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Google's SEO Starter Guide
Wednesday, November 12, 2008 at 11:55 AM
Webmasters often ask us at conferences or in the Webmaster Help Group, "What are some simple ways that I can improve my website's performance in Google?" There are lots of possible answers to this question, and a wealth of search engine optimization information on the web, so much that it can be intimidating for newer webmasters or those unfamiliar with the topic. We thought it'd be useful to create a compact guide that lists some best practices that teams within Google and external webmasters alike can follow that could improve their sites' crawlability and indexing.Our Search Engine Optimization Starter Guide covers around a dozen common areas that webmasters might consider optimizing. We felt that these areas (like improving title and description meta tags, URL structure, site navigation, content creation, anchor text, and more) would apply to webmasters of all experience levels and sites of all sizes and types. Throughout the guide, we also worked in many illustrations, pitfalls to avoid, and links to other resources that help expand our explanation of the topics. We plan on updating the guide at regular intervals with new optimization suggestions and to keep the technical advice current.
So, the next time we get the question, "I'm new to SEO, how do I improve my site?", we can say, "Well, here's a list of best practices that we use inside Google that you might want to check out."
54 comments:
Nice guide for the uninitiated. What are you trying to do, put SEOs out of business ;)
It is not that SEO is that hard to explain, it is in getting it done.
John Deck
Great post. Thanks for being willing to put Googles name to a bunch of info already out there.
@barry... none of this is new information, they have just put it all together and put their name on it.
Well done... Thank you for putting this info out there with Google's name on it. Hopefully this will remove some of the mystique of SEO and allow the average consumer to better understand the job of an SEO professional.
A decent view of on-site page related factors.
I don't agree with posting an XML site map unless there is a clear need for it. Having a site that cannot be crawled naturally is a bug that need fixed, not covered up with a sitemap IMO. It hides issues you should fix.
@berrywise - LOL! Oh My that's funny.
@john.deck - second that.
On the 11th page you wrote Consider what happens when a user removes part of your URL
So, will I see all november posts on http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/2008/11/ if I remove the /googles-seo-starter-guide.html from this URL? Think about it, blogspot team!
on the first page on top part, "Although this guide won't tell you any secrets that'll automatically rank your site first
for queries in Google (sorry!)".
is that mean there is secrets that'll automatically rank the site first for queries in google?
re: Splogger: "Consider what happens when a user removes part of your URL
So, will I see all november posts on http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/2008/11/ "
Heh, that works at my house.
A brilliant document .. thanks guys :)
Addme.com
I Just want to know how that Baseball card guy (BrandonsBaseballCards) got such good rankings in the Google engine, when all the while he is using a redirect to your main page!?
(sic)
Great guide!!
Great stuff. Don't see this competing with SEO and a really solid compilation. Scott - There are a lot good reasons to use an XML sitemap, particularly with larger websites that may have some legacy pages floating around. Multiple landing pages being located easily are another example.
I am waiting for this article for the last 1 year. I am fed up with so called SEO experts. No one really know how Google works.
It is best to hear from Google itself what it likes and dislikes than from all those folks all around the web. For years, I was in search of an article like this from the "Lion's mouth" itself!
Thanx a zillion.
Aside from the webmaster guidelines once you know what terms your audience is going to be searching for to find you it's all just a matter of content and internal/external linking. Once you have that down, then work on projects that target your key audience. All avoiding black hat techniques like doorway pages, hidden content, link farms, etc.
Jenn
Nice guide for the beginner. We teach SEO and we are into Digital Curating.
We have created a Flash Animation for Google Webmaster Guidelines. It is available here
http://vizedu.com/2008/10/
google-webmaster-guidelines/
Just wanted to share with you.
Thanks
ry informative thanks for the post
Very nice guide for seo beginners.
it would help a lot.
thanks !
Its very nice guide for new comers. its cover all the basic part of seo.
It's about time they understand exactly 'what it is we do.'
Whenever I get a customer that wants to spend more-and-more time 'learning' what i am doing each month via 2 hour conference calls.
I tell them to focus on what they called me for originally and that's 'sales'. They always want to tinker with the website instead of working sales.
It's always good to have such kind of support from you guys. Approval to the SEO industry.
Very interesting. Thanks for sharing.
Vaibhav
http://www.technofriends.in
Nice Google :) This provides some nice guidelines for newbies for sure.
Blogseotips.com
Hey Brandon--great job on this. :)
Quite a few inconsitencies in the guide. For example, the guide says to write unique descriptions but the webmaastet help pages says:
While accurate meta descriptions can improve click-through, they won't impact your ranking within search results.
So, are descriptions good for improving ranking or not? How much of the advice has more to do with CTR than SEO?
To the above: SEO is also about optimizing for CTR from the SERPs. (and while they might not rank for keywords in these descriptions they are bolding them..)
Nice post.
This is a great post for lotsa people.
Thank you, I appreciate this!
No mention of incoming links boosting your ranking - or is it implied by discussing the 'passing of reputation' by linking out to others????
thanks a ton for the post :)
I want to translate it in Dutch for my blog Google Advice blog, but if Google has any plans to do that soon, I won't of course.
Will it be translated soon?
Thanks for the advice Google. It's about time too.
But you should now be ready to be made to look stupid if any of this info contradicts any of your other official guidance.
Excellent starter guide for people. Although nothing really new, and no "secrets" revealed :-)
Good to see that the obvious basics are covered for newbies. I think this will help to stop people falling foul of ancient techniques and silly somments on SEO forums and the like.
Thanks, Google
At last everyone can now follow in how to do proper SEO within the google guide lines
I'm impressed that Google is making this document. To me it is a clear and simple statement about what is important to them.
nice guide for the new bie like me..
hehe...support me on busby seo test
Very nice guide, an excellent way sum up the process of on page optimization factors.
Finally something that I can trust. Time to update my site. I'm trying to get http://fuzz-ball.com to the first page when people search for "fuzz ball" which has a lot of overlap with other markets.
hey thanks Google... :)
This is a great SEO wrap up.
Oh God.
What is this?
This is not SEO.
This is are hard explain!
Just as I figured...after reading it, it's mostly "don't do this" and "don't do that". It's more about Google guidlines then SEO.
Perhaps you were reading the wrong page?
Excellent, thanks Google.
Martin
Internet Mechanics
Good initiative, hope to see more in depth information though
This is a great starter source for a lot of people, but doesn't do anything for people who have been at this for a while. However, I think it shoes the importance of your site, not building link backs.
This is a nice guide but it is missing some important information. Do not think for a second that Google is telling you exactly how to SEO your site for their bots. That never has and never will be done by them
I'm glad Google finally packaged this up, I mean it's not rocket science, and they did have this information spread around their Webmaster site, but honestly, it's probably a good thing.
Going to put a few crappy SEO sites out of business though haha! Down with the e-book!
The SEO starter guide is a PDF?
Hmm :)
Got to love the anchor text and double content links from this blog post to the pdf - now there is some subtle SEO
@aussiewebmaster
Nope. All outbound links are no-followed.
However, you might see a few extra hits. I think it's tacky. I don't care what anybody says. Your in a room with a bunch of SEO's...have some tact.
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