Page speed is important as a ranking factor, but it doesn’t override other factors, said Google Web Trends analyst John Mueller in last week’s Google Webmasters Office Hours.
There are many ranking factors that Google balances in determining page rank; it’s not only links or content, Mueller explained.
That list of factors can change at any time.
And while an empty page will be fast, it would be a
…really terrible search result if someone is searching for something really specific.
The user wouldn’t be very happy with a page with no content in the search results.
Held multiple times every month and open to the public, Google Webmasters Office Hours hangouts give website owners the opportunity to ask questions about
- Site indexing
- Mobile sites
- Internationalization
- Sitemaps
- Google Search Console
- Duplicate content
- Other webmaster-related questions
I’ve attended several Google Webmasters hangouts in the past, and always walk away with new info to help me optimize my site and my clients’ sites.
Read on to learn my top takeaways from the hangout.
5 Takeaways on Google Webmaster Office Hours
Here’s what I learned:
- Take the time to turn your translations into high-quality content.While automatic translation tools have improved over the years, you want to clean up the translations by manually updating them and making them more readable.
Users will notice the translation is easier to read.
And when Google’s algorithm’s notices the high quality content, it will try to treat it better in search results.
- Google Search Console will continue to support structured dataIt’s possible it will display in a different section in the new Google Search Console.
- What microformat does Google prefer?Google currently prefers JSON-LD (JavaScript Object Notation for Linked Data) microformat
- Content in tabs is not a problem for indexing, but may be an issue for usersGoogle can index content in tabs. However, users may find it difficult to access content in tabs.
Whicn can be an issue for you if content in tabs is important for your conversions.
- Anchor text is a ranking factorProviding useful anchor text provides context about a link in your website.
If you have a link with anchor text of “click here”, that’s not very helpful.
But if you link with anchor text of a product name, that’s useful.
Look at your anchor tags that you use, especially internally within your website.
Try to make sure that you’re providing anchor text in a way that is really useful and provides context to what is linked on the other page.
Mueller answered questions about ecommerce, thin content, responsive design, and shared many helpful tips.
Watch the video to learn more.
