#Google Webmaster Hangouts Notes – 6 September 2019
Welcome to MarketingSyrup! This post is part of my Google Webmaster Hangouts Notes. I cover them regularly to save you time. You might want to subscribe not to miss anything!
Top-level domains don’t have any ranking benefits in comparison to subdomains (16:35)
Top-level domains don’t have any ranking benefits. You can rank content on subdomains too.
The main piece of advice here is to keep your content on your domain versus public platforms. If you publish your content on your website, you have full control over it while with 3rd party platforms things can happen.
Your website can be penalized for using spun content (21:17)
Google can penalize a website for using spun content. Auto-generated content is against Google guidelines.
The automatically translated content is also treated as spun, so it’s against Google guidelines.
The action taken against a website using spun content can range from lowering the website rankings or removing it completely from the search.
You can get GSC notifications if you’re using an outdated version of CMS/technology (29:37)
Google can send you notifications in Google Search Console if you’re using old technology (like an outdated WordPress version) to warn you that there are vulnerabilities and your website might be hacked.
But using an outdated technology/platform doesn’t negatively influence rankings.
Link networks are against Google guidelines (33:17)
Being part of a link network or having links from such networks is against Google guidelines. This means that if caught, your website will be penalized.
Kristina’s note: There are good and bad SEO services, and cheap links from PBNs are definitely a bad service. I’ve recently written a post about how good SEO should look like, check it out!
What happens if you disallow robot.txt in your robots.txt? (36:23)
In general, not many things will change.
Google will still need to access the robots.txt file to see which website areas are allowed/disallowed/.
What will happen is that Google won’t be able to index the robots.txt file.
Google and infinite scroll (41:25)
If you’re using infinite scroll, make sure that Google can still see the links to individual pages, e.g. display paginated links.
Your syndicated content can outrank your original content (46:13)
If you’re syndicating your content to other platforms, there’s a chance they will outrank you on Google.
A single page listing multiple products: yes or no? (54:01)
If these products are variations of one product (different colours, sizes), that’s totally fine. It’s even preferable to have a single page in such situations.
But if these are completely different products, it’s hard for Google to understand what the page is about, and it’s hard to match user intent. This makes it harder for people to find these products.
That’s it for now! Was it useful? Subscribe to the updates then!
I cook digital marketing dishes. Take 3 tablespoons of on-page SEO, add 2 pinches of backlinks and sprinkle it all with paid advertising. Season to taste with actionable data from Analytics and bake until golden brown. Serve hot.