
What a week. What a world. In hard and not-so-hard times I always find my way back to this poem. Don’t let despair sink its sharp teeth into the throat with which you sing.
We’re still buried in Mammoth this month, and we just broke the all-time season snow record of 668″. We’re now at 695″, or almost 58 feet of snow this winter. I’m so grateful my boyfriend lives in sunny, warm Bishop just down the hill so I can escape. This spot at the bend in the Owens River in Bishop has been my delight. The water is up to the edge of its riverbanks, and it’s a joy to get to sit by it.
As always, it’s the outside world that lifts me, especially when it’s sunny and not buried under many feet of snow.
This Month’s Observation: Don’t forget the redirect.

I’m a repeat offender of forgetting redirects on my own website. Anytime you change a page’s URL or delete a page, you should set up a redirect. If you don’t, you risk a) people landing on an error page and not finding what they need and b) missing out on the SEO reputation built up by that page whose URL you just changed.
Even if you think no one will be going to a certain page/URL you previously used, you never know what links are still floating around out there or what URL might show up in an odd Google search.
On Squarespace, you can add redirects under URL Mappings. On WordPress, check if you can add redirects through your SEO plugin (it might even auto-create redirects if you change a page’s URL), or you can use a plugin like Redirection.
It’s worth checking for broken links with Broken Link Checker and repairing whatever you find — both for SEO and for your website visitors.
If you’re looking for more SEO tips, I updated my post on 7 SEO Tips for Small Businesses.
It was a couple years old, but the great thing about foundational SEO is it caters to humans rather than bots and helps you regardless of how the algorithm changes, so there wasn’t much I needed to change in this post.
Website & SEO Updates from Around the Web
A great post from a fellow website designer on making sure you own your brand assets (logos, fonts, etc.)
How to start your dream business in 15 simple steps
Considering starting a business? This guide from my colleague Stefani outlines all the major steps.
How do you clean up content without affecting rankings?
If you’ve created a lot of pages or posts on your website, it’s a good idea to review your content periodically.
Google Bard: everything you need to know
Google’s version of ChatGPT… still in its very early days. Also ChatGPT’s new version (4) is out.
Yoast SEO founders invest in WordPress accessibility plugin
Love this kind of news! I use and always recommend the free Accessibility Checker plugin. In other good Yoast news, you can change crawl settings if you use Yoast to reduce crawl load & make your website (and the internet) a bit more green.
Office hour with a talented graphic designer
My colleague Margo just started offering office hour calls to give design direction, ideas, etc. Highly recommend!
Recently Launched: High Country Peace Village

This was a fun and fast project for a new kids program in my hometown in North Carolina. Our priority was a super simple website that would be easy for staff/volunteers to manage going forward, so Squarespace was the perfect fit.
They had a hand-painted logo but no other branding, so we worked together to create a look that felt reflective of High Country Peace Village and would speak to parents, kids, and supporters/donors.