What does Google say about SEO?

Should You Really Stop Buying Links in 2024 to Avoid Google Penalties?

John Mueller Feb 12, 2018 ★★★

John Mueller reminded on Twitter that selling and buying links was against Google's recommendations (and therefore subject to penalties), whether the buying and selling sites are small or large.

Content AI & SEO Links & Backlinks Social Media

Should You Really Limit Each Page to a Single Keyword for SEO?

Google Feb 05, 2018 ★★★

A user asked in a forum whether it was possible to optimize a web page for two keywords. Googler Aaseesh Marina responded that he didn't see why this wouldn't be possible, as long as the page's content is relevant for both queries.

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

Does Page Loading Speed Really Impact Your Page Indexing?

John Mueller Feb 05, 2018 ★★

Regarding last month's Speed Update, John Mueller and Gary Illyes indicated on Twitter that while this new algorithm would affect page rankings on mobile, it does not impact indexing in any way. A slow page can therefore be indexed in the same way as...

Algorithms Domain Age & History Content Crawl & Indexing AI & SEO JavaScript & Technical SEO Mobile SEO Web Performance Social Media

Should You Really Submit All Your URLs to Google Every Month to Prevent It from Forgetting Them?

John Mueller Jan 29, 2018 ★★★

John Mueller gently mocked a Twitter user who explained that all URLs of a website should be submitted to Google every month "so that the search engine doesn't forget them". The Googler explained that if Google forgot URLs like that, "the site had bi...

Content AI & SEO Images & Videos Domain Name Local Search Social Media

Should You Include GPS Coordinates in Structured Data for Local SEO?

John Mueller Jan 29, 2018 ★★

John Mueller explained in a hangout that the search engine does not take into account Schema.org structured data tags providing GPS coordinates in its algorithm.

Algorithms Domain Age & History Content Structured Data AI & SEO JavaScript & Technical SEO Penalties & Spam

Should You Really Translate Image ALT Attributes to Optimize Your Multilingual SEO?

John Mueller Jan 29, 2018 ★★★

John Mueller indicated on Twitter that it was important, in terms of SEO, to also translate the ALT attributes (no, we don't say "ALT tags" 🙂) of a site's images, since this text is read by the search engine. The fewer different languages there are o...

Domain Age & History Content AI & SEO Images & Videos Domain Name Social Media International SEO

Why Do Site Mergers and Splits Take Google So Much Longer to Index?

John Mueller Jan 22, 2018 ★★★

John Mueller explained on Twitter that when a website splits into multiple information sources (splitting into several domain names) or conversely, when several sites merge into one, the processing by the search engine is most often longer than for a...

Domain Age & History Content AI & SEO JavaScript & Technical SEO Domain Name Pagination & Structure Redirects Social Media

Can Spectre and Meltdown Security Patches Actually Hurt Your SEO Rankings?

John Mueller Jan 22, 2018 ★★★

John Mueller explained on Twitter that the Spectre and Meltdown patches, which slow down certain cloud service provider servers, should not have a significant impact on a site's page load time and therefore should not result in any penalties from Goo...

Domain Age & History Content AI & SEO Mobile SEO Web Performance Social Media

Why Does Google Ignore Images Declared in CSS Files?

John Mueller Jan 15, 2018 ★★★

John Mueller explained in a hangout that Google does not index images whose URL would be present in a CSS file. It only takes into account URLs present in the HTML code itself, and he recommended using the "IMG" tag for this purpose.

Domain Age & History Content Crawl & Indexing AI & SEO Images & Videos Domain Name PDF & Files

Should You Delete Low-Quality Pages to Force Google to Index Everything?

John Mueller Jan 15, 2018 ★★★

John Mueller confirmed on Twitter that Google never indexes ALL pages of a website. And, as usual, following the search engine's well-oiled communication strategy, he added that the focus should primarily be on content quality, etc., etc.

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

Should You Really Include All Your Pages in Your XML Sitemap to Maximize SEO?

John Mueller Jan 15, 2018 ★★★

John Mueller has once again reminded us (as this has been stated several times in the past) that URLs present in the XML Sitemap file are often used by the search engine to define canonical page addresses and, therefore, those that should appear in s...

Domain Age & History Content Crawl & Indexing AI & SEO JavaScript & Technical SEO Domain Name PDF & Files Redirects Search Console

Should You Use Google Tag Manager for SEO Testing?

John Mueller Jan 08, 2018 ★

John Mueller indicated on Twitter that he does not recommend using the Google Tag Manager tool to perform SEO tests on a number of tags, as a recently published article suggested. But he didn't explain why, except to avoid a dose of "unpredictability...

Domain Age & History Content Discover & News AI & SEO Social Media

Why Does a Noindex,Follow Page Eventually Become Noindex,Nofollow?

John Mueller Jan 08, 2018 ★★★

John Mueller indicated in a hangout that a "noindex,follow" directive in the meta "robots" tag will eventually be considered as "noindex,nofollow" because the links on the page will no longer be followed.

Domain Age & History Content Crawl & Indexing Links & Backlinks

Does Your Mobile Site Need the Same Structure as Desktop for SEO?

John Mueller Jan 08, 2018 ★★★

John Mueller clarified on Twitter that a site's architecture in its mobile version doesn't necessarily have to be the same as the desktop site, but this architecture must be crawlable by robots.

Content Crawl & Indexing AI & SEO Mobile SEO Pagination & Structure Social Media

Does URL Folder Structure Really Impact Google Rankings?

Google Jan 08, 2018 ★★★

Google indicated on Twitter that including folder names in a URL (example: www.yoursite.com/folder1/folder2/folder3/page.php) has no influence on rankings.

Algorithms Domain Age & History AI & SEO Domain Name Pagination & Structure Social Media

Could Your Localized Pages Be Flagged as Doorway Pages by Google?

John Mueller Dec 27, 2017 ★★★

John Mueller clarified his definition of a "doorway page" in a hangout, in addition to the official definition: it refers to numerous pages offering identical or similar content, where the only thing that changes is the use of different keywords (or ...

Domain Age & History Content AI & SEO Penalties & Spam

Should You Really Mark All Guest Blogging Links as Nofollow?

John Mueller Dec 27, 2017 ★

John Mueller also indicated in a hangout that, in his opinion, all links from guest blogging practices should be nofollow, which wouldn't prevent users reading the articles from clicking on the links and generating traffic to the site receiving the l...

Content Discover & News AI & SEO Links & Backlinks Local Search

Should You Really Ignore Spammy Links in 2024?

John Mueller Dec 27, 2017 ★★

Still in a hangout, John Mueller explains that today, Google tends to ignore spammy links rather than penalize sites that use them. And that it is now impossible to know whether, precisely, such and such a link is taken into account - or not - by Goo...

Content AI & SEO JavaScript & Technical SEO Links & Backlinks Penalties & Spam

Does Google Consider Hiding Structured Data from Users as Cloaking?

John Mueller Dec 27, 2017 ★★★

John Mueller indicated on Twitter that showing structured data tags to Googlebot only and not to the average user was considered by Google as cloaking and that this type of technique was therefore reprehensible.

Content Crawl & Indexing AI & SEO Penalties & Spam Social Media Search Console

How Can You Tell If Your Site Has Moved to Google's Mobile First Index?

John Mueller Dec 18, 2017 ★★★

Regarding the Mobile First project, John Mueller indicated in a hangout that one way to know if a site has moved to the Mobile First index is to look at server logs and check Google's activity: if 80% (or more) of the crawl is performed at a given ti...

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