Hi there! I have been building websites for over 25 years – you can still see my first website on archive.org. Yes, it was hand-coded back when HTML <tables> was how you controlled the layout of a page.
I still love building websites but now my day-job includes getting good rankings in the search engines to drive leads and signups.
Since I first optimized a website for “free online games” 25 years ago, SEO is dramatically different, but one thing that hasn’t changed is that ultimately you need to focus on the user experience. You can employ all the hacks and tips that you want but if your user experience is poor then you’ll likely have poor results.
I built this website as a reminder to myself on all the moving parts in SEO. It started out life as a Google Doc to record all the terms I came across.
It’s very easy to get distracted by the latest shiny SEO object that you read about on Reddit or Twitter, that you forget about something else you read the previous week.
This glossary is here to help remind me and other SEO analysts of all the factors to consider when doing SEO.
Most of the content is currently in the form of notes or fragments, it’s not what you might consider to be the ‘ultimate guide’ to any particular term. This might change over time as I work on the site more.
If you’d like to help contribute to this resource or want to suggest edits, please let me know!
Thanks,
A few FAQs that I keep getting
Is this just content generated by ChatGPT?
It would be the easiest thing in the world to build a glossary on any topic using ChatGPT or another generative AI writing tool. The problem with generative AI is that it doesn’t include experience or anecdotes in the content. Sure you could have ChatGPT to write the bulk of the content and then you weave in your own experience.
However, there are two reasons that this glossary is written by a human:
1. I love to write and I’m not actively looking for shortcuts in something I like to do.
2. I’m not entirely convinced that generative AI writing tools which have been trained on other people’s content is ethical. Where are we going to be in 5 years time when no one writes any original content because they use AI to create everything based on what’s been created in the past?
I’m not anti-AI, but this is a hobby site for me to practice something that I love.
Isn’t Bing AI and Google Bard going to answer all these SEO terms?
Yes, almost certainly. If you asked Google Bard what is a 301 redirect in SEO you’ll get your answer there and then without visiting a website like this.
SEO is going to fundamentally change, and informational and research keywords are going to be the biggest losers. However, if everyone stops writing informational and research-based content where are the generative AI tools going to get trained on new things?
This website is a hobby website, I do it because I love to write and I want a place to get down all my knowledge on SEO.
Why doesn’t your site [insert SEO tactic here]?
It’s pretty hypocritical of me to preach about SEO terms and then not follow them myself on my own website.
Rome wasn’t built in a day, and neither are (most) websites. They evolve. You can go back to the content at any time and improve the on-page SEO. There’s no rule or best practice that says every new page you create has to be perfectly optimized before it is published.
Perfection is the enemy of progress. My opinion is that if you have time constraints it is better to get your content published and then optimize it when you have the time.
This is a hobby website which started out as a Google Doc to record all the SEO terms I came across. I already have a job and this website is never going to replace my salary so I focus on the content and will worry about SEO tactics some other time.