Journal archive, screen 4
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Google Search features and policies
Featured Snippets: How to Win Them and When They Cost You ClicksA featured snippet is a highlighted excerpt from a web page shown at the top of some Google results, answering the query directly with a link to the source. Google…
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Structured data
FAQ Content and FAQPage Schema: A Practical GuideGoogle no longer shows FAQ rich results. Its documentation changelog recorded the deprecation in May 2026, stating that the feature "will no longer appear in Google Search starting May 7,…
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Content strategy
Evergreen vs Trending Content: How to Decide What to PublishEvergreen content answers questions that stay relevant for years with little change: how something works, how to do a task, how to choose between options. Trending content answers questions that…
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Content strategy
E-E-A-T Signals: How to Demonstrate Experience and Expertise on the PageE-E-A-T stands for experience, expertise, authoritativeness and trustworthiness. It comes from Google's guidelines for its search quality raters, people who evaluate search results to help Google assess whether its systems…
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Link building
Digital PR for Links: Campaign Types That Earn CoverageDigital PR earns links the way public relations has always earned coverage: by giving journalists and writers something their readers want to know. The difference is the goal of earning…
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Page speed and Core Web Vitals
Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS): Causes and FixesCumulative Layout Shift measures how much visible content moves unexpectedly while a page is in use. Google's guidance is that pages should maintain a CLS of 0.1 or less at…
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Crawling and indexing
Crawl Budget: When It Actually Matters and How to Fix ItCrawl budget is the amount of crawling Google is willing and able to do on a site. Whether it is worth managing depends on the site, and Google's own guide…
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Content strategy
Content Update Strategy: How to Refresh Old Articles for Better RankingsUpdating an article means changing what it tells the reader: correcting facts that have drifted, replacing outdated examples, adding what is now missing and removing what no longer applies. Changing…
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Content strategy
Content Briefs: A Template Writers Can Actually UseA content brief is the set of instructions a writer needs to produce the right article the first time. It answers what the piece is for, who it is for,…
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Content strategy
Contact Page SEO OptimizationA contact page is not built to rank for competitive queries, but it does work that other pages depend on. It tells visitors and search engines who runs the site,…
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Keyword research
Commercial Intent Keywords: How to Classify and Prioritize by Buying StageA commercial intent keyword is a search made by someone moving toward a purchase: comparing options, checking prices, looking for a provider. Classifying intent correctly decides what kind of page…
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Local SEO
City-Based SEO: A Comprehensive Guide Using Nashville as a Case StudyCity-based SEO is the work of making a business's website relevant for searches tied to a place: "accountant Nashville", "roof repair East Nashville", "wedding photographer near Franklin". It is a…
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AI search
ChatGPT Search Visibility: Discoverability, Source Links, and MeasurementA website becomes discoverable in ChatGPT's search features when OpenAI's search crawler, OAI-SearchBot, is allowed to reach it. That is the one access requirement OpenAI documents. Everything after that, whether…
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Page speed and Core Web Vitals
CDN for SEO: When a Content Delivery Network Helps and When It Doesn’tA content delivery network does not improve rankings by itself. It moves content closer to users and can absorb load, which can shorten server response times, speed up page loads…
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Link building
Broken Link Building: Finding Opportunities and Writing Outreach That WorksBroken link building means finding links on other sites that point to pages that no longer work, and offering the site owner a live page that serves the same purpose.…
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Structured data
BreadcrumbList Schema: Implementation and How Breadcrumbs Appear in SearchBreadcrumbList markup describes the path to a page within a site's hierarchy, such as Home, then Furniture, then Sofas, then the product. Google's documentation says it "uses breadcrumb markup in…
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Keyword research
Branded vs Non-Branded Keywords: Why the Split Matters for SEO StrategyBranded searches come from people who already know the brand: they type its name, a misspelling of it, or the name of one of its products. Non-branded searches come from…
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Analytics, reporting and testing
Bing Webmaster Tools: Setup and the Reports That Actually MatterBing Webmaster Tools is Microsoft's equivalent of Google Search Console: a free set of reports and tools for seeing how Bing crawls, indexes and shows a site. It covers search…
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Structured data
Article Schema: Headline, Author, and Date Markup for PublishersArticle structured data tells Google what an article is, who wrote it and when it was published and updated. Google's documentation says that adding it can "more explicitly tell Google…
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Local SEO
Apple Business and Bing Places: Managing Your Local Listings Beyond GoogleGoogle Business Profile is not the only map listing customers see. iPhone users find businesses through Apple Maps, Siri and Spotlight; Windows and Edge users through Bing and Copilot. Each…
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Content strategy
AI-Generated Content and Google: What the Policies Actually SayGoogle does not prohibit content because it was produced with AI. Its policies target the purpose and value of content, not the tool used to make it. The scaled content…
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Crawling and indexing
AI Crawlers and User-Agent Tokens: GPTBot, ClaudeBot, Google-Extended and Which to BlockThere is no single "AI bot" to allow or block. Each AI company documents several robots.txt tokens, and each token controls a different use: collecting training data, building a search…
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Crawling and indexing
5xx Server Errors: How They Affect Crawling and How to Fix ThemA 5xx response tells a crawler that the server failed to handle a valid request. Google's response is predictable and documented: its crawlers slow down, any content returned with the…
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Crawling and indexing
404 Errors: When to Fix, Redirect, or Leave Them AloneA 404 is the correct response for a URL that has no content, and returning it is not an SEO mistake. Google's documentation says URLs that return 4xx codes are…