September 26, 2020 / Nate Holman
The world of SEO is a pretty unique place to live in as a digital professional, as our livelihoods are more or less dictated by a single company ok, let’s just call them a monopoly – so that means staying up to speed with whatever Google says is important. Fortunately, as long as the search […]
read full articleDecember 5, 2019 / Nate Holman
Here’s why content freshness should be part of your SEO strategy. One of the SEO ‘constants’ over the past decade or so – in fact, you could say a building block of Google’s core algorithm, in its effort to best interpret and respond to user behavior – is content freshness. How Does Fresh Content Matter […]
read full articleFebruary 8, 2019 / Nate Holman
Ok, so you’ve done everything you think you have to do to make your website load fast on all devices… particularly on mobile. You’ve chosen a fast, reliable host for your website, picked a lightweight theme, compressed images, enabled caching, and removed unneeded apps/plugins. But your site’s still not loading blazingly fast. And you’ve still […]
read full articleNovember 3, 2018 / Nate Holman
Google “speed up wordpress site,” and you’ll find no shortage of helpful advice to optimize your slow-loading WordPress installation — including some things you may already know (optimize all your images for the web), some that should just be good common sense (carefully evaluate web hosting providers, and choose a good one), and some you […]
read full articleAugust 7, 2018 / Nate Holman
Did you know that if you’re doing ANY site migration involving 301 redirects where the domain or URL structure changes (Shopify > WordPress, olddomain.com > newdomain.com), that Google recommends you submit the old site’s XML sitemap(s) in the new (destination) site’s Search Console property? It’s true: I wonder how many SEO professionals out there even […]
read full articleJune 24, 2018 / Nate Holman
So just how important are breadcrumbs to search optimization, anyway? Whether or not you actually think about them at all as a user, you probably know this much: • Navigation: They can be an important navigational aid, depending on the site type (I’ll sometimes use them when shopping on large sites like Amazon). Although I […]
read full articleMarch 5, 2018 / Nate Holman
First, what is rel=canonical used for? The rel=canonical tag is a piece of HTML code inserted in the <head> to indicate to search engines the “master copy,” or canonical, URL to index where the same or very similar content exists across URL versions. It’s useful in cases like these: 1) When filters and other parameters […]
read full articleJanuary 14, 2018 / Nate Holman
I’ve just launched a new consultancy website, Path Digital Services & Consulting, as of February 2018. This post explores on-the-job learnings in the past few years of SEO for agencies and small business clients alike. After a year and change as an independent digital consultant based in Chicago, a few years prior to that as […]
read full articleJune 25, 2017 / Nate Holman
There’s a reason why quality content — Optimized, Fresh, Factual (or trusted/authoritative), Engaging, and Relevant content — comes up as an SEO recommendation consistently in my own work as an SEO consultant as well as across the web, including sources like Search Engine Land and Kissmetrics. O.F.F.E.R., for short. Yes, that might be a made-up acronym 🙂 But it’s not arbitrary: as hard as it is to quantitatively […]
read full articleApril 28, 2017 / Nate Holman
Let’s look at an SEO topic that’s gotten increased coverage in the last six months due to a Google update in how Chrome displays the address bar: the HTTP to HTTPS site migration. If you’re in the digital world at all yourself, this isn’t new — but I’ve found surprisingly little in the way of a clear, […]
read full articleApril 10, 2017 / Nate Holman
With today’s web filled with non-optimized sites and short-sighted design, all you have to do is click around, or tap on your smartphone, to find examples of sites that don’t load optimally and aren’t designed for a great user experience. But users (your existing and future customers) still demand a LOT. It’s the Internet’s fault. We want instant gratification […]
read full articleFebruary 7, 2016 / Nate Holman
While the direct significance of keywords to SEO has dwindled in comparison to other signals that stress user experience thanks to the 2013 Google Hummingbird update, keyword research is still such a critical step 1 for just about any on-page, site architecture, or marketing SEO project. Sure, keywords aren’t as sexy as newer SEO topics. […]
read full articleNovember 18, 2015 / Nate Holman
When you consider social media adding a “dimension” to traditional branding & promotional mediums, people and companies today have more power to not just inform and market themselves – but interact in ways we didn’t have power to before. It’s obvious, right? As an American consumer, you can’t escape the hashtag onslaught across digital and T.V. (About every other ad was #tagging during […]
read full articleSeptember 19, 2015 / Nate Holman
Today I wanted to take a look at how social media trends influence SEO…and vice versa. (Given the fluidity that typifies the digital space, we wouldn’t want it any other way.) When I pull up a preliminary “SEO social media” search on Google, the first thing I notice isn’t the relevance of the results – or the results themselves. It’s that […]
read full articleAugust 19, 2015 / Nate Holman
Ok, so if you got to this point, you’re maybe interested in interaction design and what it’s all about for converting users and customers. What does interaction design mean, then? Well… here’s pretty much the easiest way for me as a user to find out: Interaction design at work — 3 (easy) steps 1) I go to […]
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