Weekly SEO Updates August 12- August 18

No, Outbound Links Won’t Help Your Content Rank Better on Google

People have long added external links to their blogs in hopes of being seen as relevant.?

Countless others are vying for these backlinks because they want their rankings to increase.

“What will happen if I external link to a popular website like Wikipedia?” a Redditor asked.

And Google’s John Mueller broke the floodgates open with his take:

“Nothing happens. Why should it? This has been one of those things that SEOs have claimed / hoped since literally decades.

“Here’s my affiliate site about handbags – and here’s a link to CNN & Wikipedia, please take me seriously now, k?”

Treat links like content. Does this link provide additional, unique value to users? Then link naturally. Is this link irrelevant to my users? Then don’t link to it. Name-dropping a dictionary doesn’t fix your spelling mistakes.”

Google: Your Domain Will Never Make Or Break Your SEO

Google's John Mueller said on Mastodon a few tips on domain names, but one line was pretty strong. He said, "your domain name is never going to make or break your SEO."

Here are the points he made on domains on the topic of dashes in domain names. He wrote, "In the domain name, is the use of dash ( - ) recommended or not?"

• It's fine
• Pick a domain name for your brand for the long run, don't just collect keywords (the common reason for dashes). Build out a domain.
• For SEO, dashes are very minimally better in URLs than underscores. Don't change your URLs for them though. Don't use spaces, commas, colons, etc in URLs.
• Your domain name is never going to make or break your SEO.

Google Stops Testing Links in Search Generative Experience Snapshot Answers

Google began testing links within the Search Generative Experience AI-generated snapshot answers earlier this month. Well, it seems that the test is over. Google is no longer showing links or citations in its AI-generated answers.

Google: If You're Using AI To Write Your Content, It's Going To Be Rehashed From Other Sites

Google's John Mueller had a nice one-liner on Reddit again, this one he said: "By definition (I'm simplifying), if you're using AI to write your content, it's going to be rehashed from other sites."

This means that AI is basically learning from what is already out on the web and uses that knowledge to write based on what already exists. In short, it will rehash what it knows and create something based on that knowledge. But that knowledge is not new because it is learned based on what is available on the web.

Google Answers Why A Site Doesn’t Rank Despite Good SEO

A person asked:

“Why is my site not ranking despite low competition and good SEO? I have a sitemap, indexed pages, updated content, backlinks and on-page optimization. But my site is still not in the top 200 results for my keywords.”

John Mueller answered by first recognizing the shortcoming of Google’s advice on SEO.

He says that Google’s advice tends to lean more to the technical side of SEO like structured data, page speed, and content quality but not so much about site promotion.

Mueller responded:

“I see this kind of question often. Google tends to focus on various technical asppects when it comes to talking about SEO, but you need to do more.” A good way to think about this is to compare it to the offline world. When it comes to books, does a good cover photo, a reasonable sentence length, few misspellings, and a good topic mean that a book will become a best-seller? Or as a restaurant, does using the right ingredients and cooking in a clean kitchen mean you’ll get a lot of customers? Technical details are good to cover well, but there’s more involved in being successful.”

Google: Don’t Worry About SEO Tool Scores

No, you don’t have to worry about scores from SEO tools. Google doesn’t even use scores from some of its own tools (e.g., Lighthouse) for ranking.

That’s according to Google Search Advocate John Mueller, in the latest #AskGooglebot video.

?Google Chrome’s Lighthouse tool is just one example of a tool that will show you performance scores. However, like third-party tools, Google Search doesn’t use Lighthouse scores for ranking.

• “No, Google does not use scores from third-party SEO tools or services. It doesn’t matter whether it’s about a website’s authority or a rating about spamminess, Google doesn’t use these scores at all,” Mueller said

Even though Google doesn’t use SEO scores for ranking, Mueller said some of these scores could be useful for finding actual issues.

• “They could help with the next steps, or perhaps even qualify the work that was done. Knowing how to score comes to be critical in determining whether it makes sense for you.”