February 8, 2019 / Path Digital
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 articleDecember 23, 2018 / Kayleigh Alexandra
(Lead photo credit: Flickr.) From using NAP consistently to creating regional resources, there’s plenty you can do to win at local SEO and improve your Google rankings. Use these four tips to increase the number of visitors to your website and broaden your customer base. 1. Love mobile searchers with Google My Business Local SEO […]
read full articleNovember 3, 2018 / Path Digital
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 articleSeptember 15, 2018 / Kayleigh Alexandra
Today’s ecommerce world is rife with both opportunity and heated competition. You can get out ahead through nothing but PPC advertising for some time, but you won’t build up any equity — the moment you stop, your sales will dry up — and you’ll steadily see your ROI decrease as new contenders fight over the […]
read full articleAugust 7, 2018 / Path Digital
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 / Path Digital
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 / Path Digital
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 / Path Digital
I’ve just launched a new consultancy website, Path Digital Services, 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 a hired […]
read full articleJune 25, 2017 / Path Digital
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 / Path Digital
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 / Path Digital
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 / Path Digital
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 article