What does Google say about SEO?

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

Can an Expired SSL Certificate Really Not Affect Your Site's SEO?

John Mueller Dec 18, 2017 ★★

Google recently sent a message to certain webmasters in Search Console indicating that their TLS certificate had expired and required renewal. However, John Mueller indicated in the same hangout as mentioned above that the fact that a certificate is ...

Domain Age & History Content HTTPS & Security AI & SEO Pagination & Structure Search Console

Should You Use Generic Disavow Files Containing Lists of Toxic Sites?

John Mueller Dec 18, 2017 ★★

Some webmasters use "standard" disavow files containing numerous toxic sites, even when these sites don't necessarily link to their website. However, John Mueller has indicated that Google does not encourage this type of practice and that it's better...

Domain Age & History Content AI & SEO Links & Backlinks PDF & Files

Should You Really Optimize TTFB to Improve Your Google Rankings?

John Mueller Dec 04, 2017 ★★

John Mueller indicated on Twitter that Google does not take TTFB (Time To First Byte or server response time) into account in its algorithm or in any other way to measure the relevance of a result.

Algorithms Content AI & SEO Web Performance Social Media

Should Your Structured Data Really Reflect What's Visible on Your Pages?

John Mueller Dec 04, 2017 ★★★

John Mueller also indicated on Twitter that structured data tags (particularly Schema.org) inserted into a web page must absolutely describe the content visible to a user when they view the page in question...

Domain Age & History Content Structured Data AI & SEO JavaScript & Technical SEO Domain Name Penalties & Spam Local Search Social Media

How Should You Implement Hreflang Tags in a Mobile First Context?

John Mueller Dec 04, 2017 ★★★

John Mueller, on Twitter, explained that hreflang tags should follow a "mobile-to-mobile & desktop-to-desktop" pattern within the Mobile First project framework and in the case of a dedicated mobile site (if the site is responsive, this obviously doe...

Content AI & SEO Mobile SEO Social Media International SEO

Can You Really Rank on Google Without Any Link Building?

John Mueller Nov 27, 2017 ★★★

A user asked John Mueller the following question on Twitter: can a website rank on Google without implementing a "link building" strategy? John's answer was, of course: "yes" 🙂

Content AI & SEO Links & Backlinks Social Media

Do You Really Need Perfect Keyword-Optimized URLs to Rank Well on Google?

John Mueller Nov 27, 2017 ★★★

John Mueller indicated on Twitter that a URL doesn't need to perfectly "match" the page content in its wording. For example, a page offering tomato soup recipes can have the URL tomates-leg-soup1.html. This carries very little weight for the search e...

Algorithms Domain Age & History Content AI & SEO Domain Name Social Media

Should You Really Disavow Nofollow Links Pointing to Your Site?

John Mueller Nov 21, 2017 ★★★

A user asked John Mueller on Twitter the following question: should you disavow a URL that links to your site with nofollow? John Mueller responded that nofollow links transmit no signals, so disavowing the remote URL adds nothing extra and is not ne...

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

Why Do Featured Snippets Change So Frequently in Google Results?

Gary Illyes Nov 21, 2017 ★★★

Gary Illyes indicated at the Pubcon conference that the featured snippets currently displayed in the SERPs can vary significantly for the same query from one day to the next, because Google engineers are working diligently on this topic at present an...

Content Featured Snippets & SERP AI & SEO

Why Do Google's Panda and Penguin Filters Keep Evolving and How Can You Adapt?

Google Nov 21, 2017 ★★★

Googler Eric Kuan indicated at the Pubcon conference that the engineering teams at Google continue to work on the Panda and Penguin algorithmic filters and that they evolve over time...

Algorithms AI & SEO JavaScript & Technical SEO Penalties & Spam

Do JavaScript Links Really Pass as Much PageRank as HTML Links?

John Mueller Nov 13, 2017 ★★★

John Mueller reminded us on Twitter that the way a link is designed and presented on a web page doesn't matter: HTML or JavaScript, in particular. If Google can read it, it will be treated like all others and will pass PageRank, regardless of its for...

Algorithms Domain Age & History Content AI & SEO JavaScript & Technical SEO Links & Backlinks Social Media