essays

Original writing on the current state of digital content, including SEO, UX, social media, legacy media, software, independent publishers, AR, VR, emerging tech, and everything in between.

Latest stories

170 posts

Content Strategy

My experience with Minneapolis, racism and the aftermath of George Floyd's murder

Today I have to talk about my neighborhood and my city and how police killed a man while he pleaded for his life and his neighbors pleaded for his life.

Information Architecture

Best practices for business websites in the 2020s

A website is the full experience of your business, represented digitally. What should be on your business's website in the 2020s?

Information Architecture

Does your website actually need a blog?

Why are we still building websites with blogs tacked on at the end? Are blogs really good for SEO?

Search & Discovery

How coronavirus crisis affected SEO marketing content

Queries with COVID-related terms are either being managed directly by people or they’re processed by a separate algorithm. Let's explore.

The Business of Content

Coronavirus-era clichés to use and avoid

As a close-reader-by-trade, I’ve found myself analyzing the phrases and clichés of the coronavirus crisis. Let's reflect on the early COVID-19 cliches.

Analytics

Marketing analytics v. biology

In marketing analytics, we look at rates all the time: bounce rates, conversion rates, clickthrough rates. Rates represent two absolute numbers compared, one number relative to another. We can provide context for those rates and use them to tell a defined story.