Web crawler: what it is, how it works and how to verify it
A web crawler is a program that downloads a site's pages one after another by following the links it finds,…
The Search Marketing Magazine
SSL certificate: what it is, how it works and how long it lasts today
SSL is the protocol that encrypts the connection between browser and server. What it is, why it is now called…
Google penalty: what it really is and how to check for one
A Google penalty is a manual action notified in Search Console. How to tell it apart from an algorithmic drop,…
Local citations: which directories actually matter in the UK
A local citation is a mention of a business's name, address and phone number on a website that is not…
Website security: what it is and what Google actually flags
Website security is the set of measures that stop an outsider from reading, changing or using a website and its…
Meta tags: what they are, which ones Google reads and where they break
A meta tag is an HTML element that sits inside the <head> of a page and describes that page to…
Keyword rankings: what a position measures and how to read it
A keyword ranking is the point at which a page appears on the search results page for a specific query,…
Meta keywords: what they are, who still reads them and how to remove them
Meta keywords are an HTML tag listing a page's keywords. Google has not read them since 2009: what Google, Bing…
XML sitemap: what it is, when you need one and what search engines actually use
What a sitemap is, when Google says you need one and when you do not, the protocol limits, what search…
Keyword difficulty: what it is, how it is calculated and how far to trust it
Keyword difficulty is a score from 0 to 100 that SEO tools use to estimate how hard it is to…
Google algorithm updates: what they are and what to do when one lands
What a Google algorithm update is, how to tell a core update, a spam update and a manual action apart,…
Conversion rate: what it is, how to calculate it and what a good rate looks like
Conversion rate is the percentage of visits, or of people, that complete the action a page exists for: an order,…