Author: davidball

How one tiny hyphen destroyed our SEO efforts

Edit – This article was written a long time ago now, and best-practice has actually now changed. The investigation in this article finds that hyphens in a domain name have a negative effect, wheras Google has since recommended their use to help identify spaces between words. 

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SEE ALSO: The difference between a <button> and an <a>

You might have seen Silktide’s SEO challenge, where three intrepid developers battled to get their website the highest in Google’s rankings for the obscure term: ‘frictionless owls’

Here’s the order they came when we finished the challenge:

  1. frictionlessowls.com – My site had content rich with relevant keywords.
  2. www.frictionlessowls.co.uk – Ali’s site had a few pages of unique content.
  3. frictionless-owls.com – Oliver’s site with machine-generated nonsensical content.

Continue reading How one tiny hyphen destroyed our SEO efforts

Trivia for geeks: where internet-related words come from

Spam spam spam lovely spam

Have you ever wondered where certain internet-related words come from and why we use them? Like why is spam called spam? And what’s with the term ‘radio’ button – where did that name come from? We’ve put together a list of 10 words and explained their origins, so you can be the ultimate web geek in your office. Continue reading Trivia for geeks: where internet-related words come from

Things you should know about website headings

Headings in a book

Edit – This article was written many moons ago, so isn’t going to be totally relevant. The importance of Headings in SEO for example has diminished a lot, although is still important. 

What are website headings?

Headings on websites are extremely important for breaking up your paragraphs of content, and formatting your text. In this article we’re going to explain what they are, why you should use them effectively in your web pages, and how important they are for SEO. Continue reading Things you should know about website headings