Ranking has a content side and an engineering side. This section is mostly about the second: making sure Google can crawl the site without stumbling, understands what each page is about and which language it is in, and that the page loads fast enough for people to stay.
Each article explains one concept and how to read it on your own site. Nearly all of them come with a free tool to check it in a minute, no sign-up needed.
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How can you tell how popular a website is?
What domain popularity lists such as Tranco measure, why they matter since Alexa closed, what they do not tell you about a site's traffic, and how to use them to compare competitors or judge a link.
Does HTML validation matter for SEO?
Google does not penalise invalid HTML for being invalid, but some errors change what Google reads from your page. Which ones they are, how to spot them in a validator report and which can wait.
What is IndexNow, and is it worth using?
How IndexNow works, the protocol for telling search engines a page has changed, which search engines use it and which do not, how the key is verified, and when it genuinely helps.
How do broken links affect your website and your SEO?
Where broken links come from, what they do to the people who click them and to the search engine crawling your site, how internal and external ones differ, and where to start fixing them.
What is hreflang, and how do you set it up without errors?
What hreflang does on a site with several languages or countries, why it has to be reciprocal, what x-default is, how language and region codes are written, and the mistakes that make Google ignore it.
301 vs 302 redirects: what is the difference?
What each redirect code means (301, 302, 307 and 308), when to use which, why chains and loops cost visits and rankings, and why sending everything to the home page is not a fix.
What is an XML sitemap, and what should yours contain?
What an XML sitemap is for, when you need a sitemap index, what limits the protocol sets, why the modification date matters more than priority, and which URLs should not be in it.
What is structured data, and what can you expect from it?
What structured data is, why JSON-LD is the recommended format, which rich results it can unlock, how required and recommended properties differ, and what it does not guarantee.
What robots.txt does, and how to decide what to do about AI crawlers
How a robots.txt file is written, why blocking a URL does not remove it from Google, which rule wins when two disagree, and what your options are with GPTBot, ClaudeBot and the rest.
How to write title tags and meta descriptions
What title tags and meta descriptions are, how Google uses them in results, why it truncates them by pixels rather than characters, when it rewrites them and how to write them so people choose you.
What are Core Web Vitals, and how do you read them?
What LCP, INP and CLS measure, which figures count as good, why real user data does not match your Lighthouse score, and where to start when a metric turns red.
Backlinks: more than links, authority and reputation
Chapter 7 and last of the SEO from zero guide. What a backlink actually is, why a link works as a vote of confidence, how to earn them without risking a penalty, and why internal linking is the part you fully control.
Search intent: the absolute key to keyword research and SEO
Chapter 6 of the SEO from zero guide. What search intent is, how to verify it by reading the results page, and how to pick terms by weighing traffic against difficulty, with a full worked example.
Everything you need to know about how a search engine works
Chapter 3 of the SEO from zero guide. Crawling, indexing and ranking explained without jargon, why the engine does not go looking when you type, and which part of the process you can actually influence.
From keywords to experiences: how search engines have evolved
Chapter 4 of the SEO from zero guide. Why a search engine stopped selling links and started selling curated experiences, how that shift made trick-based SEO obsolete, and what it means that SEO is now technical and anthropological at once.
Access to information: how search engines changed the world
Chapter 2 of the SEO from zero guide. How we answered our questions before search engines, the three types of search that still shape every strategy, and what became of the SEO statistics we quoted in 2019.
The digital customer: 10 keys to understanding your buyers today
Chapter 1 of the SEO from zero guide. How we went from using the internet to living inside it, told in five moments, and the ten practical consequences for any brand that wants to be found.
SEO from zero: the complete guide to search rankings
The index to our seven-chapter guide to organic search, written for people who are not developers - what each chapter covers, what has changed in search since we published it, and the order worth reading it in.
How do you contact a business through Google Maps?
Google switched off Business Profile chat in July 2024. Here are the contact routes the map still gives you, how a customer actually uses them while deciding, and what to get right if the business is yours.
Check it on your site
Free tools, no sign-up, that run the checks these articles talk about.
- Core Web Vitals checkerLCP, INP and CLS measured on real Chrome visits, which is what Google uses for ranking.
- Google SERP snippet previewTitle and description measured in pixels, the way Google truncates them, plus a review of the whole <head>.
- Structured data validatorReads the JSON-LD on a page and checks what each Google rich result requires.
- Sitemap checkerHow many URLs it declares, whether they are well formed, and a sample of which ones actually respond.
- Broken link checkerEvery link on a page, checked one by one, with the ones that return 404 or redirect flagged.
- hreflang checkerReads the language alternates, visits each one and checks that they all point back to each other.
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