Unlocking Google Search Success: Insights from Search Central Live South America
Google's Search Central Live is heading back to South America, with events planned in Brazil and Argentina that promise to bring Google's top search engineers and developer advocates face-to-face with the region's rapidly growing web development community. This is a significant moment for Latin American developers and SEO professionals who want to deepen their understanding of how Google Search actually works — and more importantly, how to make their sites perform better within it.
Whether you're planning to attend one of these events or simply want to get ahead of the curve before the sessions drop, this guide will walk you through the most impactful, actionable strategies for enhancing your site's performance in Google Search. We'll cover everything from technical SEO fundamentals to structured data, Core Web Vitals, and the security signals that Google increasingly factors into its ranking decisions.
Why Search Central Live Matters for South American Developers
Search Central Live events aren't just another conference circuit. They're Google's direct channel to developers — a place where the engineers who build and maintain Google Search share real insights, answer hard questions, and provide guidance that goes well beyond what's documented in the official help center.
For South America specifically, this is meaningful. The region has seen explosive growth in e-commerce, fintech, and content publishing over the last several years. Brazilian and Argentine websites are competing not just locally but globally, and the technical bar for ranking well in Google Search continues to rise. Events like these give local teams access to the same quality of information that has historically been concentrated in North America and Europe.
The key themes that typically emerge from Search Central Live events — Core Web Vitals, structured data, mobile-first indexing, crawl budget optimization, and security — are exactly the areas where many South American sites still have significant room for improvement. Let's dig into each one.
Core Web Vitals: The Performance Foundation You Can't Ignore
Google's Core Web Vitals — Largest Contentful Paint (LCP), Interaction to Next Paint (INP), and Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS) — have been a confirmed ranking signal since 2021, and Google has continued refining how it measures and weights them. If your site is still struggling with these metrics, you're leaving ranking potential on the table.
Diagnosing Your Current Performance
Before you can fix anything, you need an accurate picture of where you stand. A full Lighthouse-based audit using the Website Performance Analyzer gives you a breakdown of all Core Web Vitals alongside actionable recommendations. The key is to run this audit against your actual production URLs, not just your homepage — product pages, category pages, and article templates often have wildly different performance profiles.
Improving LCP
Largest Contentful Paint measures how long it takes for the largest visible element on the page to load. For most sites, this is a hero image or a large heading. Common fixes include:
<!-- Preload your LCP image to prioritize it in the browser's loading queue -->
<link rel="preload" as="image" href="/images/hero.webp" fetchpriority="high">
<!-- Use modern image formats with appropriate sizing -->
<img
src="/images/hero.webp"
alt="Hero image"
width="1200"
height="630"
loading="eager"
fetchpriority="high"
>
Beyond images, LCP is heavily influenced by server response time (TTFB). If your Time to First Byte is above 800ms, no amount of frontend optimization will get your LCP into the "Good" range. This is where caching becomes critical.
Caching Strategy and HTTP Headers
A properly configured caching layer can dramatically reduce TTFB and improve LCP scores. Use the Cache Inspector to analyze your current HTTP cache headers and identify assets that should be cached but aren't, or that have misconfigured TTLs.
A solid caching configuration for static assets looks like this:
# Nginx configuration for static assets
location ~* \.(jpg|jpeg|png|webp|gif|ico|css|js|woff2)$ {
expires 1y;
add_header Cache-Control "public, immutable";
add_header Vary "Accept-Encoding";
}
# HTML pages — shorter cache with revalidation
location ~* \.html$ {
expires 1h;
add_header Cache-Control "public, must-revalidate";
}
Fixing CLS
Cumulative Layout Shift is often caused by images without explicit dimensions, dynamically injected content, and web fonts that cause text to reflow. The fix is usually straightforward:
/* Reserve space for images to prevent layout shift */
img {
aspect-ratio: attr(width) / attr(height);
height: auto;
width: 100%;
}
/* Prevent font-related CLS with font-display */
@font-face {
font-family: 'YourFont';
src: url('/fonts/yourfont.woff2') format('woff2');
font-display: optional; /* or 'swap' depending on your tolerance */
}
Mobile-First Indexing: Optimizing for How Google Actually Crawls Your Site
Google has been using mobile-first indexing for all new sites since 2019, and the full rollout is complete. This means Google primarily uses the mobile version of your content for indexing and ranking. If your mobile experience is degraded compared to desktop, you're being indexed on the weaker version.
Use the Mobile Insights tool to audit your site's mobile-friendliness, viewport configuration, and tap target sizing. Pay particular attention to:
- Viewport meta tag: Every page must have
<meta name="viewport" content="width=device-width, initial-scale=1"> - Content parity: Anything hidden on mobile via CSS (
display: none) that isn't also hidden on desktop can be ignored by Google's mobile crawler - Tap targets: Buttons and links need at least 48x48px touch targets with adequate spacing
Structured Data: Speaking Google's Language
Structured data is one of the highest-leverage technical SEO investments you can make. When implemented correctly, it enables rich results — star ratings, FAQ dropdowns, recipe cards, event listings, product prices — that significantly increase click-through rates from the search results page.
The JSON-LD Approach
Google strongly recommends JSON-LD for structured data implementation because it's clean, maintainable, and doesn't require changes to your HTML structure. Here's an example for a local business, which is particularly relevant for South American businesses competing in local search:
{
"@context": "https://schema.org",
"@type": "LocalBusiness",
"name": "Your Business Name",
"image": "https://yoursite.com/images/logo.jpg",
"url": "https://yoursite.com",
"telephone": "+55-11-1234-5678",
"address": {
"@type": "PostalAddress",
"streetAddress": "Rua Example, 123",
"addressLocality": "São Paulo",
"addressRegion": "SP",
"postalCode": "01310-100",
"addressCountry": "BR"
},
"geo": {
"@type": "GeoCoordinates",
"latitude": -23.5505,
"longitude": -46.6333
},
"openingHoursSpecification": [
{
"@type": "OpeningHoursSpecification",
"dayOfWeek": ["Monday", "Tuesday", "Wednesday", "Thursday", "Friday"],
"opens": "09:00",
"closes": "18:00"
}
]
}
Rather than writing this by hand for every page type, use the JSON-LD Structured Data Generator to generate valid, schema.org-compliant markup for articles, products, events, FAQs, and more. This eliminates the risk of syntax errors that can prevent Google from parsing your structured data correctly.
Validating Your Implementation
After implementing structured data, always validate using Google's Rich Results Test. Common errors include missing required properties, incorrect date formats, and referencing images that don't meet Google's size requirements (minimum 1200px wide for most rich result types).
SEO Fundamentals: The Basics That Still Drive Results
It's easy to get caught up in the technical details and overlook the foundational on-page SEO elements that Google has been using as ranking signals for decades. These still matter enormously.
Auditing Your On-Page SEO
Run a comprehensive SEO Audit across your key pages to identify issues with meta titles, meta descriptions, heading structure, canonical tags, and content quality signals. Pay particular attention to:
- Title tags: Keep them under 60 characters, front-load your primary keyword, and make them unique across every page
- Meta descriptions: While not a direct ranking factor, they influence click-through rate. Write them as a genuine pitch to the searcher, not a keyword list
- Heading hierarchy: Use a single H1 per page that clearly describes the page's primary topic, with H2s and H3s creating a logical content outline
- Canonical tags: Especially important for e-commerce sites with faceted navigation, where the same product can appear at dozens of different URLs
Hreflang for Multilingual and Multi-Regional Sites
This is particularly relevant for South American sites that serve both Portuguese and Spanish speakers, or that have separate regional versions for Brazil, Argentina, Chile, and other markets. Incorrect hreflang implementation is one of the most common technical SEO errors Google sees at scale.
<!-- In the <head> of your Brazilian Portuguese page -->
<link rel="alternate" hreflang="pt-BR" href="https://yoursite.com/br/page">
<link rel="alternate" hreflang="es-AR" href="https://yoursite.com/ar/page">
<link rel="alternate" hreflang="es" href="https://yoursite.com/es/page">
<link rel="alternate" hreflang="x-default" href="https://yoursite.com/page">
Every hreflang relationship must be reciprocal — if your Brazilian page points to your Argentine page, the Argentine page must point back. Missing reciprocal tags cause Google to ignore the entire hreflang implementation.
Technical Infrastructure: DNS, SSL, and Security Signals
Google has been increasingly transparent about the role that security and technical infrastructure play in search. HTTPS has been a ranking signal since 2014, and security headers are becoming more important as Google's quality evaluators assess site trustworthiness.
DNS Health and Propagation
Slow or misconfigured DNS can cause intermittent crawling issues that are notoriously difficult to diagnose. Use the DNS Lookup tool to verify your DNS records are correctly configured and to check propagation across multiple global resolvers. For South American sites, it's worth verifying that your DNS resolves correctly from both North American and South American vantage points, since Google's crawlers are distributed globally.
Key DNS checks to perform:
- Verify your A/AAAA records point to the correct IP addresses
- Confirm your MX records are properly configured (email authentication affects domain reputation)
- Check that your TTL values are appropriate — very low TTLs can cause excessive DNS lookups, while very high TTLs slow down propagation during infrastructure changes
SSL Certificate Validity
An expired or misconfigured SSL certificate will cause Google to flag your site as insecure, which not only affects rankings but will cause Chrome to display a full-page warning to your visitors. Use the SSL Certificate Checker to verify your certificate is valid, check its expiration date, and confirm the certificate chain is properly configured.
# Check certificate expiration from the command line
openssl s_client -connect yoursite.com:443 -servername yoursite.com 2>/dev/null | \
openssl x509 -noout -dates
Set up automated monitoring to alert you at least 30 days before your certificate expires. Let's Encrypt certificates expire every 90 days, so automated renewal via Certbot or a similar tool is essential.
Security Headers
Google's vulnerability assessment systems look at security headers as signals of site quality and technical sophistication. The Vulnerability Scanner checks for common security misconfigurations including missing security headers, XSS vulnerabilities, and clickjacking exposure.
At minimum, your site should implement:
# Essential security headers
add_header Strict-Transport-Security "max-age=31536000; includeSubDomains; preload" always;
add_header X-Frame-Options "SAMEORIGIN" always;
add_header X-Content-Type-Options "nosniff" always;
add_header Referrer-Policy "strict-origin-when-cross-origin" always;
add_header Content-Security-Policy "default-src 'self'; script-src 'self' 'unsafe-inline' https://www.googletagmanager.com; img-src 'self' data: https:;" always;
add_header Permissions-Policy "geolocation=(), microphone=(), camera=()" always;
Sitemap Strategy: Guiding Google's Crawlers
A well-structured XML sitemap is your direct communication channel with Google's crawlers. It tells Googlebot which pages exist, when they were last updated, and implicitly signals which pages you consider most important.
Use the Sitemap Generator to create a properly formatted XML sitemap, then follow these best practices:
- Keep sitemaps under 50,000 URLs: Use sitemap index files to split large sites into multiple sitemaps organized by content type (articles, products, categories)
- Include only canonical URLs: Never include URLs that have a
rel="canonical"pointing elsewhere - Update
<lastmod>accurately: Only update this value when the page content actually changes — inflating it to trigger recrawling is a well-known anti-pattern that Google ignores - Submit via Google Search Console: Don't just host the sitemap — actively submit it and monitor for errors
Social Signals and Brand Visibility
While social media signals aren't a direct ranking factor, the way your content appears when shared on social platforms affects click-through rates and brand visibility, which in turn drive the engagement signals Google uses to assess content quality.
Use the Social Share Preview tool to verify how your pages appear when shared on Facebook, Twitter/X, LinkedIn, and WhatsApp. For South American markets, WhatsApp sharing is particularly important — Brazil has one of the highest WhatsApp penetration rates in the world, and content shared via WhatsApp can drive significant referral traffic.
Ensure every page has properly configured Open Graph tags:
<meta property="og:title" content="Your Page Title">
<meta property="og:description" content="A compelling description under 200 characters">
<meta property="og:image" content="https://yoursite.com/images/og-image.jpg">
<meta property="og:image:width" content="1200">
<meta property="og:image:height" content="630">
<meta property="og:url" content="https://yoursite.com/your-page">
<meta property="og:type" content="article">
<meta name="twitter:card" content="summary_large_image">
Preparing for Search Central Live: What to Bring
If you're attending one of the South American Search Central Live events, come prepared with specific questions about your site's performance. Generic questions get generic answers — the more specific you can be about your technical setup, the more valuable the feedback you'll receive from Google's engineers.
Before the event, run a full audit of your site using the tools mentioned throughout this article. Document your Core Web Vitals scores, identify your most critical structured data implementations, note any crawl errors from Google Search Console, and list the specific pages where you're seeing ranking volatility. This preparation will make every conversation at the event significantly more productive.
Conclusion
Search Central Live's return to South America is a genuine opportunity for the region's developer and SEO community to level up their technical knowledge directly from the source. But you don't have to wait for the event to start improving your site's performance in Google Search.
The strategies outlined here — from Core Web Vitals optimization and structured data implementation to DNS health, SSL validity, and security header configuration — represent the full spectrum of technical factors that influence how Google crawls, indexes, and ranks your site.
OpDeck brings all of these diagnostic capabilities together in one place. Whether you need to audit your Core Web Vitals with the Website Performance Analyzer, validate your structured data with the JSON-LD Generator, check your SSL configuration, or run a full SEO audit, you can do it without switching between a dozen different tools. Start your technical SEO audit today and walk into Search Central Live with a clear picture of exactly where your site stands — and a concrete plan for where it's going.