What does Google say about SEO?

Can Lighthouse really replace a professional SEO audit?

Martin Splitt Jan 10, 2023 ★★

Lighthouse SEO audits are superficial but provide useful pointers and indicators directly where developers are already working, especially for Core Web Vitals.

AI & SEO Web Performance

Should you really be monitoring your robots.txt continuously?

Jason Stevens Jan 10, 2023 ★★★

It is recommended to set up monitoring to automatically detect changes to the robots.txt file and other critical SEO elements, since multiple people can modify the site.

Crawl & Indexing PDF & Files

Should you really test your robots.txt before every modification?

Jason Stevens Jan 10, 2023 ★★★

Before modifying your robots.txt file, you must use the robots.txt testing tool in Search Console to check how changes will affect crawling, particularly with complex regular expressions.

Crawl & Indexing PDF & Files Search Console

Should you block certain sections of your website in the robots.txt file?

Martin Splitt Jan 10, 2023 ★★

It is often useful to block crawling of certain parts of your site via robots.txt, such as complex filter pages or content important to customers but not to search.

Domain Age & History Content Crawl & Indexing AI & SEO Links & Backlinks

Is your crawl request volume suddenly hitting zero in Search Console? Here's why it matters.

Jason Stevens Jan 10, 2023 ★★★

If crawl requests drop to zero in Search Console, it typically means there's a site-wide crawling problem. The robots.txt file is often to blame.

Crawl & Indexing PDF & Files Search Console

Can a misconfigured robots.txt really kill your snippets and crawl traffic?

Jason Stevens Jan 10, 2023 ★★

By removing an incorrect disallow directive from robots.txt, crawl requests pick up again, traffic returns, and snippets gradually return to normal.

Crawl & Indexing

Do YouTube Backlinks Really Impact Your SEO Rankings?

John Mueller Jan 09, 2023 ★★★

John Mueller explained on Twitter that backlinks from YouTube to a website do not help with better rankings and do not allow for faster indexing...

Domain Age & History Content Crawl & Indexing AI & SEO Images & Videos JavaScript & Technical SEO Links & Backlinks Social Media

Do You Really Need to Optimize Core Web Vitals to Appear in Google Discover?

John Mueller Jan 09, 2023 ★★★

John Mueller indicated on Mastodon that to be present on Discover, it is not necessary to have good Core Web Vitals scores. Google's cherished "Page Experience" is not a relevance criterion for Discover...

Domain Age & History Content Discover & News AI & SEO Web Performance

How Does Google Actually Detect and Handle Hidden Text on Your Website?

John Mueller Jan 04, 2023 ★

John Mueller explained on Twitter that Google was "pretty good" at detecting and then ignoring hidden text on a page...

Domain Age & History Content AI & SEO JavaScript & Technical SEO Links & Backlinks Pagination & Structure Penalties & Spam Social Media

Should You Really Add Page Numbers to Your Title Tags for Better SEO?

Google Jan 04, 2023 ★★★

Alan Kent (Google) explained in a video for webmasters that in paginated content, it is not necessary to add a number corresponding to the pagination (1/12, 2/12, 3/12...) in the Title tag, as it doesn't really help Google...

Content AI & SEO Pagination & Structure

Should You Nofollow Links to Your Social Media Profiles?

John Mueller Jan 04, 2023 ★★★

John Mueller indicated on Reddit that there's no point in adding "nofollow" to outbound links on a site pointing to various social media accounts (Facebook, Twitter, Instagram...). He also explains that you can instead use the "rel=me" attribute to i...

Domain Age & History Content AI & SEO Links & Backlinks Social Media

Is latency really killing your conversions and SEO performance?

Martin Splitt Dec 29, 2022 ★★★

Latency issues on product pages can lead to a drop in user retention and diminish SEO performance. Google observes that users quickly leave pages that take too long to load.

Domain Age & History E-commerce AI & SEO JavaScript & Technical SEO Web Performance Search Console

Is mobile performance really the game-changer for your Google rankings?

Martin Splitt Dec 29, 2022 ★★★

Mobile page performance is critical for SEO. Slow mobile pages cause user abandonment and negatively impact organic search visibility.

Domain Age & History Mobile SEO Web Performance Search Console

Are animated GIFs really tanking your SEO and Core Web Vitals?

Martin Splitt Dec 29, 2022 ★★

Animated GIFs, composed of thousands of images, significantly slow down page loading. Google recommends replacing them with SVG animations which are much lighter.

Domain Age & History Images & Videos Web Performance Search Console

Is image lazy loading really essential for your SEO performance?

Martin Splitt Dec 29, 2022 ★★★

Simultaneously loading all images creates latency issues because the browser has a limited number of connections. Lazy loading images is a quick and effective solution to improve performance.

Domain Age & History Images & Videos JavaScript & Technical SEO Web Performance Search Console

Are your JavaScript bundles really dragging down your Core Web Vitals?

Martin Splitt Dec 29, 2022 ★★★

Unoptimized JavaScript plugins and packages significantly increase latency. It's recommended to analyze bundles, remove unnecessary packages, load only essential functions, and implement tree shaking and bundle splitting.

Domain Age & History AI & SEO JavaScript & Technical SEO

Should you really be analyzing your JavaScript bundles with webpack to boost SEO performance?

Martin Splitt Dec 29, 2022 ★★

Google encourages the use of tools like webpack bundle analyzer to identify large and unnecessary packages that bloat pages, making it possible to optimize JavaScript bundles.

Domain Age & History AI & SEO Images & Videos JavaScript & Technical SEO

Does a 15% boost in mobile speed really keep more users on your product pages?

Martin Splitt Dec 29, 2022 ★★

A 15% reduction in mobile load time can drive a measurable increase in the number of users staying on product pages, demonstrating the direct impact of performance on user engagement.

Domain Age & History E-commerce AI & SEO Mobile SEO Web Performance Search Console

Why does performance optimization take so much time in SEO?

Martin Splitt Dec 29, 2022 ★★

Performance fixes are generally not quick solutions. While some optimizations like lazy loading or GIF replacement are fast to implement, complete bundle optimization can take several months.

AI & SEO Images & Videos JavaScript & Technical SEO Web Performance Search Console

Can you really have millions of 301 redirects without hurting your SEO?

John Mueller Dec 29, 2022 ★★★

You can have as many pages in redirect as you want. Millions of redirects are acceptable if that's what you need. It is not necessary to redirect every 404 error.

Domain Age & History AI & SEO Pagination & Structure Redirects