. There are many levers on the side of search that are totally controlled by Google. Knowing that and WHE...

Much like the Girl with No Name from Game of Thrones, this week is a Niche with No Search Volume. After talking about indexation and the next phase of the indexation testing threshold (and who might be the first to learn what I find) - I talk about this niche thing and what it got me thinking and why we charge for keyword research. If you're a business owner, I get it. But there's a lot behind sea...

In this episode in addition to the updates on projects, I address the dust up in Twitter this week. It had to do with the term LSI - latent semantic indexing - does anything of value for SEO or not. This is not a course on LSI  but rather what happens when SEOs try to beat each other up on semantics - the words that describe something related to what we're doing. I don't mind sharing my perso...

Before going into the topic of getting emotionally involved with a keyword, I provide an update on the index detector project, the buzz in the SEO world about all those crawls before an update and what Joh Mueller had to say that totally cleared that up! Which question I would pose based on the data seen in the indexation project.  Here's the link to the article with all the twitter embeds so...

This week I talk about the biggest pain of client SEO - micromanaging and I share some of my experiences and postulate on how to get to a non-adversarial and minimize any suspicions lurking in the mind of the person who is paying for their SEO. Forensic SEO Live Training - https://www.americanwaymedia.com/forensic-seo-live-training/ (2nd worst sales page in the history of sales pages!) Past Episod...

Change is a-coming on the Google Indexation Detector Project - and it's all good - still moving forward, I tell you all things moving forward.  In this episode I share what I learned, what we have and how I'm moving forward into more specific indexation tests to find the threshold for new content - and I tell you who I'm going to share that with first. Will it be you? Pick your level of suppo...

On this last day of 2021 - we look to 2022 and what we want to make of our work, businesses and lives. In this episode I share what I hope for ourselves as SEO's and businesses. December 31 2021 at 11:59 PM CST - the Survey closes. Last call to tell me what you liked and what you didn't during this first Season. New sponsors that sign up between now and Jan 1, 2022, You and/or your business will r...

It's time for the first annual Holiday Edition of Confessions of an SEO.  We start off with Google and then into some of the results of the survey that will end up as ways listeners can be supporter and what they will have access to as sponsors. Pick your level of support and sponsorship - https://anchor.fm/confessions-of-an-seo/support Every at $4.99 or higher will receive a small token of a...

Yowsa! What a lot of circumstantial evidence we have here.  Fresh data from the ongoing public research into Google's crawl and index behavior. Massive emails from Search Console saying pages had errors when pages did not have errors and a quiet announcement at the end of November. In this episode I wonder out loud what could possibly be going on at Google within the last few weeks of 2021.&n...

Well, this turned into a rant! Holy Cow! WTH Google!? I share the story about an early in the year project that took a nosedive which was in hindsight the idea behind the Indexation Project. And what is coming out of the project in the community is better than anything I could have wished for all of us. Here's the links to the articles mentioned in the show How Search Works - https://www.google.co...

I'll best honest - I need more feedback. In this episode I share some fun facts and what I know so far from listeners. And what may be a cool addition to SEASON 2. OK OK. There will be one but I need to know what you liked so I can do more of what more people like and less what is a but "meh". And at the end I provide the topics for the next couple of week and saving surprises for the holidays. An...

OMG! What a total jerk move by Google, ANOTHER update before the "High Shopping Season" - in this episode I share with SEO tools are showing as to what changed and I share MY OPINION on WHY they might have done this now. 'Cause enough already - 2021 is like the YEAR of updates. Then I break some news. Its about something I'm doing next year (2022) - and you'll be the first ones to hear about it. I...

We've all sat there. Excited by the prospect of both growing our "book of business" and helping a small business claim their rightful share of the local market for what they offer. And then they start to share all the horrible things they experienced with their previous SEO company. Our heart sinks for two reasons.  1 - We know they are going to want us to prove to them over and over that we'...

If you hear about SEO testing at all you probably think we're all insanely curious and have completely lost the reason that ultimately we all need to make revenue for our own company or our clients. Well, I call B.S. on that but honestly I will admit that I DO love stupid SEO ideas. The stupider the better!  In this episode I share a test so stupid that instead of dropping the listing - I too...

Some times there are times when the best way to be of service to a business is to say no even if the reason has nothing to do with our ability to SEO their website. Maybe it's an ROI - return on investment type of issue or maybe it's because there are obstacles to conversion which would then lead into an ROI issue. Here's a couple of my stories on times when I did say no and times when I should ha...

I realized that this is the Halloween Episode and it sure fits the scary environment in Google when it comes to getting new content into the index. And when I say scary - it's bad. Some of my musings include the following: Why is indexation so essential to business? Do we publish too much on our own sites for our own good? Big question, What if this is a wounded Google? Why Can’t Google Show us wh...

Is this real life? Or is this fantasy? This week I share my deepest fantasy SEO ideas that sprang from a conversation with a colleague about time to ranking once working on a page. And well, you might listen to this and think I've lost my mind, it doesn't work that way.  I'm a fan of challenging my own beliefs on what client SEO could be if we tried. And do things in a way where we're not tra...

This week is an example of transmuting what seemed like a failed expedition to talking about the kind of things SEO's don't normally talk about - how do we get answers to our SEO questions. Two questions posed in the last few weeks illustrate the problem as I see it- too many people trying to chart a course in SEO without a map, who ask questions of strangers in social media and those that conflat...

This week I share and tell about a couple of projects - one is the index detector project, is it a tool? What the heck is it supposed to do and where I suspect our conditioning is the reason why it's initially viewed as a tool. I talk about indexation and what makes it so essential to SEO testing. I talk about my first SEO test and an underground SEO training for intermediate and advanced SEOs tha...

It's been a long time in coming. This past week John Muller confirmed that Core Web Vitals has been rolled out and in in play as of the end of August 2021. We've been told Core Web Vitals would be a ranking factor. Higher page scores for CWV will be beneficial and conversely, low scores will be harmful. But what evidence do we have that these efforts, beyond common sense site speed efforts, to mol...

If you've listened to any of Confessions, you know that I'm a strong advocate of seo testing. It's a relatively new slice of SEO and has been instrumental in teasing new observations out of Google that helps us understand how relevance works as well as a host of other things. Today in addition to updating you on the Google Index Detector project - https://www. AmericanWayMedia.com/index-detector/...