Good day to you fellow readers, welcome to another SEO News Weekly. Let’s recap on some SEO news for the week. This is this week’s SEO news: 

• Google’s John Mueller says that User Engagement is not a Search Ranking Factor 
• Google’s John Mueller’s thoughts on Internal Links In Header and Footer within a site 
• Google’s John Mueller discusses how Google search uses keyword meta tags 

11/3 – Google’s John Mueller says that User Engagement is not a Search Ranking Factor 

During a recent SEO Office Hours hangout, Google’s John Mueller was asked whether a single page with extremely high engagement and traffic has an influence on the domain as a whole? Would these signals trickle to other pages on the site and play a positive role at that domain level? 

John Mueller’s response to this was that first and foremost, user engagement is not a Search Ranking Factor.

However, internal linking does give a signal to Google on how important a specific content is on a site and it does forward some of these signals to other pages on the site. 

Additionally, John Mueller also said that external linking gives Google additional content about a page which Google will forward some of the signals to other pages of the site. 

Google’s John Mueller thoughts on internal links in Header and Footer within a site 

John Mueller recently answered questions on whether internal links in the header or footer of a site would be used differently by Google.

His response was that internal links in the header and footer within a page would not be treated differently by Google.

However, texts are treated slightly differently in that Google would use texts to try to understand what the primary content is of a page. Hence, when it comes to a ranking relative to other content within a site, Google will try to focus on the primary content section of the page. 

15/3 – Google’s John Mueller discusses how Google Search uses keyword meta tags

In the most recent episode of John Mueller’s #AskGooglebot, Google’s John Mueller gave an answer to a question raised by multiple Twitter users on the importance of keyword meta tags in SEO nowadays. 

In response, Google John Mueller said that Google does not use the content of the keyword meta tag in Google Search. However, Google does use the meta description tag as a possible snippet if it finds that it is well written. 

The End 

That is it for this week’s SEO News Weekly fellow readers. Don’t forget to leave a comment and share your thoughts on today’s topic down below. Have a good week ahead!

Updated: 28 July 2026