Professional Q&A With Google’s Martin Splitt On HTML, Search, And Search Console
What is the role of product schema markup in Google Search Console?
Can semantic HTML help search engines better understand your website?
The competition is tough, and every simple win counts, but is semantic HTML worth your time?
On Feb 23, Search Engine Journal conducted a webinar with Google’s own Martin Splitt, who offered his thoughts, opinions, and insights on a wide range of technical SEO topics such as semantic HTML, Google Search Console, indexing, client- and server-side rendering, and more.
What Are the Best Error Handling Methods for SPAs?
“My client has a single-page application; SPA HTTP status codes that are 400 or 500 are not appropriately maintained by the server.
“What are the best practices for managing errors while working with SPAs?”
According to Martin Splitt:
“There are ways to it.
I understand exactly what you’re going through because the server doesn’t do anything in terms of handling requests.
It just returns a 200 response for each URL you handle.
The client-side JavaScript then thinks that this is a mistake, leading to software force and potentially dangerous situations.
The same goes for 500 error codes and single-page apps.
The story is similar.
What you can do, though, if you know that it is a 404, is that you have two options because two things can happen that you would instead not happen.
- One example is an indexed error page that appears in search results when it should not.
- The second problem is that you’re probably messing with your data by making 404s in the search console.”
How Does Google Decide Header Structural Focus?
“Are two H1s on a website fighting over which one has the greatest weight or value for Google to crawl?
For example, how does Google rank the header structure inside that content?”
According to Martin Splitt:
“Everything comes down to structure. I can’t stress this enough: if you want to use H1s as your top-level content structure, that’s OK.
It simply means that the top level of the content is structured all around H1 tags.
It makes no difference if you have one H1 and nothing else under there but H2s, content H2, and content H2.
That means you alternately structured your data. You could have structured it better.
You didn’t make things worse but. You just structured it differently.
Both of these structures, however, make sense.
If you use H1 as your overall title, it does not suggest that it is more valuable or meaningful to anybody — search users, for example.
It just means adding a new level and then more sub-levels.
That makes no difference.
It makes no difference if you have an H1 followed by an H2, H2, H2, H2, H2, H2, or whether you have H1 content, H1 content, and H1 content.
This means that there is no overall document level H1 heading, only the one we get from the title.
And hence, obviously, it doesn’t make a difference.”
Where Should You Focus Your SEO Efforts in 2023?
“What should folks be focusing on right now?
[Are there any] things that you feel SEOs or developers are ignoring?”
According to Martin Splitt:
“I would suggest you focus on content quality and giving value to your users.
That has always been, and will always be, the most important thing right now.
Everything else should go smoothly after that.
Maybe you’re spending time fine-tuning technical details like the structure or markup of your website.
In that case, you are most likely going to pass up the most significant opportunity of discovering what individuals receive from our website.
What do they expect from our website, and how can we make it better, faster, and more enjoyable for them?”
Parting is sweet sorrow, but a $1 coffee would make it sweeter!
