Automattic cloned WP Engine’s paid ACF Premium plugin and is distributing it for free. Many in the WordPress community disapprove of this action, expressing concerns that it undermines the plugin and theme ecosystem. Advanced Custom Fields Plugin Advanced Custom Fields (ACF) is a WordPress plugin that’s popular with WordPress website developers because it enables them…
For most websites, the homepage represents your brand’s first interaction with your audience on your website. As the catch-all landing page where people will be sent by default, your homepage needs to cater to a breadth of user needs and intent. Consider your homepage as your shop window. It showcases your most valuable content, positions…
In nearly 20 years in search marketing, something I continue to see and debate about is shared budgets. When I ask the advertiser why, I always get a similar answer: “We have a set limited budget, and this is the best way for us to fund everything.” Or, the one that truly pains me: “The…
One of the biggest challenges in enterprise SEO is getting buy-in from the wider C-suite. Typically, the CMO will sign off on your vendor engagement, having been involved in the selection process (more often than not) and helping smooth onboarding with other inbound and demand generation stakeholders. Despite its potential to drive revenue, generate new-to-brand…
How does the rapid growth of bots change the open web? More than half of the web’s traffic comes from bots: Imperva’s Bad Bot Report 2024 reveals that almost 50% of total internet traffic wasn’t human in 2024. Trend: declining. Cloudflare’s Radar shows ~70% human traffic and 30% from bots. Akami reports that 42% of…
We tend to craft budgets based on major objectives and real-world business timing. This makes sense, as our real-world priorities should influence where we put our marketing dollars and at what velocity. However, many don’t take the ad platform mechanics into consideration when setting initial, growth, and lower priority budgets. This can mean successful campaigns…
Google has quietly introduced a new AI Search experiment called Learn About, which summarizes content and offers navigational menus to explore related subtopics. This new way of exploring content uses drill-down navigational menus called Interactive Lists and if the user scrolls down far enough they will eventually find links to human created content. This new…
WP Engine escalated its Federal complaint by citing Automattic’s publication of the WP Engine Tracker website as evidence of intent to harm WP Engine and exposing customers to potential cybercrimes. The updated complaint incorporates recent actions by Mullenweg to further strengthen their case. A spokesperson for WP Engine issued a statement to Search Engine Journal…
Link building is a complicated art form with many different tactics and approaches. Despite being one of the most mature processes in SEO, there’s still much disagreement about what makes a “bad” or “good” link building strategy, including effectiveness vs. risk, and what tactics Google can detect or punish a website for. This post will…
To remain the most popular search engine in the world, Google has to continuously update its algorithm to continue delivering users useful results. To this end, Google also makes available Google Search Essentials, so everyone from web developers to SEO professionals knows the rules of the game. Of course, there are plenty of people who…