What does Google say about SEO? /
Martin Splitt is a Developer Advocate at Google, specializing in JavaScript rendering and modern web application indexing. He created the 'SEO Mythbusting' video series and regularly explains how Googlebot handles JavaScript frameworks. His statements are essential for developers looking to optimize the SEO of their applications.
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🕒 ~1 min 🎯 5 questions
★★★ Can styled divs really harm mobile SEO?
You must use semantic title tags (h1, h2, etc.) on your mobile pages. Divs with styled classes are not recognized as titles by Googlebot, which treats them as regular text, affecting the page's compre...
Aug 06, 2020 ⚡ Analysis available
★★★ Are background images in CSS truly invisible to Google?
Images must use semantic tags with relevant and descriptive alt text. Googlebot cannot index CSS images (background-image). An empty or meaningless alt text harms user experience and indexing....
Aug 06, 2020 ⚡ Analysis available
★★ Should you really place your videos at the top of the page to rank on mobile?
Do not place videos or important content too low on the mobile page, requiring the user to scroll excessively. If users are specifically searching for a video, a poor position creates a negative user ...
Aug 06, 2020 ⚡ Analysis available
★★★ Is it necessary to duplicate structured data and meta descriptions between desktop and mobile?
It is recommended to maintain identical structured data on both desktop and mobile pages. Don’t forget to add meta descriptions to your mobile pages; they are very important for Googlebot....
Aug 06, 2020 ⚡ Analysis available
★★★ Is page speed really overrated as a Google ranking factor?
Page speed is a ranking factor, but it is not the most important one. Relevant content remains king. Google cannot make it such a strong factor that it would prevent displaying the most relevant conte...
Jul 27, 2020 ⚡ Analysis available
★★★ Is it really necessary to aim for a Lighthouse score of 100 to rank better on Google?
Google does not rank pages based on a specific Lighthouse score. Pages are categorized into groups (slow, average, fast). Moving from a Lighthouse score of 90 to 95 does not make a difference for the ...
Jul 27, 2020 ⚡ Analysis available
★★★ Why doesn’t Lighthouse reflect the true performance of your site?
Lighthouse results are lab data tested from your machine and connection, not what real mobile users experience on unstable connections. You need to use the Chrome User Experience Report (CrUX) and Goo...
Jul 27, 2020 ⚡ Analysis available
★★★ Is AMP really useless for Google ranking?
AMP is not a ranking factor. AMP simply indicates to users that they can expect a fast page. Fast non-AMP sites can outperform equivalent AMP pages. Page speed matters, not the framework used....
Jul 27, 2020 ⚡ Analysis available
★★ Should you really stick to Google's 500 KB page limit?
Google recommends a page size of 500 KB or less, while the market average is several megabytes. The lighter, the better, especially for users on limited or metered connections....
Jul 27, 2020 ⚡ Analysis available
★★★ Does crawl budget really only concern very large sites?
Crawl budget should only be a concern for sites with millions of URLs. For sites with fewer than one million pages, crawl budget is generally not an issue unless the server infrastructure is failing....
Jul 14, 2020 ⚡ Analysis available
★★★ Does the crawl budget really boil down to the simple sum of two variables?
The crawl budget consists of two elements: crawl rate (the speed at which Google can crawl without overloading the server) and crawl demand (crawl frequency based on content change frequency and not i...
Jul 14, 2020 ⚡ Analysis available
★★★ How does Google really detect content changes on your site?
Google employs several signals to determine crawl frequency: content fingerprint, structured data with dates, ETag, HTTP Last-Modified header, and modification date in the sitemap. If these signals do...
Jul 14, 2020 ⚡ Analysis available
★★★ Does the crawl budget truly impact the rendering phase of your JavaScript pages?
The crawl budget affects not only the initial crawl but also the rendering, as Google needs to fetch additional resources (CSS, JavaScript, API). A poor cache can force Google to continuously re-downl...
Jul 14, 2020 ⚡ Analysis available
★★ How does content hashing in URLs truly enhance your crawl budget?
To optimize caching and crawl budget, use content hashes in file names (e.g., application.AEF3CE.js) instead of generic names. This allows Google to cache resources indefinitely, and only new hashes w...
Jul 14, 2020 ⚡ Analysis available
★★ Should you ditch POST for crawlable APIs and switch everything to GET?
Google cannot cache POST requests, leading to greater crawl budget consumption. For rendering APIs, use GET requests. GraphQL can be employed to reduce the number of requests, but only in GET mode....
Jul 14, 2020 ⚡ Analysis available
★★ Can you really make Google crawl your site more often?
Webmasters cannot ask Google to crawl more. Google automatically detects server capacity and adjusts the crawl. It is only possible to limit crawling, not to increase it. Google's scheduler is smart e...
Jul 14, 2020 ⚡ Analysis available
★★★ Does Googlebot crawl with cookies enabled or does it ignore your personalized content?
Googlebot does not operate with cookies enabled, so it will only see the content presented to new users. To expose different content (e.g., promotions for existing users), it is advisable to create se...
Jul 01, 2020 ⚡ Analysis available
★★ Can logged-in users be redirected to different URLs without facing SEO penalties?
It is acceptable to redirect users to different URLs based on the presence of cookies as long as Googlebot can access all content versions via links. This approach does not negatively impact SEO....
Jul 01, 2020 ⚡ Analysis available
★★★ Does changing your JavaScript framework lead to a drop in Google rankings?
Changing a JavaScript framework (e.g., moving from Angular to Vue/Nuxt) should not in itself lead to a drop in ranking, as Google focuses on the content, not on the technology being used. The drops ob...
Jul 01, 2020 ⚡ Analysis available
★★★ Does rendered HTML really ensure JavaScript indexing?
To determine if content loaded by JavaScript is indexable, Google’s testing tools (URL Inspection Tool, Mobile-Friendly Test, Rich Results Test) should be used to examine the rendered HTML. If the con...
Jul 01, 2020 ⚡ Analysis available
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