Informed Webmaster

Welcome back to season 2 of SEO Mythbusting. Get ready to join Martin Splitt, Search Advocate at Google, and several members of the SEO community as they debunk some of the common questions and myths around SEO! Watch out for the first episode coming out next week!

In the first episode of SEO Mythbusting season 2, Martin Splitt (Developer Advocate, Google) and Sandhya Guntreddy (Principal Program Manager, Microsoft) discuss the most common SEO questions they get, the trends they see in the SEO community as well as Bing Webmaster Tools and Google Search Console.

Specific timestamped topics discussed in the first SEO Mythbusting episode:
If I have a lot of backlinks, will I rank higher? (0:00)
How to rank at the top of search engines? (1:43)
I run search ads, will I get ranked higher? (6:09)
Is the SEO community getting more technical? (6:35)
Blockers, Robots.txt, Bingbot and Googlebot (7:15)
Integration of Google Search Console and Bing Webmaster Tools (9:58)
Recommendations for JavaScript SEO (10:35)
Third-party tool scores and query intent vs user intent (12:53)

Documentation mentioned in this episode:
Bing Webmaster Tools
Verify Bingbot Tool → https://goo.gle/38an3kx
URL & Content Submission API → https://goo.gle/2NDZeYN
Crawl Control → https://goo.gle/2Zj6IWB
Import sites from Google Search Console to Bing Webmaster Tools → https://goo.gle/2NGAKOv

Formalizing the Robots Exclusion Protocol Specification (blog post) → https://goo.gle/3g7K4Hu

Specific timestamped topics discussed in this episode:
Why is crawl budget an interesting topic to discuss (0:00)
What is crawl budget? (1:15)
What is crawl rate, and what is crawl demand? (1:47)
How does Googlebot make its crawl rate and crawl demand decisions? (2:44)
ETags, HTTP headers, last modified dates, and similar (3:43)
What size of sites should worry about crawl budget? (4:35)
Server setup vs crawl budget (5:00)
Crawl frequency vs quality of content (6:18)
What to expect to see in one’s log files if Google is testing one’s server? (7:45)
Tips on how to get your site crawled accurately during a site migration (8:18)
Crawl budget and the different levels of one’s site’s infrastructure (9:40)
Does crawl budget affect rendering as well? (10:37)
Caching of resources and crawl budget (11:46)
Crawl budget and specific industries such as publishing (13:34)
What can be - generally speaking - recommended to help Googlebot out when crawling one’s site? (15:03)
What are the usual pitfalls people get into with crawl budget? (16:52)
Can one tell Googlebot to crawl one’s site more? (17:40)

Documentation mentioned in this episode:
What Crawl Budget means for Googlebot → https://goo.gle/3iIJHp2
How to move your content to a new location → https://goo.gle/3iKf2HS
Reduce the Googlebot crawl rate → https://goo.gle/38LfMb5

In the third episode of SEO Mythbusting season 2, Martin Splitt (Developer Advocate, Google) and Eric Enge (General Manager of Digital, Perficient) discuss the most common SEO questions and myths around page speed.

Specific timestamped topics discussed in this episode:
The general misconception about page speed & ranking (0:00)
Why is page speed important? (1:57)
Page speed vs content relevancy (3:00)
Average vs recommended web page size (4:54)
Page speed optimization (5:48)
The intricacies of Lighthouse reports, data, and scores (7:44)
Page speed on the different user devices and connections (9:18)
Page speed, Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP), and Progressive Web Apps (PWA) (11:36)
More on page speed as a factor in Google Search ranking (13:06)

Documentation mentioned in this episode:
Evaluating page experience → https://goo.gle/2ZOnBd3
Why performance matters → https://goo.gle/3hmaHJh
Mobile page speed - industry benchmarks → https://goo.gle/3joze29
Lazy loading → https://goo.gle/30wEGYh
Lighthouse → https://goo.gle/3jqspgD
Chrome User Experience Report → https://goo.gle/2WHxLdP
Progressive Web Apps → https://goo.gle/3fQ95XQ

In this episode of SEO Mythbusting season 2, Martin Splitt (Developer Advocate, Google) and Rachel Costello (Technical SEO Consultant, Builtvisible, at the time of recording Technical SEO & Content Manager, DeepCrawl) discuss the most common SEO questions and myths around canonicalization.

Specific timestamped topics discussed in this episode:
Canonicalization is not a topical grouping (0:00)
The most common canonicalization myths (1:29)
Is canonicalization a directive or a signal for Google Search? (2:01)
Should canonicalization be used as a redirect? (3:08)
What are the actual factors for duplication and deduplication? (4:25)
Site’s preference for the canonical URL vs user’s preference (7:33)
Canonicalization vs unique content on pages with a canonical tag (08:59)

Documentation mentioned in this episode:
Learn more about canonicalization → https://goo.gle/2DX7OjI
Canonical URLS: How does Google pick the one? (video) → https://youtu.be/8j_hxBw5B4E

In the fourth episode of SEO Mythbusting season 2, Martin Splitt (Developer Advocate, Google) and Glenn Gabe (Digital Marketing Consultant, G-Squared Interactive) discuss the most common SEO questions and myths around site moves, URL migration, domain name changes, and more!

Specific timestamped topics discussed in this episode:
Redirecting images during a site redesign or migration (0:00)
Will you always experience a drop in traffic with a domain name change or a site migration? (1:53)
Buying a new domain name with history & traffic anomalies (2:40)
Site merger vs site move (6:24)
What goes on on the Google side once a domain name change is triggered? (8:12)
Why would one use the Change of Address Tool? (10:16)
If a site moves, is there a reassessment of content quality by Google? (11:15)
Should you revert back if a site migration results in a major drop in traffic? (14:54)
Should one unblock URLs normally blocked by robots.txt during a site migration? (17:31)
Most common problems after a site moves & doing things step-by-step (18:16)
(19:32)

Documentation mentioned in this episode:
How to 301 redirect images during a website redesign or CMS migration → https://goo.gle/32tGMJz
Site moves (with URL changes) → https://goo.gle/2FQti2E
Change of Address Tool → https://goo.gle/3lh3uNq
Penguin update → https://goo.gle/32j0ibi

In the sixth episode of SEO Mythbusting season 2, Martin Splitt (Developer Advocate, Google) and Lily Ray (SEO Director, Path Interactive) discuss if more content is always a good thing for SEO or not.

Specific timestamped topics discussed:
Updating the same type of content each year vs creating new one (00:00)
Introduction to the episode (1:07)
How much content should I have and to what extent does this help my performance? (1:52)
Does having a blog / producing new content help my performance on Google? (03:02)
Updating older pieces of content (04:00)
Is there any way that Google tells us if there’s ‘too much content’ or maybe that content is underperforming? (04:40)
Underperforming content and the overall trustworthiness or authority (05:36)
Grouping and consolidation of one’s content (06:19)
Is word count a ranking factor? (08:07)
Specific keywords and word count (8:39)
Auto-generated content & canonicalization (9:32)
How does Google determine duplicate content? (11:35)

Documentation mentioned in this episode:
Quality evaluator guidelines → https://static.googleusercontent.com/...

In the last episode of SEO Mythbusting season 2, Martin Splitt (Developer Advocate, Google) and Barry Schwartz (CEO, RustyBrick) discuss the relationship between Google and the SEO community.

Specific timestamped topics discussed in this episode:
What does ‘it depends’ depend on? (0:00)
Introduction to the episode (0:59)
Featured snippets, publishers & Google (2:03)
Too little transparency, too much transparency? (5:03)
Submitting feedback (7:00)
Not using Android or Chrome data for ranking (7:56)
AMP & the Top Stories Carousel (9:15)
More on Google’s communication with the SEO community (11:52)
Why doesn’t Martin Splitt want to know about ranking? (16:02)
‘The best possible website’ & user testing (17:04)
Bloopers (19:16)

Documentation mentioned in this episode:
Google Surveys → https://goo.gle/3iSDu9s
Google Search Liaison → https://goo.gle/35XANjo
Top Stories and AMP → https://goo.gle/2El8JLk
Top Stories and page experience → https://goo.gle/3cigi26