What does Google say about SEO?

Why does user and competitive analysis really make or break your SEO strategy?

John Mueller Aug 17, 2023 ★★★

It's important to understand your users and your competitors to succeed in SEO. You need to consider what people are actually searching for and identify domains where you can be competitive.

AI & SEO JavaScript & Technical SEO Domain Name

Does Google really understand what your site is about if you don't tell it clearly?

John Mueller Aug 17, 2023 ★★★

It's very common to come across sites that don't make it obvious what topic they want to be found for. This confuses search engines and creates a poor user experience.

AI & SEO

Does Text-to-HTML Ratio Really Impact Your SEO Rankings?

John Mueller Aug 15, 2023 ★★★

On Reddit, John Mueller indicated that the text-to-HTML ratio had no relevance for SEO: "Please ignore any report that gives you a text:html ratio. It makes absolutely no sense for SEO. Zero. Nada. Zilch. You'll see more effect if you change the font...

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

Does AI Content Really Need Human Oversight to Avoid Google Penalties?

Danny Sullivan Aug 15, 2023 ★★★

Danny Sullivan, from Google's Search Liaison team, stated that ensuring human oversight of AI-generated content is important: "right now, there are well-known issues with AI-generated content, so human oversight is important if you're using it to cre...

Content E-commerce AI & SEO

Does Google really use authority scores and spam ratings from third-party SEO tools in its algorithm?

John Mueller Aug 15, 2023 ★★★

Google does not take into account scores provided by third-party SEO tools or services in its ranking algorithm. Whether it's the authority of a website or a spam rating, Google does not use any of these scores.

Algorithms JavaScript & Technical SEO Penalties & Spam

Do third-party SEO tool scores really help you improve your search rankings?

John Mueller Aug 15, 2023 ★★

Although Google does not use third-party SEO tool scores, this does not mean they are all useless. Scores calculated transparently can be useful for estimating a website's position or identifying real problems.

JavaScript & Technical SEO

Should you really trust the SEO scores your audit tools are giving you?

John Mueller Aug 15, 2023 ★★

It is essential to know how an SEO score is calculated to determine whether it makes sense for you. Transparency in score calculation is an important criterion for evaluating its usefulness.

JavaScript & Technical SEO

Do SEO tool scores really have operational value for your rankings?

John Mueller Aug 15, 2023 ★★

SEO tool scores can be used to guide the next optimization steps or to validate the work that has been performed on a website, even though they are not used directly by Google.

AI & SEO

Should you ignore Lighthouse scores to optimize your SEO?

John Mueller Aug 15, 2023 ★★★

Google does not use the scores generated by Chrome's Lighthouse tool for ranking in search results. However, these scores can help identify usability issues that could be noticed by users or search engines.

AI & SEO

Are transparent scores really the key to uncovering your hidden UX problems?

John Mueller Aug 15, 2023 ★★

A transparently calculated score makes it possible to estimate a website's performance and can help identify concrete problems, such as overly short anchor text, that affect user experience.

Content AI & SEO JavaScript & Technical SEO Links & Backlinks Web Performance Search Console

Why does Google cap sitemaps at 50,000 URLs, and how does it impact large websites?

Google Aug 09, 2023 ★★★

An XML sitemap file can contain up to 50,000 URLs. This same limit also applies to sitemap index files, which contain only references to other sitemap files.

Crawl & Indexing JavaScript & Technical SEO Domain Name PDF & Files Search Console

Do ARIA attributes really improve your website's SEO?

Google Aug 09, 2023 ★★★

There is no inherent SEO advantage to pretending to have accessibility features. ARIA attributes should be used correctly for accessibility reasons, not for SEO. There are enough users who depend on them for it to be worthwhile even without direct SE...

Domain Age & History AI & SEO

Do you really need to redirect canonicalized URLs to improve your search rankings?

Google Aug 09, 2023 ★★

Redirecting a canonicalized URL provides no SEO advantage. It is useful to be consistent: use x-default in Hreflang for the default version. Consistency with canonicalization and internal links will facilitate tracking work, but has no SEO effect.

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

Does Google really ignore URL fragments (#) for SEO purposes?

Google Aug 09, 2023 ★★★

Elements after the hashtag in a URL (called fragments) are generally ignored by Google Search. Google looks at the entire page. In very rare cases, Google may detect that the fragment displays different content, but this is not a recommended practice...

Domain Age & History Content AI & SEO Domain Name Local Search

Why isn't perfect technical optimization enough to rank your site anymore?

Google Aug 09, 2023 ★★★

Having a sitemap, indexed pages, updated content, backlinks, and on-page optimization is not enough to rank. Like a book or a restaurant, technical aspects are important but there is much more to do to succeed. Google focuses on technical aspects but...

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

Is your website hit by a manual penalty? Here's exactly how to check in Search Console

Google Aug 09, 2023 ★★★

You can see the current status of manual actions in Search Console once you've verified site ownership. This information is visible to all verified owners. Expired or resolved manual actions are not listed. Algorithms can also react to quality issues...

Algorithms AI & SEO Penalties & Spam Search Console

Does color contrast really impact your SEO rankings?

Google Aug 09, 2023 ★

You can use white text on a colored background. Just make sure there's good contrast so your users can actually read the content.

Content

Does the HTML <article> tag really boost your SEO rankings?

Google Aug 09, 2023 ★★

The HTML article element has no particular effect in Google Search. It's similar to many other types of HTML tags. There's much more to using HTML than just Google Search. Sometimes there are accessibility or semantic reasons to use specific markup.

Domain Age & History Discover & News AI & SEO

Do Relative and Absolute Links Really Make a Difference for SEO?

Google Aug 09, 2023 ★★

Search engines look at links the same way a browser would. There is therefore no SEO difference between using relative or absolute links on a website.

AI & SEO Links & Backlinks

How can you verify that a crawler is really Googlebot and block fake ones without hurting your SEO?

Google Aug 09, 2023 ★★★

To verify if an IP is a Google crawler, perform a reverse DNS lookup of the IP address to obtain the hostname, then verify the hostname to confirm the IP address. You can also use online WHOIS services. Some scrapers use the Googlebot user agent to d...

Domain Age & History Crawl & Indexing AI & SEO Pagination & Structure