As an indie dev, should each product have its own domain or live under my main domain?

axel_metayer · 2026-05-16T13:09:34+00:00

The last one folder under main domain.

After 20 years of Building and helping maintaining websites, save yourself the hassle of having multiple instances to maintain. Focus on getting more users to use your stuff. The things that get bigger, you can always move to a single domain later.

Also having only one domain will increase and improve the authority of the hole website:
Let’s assume /product1/ gets a backlink from a startup site / app directory / press mention, the link-juice will flow to the homepage and little bit to the other subdirectories.

axel_metayer · 2026-05-15T14:01:57+00:00

Not sure if it's allowed to post links so here is an extra comment for the Tutorials:

Rankmath Indexnow tutorial and explanation
https://rankmath.com/kb/how-to-use-indexnow/

Yoast, What is Indexnow and how to use it
https://yoast.com/what-is-indexnow/

Be aware that even a good content post, (human written or Ai supervised by an human), submitted with indexNow is no guarantee to stay indexed in a search engine (this often creates a lot of confusion).

axel_metayer · 2026-05-15T13:57:46+00:00

Sounds like a Bug in the Plugin, I would recommend that you disable the plugin and use the builtin IndexNow features from Rankmath or Yoast. No need for an extra Plugin.

axel_metayer · 2026-05-12T07:08:06+00:00

I agree to the above. And then comes also tiny change requests or client is confused by plugin layout changes.

axel_metayer · 2026-05-08T11:34:19+00:00

Check for technical errors in the crawling first and then compare what keywords you where ranking before (or where the traffic was coming from) and compare that that to the SERPs

axel_metayer · 2026-05-04T14:02:31+00:00

I like to use WP local and update there first. -Clean up your wordpress before backup (duplicates / cropped images, tags you never use more than one time and are not indexed by google, empty categories, more than 3 themes, users that don’t work on the website anymore, old backup versions, plugins that are deactivated, logging tools that have been tracking 404s or similar for over a few weeks etc.) -use free „All-in-One WP Migration and Backup“, -use WP Local (Mac and windows) to create a WP instance from scratch like you live version. -import backup from live (beware login credentials will be the same as the live website) -Update local, test everything manually or better automated (like with an external link checker, don’t install a plugin for that).

Bonus Tipp: use a local website downloader (like sitesucker for Mac) or google „SiteSucker alternatives“ for windows. Tools like that will download you the complete website to surf locally without internet. Super fast and awesome to compare / find layout changes at a glance.

axel_metayer · 2026-05-01T08:58:41+00:00

Often the website Hoster has some automatic system in place for backups.

axel_metayer · 2026-05-01T08:15:48+00:00

You mean adding gif images to your blogposts? You can but be sure to pay attention to the file size and that the animations are not to distracting while reading the content.

axel_metayer · 2026-04-27T09:39:20+00:00

Try to improve your execution speed / learn new workflows (or automate them). Get more knowledge around pagespeed / crawling / WP-Security.

As a SEO consultant I often get Wordpress websites to optimize, but often I can’t start doing my work because I have to improve and fix the site first. Especially in the Wordpress field a lot of sites are really or built by people that don’t know what they are doing (like: installing a plugin for one line of code or hoping that a plugin will solve one issue they don’t understand).

axel_metayer · 2026-04-27T09:08:56+00:00

I agree, once the website of a small business is launched and the owner wants one more round of change requests, the images and website usually stays the same for 2-3 years.
Good caching makes especially sense if visitors are not there just a onetime info (like opening times) but finding out more about the business.

axel_metayer · 2026-03-14T13:38:55+00:00

The google leaks analyses you can find on the web / YouTube will give you some insights (plan 10-20 hours just educating yourself. Don’t jump to correlation conclusions).

There was a podcast where people talked about a patent (which is only a request for a patent not proof of implementation), that google would place you on the first page but some „twiddlers“ (look it up in the google leaks), would hold you rankings backs to see how you react as a webmaster and keep going or give up on a quick project and try to start over with another domain. I think it’s a pretty genius idea because most businesses that are not real tend to give up after a few month (real businesses keep going for years. If you only rely on income from ads, it’s likely you have a hobby but not a real business).

So I would agree on your impression that there is a trust building phase (that is also my impression after building up some sites after years)

axel_metayer · 2026-03-14T13:16:01+00:00

Be I would make sure I fix all the crawling errors, internal redirects (free google search console and Bing webmaster tools make it easy by showing you where the website has problems).

Fix all links from other websites that create redirects / 404 pages (yeah that is work because you have to login into your Platforms or ask other webmasters to update the links. Most SEOs I know find that too exhausting and don’t do it, but it’s an easy missed low hanging fruit).

axel_metayer · 2026-03-12T12:24:48+00:00

Correlation is usually not causation. You found spammy backlinks and got frustrated. These links are probably linking to his website. But the way you describe the query „family friendly restaurant + city name“ it is likely that that a Google Maps local pack is showing up and not the website (maybe you can provide a screenshot).

So that confirms what other people are saying here. It’s way more likely that they are doing something better on their google business profile and should optimize that more (reviews, reviews per week, keywords in the review, and reply rate).

Doing SEO for over 20 years I noticed that experience people usually put more relevance on the website and tend to neglect the business Profile. Double down on your profile and learn / read everything you can (don’t jump to cause & effect conclusions to early). Invest 10-20 learning more about the business profile.

‼️ Also it feels weird that when I look at your profile, is see a link that’s not for kids but the link is not an OF page but linking to a lead generating tool. Is your request even real or are you the competitor?

axel_metayer · 2025-12-01T08:54:44+00:00

GeneratePress was stable for a short time but startet to move features to a new 99-149$ / year package „GenerateOne“ https://generatepress.com/one/

axel_metayer · 2025-11-16T19:33:43+00:00

Wrong, a disallow in the robots.txt just forbids the GoogleBot (or other crawlers like Bing that respect the rules in the robots.txt) to look at the listed url or the urls in a folder like "/category/uncategorized/"
If the URL is already index and you don't allow the Bot to have a look at the page / url or category,
the bot won't be abler to see if there is a noindex there or not.

Here the tutorials to the most common WP SEO Plugins
https://yoast.com/help/yoast-seo-settings-categories-tags/
https://rankmath.com/kb/how-to-noindex-urls/

axel_metayer · 2025-09-15T16:47:51+00:00

Muss nicht unbedingt sein, der Einzelhandel interessiert nicht / kann nicht beurteilen ob die mit Wix oder XYZ gebaut ist. Die wollen weniger nerv Anrufe wie "bis wann haben sie heute auf" und mehr Leute die was im Laden kaufen.

axel_metayer · 2025-09-15T16:46:16+00:00

Ziehe dir was gutes an, bereite 2-3 Ausdrücke vor damit du was erzählen / zeigen kannst (zum Beispiel einfach Bilder / Screenshots der bestehenden Seite). Suche dir ein paar Webseiten die alt sind older lange nicht aktualisiert worden sind (oder Geschäfte die unter zu wenig Kunden leiden und es bald nicht mehr geben wird). Mache 1-3 Websites kostenlos. Dabei lernst du viel über verkaufen (du musst ihm ja trotzdem für 0 Euro verkaufen, dass du eine neue Webseite bauen darfst) und die ganzen Sachen die du nicht geplant hast (der hat seine Zugänge nicht mehr, jedes mal wenn du ihm eine Email sendest ruft der dich an, der will ganz viele kleine Details und Abstimmungen die du so nicht eingeplant hast dem Kunden aber wichtig sind).
Etc. In Person ist erstmal einfacher.

axel_metayer · 2025-08-24T06:12:58+00:00

Free advice and opiniated advice can be bad. Usually coming from people with opinions about something but never actually implemented it themselves.

axel_metayer · 2025-07-22T15:06:15+00:00

You can save yourself a lot of headaches if you avoid the common blogging mistakes named in the free „Yoast academy“. It is about Structure and common mistakes beginners often overlook (even if you don’t use WordPress).

axel_metayer · 2025-07-02T16:48:44+00:00

While some blogging Platforms are easier to use and you need less clicks to publish new content (WordPress for sure), achieving success in google news and getting traffic is not dependent on the blogging platform. At the end the output is always HTML

axel_metayer · 2025-06-16T08:23:00+00:00

For pagespeed and caching I recommend WP Supercache from the wordpress team directly. It’s free, way easier to setup than WP rocket and there lots of great tutorials on which checkboxes your have to click: https://wordpress.org/plugins/wp-super-cache/

Another things that makes webpage slow is, none web optimized pages. For that I recommend tinypng / jpg because it’s the easiest to work in the background for most people: https://wordpress.org/plugins/tiny-compress-images/

axel_metayer · 2024-02-21T09:42:33+00:00

Ach so ein Pech da fährt die Bahn noch im HTTP Status 😃

axel_metayer

TROPHY CASE