One does not have to suck up to Google & Co. or try to apply some magic SEO-Snakeoil in order to be diligent about professional web performance and search-engine friendlyness. Google doesn’t like people trying to trick them into higher pageranking and they are fast at retaliation and downmodding ranks a few thousand points when it comes to that.
However, Google does actually know what they’re talking about when it comes to solid web performance and sound web-design. While I strongly recommend against SEO-Snakeoil, I do recommend listening to Google when it comes to building a website that is modern and performant and adheres to contemporary professional standards. They do know what they are talking about.
Googles web.dev is a good stop for professionally evaluating and testing your general performance and technical SEO of your project. This is most definitely not to be confused with Google Analytics, which is Googles offering for measuring user engagement and user behaviour, something entirely decoupled for actual technical performance. However, it is also industry standard, and if you follow sound and well-build EU-GDPR standards, using Google isn’t necessarily a bad idea. They know what they’re doing when it comes to analytics.
Furthermore, both of these are not to be confused with Googles Webmaster Services that enable Webmasters to inform Googles crawlers that a website exists and to get some valuable insights on what can be done to improve visibility and usability within the Google ecosphere.
Last but not least, the big Google, being the powerful corporation they are, does like it when you play their game of ball and perhaps add in a little AMP (Google AMP) compliant content presentation or something similar.
While this post might look like a big fat Google ad, it isn’t. It only happens that Google is really interested that you use the open web and come and use Googles offerings along with it – that’s why their services are so hell-bent on leading the pack in term of the open web. Yes, that’s pure self-interest, but one you can play along with if you are aware of what’s going on.
Enjoy building a professional web experience!