Workshop notes
The web advances by small additions, almost none of which make headlines. Noted here are the ones tried in the workshop: what came of them, what they cost, and why some were set aside. Every note is dated.
The volunteer secretary who has to choose a site for the club or association needs five pages, a clear budget and a site the next committee can keep up. The whole question, in plain words.
Google states in plain words that the number and quality of reviews weigh on local ranking. The habit that brings them in, and the red line never to cross. A quick win from the SEO series.
Creating and verifying your Google profile is the beginning, not the end: completeness, photos, updates, the living profile beats the one filled in once and left there. A quick win from the SEO series.
Publishing a page is not enough: it is the links from your existing pages that get it discovered and give it its weight. The reflex to build into every publication. A quick win from the SEO series.
IMG_84759.jpg tells nobody anything. Descriptive file names, alt text, images placed next to the text that discusses them: three habits documented by Google. A quick win from the SEO series.
The nine parts of the series folded into a dated sequence of steps: what to do on day one, in the first month, then every month. Beginners' SEO series, final part.
A good questions-and-answers page attracts because it matches the exact wording of searches. What works, what stopped working in 2026, and what translation adds. Beginners' SEO series, part nine.
One address per language, tags that declare the correspondences, and a title of its own for each version: the three rules of a multilingual site that does not cannibalise itself. Beginners' SEO series, part eight.
For a local clientele, the panel shown beside the results and on Maps counts as much as the site. Creating, verifying and keeping up your profile, following the official help. Beginners' SEO series, part seven.
Google ranks what is genuinely useful first. What "helpful content" means in concrete terms, the two tags that decide the click, and the official list of dead ends. Beginners' SEO series, part six.
Google discovers pages by following links. A site whose pages never cite one another condemns itself to invisibility, page by page. Beginners' SEO series, part five.
What a sitemap actually does, when Google itself says it is not always necessary, and the two mistakes that make it counterproductive. Beginners' SEO series, part four.
Google provides, for free, the tool that tells you what it has indexed of your site, what it has set aside and why, and on which queries it shows it. Beginners' SEO series, part three.
Being online and being indexed are two different things. The four causes behind almost every absence, and how to check which one applies to you. Beginners' SEO series, part two.
Search engine optimisation is not a secret recipe: it means making possible three operations that Google performs in a fixed order. First part of a series for beginners.
Buying reviews, posting them under false names, rewarding customers who rate you well or burying a competitor under negative stars: what Google forbids on Business Profiles, and why this is the most expensive cheat of all. Punished practices series, sixth and final part.
Generating hundreds of worthless pages, buying an expired domain for its reputation, or renting out your good name to third-party content: the three practices Google added by name to its rules in March 2024. Punished practices series, part five.
Showing one page to Google's robot and another to the visitor, or sending the human somewhere other than where they thought they were going: cloaking is the most outright cheat in the catalogue, and one of the most harshly punished. Punished practices series, part four.
Google treats a link as a recommendation. Buying links, swapping them in bulk or scattering them in comments amounts to rigging recommendations, and the penalty hits both parties. Punished practices series, part three.
Repeating the same words a hundred times, or writing them in white on a white background: the two oldest cheats in search optimization, why Google names them in its rules, and how to recognize them. Punished practices series, part two.
Trends, autocomplete, Search Console and PageSpeed are useless consulted once. Here is the monthly routine that ties them together, minute by minute, and what to note along the way. Tools series, fifth and final part.
A free tool measures your site the way Google measures it: real visitor data on one side, a lab test on the other. What the scores mean, and what really counts. Tools series, part four.
Google publishes the list of practices that make a site drop or vanish, and hands out documented penalties. The principle behind the list: deceiving the searcher is unfair to them and to your competitors. Punished practices series, part one.
Search Console lists the exact queries on which your site appears, how many times, and how many people click. A guided reading of the one report that replaces guesswork. Tools series, part three.
The search bar completes your half-typed sentences with what people really type. It is a free research tool, no account needed, and nobody thinks of using it. Tools series, part two.
Google Trends shows, free of charge, how interest in a word rises, compares and spreads across cantons. What it tells you, what it doesn't, and how to use it before you write. Tools series, part one.
Many small businesses install a heavy analytics tool, consent banner included, for numbers they never look at. What Search Console measures without placing anything on the visitor, and what is genuinely missing.
The classic scenario: gorgeous new site, traffic cut to a third. A redesign is a migration, and Google documents the exact procedure for moving without losing anything. The mapping plan, piece by piece.
A page not found is not a disease of your site, it is a normal web response code. Sorting the 404s that do not matter from the ones that bleed, based on the status code documentation.
No, Google does not "penalise" accidental duplicates. It picks one version and ignores the others, and that is sometimes worse: the version it picks is not the one you wanted. What canonicalisation actually means.
Every page that changes address without a redirect loses everything it had built up: its links, its ranking, its regulars. The permanent redirect passes on the inheritance, and Google documents precisely how.
Since 2014, Google has said in plain words that an encrypted connection is a ranking signal. But the real reason to have a certificate lies elsewhere: without it, the browser displays "not secure" next to your name.
The white flash between two pages was used to sell heavy, costly sites. Browsers now avoid it on their own: a simple site can be just as smooth.
A browser can prepare the next page before the click. On a site that is already fast, the arithmetic does not fall the right way. The full reasoning.
The headline whose second line carries a single word is a flaw everyone has seen. Browsers can now correct it on every screen, for every visitor.
Text that fades in gently as you scroll is pleasant. What it should cost the site, and why we turn down effects that weigh a site down.