7-Step SEO Basics for Beginners - Step 1

While Lockdown creates the time and space for it, we're going back to basics on SEO. It shouldn't be difficult, it definitely isn't rocket science. It just takes a little effort.

Getting the basics right can make a big difference to all of our portfolio sites' rankings.

Today is Global Accessibility Awareness Day

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Thursday, May 21, 2020, marks the ninth Global Accessibility Awareness Day (GAAD). The purpose of GAAD is to get everyone talking, thinking and learning about digital access/inclusion and people with different disabilities.

How to Fix VirtualBox UUID already exists Errors

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Retrieving an old VirtualBox VM earlier, I had to copy the virtual hard drive from one partition to another. I released the copy of the disk from the Virtual Media Manager, tried to add the new copy in the new location to the machine's storage tree and Virtual Box stopped dead because... the disk's unique identifier was already registered by VirtualBox itself. I had to relearn how to fix VirtualBox 'UUID already exists Errors' all over again.

How to match content to questions, NOT SEO

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The search engines make good incomes out of finding information and providing answers. It may be as a by-product of their advertising business, but the key to keeping eyeballs on the engine is to fulfil as many information needs as possible. Which is what you need to do for them if you want to be found; match content to questions not SEO.

How-to: Understand SEO

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Are you getting junk mail daily from a mob of SEO 'experts'? Paranoid that you really really need it but don't understand what it is, how to get it, or whether to pay for it? Well, it's lock down, the time is now, so here is a whole series of posts on SEO, beginning with: How to understand SEO.

Is your web page mobile-friendly?

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Ever though Google went mobile-first for search indexing in 2015, there's a long tail of websites still on their original desktop layouts. Fortunately Google's own mobile-friendly test tool is still accessible.

Stop Firefox updating in background

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<Rant:> I didn't want my work interrupted, so I told Software Updater to 'remind me later'. Firefox insisted on behaving like Windows 10 and updated anyway and further insisted on a re-start before it would do anything else. I hit the restart button and to add insult to injury... nothing. No restart and my open tabs weren't restored when I restarted manually. Bastards.

If you want to behave like bloody Microsoft, sell out to them so we all know where we stand and can go use a browser we can trust not to go behind our backs making a zillion connections and updates without our consent.

The ability to disable Firefox update checking was removed in Firefox 63. Thanks a bunch. Do not lecture me, Mozilla, about security, privacy and freedom of choice if you're going to enforce automatic updates whether I want them or, for good reason, not. Twats. </Rant>

How-to: Artwork for Blog Posts

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Image: Mini Piggy Bank
Money Box - aliexpress.com

As I have to keep telling clients, the bad old days of text-only blogs is over. Every post needs at least one image at the top so that it has some visual interest on the page and in any list of search results.

You need not only to find that image, but know how and where it will be displayed and at what resolution, in order to avoid that 'elementary school project' look.