What does Google say about SEO?

How important is the LCP score from the Search Console for your SEO strategy?

Patrick Kettner Oct 05, 2021 ★★★

The only LCP score that really matters is the one from the Page Experience report in the Search Console. This is exactly the same information that Google Search uses for ranking. Development measurements may differ from actual scores.

Domain Age & History AI & SEO Web Performance Search Console

Why should every SEO professional consider a CDN for optimizing LCP?

Patrick Kettner Oct 05, 2021 ★★

It is essential to use a CDN (Content Delivery Network). CDNs store copies of your content on servers that are closer to end users, reducing the distance and loading time of files, which decreases LCP.

Content PDF & Files Web Performance

How can Service Workers help boost your LCP by 80%?

Patrick Kettner Oct 05, 2021 ★★

Using a Service Worker with a cache-first strategy is an excellent choice for loading sites instantly. An engineer from the Chrome team managed to reduce the LCP of his site's pages by nearly 80% using this technique.

Domain Age & History Content AI & SEO Web Performance

How does removing unused scripts and CSS really enhance LCP?

Patrick Kettner Oct 05, 2021 ★★

Remove all scripts and stylesheets in the head of your document that are not used on this specific page. They can block or slow down the browser during the rendering of the actually used content, reducing your critical LCP budget.

Domain Age & History Content PDF & Files Web Performance

Should you inline critical CSS and JS to boost your SEO?

Patrick Kettner Oct 05, 2021 ★★

Instead of linking separate files, add critical CSS and JavaScript essential for the initial viewport directly into your head. This prevents the browser from having to download, parse, and apply styles, allowing it to jump straight to rendering the l...

Domain Age & History AI & SEO JavaScript & Technical SEO Mobile SEO PDF & Files

Should you use async and defer to optimize your SEO scripts?

Patrick Kettner Oct 05, 2021 ★★

The async attribute tells the browser that it can download other resources in the background and execute the script as soon as it's ready. The defer attribute is more polite: it downloads in the background but does not interrupt rendering and execute...

Domain Age & History AI & SEO

How do DNS prefetch and preconnect transform technical SEO?

Patrick Kettner Oct 05, 2021 ★★

For resources hosted on other domains like CDNs, add DNS prefetch or preconnect metadata. These hints allow the browser to perform DNS resolution and establish connections in the background, paralleling these network tasks.

Crawl & Indexing AI & SEO JavaScript & Technical SEO Domain Name Pagination & Structure

Why is preload vital for SEO of critical content?

Patrick Kettner Oct 05, 2021 ★★

Preload tells the browser to download and parse content immediately. When used on too many elements, it can slow down the browser. Reserve it exclusively for extremely important content like that in the initial viewport.

Content AI & SEO Mobile SEO

Should you implement loading='lazy' to optimize images that are not immediately visible?

Patrick Kettner Oct 05, 2021 ★★

For images that are not in the initial viewport, add the loading='lazy' attribute. This signals to the browser that it can delay loading these images since they are less likely to be seen immediately. Never add this attribute to images within the ini...

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

Are modern image formats truly revolutionizing SEO optimization?

Patrick Kettner Oct 05, 2021 ★★★

Utilize modern image formats like WebP or AVIF through content negotiation. These formats can reduce image size by up to 90% compared to traditional JPEGs, which can have a massive impact on LCP.

Domain Age & History Content AI & SEO Images & Videos Web Performance Search Console

How can you get real-time LCP data using Google Analytics?

Patrick Kettner Oct 05, 2021 ★★

Although canonical data from the Search Console is published every 28 days, you can gain insight into your LCP scores by using PerformanceObserver with Google Analytics. Create a custom event to get LCP results minute by minute for your improvements.

Crawl & Indexing Web Performance Search Console

Does URL Length Really Impact Your SEO Rankings?

John Mueller Oct 04, 2021 ★★★

John Mueller explained on Twitter that Google uses URL length as an ultra-light criterion in the context of defining a canonical page (if it discovers duplicate content): "We use URL length with a very light weight for canonicalization, so if we spot...

Domain Age & History Content Crawl & Indexing AI & SEO Domain Name Social Media

Should You Block Sponsored Links from Indexing in Your E-commerce Category Pages?

John Mueller Oct 04, 2021 ★★★

Recently, John Mueller has been actively communicating about category pages, particularly on e-commerce sites (see previous weeks). This week, he responded on Twitter to a question about integrating (as Amazon does, for example) links to sponsored pr...

Domain Age & History Content Crawl & Indexing E-commerce AI & SEO Links & Backlinks Social Media

How Does Google Rank Specific Passages Instead of Entire Pages?

John Mueller Oct 04, 2021 ★★★

During a webmaster hangout, John Mueller explained in a few words what the Passage Ranking algorithm was: "we essentially take a very long page and generally these are pages that are not very well optimized for SEO and that contain different intents ...

Algorithms Domain Age & History Content Discover & News Featured Snippets & SERP AI & SEO

Do relative URLs really influence your internal SEO?

John Mueller Oct 01, 2021 ★★

Relative URLs are perfectly acceptable for internal links, much like the combination of relative and absolute URLs. Google has no issue processing this type of configuration.

AI & SEO Links & Backlinks Domain Name Pagination & Structure International SEO

Do Pages Blocked by robots.txt Really Affect Your SEO?

John Mueller Oct 01, 2021 ★★★

Pages blocked by robots.txt that show up as indexed in Search Console do not count against site quality. It is mainly a warning to inform owners. If you do not care about these pages, just leave them as they are.

Domain Age & History Crawl & Indexing AI & SEO Search Console

Does a temporary noindex really affect Google's recrawl?

John Mueller Oct 01, 2021 ★★★

Adding and then removing a noindex tag will not have a negative long-term effect. Google will continue to crawl the URL normally, especially if you add internal links to those pages. The crawl rate may decrease slightly but will not drop to zero.

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

How do noindex tags affect the de-indexing timeline for large websites?

John Mueller Oct 01, 2021 ★★

For a large website, processing noindex tags can take up to a month. De-indexing usually happens in a gradual and progressive manner, not all at once.

Crawl & Indexing AI & SEO

Why does Google's quality evaluation take so long?

John Mueller Oct 01, 2021 ★★★

Google's quality evaluations take a considerable amount of time. If you deindex 10% of your site, it won't be reevaluated the following week, but rather over several months.

Crawl & Indexing AI & SEO

Does simply deleting content actually enhance your site's SEO quality?

John Mueller Oct 01, 2021 ★★★

Removing low-quality content doesn't automatically make a site of higher overall quality. It's necessary to improve the rest of the content as well, not just eliminate the bad parts. The overarching framework that causes a site to be perceived as low...

Content AI & SEO