It’s been said by the legends that “no two living SEO’s can agree on one unified way to do SEO”.
Partly Google is to blame because John Mueller flat out refused to share the secret of SEO with us to end the debate once and for all.
The other reason is that SEO is now a constantly evolving process. Things that used to work a couple of years ago are now almost obsolete. Moreover, with increasing evidence of Google category-based (or niche based) algorithms, it is becoming too difficult to track all the changes.
Things got so desperate that SEO’s now rely on third-party tools to predict & analyze SEO improvements in Google. These tools claim to mimic Google’s algorithm but, they tend to add more confusion rather than solving, as every tool has its algorithm & metrics and when you start comparing them to conclude, things can go sideways pretty quick, leaving you questioning your life choices.
Things get worst when you see lengthy posts on how these tools are your only chance to do proper SEO. So with all the information overload, people often left wondering what to do, considering that very reputable SEO’s are recommending SEO strategies based on these tools?
I think the best way is to go directly to the horse’s mouth i.e. Google. So the following is some information that is directly given by Google or Googlers regarding SEO. Use these in formulating your SEO strategy and things can never go wrong.
1. WordPress CMS Can Help Increase Google Rankings
The answer is No.
CMS is often a point of debate among SEO’s and usually, the recommendations are based on security, scalability, and adaptability. However, we have seen some posts that flat out called WordPress a winner when it comes to better rankings in Google.
However, according to Google, WordPress CMS itself has no advantage over other CMS when it comes to SEO. Answering a comment regarding Shopify CMS & Google rankings, John Mu categorically denied that any particular CMS has any advantage over others.
no. WP is a great CMS & works well in search, but afaik our algos don’t explicitly check for any particular CMS.
— ? John ? (@JohnMu) November 1, 2016
So as long as a CMS has a clean URL structure and follows basic technical SEO recommendations like easy access for crawlers, clear navigation, etc it’s as good as any other CMS out there.
2. AMP pages got better rankings
The answer is No.
AMP was a hot topic couple of years back (just like E.A.T nowadays). People start claiming that Google gives special ranking to sites that have implemented AMP. Now if we go all technical then indirectly almost everything can impact SEO but if we single out the AMP as a preferred ranking factor then it is not the case.
On a question asked at Twitter, Martin Splitt from Google categorically denied that Google prioritizes AMP content on Google search.
That’s a myth.
— Martin Splitt at ??? (@g33konaut) March 22, 2020
3. Mobile First Indexing has Ranking Benefit
The answer is No.
Mobile became a big thing since people start witnessing traffic increase from mobile devices as compared to desktop. Countless researches pointed out that Mobile traffic has surpassed desktop traffic.
This inevitably leads to companies and SEO’s focusing on Mobile SEO and like AMP Pages, somehow it becomes a strong SEO factor. Many SEO blogs start claiming that ranking in Google without mobile is now the thing of the past and websites without mobile versions will face difficulties to rank compare to websites with the mobile version. These claims get more traction after Google announces the mobile-first index will be the default index after September 2020.
However, replying to a tweet, John said that Mobile’s first indexing has no ranking benefit.
That can happen — sometimes there are small subtle differences that tip our algorithms over the edge. I wouldn’t sweat it, there’s no ranking advantage to being mobile-first indexed.
— ? John ? (@JohnMu) March 5, 2020
So if your site is responsive, then you don’t have to do any special “mobile-first indexing SEO optimization”.
4. E.A.T is a part of Google Algorithm
The answer is No.
Since it first appeared in Google Raters Guidelines, EAT has been the topic of debate among many SEO blogs. E.A.T refers to Expertise, Authoritativeness, and Trustworthiness. Google raters use it to evaluate websites and based on the rated data, Google results are evaluated by the concerned depart.
Since it was mentioned in Google’s official document, therefore SEO’s start using to write 5000 words ultimate guides on how to use it for SEO.
However, Danny Sullivan cleared the misconception by stating that Google also itself isn’t looking for any EAT signals. Instead, it is just for the raters to see how good Google also is working.
Our systems aren’t looking for EAT. Our raters are using that to see if our systems are working well to show good information. There are many different signals that, if we get it right, align with what a good human EAT assessment would be. See also: https://t.co/1fs2oJ9Gtl pic.twitter.com/GBbnYEjJUV
— Danny Sullivan (@dannysullivan) February 19, 2020
5. Soft 404 is equal to 404 & 404’s are not good for your site
If you have used Google Search Console, you might have seen some Soft 404 Errors under Coverage.
Now we know that a large number of 404 errors are bad for your site and soft 404 are increasing the risk. If Google sees a page with a 404 error code, it will drop the page from its index. Now imagine your site is showing 50 soft 404 errors in search console. This means that Google might drop these 50 pages from its index.
John has confirmed multiple times that Google crawler treats soft 404 as a hard 404 error.
Yes, if we detect that a page is a soft-404, we’ll treat it the same as a normal 404 (though generally, we have to process the page first to determine that it’s likely a soft-404, so it’s a bit of extra overhead before we drop things, which is why it’s good to avoid soft-404s).
— ? John ? (@JohnMu) April 17, 2020
No, if a URL returns 404 we ignore / drop all of the contents of the page; we don’t process JavaScript, we don’t look at robots meta tags, we don’t follow links, etc.
— ? John ? (@JohnMu) April 16, 2020
So if your site has soft 404 errors, make sure to get them fixed ASAP.
6. Structured Data Helps in Better Ranking
The answer is NO.
I have seen people selling services to add schema markup on your site with the claim that it will help you in boating rankings in Google. However, that’s not the case.
Things went so bad that Google has to filter out the structured data and bring in some checks to control what sites can show structured data.
In a series of tweets, Google mentioned that Schema has no impact on rankings, whatsoever.
Yesterday, a concern was raised that calorie information was required for recipes to be included in or to rank well for Google Search. This is not the case. Moreover, structured data like this has no impact on ranking in web search. This thread has more we hope eases concerns…
— Google SearchLiaison (@searchliaison) January 16, 2020
7. Https links are more valuable than HTTP links
The answer is NO.
Recently I saw trends where people recommending that backlinks from HTTPS sites are somehow more valuable than HTTP sites.
Although it is been noted there is a small ranking boost for sites with https, this is not the case when it comes to backlinks. A backlink from a good relevant source, despite it being a non-SSL site is worth the same as a backlink from an SSL site. The same goes for the indexing of the website. Google doesn’t give any special treatment to https sites when it comes to indexing. Hence a backlink form a non-SSL site is as good as an SSL site.
This was also confirmed by Google’s John in a reply to a query asked by someone.
I don’t know about authority, but we treat links on http the same as links on https sites.
— ? John ? (@JohnMu) January 10, 2020
So these were some SEO recommendations confirmed and validated by Google itself. You can now plan your SEO strategy according to it and you can never go wrong if you follow these bits of advice. If you know any more SEO recommendations from Google, do not forget to share it with us in comments.
