Notes from the Google Webmaster Hangout on 29th July 2016.
Submit Redirected URLs When Changing URLs
It makes sense to submit both the old and new URLs when you have changed them. Google may increase the crawl rate automatically when it thinks something has changed.
Manual Penalties are specific to www/non-www and HTTP/HTTPS
Manual Penalties are specific to www/non-www and HTTP/HTTPS
Add Nofollow to Shared Links
If you are giving out links to be shared on other websites, you should ask for nofollow to be added. If a few links are added without the nofollow, it probably won’t cause a penalty, but you can disavow the URLs with the links to be safe.
Prevent Test Site Being Indexed with Canonical
John recommends using a canonical to the main site, although he says that it’s possible for both to be indexed.
Solve Duplication with Redirects, Canonical and Linking
John recommends using redirects, canonical tags, and consistent internal linking to the primary page to solve duplication. He says Google are against using robots.txt to prevent content duplication, because Google can’t recognise the pages are duplicated if they cannot crawl it.
Overstuffed Text will be ignored
If you overuse the same text too much on a page, including in links, then Google may consider it keyword stuffing and choose to ignore it.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=41m10s
Hreflang Doesn’t Pass PageRank
Hreflang doesn’t passPageRank. You can still choose to link the pages together to pass PageRank.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=45m0s
Content Position Doesn’t Contribute to Weighting
John seems to be confirming that the posistion of content on a page doesn’t impact the weight, but they do treat hidden or visibly small content as less relevant.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=59m10s
