This was an interesting question in today’s hangout with John Mueller. Someone asked about the potential impact of an affiliate/advertising link that was placed inside of a form tag as a user action, and whether this could be a problem from a link perspective. Now links inside forms cannot have a nofollow attribute attached to […]
Archives for 2016
Valid HTML Not a Ranking Factor But Invalid Can Cause These Issues
In the changes yesterday that Google made to their webmaster guidelines, Google changed the phrasing of “clear HTML” to “valid HTML.” So as expected, that phrase got a lot of attention, especially from those who advocate for compliant W3C validation, which Google links to. But is valid HTML a ranking factor? In today’s webmaster hangout, […]
Google’s Webmaster Guidelines: Breakdown of All Changes Made
As part of Google’s redesign of Google Search Console, they have released a brand new version of their Webmaster Guidelines. Here is a line-by-line of every change, addition and removal from the previous version. So let’s get started! Introduction The first change is the ommission of a single phrase within their opening paragraph. Previously, it […]
Tips from Google on Structuring a Disavow File
While most SEOs who do disavows for clients have their own ways of making sense of their files, whether adding comments or making multiple files and combining them later into one before uploading to Google, John Mueller from Google was asked about advice on structuring disavows files to submit to Google. While some of the […]
Google Penguin & Spammy Links from Competitors
Negative SEO is always a hot topic, since the idea that a competitor can merely point a ton of crappy backlinks at a site to see it penalized is always a scary one to site owners. John Mueller was asked about spammy backlinks from a negative SEO perspective, specifically as it relates to Penguin. Since […]
Should you Disavow Links from Hacked Sites?
In yesterday’s webmaster hangout, the question was brought up about whether site owners need to disavow links from hacked sites. If a website identified as hacked by google (such as example.com) shows as linking to a site in webmaster tools, do we need to/should we disavow it? Or is google automatically not counting this? If […]
When Google Favors Shorter URLs Over Longer Ones in Ranking
URLs were a popular topic in yesterday’s Google hangout with John Mueller. Along with how important keywords in URLs are, he was also asked about the overall length of a URL and if shorter versus longer URLs played a part in ranking. What definitely plays a role here is when we have two URLs that […]
Number of Pages with Affiliate Content Hurt Site Quality?
The use of affiliate content and links when it comes to Google ranking is always a hot topic. In the recent Panda Algo Guide, I talked quite a bit about the role affiliate links and related content and the impact of it from Panda, including specifics that Google has previously said about affiliate content and […]
How Important are Keywords in URLs in 2016?
If you have been in the search industry for a long time, you will likely remember the days when having keywords in the URL was extremely important, and seeing page URLs like www.example.com/buy-keyword-keyword-keyword-online-now.html was pretty common. Obviously, much as changed with SEO since that was important 10-15 years ago. In yesterday’s hangout, someone asked how […]
Are Number of Reviews a Ranking Factor in Google?
Does Google view pages or websites with a higher number of reviews as higher quality than those without? John Mueller answered this question in yesterday’s hangout. Do note that when he answers, he does add the caveat that this may be different from how the local search results do their rankings, such as in the […]