When content becomes outdated, sometimes site owners remove the old page and replace it with a new one. And they don’t always remember to use a redirect when doing so. The question came up on Twitter about whether it is best to replace the content or redirect from the old page to the new one. […]
Google Uses Machine Learning for Crawling, Indexing & Ranking
There has been plenty of speculation about just how much Google uses machine learning when it comes to the search algorithm, especially outside of RankBrain itself. During a recent Google Webmaster Office Hours, the role of machine learning in the algo came up. The question was specifically about Panda and whether it uses a machine […]
Google Rankings & Ugly or Difficult to Use Sites
Does Google’s algo devalue sites that are ugly or with poor usability? Are there any direct or indirect links between this and a site’s rankings on Google? We do know that usability and site perception plays a large role in the Google Quality Rater Guidelines. Raters are specifically asked to look at how easy to […]
Criteria for Google Mobile First Indexing is Matching Content Not Mobile Friendliness
Google has officially begun sending out email notices to site owners confirming their change from desktop indexing to mobile first indexing. And we do have some clarification on mobile friendliness being a criteria or not for sites changing over. Some people had speculated that a way to prevent mobile first indexing was to have a […]
Google Sending Mobile First Indexing Enabled Notices via Google Search Console
It seems Google has finally started sending out emails to site owners informing them that their sites have been switched over to mobile first indexing. The emails, sent via Google Search Console, advise site owners on changes they can expect to see now that their sites are being indexed by the mobile Googlebot. The emails […]
Switching to AMP Won’t Negate Other SEO & Google Algo Issues on a Site
The use of AMP is an interesting one. For many site owners, using AMP can result in a lift in traffic, but this is because AMP gets priority placement, such as the carousel placements. But it doesn’t specifically get an additional ranking boost outside of the regular mobile friendly one. But an interesting question came […]
Google: Major Redesigns & Issues With Search Traffic Loss
Some of the changes made by the site, which already had millions of pages, included a redesign as well as splitting up many millions of pages – including the homepage – into many smaller individual pages. On average, each of these longer static HTML pages was split into roughly four new pages, a main page […]
Google: Dividing One Page Into Multiple Pages Often Dilutes Value for SEO
Google has long advocated that having strong high quality pages is much better for Google search than many lower quality pages. But in the quest to get more pages indexed in Google, some site owners are going for quantity over quality, and sometimes sacrificing the parts of the site that are high quality. For some […]
Google: Do Not Link Hreflang to Redirecting URLs
For sites that are using hreflang, especially those who are utilizing 301 and 302 redirects for any reason, it is a reminder that all hreflang URLs should not be linked to redirected URLs. The question came up to John Mueller on Twitter, where he reminds site owners that hreflang URLs should be the destination URLs […]
Google Adds Manual Action for Google Job Postings Schema
Google has added a new manual action related to the recently added Google Jobs feature in the search results. Site that are utilizing the schema and not handling expired job listings properly. Here is what it says: Jobs that are no longer open for applications must be expired in one of the following ways. Failure […]