Google: No Search Penalty For Too Many Redirects
Google’s John Mueller confirmed that Google Search does not have a penalty for having too many redirects. John said on Twitter “No, Google won’t penalize a site for having 15 redirects (or any other number).”
Google Mobile-First Indexing Deadline Is Around March 2021
Google said it is going 100% into mobile-first indexing. Google moved the deadline from September 2020 to March 2021. John Mueller of Google said today the March 2021 is an approximate deadline. John was asked if all sites will be moved over by April 1, 2021. John said on Twitter “That’s approximately the target. We don’t have a critical reason to reach any particular cut-off date, so it could be that the remaining sites are a bit spread out, some earlier, some a little bit later.”
Six Reasons Good SEO Is A Long Game
- Building page authority takes time.
- Several factors play into your brand’s overall SEO.
- Competition for organic rankings can be fierce.
- The algorithm is smart — and keeps getting smarter.
- ‘Quick wins’ aren’t what they seem.
- You’re never ‘done’ improving SEO.
Google: Total Number Of Links Is Completely Irrelevant For SEO
Google’s John Mueller said that “the total number [of backlinks] essentially is completely irrelevant” to rankings in Google in a video hangout last week. Google weighs different links differently. He said one link can be way more valuable than thousands of links because Google can ignore links.
Google on SEO Best Practices for News Sites & Short Articles
News sites shouldn’t be overly concerned with the length of articles, Mueller says, as shorter articles are sometimes fine for the given query. Google’s Panda algorithm update is designed around reducing the prevalence of thin content with little or no added value.
Mueller says he doesn’t think a noindex tag is needed just because an article is short, as sometimes smaller stories can be fine.
“If you don’t want them showing up in search you can use noindex, but I don’t think you would need to noindex something just because it’s a short news article.
Sometimes short articles are completely fine. I wouldn’t focus so much on the length of the article, but rather do you want it indexed or not?”
“For web search, we don’t care about the length of articles. I don’t know if there’s any policy around Google News. Especially if you mentioned that this is on a news website – I vaguely recall some errors that we had in Search Console way in the beginning where we would show this news article is too long or too short.
Maybe that’s something that plays a role there with regards to news content. If that is the case then you can also use the Googlebot news metatag to specifically block it from Google News. So that you can keep it shown in search and just block it for Google News.”
Short content is not automatically viewed as thin content. Google does not assess the value of content based on length alone. Long articles run an equal risk of being viewed as thin content if they’re full of spam, or if they don’t contribute anything unique to the web. Content that’s duplicated or scraped from other sources, with no new information added, are other forms of thin content. A short article can provide value if it contributes something new and useful to the web. Short content can also be fine if it answers the user’s query. Google aims to provide the best results for every search, not the longest.
Google Showing Fewer Featured Snippets Since February 19th
Google seems to be showing fewer featured snippets in the search results since February 19, 2021. Mozcast is showing a decline 7.5% of search results having featured snippets to 4.5% of search results having featured snippets.
Google: Title Tags Longer Than What Is Displayed Has SEO Benefit
Gary Illyes from Google said in February 24th’s Google Central Live event that there is a benefit to having title tags longer than what is displayed in the search. He later added that you should keep the title tag “precise” to the topic of the page and do not worry how long it is or if it is too long.
Google: The Page Experience Update Won’t Be A Massive Change To Start
Google’s Danny Sullivan said to start, when the Page Experience Update rolls out, it won’t be a massive change. It might grow in terms of importance over the years. But to start, Danny said “it shouldn’t be the case that overnight, we flip some type of switch and there’s a massive change.”
Google: There Is No SEO Reason To Make Bloated Sites
John Mueller from Google said on Twitter “there is no SEO reason for making such terrible & bloated sites.” Google did say at some point, having a run down web page can impact how Google renders the page but it has to be insane levels of CPU requirements to cause such an issue. But there is no specific SEO reason to make your site bloated for SEO. In fact, it might hurt things not just with your SEO (i.e. rendering) but also with your user loyalty.
Advertisers have until February 2022 to adjust to Google’s new Partner Program requirements
-Partners can either dismiss or apply recommendations to achieve a 70% optimization score.
-The spend threshold will remain at a 90-day spend of $10,000 US across all of a partner’s managed accounts.
More clarity for advertisers: Google wants to provide more clarity around program benefits. To do this, the company is developing new benefits in three main categories to support Partners in the move toward the new requirements:
- Education & Insights
- Access & Support
- Recognition & Rewards
SEO in 2021: What your organization’s executives and senior leaders must know
- Define the integration of SEO within other channels going forward
- Organizations must hold SEO to the same accountability and scrutiny as other channels (ROI)
- Organizations must optimize to one search experience by harmonizing SEO and SEM
- Marketing teams must align SEO and user experience
- Technical priorities for web must include SEO, Core Web Vitals, and user experience
- SEO anchors on optimizing content across the entire customer journey
8 Google My Business Updates You Might Have Missed
- Health & Safety Attributes
- Pandemic-Related Attributes for Restaurants
- Attributes for Online Services
- Call Logging
- Additional GMB Insights Data
- Messaging
- Black-Owned Business
- Max Video Upload Size
11 Important Image SEO Tips You Need to Know
- Choose the Right Format
- Compress Your Images
- Create Unique Images
- Beware of Copyright
- Customize Image File Names
- Write SEO-Friendly Alt Text
- Think About the Image File Structure
- Make Your Page Title & Description
- Define Your Dimensions
- Make Your Images Mobile-Friendly
- Add Images to Your Sitemap
How to Reduce Customer Acquisition Costs with SEO
- Learn what your customers care about
- Become an authority
- Create, share, distribute
Think of SEO as part of a customer-centric business model where you help customers be more successful. The greater your digital presence, the higher its authority. And the more valuable you are, the less you need to spend on acquisition.