It's that time of the year. Or something. Yes, I redesigned my site... again. If you have been hanging around for a while, you already know I cannot quit tweaking and refining and messing around my site. It's something I've been doing since late '90s and I cannot stop. Actually I redesigned my site last time just about six months ago, but I didn't quite like the design. I didn't hate it. I just didn't like it that much either. It wasn't that much different from the previous design, mainly just working on the colours and adding some solid colour blocks here and there. But it felt a bit stif...
When I first set up this site in 2010, I built it with Drupal 6. Back then I decided it was time to get back into blogging, since my lengthy break from it. Before my Drupal site I had been using either some self developed blogging systems (first with flat files and php, then with PHP and database), or I had different simple static websites without a blog or other dynamic and structured content. I chose Drupal because it seemed flexible enough with loads of interesting features. It comes with custom content types, and can be extended with many modules (Drupal's version of extensions o...
This is a true story. A person, using a specialised platform for creating a course website was asking a question about adding keywords to the site. They weren't finding a place for their keywords. Apparently they were looking for some sort of a keywords field and since it wasn't there, they were confused. Naturally, they were worried about their search engine optimisation. I get where they come from. With all the misleading, overly complicated and contradictory information about SEO and keywords out there, it all can be perplexing. The messy history of keywords doesn't make it any easier....
Landing pages are often considered to be structured in a specific way, include specific information, look a specific way and even be made with some expensive dedicated tool. In reality, a landing page can look and feel many different ways. In your website traffic analytics you probably find a section called "Landing Pages", which includes... Kind of anything. This may be a bit confusing. You probably didn't think of that particular page or blog post as a landing page. Basically, any page a person lands on your website after clicking a link somewhere or typing the address to the address b...
Your website is never ready and done. It requires constant improvements and updates. For your website to be found through search engines, such as Google and Bing, it must evolve. Content needs to be updated and added, links checked and fixed, design freshened up, the code and security kept up to date. A website audit helps you to fix any problems, search engine optimise your site, and improve performance and conversions. I recommend auditing your site now and then. You can either do it yourself, or hire a professional. Of course, it is always best to get someone else to audit your site now...
Google keeps tweaking their search and algorithms, and lately it has been causing a lot of grief. I've been having some difficulties of finding what I have been searching. I've seen pages not indexed for myriad reasons. I've been frustrated with Google Search Console notifying me about issues that don't really exist. Today, I received a notification from Google Search Console about a new coverage issue: "Submitted URL seems to be a Soft 404" I had no clue what Soft 404 is. Of course I know what 404 is. It is a common HTTP status code. It's received when you try to access content that...
Too often I see websites created just because. Just because everyone else has one. Just because someone said it's good for marketing. Just because. Those websites generally fail to generate traffic or conversions. This is because their existence doesn't give anything to the people using the web. There's no reason to visit and revisit the site, nor to click on any of the links within it. Here's the question to ask: Why would anyone use this site? We all have different reasons for visiting and using websites. The practical reasons, such as need for finding certain information, are most pro...
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