E-mail:
jsem@patrikpilous.cz
Google Search Console
Google Search Console (GSC for short) is a free Google tool that shows you how your website looks from the search...
Erika Fashion case study with 436,000 visits from Google in a year
I started working for Erika Fashion, a women's fashion client (erikafashion.cz and erikafashion.sk), as an...
Keyword cannibalisation, how to find it and what to do about it
Keyword cannibalisation happens when two or more pages on the same website target the same query with the same...
How to build a marketing strategy, with a step-by-step process and an example
A marketing strategy is a decision about who you will sell to, what you will sell and how, so that the company meets...
Who a CMO is and what they really do in a company
A CMO (Chief Marketing Officer) is the person in a company’s leadership who is responsible for what marketing...
USP, or unique selling proposition, and how to find yours
A USP (Unique Selling Proposition) is a unique selling argument. It is one specific thing that only you offer, or...
Why SEO and AI visibility depend on associations and entities
A brand has two layers in the customer’s mind. The entity, meaning a clear idea of who the brand is, and...
How to choose an SEO consultant, questions to ask and warning signs
Choose based on four things, not on price. Who will actually work on your website, what they will do in the first 90...
What makes my eyes pop out of my head when it comes to pricing development in the age of Claude Code
For years I have been reviewing and writing briefs for developers at my clients. I am not a developer, I am an SEO...
Brand positioning explained with brand examples
Brand positioning (positioning značky in Czech) is a marketing term for the unique value a brand gives its...
Survivorship bias
We only see successes because failures have disappeared from view. Abraham Wald’s planes, Bára’s story...
Cognitive biases in marketing and everyday life, with examples, books and research
A cognitive bias is a systematic or systemic natural error in human thinking that occurs when people process and...
Customer journey, or a slightly different view of your business
Clients think everyone has long known how people buy from them. In most cases, though, it is just a mix of feelings...
The best advertising slogans that stuck in people’s memory
There aren't many things I remember well. The exceptions are numbers, years, stories, football line-ups and...
SEO pricing. How much it really costs and what you pay for
I have heard the question "how much does SEO cost?" many times, and it really is a tricky one. We dealt with it...
The bystander effect and why a crowd rarely helps
The more people watch, the fewer of them help. The Kitty Genovese case, the Darley and Latané experiments and why a...
Backlinks, what they are for, how they evolved and how to earn them effectively
When I started with SEO years ago, link building worked in a surprisingly crude way. On the other hand, the...
How to build a functional website architecture and structure
One of the first things I look at in a more comprehensive SEO audit or in ongoing collaboration is website...
The Dunning-Kruger effect
The less we know, the more confident we are. The story of the lemon juice robber, the confidence curve and how to...
How SEO and GEO work, and why they are closer than they seem
When I walk into a client meeting these days, the same question often comes up: "What about AI? Do we want to do...
FOMO, the fear of missing out
FOMO is the fear of missing out, which pushes us to act straight away. What the acronym means, FOMO syndrome,...
Social proof
We see what others do as the right thing to do. The Asch experiment, Cialdini and using social proof in marketing...
How page indexing works and what it is for
Indexing is the process by which a search engine stores a page in its index. The etymology, the history from...
The Streisand effect
Trying to hide something paradoxically draws more attention to it. The story of Barbra Streisand, reactance and how...
Paradox of choice
Too many options lead to paralysis and lower satisfaction. The jam experiment, Barry Schwartz and how to narrow your...
AI Performance and how to use it beyond online PR
AI Performance in Bing Webmaster Tools gives us a new perspective. According to the product managers behind this...
Bandwagon effect
We join in with something because others are joining in. The origin of the term bandwagon, Leibenstein and how to...
Zeigarnik effect
We remember unfinished tasks better and they won’t leave us alone. Zeigarnik and the waiters, progress bars...
My 2025 in marketing
Reading my reviews of previous years (2023, 2024 and the ones I keep just for myself) is extremely interesting and...
The decoy effect and how a third option steers your choice
A planted third option changes the choice between the other two. The story of The Economist, popcorn and using the...
Pygmalion effect
Our expectations can change another person’s reality. The Greek myth, Rosenthal’s classroom experiment,...
Peak-end rule
We remember an experience by its peak and its end, not by its average. Kahneman’s research, the ice cream at...
Authority bias
We trust an authority’s opinion more, without checking it. The white coat, the Milgram experiment and how...
Availability heuristic
We overestimate what we can easily recall. Tversky and Kahneman’s experiment, the fear of flying and how to be...
Confirmation bias
We only see what confirms our opinion and overlook the rest. Francis Bacon, the Wason test, social media bubbles and...
Illusory truth effect
What we hear often, we start to accept as true. Propaganda, advertising slogans and fake news, how the illusory...
Overconfidence bias
Our certainty tends to be higher than our actual success rate. Kahneman, the planning fallacy and why we buy our...
Reciprocity
When we receive something first, we feel the need to return it. A cheese sample, Cialdini, the Coca-Cola experiment...
The liking effect
We buy from people we like. Tupperware, Cialdini, the power of similarity and compliments, and how to use the liking...
Anchor text
Anchor text is the visible text of a link. It tells Google what the target page is about. What types of anchors are...
Jakob’s Law
Users expect your website to work like the ones they already know. Jakob Nielsen, conventions in UX design and why...
The Forer effect (Barnum effect)
We take general statements as if they were tailored specifically to us. Forer’s horoscope experiment, P. T....
Hreflang
Hreflang is an attribute you use to tell Google which language version of your website to show to whom. How to set...
Crawling
Crawling is the process in which Googlebot moves through a website and reads its pages. How it works, what crawl...
The curse of knowledge
If you know a topic well, you cannot imagine what it is like not to know it. The song-tapping experiment, why...
Public relations (PR), what it is and how it relates to marketing
Public relations (PR), known in Czech rather impersonally as vztahy s veřejností, plays a key role...
SERP (search engine results page)
SERP is the search engine results page. From ten blue links to AI Overviews, how it varies by query and why it...
Keyword
A keyword is the phrase people use to search. From keyword stuffing to search intent, the difference between generic...
The endowment effect
Once we hold something, we value it more highly. The mug experiment, the car test drive, estate agents and how to...
Mere exposure effect
We prefer what we know. The hated Eiffel Tower, Zajonc’s experiments, the power of repeated advertising and...
Loss aversion
A loss hurts roughly twice as much as an equal gain pleases. Prospect theory, a story about a bet and how to use...
Anchoring
The first number you see becomes the anchor for everything that follows. How anchoring works, a story from a market...
Search intent
Search intent is the real goal behind a query. The four types of intent and why it matters more for rankings than...
The default effect
Most people leave the pre-set option as it is. The organ donation study, how to use the default effect, and how it...
The zero-price effect
A zero price attracts us more than the saving justifies. Ariely’s chocolate experiment and why free shipping...
Canonical (canonicalisation)
Canonical, or canonicalisation, deals with duplicate content by setting the main version of a page. Etymology,...
The goal-gradient effect
The closer we are to a goal, the more effort we put into reaching it. Kivetz’s coffee experiment, loyalty...
The gambler’s fallacy and why chance has no memory
We believe that after a run of one outcome, the other one has to come. The Monte Carlo roulette wheel in 1913, why...
The halo effect
One good impression colours your whole judgement. The origin (Thorndike), a story from a job interview, the horn...
Robots.txt
Robots.txt is a file with rules for search engine robots. The origin of the word robot in Čapek’s work, its...
Miller’s law
We can hold only 7 ± 2 items in working memory. George Miller, chunking and how to break up menus, forms and content...
Cognitive dissonance
We ease the tension between what we do and what we know with an excuse instead of a change. Festinger, a cult,...
Scarcity principle
What is scarce is more desirable. The cookie experiment, Cialdini and how to use the scarcity principle in...
Mental accounting
We sort money into boxes and treat it differently in each one. Thaler, gift cards and how to use mental accounting,...
Core Web Vitals
Core Web Vitals are three metrics Google uses to measure how fast and smooth a website is: LCP, INP and CLS. Why...
My 2024
So here it is again, the time for taking stock. It is great that today I can read my report from last year and see...
What caught my attention at Brand Restart 2024
What stayed with me most from this year's Brand Restart was definitely Hanka Kloučková's talk on the subconscious...
Erik the Red and his persuasion strategy
Lately I've changed course, moving away from self-development, marketing and investment books towards something a...
5 reasons every large e-shop should use affiliate marketing
Most e-shops start with PPC, then add SEO and social media. People often forget that an e-shop should also be...
Sitemap
A sitemap gives search engines a list of your important pages. Etymology, history since 2005 and its practical...
How brand associations form and why they matter so much in marketing
What is behind the success of the biggest brands? Is it a great product? Not only that. The biggest and best brands...
The pain of paying
We experience paying almost as pain, and the more visible it is, the more it hurts. Prelec and Loewenstein, cash vs...
Structured data, the key to better visibility in search engines
Structured data is a powerful tool for improving SEO, but unfortunately many websites still don't use it correctly....
Noindex and nofollow
Noindex and nofollow are two different instructions for Google. Noindex deals with whether a page is indexed,...
Priming and how it disrupts the psychology of thinking
Priming, also known as the priming effect, is a cognitive bias. It occurs when a person's exposure to one stimulus...
Title tag (meta title)
The title tag (meta title) is the page headline in search results. How to write it in under 60 characters so it...
Present bias
We overvalue immediate rewards and undervalue future ones. The marshmallow test, hyperbolic discounting and how “buy...
Meta description
A meta description is the page summary shown in search results. It won’t affect your ranking, but it...
Processing fluency
What is easy to read feels truer and more likeable. The share pronounceability experiment, rhyming claims and why...
Fitts’s law
A large, nearby target is easier to hit. Paul Fitts, buttons, thumb reach on mobile, and how the size and placement...
Serial position effect
We remember the beginning and end of a list but forget the middle. Ebbinghaus, restaurant menus and how to order...
The Veblen effect
With luxury goods, the rule is simple: higher price, higher demand. Veblen, conspicuous consumption, De Beers...
Sunk cost fallacy
We stick with something because of what we have already spent, not because of its future benefit. The Concorde...
Framing effect
The same information presented differently leads to a different decision. Kahneman’s experiment, “90%...
What is branding and what are its benefits?
The growth of your business, or of any project, depends to a large extent on a successful brand-building strategy....
Insights and highlights from SEOloger naživo 2024
For me, SEOloger combines business with pleasure: swapping funny work stories, inspiration, meeting new people,...
What is a landing page and its 3 meanings
A landing page is a standalone page on a website with a unique URL. Potential customers can reach it by clicking...
Conversion rate
Conversion rate is the share of visits that turn into an action. How it is calculated, what a good rate is for an...
The 6 best-known marketing KPIs and why you need them
Key performance indicators (Key Performance Indicators, abbreviated KPI) are quantifiable metrics that show a...
Project Restart 2024 on projects, crises, processes and motivation
Project Restart was the first Restart where I had no role at all, so I could look at the whole event with a bit...
Domain authority (DR)
Domain authority (DR) is an estimate of a website’s strength on a scale of 0 to 100, based on backlinks. It is...
Thailand and Bali, tips, work and experiences
Thailand has become a magnet for digital nomads from all over the world and for many people in my circle. I kept...
Hick’s Law
More options = longer decisions. Hick and Hyman, overloaded menus and forms, how the number of choices reduces...
What is digital marketing? Its evolution and channels
The term digital marketing generally refers to using websites, apps, mobile devices, social media, search engines...
What is the marketing mix? The 4Ps, 7Ps and how it works
The marketing mix is sometimes treated as a synonym for the abbreviations 4P, 5P, 7P, 8P or 4C. It is an extremely...
My 2023 in marketing
At last I can do my annual review on my own website. For the past 3 years I have at least written an honest review...
Duplicate content
Duplicate content is the same text on several URLs. Google does not penalise it, but it splits your site’s...
How to reach Generation Z and other trends from Social Restart
This year, Social Restart once again reflected the news and trends from the world of social media. There was a lot...
Left-digit effect
We read a price by its first digit, so we perceive 199 as “one hundred and something”. Research from...
301 redirect
A 301 redirect is a way of telling both search engines and visitors that a page has permanently moved from one...
Mandela effect
A false memory that many people share in exactly the same way. Nelson Mandela, the monocle from Monopoly and what it...
Von Restorff effect (isolation effect)
We remember best whatever stands out from its surroundings. Hedwig von Restorff, how to make a CTA or a pricing plan...
How much is AI changing digital marketing?
AI Restart is a response to the biggest change in digital marketing in recent years. There are always two responses...
How to build a B2B marketing strategy
B2C marketing strategies and individual tactics fail in B2B. Certainly not all of them, but most do. That is simply...
4 interesting takeaways from Project Restart 2023
As I am writing this Project Restart report some time after the event, I will mention the things that really stuck...
5 things I took away from SEOloger live 2023
I had been looking forward to SEOloger 2023 ever since last year's edition, which was my first. That's despite SEO...
5 things I will start doing after SEO Restart 2023
Conferences are there to inspire us and get us out of our usual ruts. Restarts even has it in its name. Most...
How to use customer lifetime value (CLV) in marketing
Many experts say that one of the most important metrics a marketing manager or e-commerce owner should pay close...
How does the IKEA effect work and how can you use it?
The IKEA effect is named after the popular Swedish furniture giant and describes a fairly simple phenomenon classed...
Frequency illusion (the Baader-Meinhof phenomenon)
Once you notice something, you see it everywhere. Where the name Baader-Meinhof comes from, Zwicky and the two...
Negativity bias
Negative things affect us more strongly than positive ones. Baumeister’s “Bad Is Stronger Than Good”, reviews...
Compromise effect
Given three options, we most often choose the middle one. The study by Simonson and Tversky, how to use the...
Mobile-first index
Mobile-first index means that Google assesses a website by its mobile version. What it is, since when it has applied...
E-E-A-T
E-E-A-T (experience, expertise, authoritativeness and trustworthiness) is the framework Google uses to assess...
Featured snippet
A featured snippet is the extracted answer shown in position zero above Google’s results. How to get into one,...
