Category: Google Search Engine Optimization

Google has added article structured data support to the rich results test tool. So that is one less thing you need to rely on the structured data testing tool for and I am sure more and more is coming.

Google updated its Google Image best practices to specify that images referenced in structured data must be in one of the image file formats that are supported by Google Images. These formats include BMP, GIF, JPEG, PNG, WebP, and SVG.

Google’s John Mueller said that links from guest blog posts have zero value. He said on Twitter when asked about that as a link building strategy, he said “those links have zero value.” “It’s a waste of time if you’re just doing it for the links,” John…

John Mueller from Google said he does not believe that an image that is licensed and copyrighted would rank better in search because it has a copyright label on it. Google does have that newish license metadata but all that does it let you show a lice…

The other day I reported that Google said the order of your header tags and elements do not matter for SEO purposes. Then a bunch of SEOs say but Google’s Lighthouse tool gives you warnings when your headers are out of order. So Patrick Hulce, the fo…

In the last webmaster hangout with John Mueller of Google I asked him why he seems to get so many questions about hreflang when I suspect a very small percentage of sites on the web actually implement it. I then asked if he knew how many sites do impl…

Izzi Smith posted a Twitter poll asking “does something being a “confirmed ranking factor” help you get optimisations approved internally?” The responses were fun, where 42% of those who responded said yes.

I’ve heard this before where to keep your links “looking natural” you want to make sure your nofollowed to followed link ratio is a good and natural looking one. But just by saying a statement like that means your link ratio of followed and unfollowed…

Google announced this morning it has been upgrading the infrastructure for the Google Search Console API. Google said this is an infrastructure change and that “API is backward compatible and there are currently no changes in scope or functionality.” …

Google’s John Mueller was asked if putting an H5 before an H1 on a page would end up hurting the page from ranking well in Google. John said “nope” it won’t end up hurting the page from ranking organically in Google Search.

Google’s John Mueller said that many of those manual actions are probably not used anymore. Why? He said because many may have been automated and done algorithmically. I did ask John for a list but he refused, go figure.

I have covered Google saying that its quality raters, which are third-party consultants who are not even employed by Google directly, do not have any direct influence in Google search rankings. I reported Googlers saying this countless times and I did…

The other day I reported that Google said negative reviews on the web about your brand or business won’t hurt your rankings in Google search. Yesterday, I was on the video call with John Mueller and I asked him this question and brought up the Decor My…

Martin Splitt from Google went a bit deeper, on Twitter (yes on Twitter), on how Google goes about rendering and measuring what it renders. Here is what Martin Splitt said on Twitter.

The other day, Danny Sullivan of Google went back and forth with the SEO community on why Google does not want to add paywall content labels to publisher sites that require you to pay to see the content. For a user, it can be frustrating to go to an a…

In the next episode of the Search Off The Record podcast from John Mueller, Gary Illyes and Martin Splitt of Google – they spoke about comments and how they may impact your blog. They also spoke about CMS platforms, how they got hired at Google and Ja…

SEOs have been loving playing with Web Stories in Google Search for the extra exposure those get and potentially the higher click through rate. But did you know that these are also highlighted in Google’s Image search results?

Google’s John Mueller said on Twitter “links are definitely not the most important SEO factor.” This comes shortly after he said to forget everything you have read in the past about link juice.

Google Search Console is currently not loading for many SEOs, webmasters, developers and site owners. It works fine for me in the New York, but some folks in India, Japan, Australia and some other locations it is not loading. Users are getting a 429 …

Google has now added the still in BETA image license structured data markup to both Google Search Console’s enhancement reports and to the Rich Results test tool. So now if you use this image license markup, you can debug it in both of those toolsets….