When Can You Delete Old Redirects From Your Site?

November 6, 2024 / Site Migrations / by Kathy Alice

Ask SEOs how long to keep redirects, and many will say “forever”. I’m in that same camp. Most sites have more pressing issues to focus on, and you don’t want to throw away any redirects that still have value.

But sometimes “forever” isn’t always for the best. A growing list of redirects can cause problems ranging from performance issues to long redirect chains that land a user on a page that bears little resemblance to the original page they were looking for.  

The web is always evolving and changing. Page changes and deletions happen more than you think. Websites go through redesigns, rebranding, and technology changes which all can contribute to changing and discarded URLs.

A site migration, especially if you have to port over the old redirects, is a good time to evaluate whether old redirects are worth keeping. 

Sometimes you’ve just got to wade in and clean up.

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Beyond 1,000 queries: Breaking through the Google Search Console row limits

January 25, 2024 / Search Engine Optimization / by Kathy Alice

Google Search Console is an indispensable tool for SEOs and webmasters. But the larger the site, the less complete the data that is available to you in GSC. In both the Performances and Pages reports, you can only get up to 1,000 rows for any metric. 1,000 queries is just a drop in the bucket for sites that regularly rank for hundreds of thousands of keywords, even small sites often rank for more than 1,000 keywords. Additionally if your site has more than 1,000 pages the row limits are an issue there as well, you won’t be able see complete performance and indexation data for all your pages.

Fortunately, there are a number of ways to work around the row limits in GSC. Here are six to consider:

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Which technical SEO issues are the most important to fix?

July 12, 2023 / SEO Guides / by Kathy Alice

When it comes to Technical SEO it’s easily to get mired in the details. When I do a technical SEO site audit, it’s not uncommon for me to find 60 or more issues, which can be overwhelming and make it more challenging to know where to start. The thing is not every technical SEO issue is critical to fix. So the question is:

Which technical SEO issues are the most important?

While you can find many listicles of top technical SEO issues, zeroing on the one or two fixes that will really make a difference for your traffic is a matter of having both knowledge and experience. And what many articles miss, is that it’s not just the type of issue you need to consider, but also the scope.

Here are the key questions you can ask yourself to help determine the urgency of the issue.

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Why is my Core Web Vitals report not updating in Google Search Console?

May 9, 2023 / Core Web Vitals / by Kathy Alice

Does this sound familiar? 

You implemented one or more fixes that should improve your Core Web Vitals metrics. Day after day, you monitor the Core Web Vitals report in Google Search Console, but nothing changes. You were so sure that you significantly improved your site’s LCP (or CLS), but now with the reports continuing to show no improvement you start questioning yourself.

Why are the Core Web Vitals reports not updating in Google Search Console?

The fact is, while the Core Web Vitals (CWV) reports can be helpful in identifying fixes, they are not ideal for getting quick feedback on the impact of your fixes. Because the CWV report is an aggregation of the previous 28 days of data, it can be slow to update. 

If you are serious about improving your CWV metrics, you’ll need to have a good understanding of how the GSC CWV report works, as well as having some alternative ways to monitor your progress.

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Why Doesn’t GSC Live URL Test Show a 301 for Redirects?

January 6, 2023 / Search Engine Optimization / by Kathy Alice

Since it was introduced in 2018, Google Search Console’s URL Inspection Tool has been an indispensable aid to webmasters and SEOs, helping them understand the indexation status of their site’s URLs. One handy feature of the URL Inspector is the Live URL Test button, allowing you to test your current version of your page as Google would see it.

But when I used Live Test to test some redirects, I found that it reported a HTTP Status Code 200 instead of a 301 (redirect) which confused me greatly!

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What to do with WordPress Old Posts

May 5, 2022 / Rockstar Blogging, WordPress / by Kathy Alice

I have a guilty confession to make, when I first created this blog over a decade ago, I was just interested in creating a site that was monetized with affiliate links. I signed up for a auto-blogging service targeting keywords such as internet marketing. These services then auto publish to your blog, the content usually has links placed by the author to their service or are affiliate links.

It was an eye-opener on what passes for decent writing. Fortunately I had moderated it so I had final publishing approval. Which was a smart decision, because most of it was awful. At best they were that general sort of forgettable writing that imparts no real value or knowledge. Many had obvious misspellings and were just thinly veiled attempts to get people to click on the links. I rejected many and there are not many that actually got published.

After reviewing these posts for a while, I thought to myself, “I can do a better job writing than this”, and that is how my blogging career was born.

Content Quality is essential for SEO

Since then the quality of your content has gotten even more important for ranking well in the Google SERPs. Even though we now have tools like generative AI at our disposal, it is essential that your content is helpful and useful and not just written for SEO.

Google recently released a new type of Algorithm Update called “Helpful Content Updates” which likely is aimed to weed out some AI generated content and certainly made for SEO content. If you are wondering what Google considers “Helpful Content” reviewing their comments on writing for “People First” is recommended.

So we all know that we need to publish useful and valuable content for people first and SEO second. What do we do about those old posts we have written many years ago that may not be up to our now enhanced quality standards?

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