Google’s Search Engine Optimization Starter Guide
Google releases a Search Engine Optimization Guide somewhere around mid November 2008. Below is the summery that I compile after going through the guide. It would be better if you could go through it, even if you already learn up a lot of SEO tips. Who knows you might miss out some important clue.
- Create unique and accurate page title. Choose a brief but effectively describe the page content.
- Apply different title tag for each page. The <title> tag should be within the <head> tag.
- Make use of the “description” Meta tag. It should be the summery of the page content.
- Improve the structure of URLs. Use descriptive words instead of numbers.
- Make site easier to navigate. Create an XML sitemap file to make it easier for Google to discover the pages.
- Offer quality content and services. Write simple, easy to read articles. Have an organized and unique content. Write for users not search engines.
- Write better anchor text. Write short but descriptive text so that users understand where it links.
- Use heading tags appropriately.
- Optimize the use of images. Have a distinct file name and “alt” attribute for all images.
- Make effective use of robots.txt. Control pages crawled by search engine. Certain pages of site might not be useful to users.
- Be aware of rel=”nofollow” for links. Linking sites that Google considers spammy can affect the site reputation.
- Promote website the right ways. Blog about new content or services. Use offline promotion. Add business to Google’s Local Business Center. Make use of social media sites. Communicate with sites that share similar interest.
- Make use of free webmaster tools, example Google’s Webmaster Tools, Google Analytics.
Basically it’s actually making your site reachable and understandable by Google. This can be done better when using Google free tools.
Most of the above mention is common guide of SEO. If you’re new to SEO and would like to improve your blog PR, then you should go through it. As for those that familiar with SEO and already implement most of the steps, it’s good to go through it too. There are many SEO steps that are well explained. I’m sure most of us know that it must be done this way buy do not know the reason of doing so.
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Comments
It’s November 2008. The guide already been release and you can check it out from the link from the above post.
Hi! this Google SEO guide sounds interesting. I would like to know the tips and guides in SEO and I want to learn the effective use of robots.txt. I am sooo excited to try this later. Thanks!
Using an XML sitemap is easier than it sounds. I tried doing that and there were too many choices for the settings and I am pretty sure I screwed it up.
I just knew that Google consider it spamming if our website is linking to a nofollow attribute.. That make sounds useful to me. Thanks!
This is just a short guide from Google. I’m sure there are many more tips regarding SEO. Hope that Google will release a update version of this guide soon.
Great information for everyone to remember. There are so many things you can do wrong if you don’t know what the search engines look for. Thanks for the great post.
I think most of us just do it without knowing the search engines. It’s not a bad thing as we started blogging for readers not search engines. We can always tuned our blog to suit search engine later as we learn up. Capturing loyalty readers takes more time then making a SEO Blog.
Do you mean the release is November 2009?