If you follow search engine news at all, you've likely heard of TF-IDF. But what is it? See full show notes at: https://digitalcast.org/podcast129

Google often likes fresh content, but it depends on the context of each search query, and updating your posts to seem more fresh isn't going to help you rank better. See full show notes at: https://digitalcast.org/podcast128

Many website caching tools including options for minifying HTML and CSS. Does it help? Google says yes. See full show notes at: https://digitalcast.org/podcast127

If you're migrating a site to a new domain or CMS, the final step of the migration should only take about a day — if you do it correctly. See full show notes at: https://digitalcast.org/podcast126

Do people browse the blog category listings on your website? Probably not, but that's ok. See full show notes at: https://digitalcast.org/podcast125

We talk about XML sitemaps on here fairly often, and they're a good thing to have, but they have no direct impact on your search rankings. See full show notes at: https://digitalcast.org/podcast124

We all know that alt text can help your images rank in Google, but that text can also help the page itself rank a bit higher. See full show notes at: https://www.mickmel.com/podcast123

According to a recent study, 49% of all Google searches are now "zero-click", meaning users are getting the answer they need without having to click on a single result or ad. See full show notes at: https://www.mickmel.com/podcast122

For years, Google Search Console has allowed you to set your "preferred domain". With the new version, though, that option is going away. How will this affect you? See full show notes at: https://www.mickmel.com/podcast121

Google typically finds websites through backlinks or XML sitemaps, but can it find them other ways as well? See full show notes at: https://www.mickmel.com/podcast120

People talk about website authority scores quite a bit, and I use them from time to time myself, but Google has made it clear that they have no such official metric. See full show notes at: https://www.mickmel.com/podcast119

XML sitemaps are a great way to help inform Google about the content on your site, and there are many great WordPress plugins to help with that. Soon, though, XML sitemaps might be part of WordPress core. See full show notes at: https://www.mickmel.com/podcast118

Sometimes Google likes to point things out that are obvious yet need repeating, so we'll help repeat them here; links and title tags still matter. See full show notes at: https://www.mickmel.com/podcast117

When you do a search on Google, there are times when the first page is filled almost entirely with results from the same site. With their latest update, Google is working to fix that. See full show notes at: https://www.mickmel.com/podcast116

Google has said before that having SSL on your site is a "light-weight ranking" factor, and that continues to be the case, but Google seems to be pushing a bit harder on it now. See full show notes at: https://www.mickmel.com/podcast115

Adding text to the alt attribute of an image is a great way to help vision-impaired users (and Google) understand what the image is about. However, removing it can be ok in some circumstances. Sort of. See full show notes at: https://www.mickmel.com/podcast114

The most common way to let Google know about new content on your site is by using XML sitemaps. However, some folks have started using Google's indexing API to push new content to Google, but that's likely not a good idea. See full show notes at: https://www.mickmel.com/podcast113

Google has been slowly rolling out their mobile first index, and will continue to roll it out on existing sites, but starting July 1 all new sites will automatically be indexed mobile-first. See full show notes at: https://www.mickmel.com/podcast112

Companies have struggled over the years about whether to create one website for their entire business, or separate ones for different pieces. In most cases, Google stays stick to one. See full show notes at: https://www.mickmel.com/podcast111

While it's certainly important to have a solid presence on Google My Business, a recent study shows that people put much more trust into a company's website. See full show notes at: https://www.mickmel.com/podcast110 Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/digitalcast/message

How often does Google makes adjustments to their algorithm? In 2018, there were over 3,200 changes, or nearly nine per day. How much do they all matter? See full show notes at: https://www.mickmel.com/podcast109 Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/digitalcast/message

I'm a big believer in backups. For client sites that our agency manages, we take 2-3 backups of every site, every day, if not more. However, when my computer crashed last week, I got up and running on a new one with no loss of data — and no real backups. How did that work?  See full show notes at: https://www.mickmel.com/podcast108

 At WordCamp Atlanta a few weeks ago, I got into a discussion with some other folks about RSS, and was surprised that many weren't familiar with it. It can be very valuable, so let's explore that a bit.   See full show notes at: https://www.mickmel.com/podcast107

Whether you realize it or not, spammers are likely stealing your content and reposting it on other sites across the web. That's certainly not a good thing, but can it affect your rankings?  See full show notes at: https://www.mickmel.com/podcast106

It's thought that there are roughly 200 factors in Google's ranking algorithm, so if you're trying to track your progress on just one of them, it may be impossible to do. See full show notes at: https://www.mickmel.com/podcast105