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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★★★ 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
★★★ Do JavaScript Links Actually Pass PageRank and SEO Value?
A user asked Google whether links placed in code using <div href> + JavaScript were recognized by the search engine. John Mueller indicated that while these links could be used to identify certain URL...
John Mueller Jul 16, 2018
★★★ How Does Google Really Identify Synonyms for SEO?
Still John Mueller and still the question of synonyms. On this subject, Google's SEO spokesperson indicated that the algorithm's learning of synonyms is not based on tables created beforehand by human...
John Mueller Jul 09, 2018
★★★ Should You Really Include a Self-Referencing Hreflang Tag on Every Multilingual Page?
Google recently updated its online documentation on Hreflang tags. On this subject, John Mueller reminded on Twitter that indicating in the source code of a page - using these tags - the corresponding...
John Mueller Jul 09, 2018
★★★ Are Synonyms Really an Effective SEO Strategy to Improve Your Rankings?
John Mueller indicated during a hangout that using synonyms in a legitimate and moderate way could be a good approach to optimize content in terms of SEO, especially if the different forms were used b...
John Mueller Jul 09, 2018
★★★ Are Links in Press Releases Still Effective for SEO?
Interesting remark from John Mueller in a hangout: when Google detects that a web page is republishing a press release, most of the links it contains are ignored by the search engine....
John Mueller Jul 02, 2018
★★★ Why Does Every Indexed URL Necessarily Have a Canonical URL?
John Mueller indicated on Twitter and during a hangout that every web page, therefore every URL indexed by the search engine, was associated with a canonical URL, which could be the same (if the page ...
John Mueller Jul 02, 2018
★★★ Should You Block Crawling of the robots.txt File in the robots.txt Itself?
John Mueller explained on Twitter that it's pointless to prevent search engines from crawling the robots.txt file by adding a "Disallow:" directive for that very file in the... robots.txt itself??....
John Mueller Jul 02, 2018
★★★ Does Google Analytics Really Penalize or Boost Your Organic Rankings?
John Mueller has repeated for the 345,754th time 🙂 that a website's Analytics data is not taken into account by the relevance algorithm. Similarly, simply using Analytics as an audience measurement to...
John Mueller Jul 02, 2018
★★★ Can Keyword Stuffing Really Get Your Site Blacklisted by Google?
John Mueller explained on Twitter that "keyword stuffing" techniques do not result in a site being "blacklisted" and that Google now has enough experience in this area to simply ignore texts containin...
John Mueller Jun 25, 2018
★★★ Does Google Actually Recognize Data-href Attributes for SEO?
John Mueller indicated on Twitter that link tags with a "data-href" attribute (<a data-ref="URL">) are not recognized as links (not followed, no PageRank transmission). Only tags with an "href" attrib...
John Mueller Jun 25, 2018
★★★ Do Forum Backlinks Still Work for SEO?
John Mueller explained in a Reddit discussion that including links (backlinks) in forum posts worked "very badly" for SEO....
John Mueller Jun 18, 2018
★★★ Should You Use HTML or XML Sitemap for Hreflang Tags?
John Mueller indicated on Twitter that Hreflang tags are processed in the same way, whether they are integrated into the source code of pages or in XML Sitemap files....
John Mueller Jun 18, 2018
Do Customer Reviews and Surveys Really Impact Google's Ranking Algorithm?
John Mueller (yes, him again) explained in a hangout that Google's algorithm doesn't use data such as survey results, reviews, ratings, critiques, etc. to assess a page's relevance for a given query....
John Mueller Jun 18, 2018
Does the Order of URLs in an XML Sitemap Actually Affect Google's Crawling?
Once again, it's John Mueller (since Gary Illyes no longer seems to talk about SEO online at all, which, let's be honest, is no great loss...) who explains that the order of URLs provided in an XML Si...
John Mueller Jun 18, 2018
★★ Why Doesn't Google Images Crawl Images Embedded with DIV Tags?
John Mueller indicated on Twitter that when an image is embedded in the source code using a DIV tag, it is not, in his opinion, taken into account and crawled by the image search engine robot....
John Mueller Jun 18, 2018
★★★ How Long Should You Really Wait After a Website Merger or Split?
John Mueller reminded us in a hangout that when multiple sites merge or "split" (one site broken into several different ones), it can take quite a long time for the search engine algorithms to fully p...
John Mueller Jun 11, 2018
Does Word Order in Title Tags Really Impact SEO Rankings?
John Mueller indicated on Twitter that changing the word order in a Title tag does not, in his opinion, modify the page's ranking in search results....
John Mueller Jun 11, 2018
★★★ Does Frequent Crawling Really Improve Your SEO Rankings?
John Mueller, once again, explained on Twitter that regular crawling of a site was not synonymous with better rankings and that, as a general rule, crawl frequency has no direct correlation with ranki...
John Mueller Jun 06, 2018
★★★ Are PDF Files Penalized by Google for Not Being Mobile-Friendly?
John Mueller reminded us of an obvious fact on Twitter by explaining that a PDF document cannot be "mobile friendly" or at least that Google does not see them as such......
John Mueller Jun 06, 2018
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