To give you a general overview and further information on SEO, we have compiled some frequently asked questions and answers about the tool "Sistrix":
- How often can a keyword appear in a text?
If the text is written for users and not for search engines, the frequency of keywords is not the primary concern. Google is now very good at measuring user behavior, which is far more important. Therefore, you should focus on writing for the user; Google will take care of the rest.
- What is the maximum number of different keywords one should use in a text?
There's no general rule for this. You should always ask yourself whether it makes sense to use the keyword again, or whether it would be more beneficial to write additional text for it, which might be more helpful to the user. However, you should offer a separate page for each keyword and not use similar keywords on a single page, as a uniform page will never satisfy users as much as a dedicated page for each keyword.
- I've heard about "Amazon SEO" quite a bit lately. What's your take on it? Will it be something we should be paying attention to in the future?
Meanwhile, 50 percent of people in the US don't search for products on Google first, but directly on Amazon. While this is very bad for Google, it's a huge opportunity for Amazon. Since Sistrix has been working on this since last year, they also have a free beta version an Amazon tool.
- How important is content on landing pages with transactional search intent? For example: A user is searching for jobs in Berlin. Does Google expect text or are the job postings sufficient?
Since job postings are essentially text-based, it would probably be most sensible to look at which content is most helpful to the user. These are usually the pages that rank best for search queries.
- The top SERPs are usually dominated by well-known brands (Stepstone, Indeed, etc.), and these brands don't have any text on their pages. As a smaller brand, you simply can't compete with that..
The fact that these sites rank in the top SERPs means they offer users exactly what they want: job postings. Of course, this is difficult initially without a strong brand and with few ads, but starting with a focus on specific regional markets is a good idea.
- Does it still make sense to optimize for a keyword density of three to four percent?
As mentioned earlier, keyword density is not the most important ranking factor for Google. When writing content, you should simply ask yourself whether this is currently the best content for the respective keyword; if so, keyword density itself becomes increasingly less important.
- Are do-follow links really that essential for a better ranking and what is the significance of no-follow links? All this refers primarily to online reporting and blog posts.
Nofollow links were introduced to mark links that weren't created by the website owner, such as in blog comments or forums. Google doesn't use these links to improve rankings; therefore, only "real" dofollow links help achieve a better ranking.
- Don't do-follow links have a negative impact on link power?
No, they simply aren't counted.
- How should link texts (product links, category links) be optimized for SEO (content, length, umlauts)?
You can use internal links completely without external help. The basics are explained in this. Ask Sistrix article depicted.
- Google will soon be creating separate search results for desktop and mobile devices. Will this have an impact on SEO rankings? What should you already be considering when writing SEO texts?
Desktop and mobile rankings already differ. However, this has nothing to do with the content itself. The crucial point now is that there are no structural errors on mobile devices and that the content is easily readable and usable on smartphones. It's true that Google plans to separate its index and create a dedicated mobile index in the coming months. Then, Google will likely be able to evaluate texts for desktop and mobile separately. However, the exact changes Google intends to implement are still unclear.
- How important are category texts for Google? How long should or can they be?
Since Google doesn't think in terms of category texts, it's more important that Google understands the structure of a website as well as possible, trusts the content, and finds the search query in the text.
- We're considering integrating our blog, which currently runs on a subdomain, into our website, as we believe this is more SEO-friendly. However, we've heard differing opinions on this topic. What do you think? Subdomain: yes or no?
Unfortunately, with subdomains, you can never be sure whether Google will associate them with the main domain or not. This can also change suddenly. Therefore, a blog on the main domain is certainly more sensible.
However, if the blog has been running on the subdomain for a longer period of time, you can consider leaving it there; this always needs to be decided on a case-by-case basis.
- Google has been penalizing pages with pop-up windows since January 2017. Does this also apply to pop-up layers with information that appear, for example, when you hover your mouse over the "x" to close the window?
This announcement only applies to mobile websites. Specifically, it refers to sites that display a pop-up on the first visit. Since all pop-ups annoy users, Google is taking the position of advocate for users.
- Is it advisable to add canonical tags to PDFs pointing to corresponding subpages in order to positively influence the ranking?
Shortcuts in SEO often lead to short-term improvements, but in the long run to more frustration for users.
- Would you also recommend using Schema.org markup for videos on the website?
Just like with abbreviations, this certainly makes sense in the short term. In the long term, however, this leads to Google having a better offer and preferring to keep the traffic rather than redirect it.
- What about AMP pages? Would it make sense to convert product pages to AMP?
From a user's perspective, AMP pages are certainly superior at present, but this is mainly due to the fact that many mobile websites are very poor and slow.
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- Are there user signals that carry more weight than others? These are, of course, always dependent on the objective.
According to Google, dwell time is not a meaningful user signal. A short dwell time can also be positive; for example, the user may have found the page very clear and quickly found what they were looking for. It's worse if a website has a poor click-through rate (CTR) in the search results. This means that users are avoiding the page for a specific reason. It's also bad if a user opens a page on Google, then goes back and opens a new page because they didn't like the first one; this is called a "short click."
- How relevant are social signals for a website's ranking? (Especially with regard to activity on Google+)
Social signals officially have no direct influence on Google rankings. This makes sense, since likes and links can be bought very cheaply on eBay, and Google cannot verify the trustworthiness of profiles, as this data is only available to the social media platform providers.
- How important are mega menus (popup navigation) for websites with a deep structure, many categories, and a large number of pages?
Two things are important here: 1. The internal linking of the site should be structured so that Googlebot can crawl all subpages in as few levels as possible. HTML sitemaps or similar constructs are suitable for this.
XML sitemaps only serve as a navigation aid for Googlebot.
- How problematic are many URL parameters with regard to domain controllers, and what are some possible solutions?
URL parameters are primarily a problem for you, not so much for Google. Since it's not easy to see if URLs with parameters are structured correctly, you should avoid them whenever possible.
