-
Recent Posts
- Thinking About Switching From WordPress? What Should You Consider Before You Move?
- The Airtable Acquisition Raises a Bigger Question: Do You Really Own the Software Your Business Runs On?
- How to Use Google Search Console’s New Generative AI Data to Improve Your SEO
- How to Update the Same Website Content on Multiple Pages at Once
- Discovered vs. Crawled Not Indexed in Google Search Console: What’s the Difference and How to Fix Each
- The Small Business Guide to Auditing Google Ads and Website Costs
- Do Professional Writers Still Need SEO in the Age of AI?
- Search Engine First vs. People First Content: Why Generic FAQ Dumps Harm Your SEO
- Looking for a Website Builder Without AI? Which One Should You Choose?
- Keyword Cannibalization: How to Find and Fix the Pages Stealing Your Own Google Traffic
- Why Great Content Gets Stuck on Page 8 (And How to Fix It)
- Why MySQL FULLTEXT Search Returns 0 Results (And How to Fix It)
- The Reality of Domain Speculation on New TLD Launches: Is It Still Worth It?
- The Hidden Domain Name Lock-In: Which Registrars Restrict Nameservers?
- Paying $10,000 a Month for SEO? Here’s How to Tell If You’re Getting Your Money’s Worth
- Introducing New WordPress Magazine Layouts in UltimateWB 9 (With Early Access)
- How to Fix the WordPress “Critical Error” on the Widgets Page After a PHP Upgrade
- The Hidden Risk of SaaS Website Builders: Lessons from the Recent Wix Outage
Categories
Category Archives: Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
Why is the Discover tab missing now from Google Search Console?
"Ask David" question:
"I noticed today that the Discover tab is completely missing from my left-hand sidebar in Google Search Console. It used to be under the Performance section, but now it’s just gone. Did my account break, or did Google remove this feature?"
Answer:
Don't worry, your account isn't broken. If you are wondering why the Discover tab is missing now from your Google Search Console page, it comes down to a specific built-in feature of Google's
... Continue reading
Posted in Ask David!, Search Engine Optimization (SEO), Website Traffic
Tagged core web vitals, discover, E-E-A-T, evergreen content, Google algorithm update, google analytics, Google Search Console, high-quality conetnt, mobile-friendly, responsive, robots, robots meta tag, search engine optimization, seo, trust, trust signals
Leave a comment
The Right Way vs. The Wrong Way to Do Programmatic SEO (pSEO)
If you’ve been tracking digital marketing trends lately, you’ve likely run across the phrase Programmatic SEO (pSEO). The pitch is incredibly seductive: instead of writing blog posts one by one, you connect a database to a page template, press a button, and instantly deploy thousands of pages targeting long-tail search terms.
Traffic multiplies overnight, you dominate the search engine results pages (SERPs), and you win.
Except, that’s exactly how you get your entire domain penalized and deindexed.
... Continue reading
Posted in Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
Tagged algorithm changes, authority, automated page generation, bloat, core web vitals, database, duplicate content, google algorithm, google algorithm penalties, Google Search Console, google search engine ranking, indexing, long-tail keywords, organic traffic, plugins, programmatic seo, pseo, scalable, scaled content abuse, search engine results pages, seo, serps, spam, thin content, third-party plugins, trust, trustworthy, url structure, visibility, webflow, WordPress
Leave a comment
Is Your Google Search Console “Average Position” Lying to You?
You log into Google Search Console (GSC) and see massive numbers under your daily impressions. Your site is popping up in thousands of search results! Then, you check your sitewide Average Position metric. It hovers somewhere between 10 and 15. On really good days, you might even celebrate hitting the coveted single digits - positions 7–9.
But then you look at your actual traffic, and the click count is surprisingly low.
With AI Overviews and Featured Snippets now eating up
... Continue reading
Posted in Search Engine Optimization (SEO), Website Traffic
Tagged ai overviews, average position, bloat, clean code, click-through rate, clicks, ctr, fast loading times, fast website, featured snippets, Google Search Console, gsc, html, impressions, long-tail keywords, plugins, ranking position, search engine ranking, seo, third-party plugins
Leave a comment
How can I avoid “AI SEO sludge”?
The obvious simple answer is: stop using AI entirely, right?!
But that is not the only answer.
If you use AI - don't treat it like an autopilot content machine. The moment you use it as a “set-and-forget” SEO tool, the quality usually collapses.
The web is already flooded with low-value AI-generated filler - repetitive articles written mainly to chase rankings instead of helping people. That’s what we call AI SEO sludge (or AI slop). And guess what? It's not
... Continue reading
Posted in AI, Search Engine Optimization (SEO), Web Content
Tagged ai, ai seo sludge, ai slop, AI-generated content, authority, bounce rates, engagement, experience, expertise, indexed pages, search engine ranking, search visibility, seo, thin content, thin pages, trust, trustworthy, user intent, visibility
Leave a comment
Why Have My Indexed Pages on Google Decreased? (Real Causes + Fixes Most Sites Miss)
Seeing your indexed pages drop in Google can feel like your website is quietly disappearing.
One day everything looks stable… the next, your index count is down - and you’re left wondering if your rankings are about to follow.
If you’re asking “Why have my indexed pages on Google decreased?”, here’s the reality:
This is common - but it’s not random.
Google doesn’t just “lose” pages. When your indexed count drops, it’s almost always the result of a decision
... Continue reading
Posted in Ask David!, Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
Tagged broken links, cannibalization, canonicalization, crawl efficiency, crawlability, crawled, disallow, duplicate content, engagement, google search engine ranking, indexed pages, indexing, internal links, keywords, noindex, noindex tags, not indexed, redirect chains, redirect loops, redirect url, relevance, reliability, robots.txt, search engine optimization, seo, sitemap, slow website, target keywords, thin pages, trust, user intent, wasted crawl budget
Leave a comment
How to Design a High-Converting Website Homepage: Step-by-Step Guide
Most website homepages don’t fail because of design quality - they fail because they don’t guide the visitor.
A homepage is not just an introduction. It is a decision-making layer. Its job is to help users quickly understand what the site offers and move them toward the right action.
If users land on your homepage and don’t immediately understand what you do, who it’s for, and what they should do next, conversions drop.
This guide breaks down how to design
... Continue reading
Posted in Ask David!, E-commerce, Search Engine Optimization (SEO), Website Design
Tagged bloat, call-to-action, clarity, clean code, clean structure, consistency, conversions, cta, design consistency, easy navigation, fast-loading times, first impressions, headlines, high-converting website, homepage, intent, responsive, responsive app, web design
Leave a comment
When Your CMS is the Bottleneck: A Performance Reality Check
It’s a common misconception that a slow website is just a "mobile problem." We recently audited a WordPress-based lifestyle blog where the performance was sluggish across the board - hitting the 70s on desktop and dropping to the 30s on mobile.
When a site fails to perform on a high-speed desktop connection, you aren't just looking at a slow network or a weak processor. You are looking at a fundamental architectural problem.
The Problem: Bloat as a Feature
This
... Continue readingHow to Update Old Blog Content for SEO – 10 Easy Steps
Updating old blog content is one of the most underrated ways to boost your SEO without having to write something from scratch. But since we’re in 2026, the old "change the year in the title" trick isn't enough. With AI search engines like Gemini and Perplexity looking for deep expertise, your refresh needs to be strategic.
... Continue readingDoes Google still use PageRank to rate your website?
"Ask David" short answer: yes. While you can’t see it anymore, PageRank is still a "core" part of how Google determines which websites are trustworthy and important.
Related: What Makes a Simple Website Feel Trustworthy? (From Real User Experience, Not Theory)
However, the PageRank of today is very different from the simple "0 to 10" score people obsessed over in the early 2000s.
How PageRank Works in 2026
In the early days, PageRank was the primary way Google ranked
... Continue reading
Posted in Ask David!, Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
Tagged ahref, Ahrefs Domain Rating, authority, backlinks, E-E-A-T, experience, expertise, google, google algorithm, google pagerank, google ranking, high value link, important, internal linking, Larry Page, link spam, low value link, moz, Moz Domain Authority, new york times, pagerank, reasonable surfer, seed set, stanford, trustworthy, useful, wikipedia
Leave a comment
Does “Test Live URL” help Google index your webpage faster?
Does clicking on the "Test Live URL" on Google Search Console after using the "Request Indexing" link make Google index your page sooner? Or was it just a coincidence?
“Ask David” answer: The short answer is no, if you experienced Google indexing your page soon after testing the Live URL, it was just a coincidence. Clicking
... Continue reading