Jay McCarthy

Hello. Jay here. This is SEO Daily, which is a slightly ambitious name for a notebook maintained by somebody who occasionally spends too long investigating one weird page label.

I work in digital marketing and like the place where search questions meet the actual website. Paid and organic search both bring people with tasks. The tasks interest me more than the departmental argument about who deserves the medal afterwards.

A customer looking for a repair without replacing a whole unit is giving us something to work with. I want to know whether the website answers that question, whether the answer is correct, and whether somebody can find it without learning the company's internal vocabulary.

That is most of the spirit of this blog.

I'm suspicious of content written because a calendar demands feeding. A publishing schedule can be useful. A schedule that needs an article about “why quality matters” every third Thursday is a sausage machine with access to a keyboard.

Sometimes the useful piece of content is a long guide. Sometimes it is two sentences on a service page. I like choosing the home after understanding the question, rather than deciding every answer needs to become a blog post first.

A few notes about how I work:

I open the destination. This sounds so basic that writing it down feels faintly insulting, but it is remarkably easy to have an entire campaign discussion without anyone following the actual visit.

I try the unfamiliar route. If I know the page address already, I am not a convincing stand-in for the customer trying to find it through a menu.

I read words in context. A headline on a slide can sound clear until it sits next to a photograph and an action that suggest a different arrangement.

I ask colleagues what people say. The enquiry inbox can contain better writing prompts than an afternoon spent guessing what would make the business sound authoritative.

None of this is particularly mystical. I enjoy the detective work precisely because the clues are ordinary. An unexpected search phrase. A repeated question. A useful page that lives three clicks away beneath a label only the staff understand.

I keep working notes on those clues and the changes they suggest. The notes help me resist improving six things at once and then inventing a confident story about which one mattered.

The report should make room for uncertainty. If the page changed, say so. If the visitor groups differ, keep that nearby. A chart can be precise about its numbers while supporting a fairly loose conclusion.

I also like a bit of humour because websites can be unintentionally hilarious. Somewhere, right now, a perfectly good maintenance service is hiding beneath “Integrated Solutions,” patiently waiting for a customer to complete the quest.

This publication contains letters, rants, little navigation adventures and the occasional attempt to be measured. The annoyance is usually directed at habits we can change: empty copy, confusing labels, territorial reporting and the belief that producing more material must mean being more useful.

I include myself in the complaint. I have made a neat document before establishing whether the document needed to exist. It is an excellent way to look busy.

What I want from the work is fairly plain. A person should be able to arrive with a question, recognise the relevant offer and understand a sensible next step.

If the website gets them there, brilliant. If it gives them three slogans and a bloody treasure map, there is probably another post in it.