One of the reports in Google Search Console is the 404 errors report. Every site tends to have at least a few of these 404s, but is it a sign of low quality? John Mueller was asked about 404s being a sign of low quality, and if 410s are better to use for this reason. […]
Archives for March 2017
Google’s Fred Algo is a New Type of Quality Algo
The latest so-called “Fred” update has brought one thing to the forefront – SEOs can’t decide what Fred is and what specific tactic it is targeting. Is it links? Is it ads? Is it ad heaviness? Is it private blog networks, aka PBNs? Many people are identifying symptoms of Fred, but I feel Fred is […]
Google Partner Program Changes Target AdWords, SEO & Local Services Misleading Claims
Google has updating their policies to govern what many in the industry have a major issue with – agencies and individuals making wildly false claims about their association with Google for organic, paid and local listings. For SEOs, many are upset with the misuse of the Partner badges to imply that Google is either endorsing […]
Updated Google Quality Rater Guidelines: Fake News, Dubious Claims & Clickbait Targeted
A year after the last Quality Rater’s Guidelines were released by Google, we have a brand new version. And it has some pretty interesting changes – Google is explicitly declaring fake news sites as low quality. And among the other sites being targeted? Those that use clickbait and those with dubious science claims. Hate sites […]
Google Tackles Fake News, Inaccurate Content & Hate Sites in Rater Guidelines Update
It seems that it isn’t just users who are annoyed at the prevalence of fake news in search results and social media these days. Google has made some new and very specific changes to their Quality Rater Guidelines to target fake news, as well as other types of sites including hate sites, “monstrously inaccurate” information […]
Near Duplicate Content Can Cause Google to Choose Wrong Snippet
There is yet another reason why site owners should take care about internal duplicate content on their site – according to John Mueller, near duplicate content can result in Google using the snippet for a similar page in the search results, rather than the snippet for the actual page being served in the search results. […]
Internal Links to About Us, Contact Us & TOS Pages for SEO
For those who optimize their internal linking structure, pages with more links pointing to it tend to be the most important pages on the site. But what about other less important pages that also tend to have a lot of links to them, specifically pages such as about us, contact us and TOS pages. For […]
Weight of Google Ranking Signals Changes Based on Search & More
Many SEOs have a fairly good idea of the top ranking signals in the Google search results. Google has confirmed that content and links are two of the most important ranking signals, RankBrain is among the top ranking signals, although it is debated whether it is number three or not. But the weight of Google’s […]
Google: Font Choices Do Not Directly Impact SEO
If you ever wondered if Google looks down upon websites that use questionable font choices, such as if a website decides to use Comic Sans, the question came up in the latest Google Webmaster Office Hours. More specifically, whether Google takes font choices into account when judging quality, such as whether hand written dont type […]
Google: New Pages Can Rank for Competitive Keywords, With Caveats
Can a new page rank well for a competitive keyword in Google? The question came up about whether new pages could rank for competitive keywords or not in Google or if Google does something that makes it difficult for these newer pages to rank well for more competitive keywords. John Mueller from Google discussed this, […]