Google SEO
Search Engine Land is your premier source for Google SEO news, strategies, and in-depth content.
You’ll find a variety of up-to-date and authoritative resources, including the latest news, tactic-rich tutorials, and the latest data to help you optimize your website, work smarter, and make data-driven decisions that boost your organic search performance.
Why staying updated on Google SEO matters
Google’s search algorithms evolve constantly, and staying ahead of these updates is key to maintaining and improving your website’s rankings. Whether it’s changes to core web vitals, guides to E-E-A-T, or advancements in AI-driven search like generative AI features in Google Search, understanding these shifts can give you a competitive edge.
Search Engine Land brings you actionable strategies to navigate algorithm updates, optimize for featured snippets, and improve your site’s technical SEO performance. Our resources are tailored to anyone that wants to maximize organic visibility.
What you read here is written by our experienced in-house team, and subject matter experts from leading agencies and top-ranking brands across various industries.
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Google updates image SEO best practices and Google Discover docs
The title and link elements are most important for RSS feed follow in Discover and Google parses img elements within other elements.
Is AI-written content replacing cheap old content farms?
Red Ventures' use of AI to write cheap content that ranks well in search sure sounds like the old content farms Google Panda wiped out.
13 key SEO metrics to track in 2023
The right SEO metrics to track will depend on your marketing goals. Get started with these useful metrics recommended by top SEO experts.
How Google’s continuous scroll can impact SEO
Ranking on Google's first page will be useless if there's only one page of search results. Learn what else can happen with this change.
Google improves error classification in video indexing report
The total number of errors should not change, this is just a reclassification of those errors.
Product results in Google’s performance report may see an increase in impressions and clicks
This report no longer requires structured data and if Google finds products in your content, it may show in this report starting January 6th going forward.
Google ranking signals: A complete breakdown of all confirmed, rumored and false factors
An easy-to-read, highly condensed analysis of all the known, confirmed, rumored, and absolute myth-level Google ranking factors.
AI content: Is it helpful or spam?
AI-generated content has its place in SEO. Whether it's helpful or spam depends on how, where and why you're using it.
Google’s December 2022 helpful content update is now done rolling out
The update started on December 5th and completed 38 days later on January 12th.
Google December 2022 link spam update done rolling out
That's a wrap, the second Google algorithm update this month is done rolling out.
Google search responds to BankRate, more brands using AI to write content
In short, don't produce content that is written just for search ranking.
Google’s December 2022 helpful content and link spam updates still rolling out
Google said these updates may take one to two weeks longer to complete.
Google drops the character limit for headlines in article structured data
Google says headlines should be concise, eliminates 110 character limit.
Google algorithm updates 2022 in review: Core updates, product reviews, helpful content updates, spam updates and beyond
Google introduced a brand new ranking algorithm this year, the helpful content update but pushed the same number of official updates in 2022 as it did in 2021.
Google says don’t expect a new core update by year-end
The holidays are approaching and SEOs are worried that we might get another core update by year end.
Google doubles up on E with updated search quality raters guidelines (E-E-A-T)
Add an E to E-A-T with experience, expertise, authoritativeness and trustworthiness.
Google releases December 2022 link spam update
This update is rolling out now for the next couple weeks, while the helpful content is still rolling out.
Hit by the Google spam update? Here’s what you might be doing wrong
Steer clear of outdated and dubious SEO tactics. Here are tips for doing SEO that benefits real-world users – without tricking anybody.
Google helpful content system update rolling out now (December 2022 update)
This update adds new signals and also brings the helpful content update globally for all languages.
Google brings continuous scroll to desktop search results
This is now rolling out for English / U.S. search results.
Link juice: Is it the new snake oil of Google SEO?
Should you reject any SEO advice mentioning "link juice"? Here's a look at the term's origins and why you shouldn't completely dismiss it.
Google Search adds new spam policy: Policy circumvention
If you find ways to get around Google's spam measures, Google may take action on your content, site or account anyway.
Google publishes document on more notable ranking systems
Google also lists the algorithms that are no longer being used for search rankings.
Google Search Console adds Shopping tab listings feature
This gives you more details on your product snippets, merchant listings and the shopping tab listings.
Google’s Panda algorithm evolved into the Coati algorithm
At SMX Next, Google revealed that, years ago, the Panda algorithm was replaced with an updated algorithm called Coati
Google now recommends using dots for decimal numbers in your review snippet structured data
Commas will continue to work but Google is specifically recommending you use dots over commas.
Links may be less important to the Google Search ranking algorithm in the future
As Google better understands how the content fits in within the context of the whole web, links might not be as necessary.
5 SEO best practices for Black Friday and the holiday season
Looking to boost your holiday sales this Black Friday/festive season? It's best to plan ahead of time and implement these seasonal SEO tips.
Google Search adds new coupons, side-by-side deals and price insights
Right before the holiday shopping season, Google added new search features to help searchers find deals.
How seasonality affects the SERPs and what it means for SEO
Assessing how the SERPs will change during these seasonal periods helps inform our SEO strategies to maintain brand visibility.
Google’s 2010 and 2018 page speed algorithms were replaced by core web vitals
Yep, it is all about the Page Experience update and core web vitals when it comes to Google's ranking alogrithms.
Crawl efficacy: How to level up crawl optimization
Crawl budget is a vanity metric. Your goal should be to guide Googlebot in crawling important URLs fast once they are published or updated.
Google search study: 25.6% of desktop, 17.3% of mobile are zero-click
Is Google stealing all those zero-click searches for themselves? No. In fact, many are a result of query refinement from searchers.
Google Search Console mislabeled structured data errors as errors
This was a reporting issue only and did not impact the Google search results.
Google October 2022 spam update done rolling out in less than 48 hours
The update started on October 19th and was completed less than two days later on October 21st.
Google releases October 2022 spam update
This is a global update that may take several days to fully roll out.
7 tips to turn Google’s Search Essentials into strategy
Building an SEO strategy around the Search Essentials documentation gives you the best chance to boost your clients' Google performance.
Google rolling out site names and updated favicon logos in search results
Make sure to check out the new site name structured data documentation.
Google replaces its Webmaster Guidelines with Google Search Essentials
Google has done a full refresh of its old Webmaster Guidelines, simplifying them and removing the term "webmaster."
Google adds more example categories of sites that may be impacted by the product reviews update
Three new examples were added to the how to write product reviews Google help document.