What does Google say about SEO? /
The Content category compiles all official Google statements regarding textual content creation, optimization, and evaluation in the context of search engine optimization. It encompasses fundamental aspects such as editorial quality, E-E-A-T criteria (Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness, Trustworthiness), duplicate content issues, and thin content concerns. Google's positions on these topics are critical for understanding how algorithms assess the relevance and added value of web pages. This category also includes recommendations on structural elements like headings (H1, H2, Hn tags), meta descriptions, and semantic optimization. With the introduction of the Helpful Content system, Google has reinforced the importance of a user-first approach rather than a search engine-first methodology. SEO professionals will find here official guidance for creating content that meets algorithmic expectations while delivering genuine value to users, a balance that has become essential for achieving and maintaining strong rankings in search results. These declarations provide clarity on content strategies that align with Google's evolving quality standards and ranking factors.
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★★★ Can You Use the Same Image Multiple Times on Your Site Without an SEO Penalty?
John Mueller indicated on Twitter that an image could appear identically (under the same filename or not) on the same site, or across several different sites, this posed no problem for Google, and tha...
John Mueller Aug 27, 2018
★★ Does Author Reputation Really Impact Google Rankings?
John Mueller indicated during a hangout that the search engine does not take an author's reputation into account in its analyses. The question arose because this point is sometimes mentioned in the Qu...
John Mueller Aug 27, 2018
★★★ Which HTTP Redirect Should You Use During HTTPS Migration to Preserve Your SEO?
John Mueller indicated during a hangout that "Google strongly recommends 301 redirects during an HTTPS migration", and therefore to move URLs from HTTP to HTTPS, when he was asked about 302 or 303 red...
John Mueller Aug 27, 2018
Does Google Really Favor Fresh and Recent Content in Its Rankings?
When asked on Twitter: "Does Google favor 'fresh' content?", John Mueller answered "No". According to John, the search engine would not favor "fresh" content....
John Mueller Aug 27, 2018
★★ Does Content Placement on a Page Really Impact SEO Rankings?
John Mueller indicated on Twitter that the geographical location (top, middle, bottom) of text on a page doesn't matter to Google. If the text is interesting and relevant, it will be taken into accoun...
John Mueller Aug 20, 2018
★★★ Can a Single Toxic Link Trigger a Manual Google Penalty?
John Mueller reminded on Twitter that a manual action is never decided by the search engine's Search Quality Team based on a single "toxic" link. The problem must be much broader, and many low-quality...
John Mueller Aug 20, 2018
★★★ Does Page Popularity Really Influence How Often Google Crawls Your Content?
John Mueller reminded us on Twitter that the most important and popular pages for Google on a website are crawled more frequently than others....
John Mueller Aug 20, 2018
★★★ Does Google's URL Removal Tool Actually Delete Your Pages from the Index?
John Mueller indicated on Twitter that the "Remove URLs" tool in Search Console only hides the URL from search results. It will therefore continue to be crawled, analyzed, and indexed until the 90th d...
John Mueller Aug 13, 2018
★★ Should You Fear Amazon and Marketplaces for Your Product SEO?
When a user asked John Mueller on Twitter whether listing his products on marketplaces like Amazon would impact his own website's rankings for those products, Mueller responded in an amusing (and indi...
John Mueller Aug 06, 2018
★★ Are EMD (Exact Match Domain) Names Really Useless for SEO?
John Mueller provided several pieces of information in a hangout regarding the presence of keywords in domain names: keyword domain names (EMD for Exact Match Domain) do not perform better, according ...
John Mueller Aug 06, 2018
★★★ Do Hn Tags (H1, H2, H3) Really Impact SEO Rankings?
John Mueller indicated on Twitter that clearly and cleanly structuring editorial content using Hn tags (h1, then h2, then h3, etc.) could potentially help Google understand the content, but that it wo...
John Mueller Jul 31, 2018
★★ Do You Really Need Lots of Text on Your Pages to Rank Well in Google?
We asked John Mueller whether the amount of text on a web page could play a role as a quality criterion. In other words, could a significant number of pages on a website with very little text in their...
John Mueller Jul 31, 2018
★★★ Does Google Really Honor the Canonical Tag Every Single Time?
John Mueller, on Twitter, explained that the "canonical" tag is not a guarantee that Google will consider a page as canonical or duplicate. Multiple signals are used and some can sometimes be contradi...
John Mueller Jul 31, 2018
★★★ Should You Really Avoid Combining Noindex, Canonical, and Disallow on the Same Page?
John Mueller, on Reddit this time, indicated that Canonical tags and meta robots "noindex" (just like Disallow: in the robots.txt file) should not be used at the same time because they are contradicto...
John Mueller Jul 23, 2018
★★★ Should You Notify Google About Site Migrations or Redesigns for Better Crawling?
John Mueller, this time on Twitter, explained that Google does not need a tool allowing webmasters to inform the search engine of major changes to a site, such as during a migration or massive redesig...
John Mueller Jul 23, 2018
★★ Does Pogosticking Really Impact Your Google Rankings?
John Mueller explained in a hangout that pogosticking, or the measurement of user behavior in the SERPs, is not a relevance criterion in terms of page ranking and that the potential back-and-forth mov...
John Mueller Jul 23, 2018
★★★ Why Hasn't Google's Mobile First Index Been Fully Rolled Out After All These Years?
Again John Mueller, on Twitter, explained that the Mobile First Index was still being rolled out (we periodically see messages about this appearing in Search Console) and that there was still a lot of...
John Mueller Jul 23, 2018
★★★ Should You Worry If Competitors Use Domain Names Similar to Yours?
Again John Mueller who, in a hangout, explained that each website was treated uniquely and that if several sites had very similar domain names (example: abondance.com, e-abondance.com, aboundance.com ...
John Mueller Jul 16, 2018
★★★ Can 500 Errors Really Slow Down Google's Crawling of Your Site?
John Mueller explained on Twitter that when a server returns numerous 5xx errors (500 or similar), it can cause crawling problems. Indeed, in this case, Googlebot's crawl is slowed down and exploratio...
John Mueller Jul 16, 2018
★★★ Should You Really Structure Your Content with H1 to H6 Tags for SEO?
John Mueller explained in a hangout that using H1 to H6 tags is a good practice. They help the search engine understand the content structure and the relationships between different blocks of informat...
John Mueller Jul 16, 2018
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