Fev, 2020 : Top Internet and Google News Update - February 2020

📅 Fevereiro 9, 2020 - 1. Google says you can host your website anywhere in the world



Google’s John Mueller said that Google does not prioritize crawling of websites that are hosted in the USA. You can host your website anywhere you want
John ✔ @JohnMu

Replying to @JohnMu and 3 others



Anyway, back to the original question, @visalvadayar , we don't prioritize crawling of sites in the US. Crawling internationally works fine, and the difference for search is minimal (the speed of light + network issues, essentially). Host your site where you want to host.


2. Google says most sites don’t have toxic links



Google’s John Mueller said that most websites do not have ‘toxic’ links. If they do, they usually created them on their own:

Most sites don't have "toxic" links, or at least, created them on their own. IMO there are more important things to focus on, by our engineers, and definitely by site owners.
— John (@JohnMu) January 28, 2020

Toxic links are spam links that have a negative impact on your search engine rankings. If you built spam links in the past, use the link disinfection tool in SEOprofiler to get rid of them:

3. How You Can Manage Thin Content on Your Website



What is thin content?

Thin content pages are pages with less than 400-500 words that do not have a clear focus. Some people also consider unoptimized pages, duplicate pages and outdated pages thin content.


How to identify thin content on your web pages
Use a website audit tool to find thin content pages on your website. Just run a website audit. The audit report shows thin content pages on your website,.


What you should do with your thin content pages
There are four strategies for dealing with thin content pages: do nothing, update the pages, redirect the pages, or remove the pages.

1. Do nothing

You don't have to do anything if the page gets many website visitors and/or if the page is ranked well on Google and other search engines. Of course, the content of the page should be up-to-date.

2. Update the page

If the content of the page is relevant but not up to date, update the page to make sure that it is relevant to your current offerings.

If the content is relevant but not detailed enough, add more information about the topic on the page. Make sure that the web page plays a relevant role in converting visitors on your website.

Updating content is less work than creating new content. In additions, the old pages usually contain some backlinks. When updating a page, you can also add videos, infographics and other content that makes the page more linkworthy.

3. Redirect the page

If you have another page on your website that contains a better version of the same content, just redirect the thin content page to the rich-content page.

4. Remove the page

If the content of a page is outdated, or if it does not comply with current regulations, it might be a good idea to remove the page from your website.

This should only be done if it is not possible to redirect the old page to another page of your website that is up-to-date.

Other errors on your web pages



Your website can contain many more errors that have a negative impact on your search engine rankings. The website audit tool helps you find them:

Check your web pages regularly (with an automated tool)



Updating or replacing content that doesn't provide value for your customers is always a good idea. You should also check the redirects on your website. One bad redirect can lead to massive problems.


4. Evergreen Content Doesn't Need To Change



Google's John Mueller was asked how can one communicate to Google that a page with evergreen content is as value as it was when it was first published several years ago. John responded that "If it's evergreen, then by definition you don't need to change it. No need to do anything special."

The SEO wanted to know if the date should be removed, updated, or something else. John said do nothing, just keep it as is.

Here are those tweets:

Saswata Baksi @am_saswat
· Jan 5, 2020


Hey, @JohnMu Any recommendations for "EVERGREEN" content, which literally need no changes for several years! How to notify Google that content still has the same value as previous! Am I need to delete the date? Or something else.


John ✔ @JohnMu

If it's evergreen, then by definition you don't need to change it. No need to do anything special. Keep your dates, make it great.

The SEO then said it would be a disadvantage not to do anything. Having an old date show in the Google search results may deter a searcher from clicking on the article in search. John responded.
Vincent Malischewski @VMalischewski
· Jan 6, 2020

Replying to @JohnMu @am_saswat

Won't a 'great' article be disadvantaged by an old timestamp if another great article has been written more recently?
Users will probably be influenced by the earliest published date snippet in the serps

John ✔ @JohnMu

Why would an article be disadvantaged by a date?

So you should manually change the date, manipulate it, to be more recent? Either update the article or leave it alone?


5. Google updates mobile-first indexing best practices



Google has announced an update to their mobile-first indexing best practices on Twitter.

We made some significant updates to our developers documentation on mobile-first indexing (#⃣1), Whether your site has been moved over already or not, it's worth checking it out