Welcome to Google's Search Engine Optimization Starter Guide
Search Engine Optimization
Starter Guide
Welcome to Google's
Search Engine Optimization
Starter Guide
This
document first began as an effort to help teams within Google, but we thought
it'd be just as useful to webmasters that are new to the topic of search engine
optimization and wish to improve their sites' interaction with both users and
search engines. Although this guide won't tell you any secrets that'll
automatically rank your site first for queries in Google (sorry!), following
the best practices outlined below will make it easier for search engines to
crawl, index and understand your content.
Search
engine optimization is often about making small modifications to parts of your
website. When viewed individually, these changes might seem like incremental
improvements, but when combined with other optimizations, they could have a
noticeable impact on your site's user experience and performance in organic
search results. You're likely already familiar with many of the topics in this
guide, because they're essential ingredients for any web page, but you may not
be making the most out of them.
Even
though this guide's title contains the words "search engine", we'd
like to say that you should base your optimization decisions first and foremost
on what's best for the visitors of your site. They're the main consumers of
your content and are using search engines to find your work. Focusing too hard
on specific tweaks to gain ranking in the organic results of search engines may
not deliver the desired results. Search engine optimization is about putting
your site's best foot forward when it comes to visibility in search engines,
but your ultimate consumers are your users, not search engines.
Your
site may be smaller or larger than our example site and offer vastly different
content, but the optimization topics we discuss below should apply to sites of
all sizes and types. We hope our guide gives you some fresh ideas on how to
improve your website, and we'd love to hear your questions, feedback, and
success stories in the Google Webmaster Help Forum.
Table of Contents
SEO
Basics
Create
unique, accurate page titles
Make
use of the "description" meta tag
Improving
Site Structure
Improve
the structure of your URLs
Make
your site easier to navigate
Optimizing
Content
Offer
quality content and services
Write
better anchor text
Optimize
your use of images
Use
heading tags appropriately
Dealing
with Crawlers
Make
effective use of robots.txt
Be
aware of rel="nofollow" for links
SEO
for Mobile Phones
Notify
Google of mobile sites
Guide
mobile users accurately
Promotions
and Analysis
Promote
your website in the right ways
Make
use of free webmaster tools
From here on, I'll be explaining various points on search engine
optimization (SEO)!
Googlebot
Crawling
content on the Internet for Google's index every day, every night, non stop.
An
example may help our explanations, so we've created a fictitious website to
follow throughout the guide. For each topic, we've fleshed out enough
information about the site to illustrate the point being covered. Here's some
background information about the site we'll use:
Website/business
name: "Brandon 's Baseball
Cards"
Domain
name: brandonsbaseballcards.com
Focus:
Online-only baseball card
sales, price guides, articles, and news content
Size:
Small, ~250 pages
Search
engine optimization affects only organic search results, not paid or
"sponsored" results such as Google AdWords.
“Paid” Search, AdWords
Organic Search
SEO Basics
Create unique, accurate page titles
A title tag
tells both users and search engines what the topic of a particular page is. The <title> tag should be placed
within the <head> tag of the HTML document (1). Ideally, you should
create a unique title for each page on your site.
If your
document appears in a search results page, the contents of the title tag will usually appear in the
first line of the results (if
you're unfamiliar with the different parts of a Google search result, you might
want to check out the anatomy of a search result video by Google
engineer Matt Cutts, and this helpful diagram of a Google search results
page). Words in the title are bolded if they appear in the user's search
query. This can
help users recognize if the page is likely to be relevant to their search (2).
The title
for your homepage can list the name of your website/ business and could include
other bits of important information like the physical location of the business
or maybe a few of its main focuses or offerings (3).
<html>
<head>
<title>Brandon 's
Baseball Cards - Buy Cards, Baseball News, Card Prices</title>
<meta name="description=" content="Brandon 's Baseball Cards
provides a large selection of vintage and modern baseball cards for sale. We
also offer daily baseball news and events in">
</head>
<body>
Indicate
page titles by using title tags
Page
title contents are displayed in search results
(1) The
title of the homepage for our baseball card site, which lists the business name
and three main focus areas.
(2) A user
performs the query [baseball cards]. Our homepage shows up as a result, with
the title listed on the first line (notice that the query terms the user
searched for appear in bold).
If the user
clicks the result and visits the page, the page's title will appear at the top
of the browser.
(3) A user
performs the query [rarest baseball cards]. A relevant, deeper page (its title
is unique to the content of the page) on our site appears as a result.
Glossary
Search engine
Computer function that searches data available on the
Internet using keywords or other specified terms, or a program containing this
function.
<head> tag
An element that indicates the header in an HTML document. The
content of this element will not be displayed in a browser.
HTML
Abbreviation for HyperText Markup Language, a language used
when describing web page documents. It denotes the basic elements of web pages,
including the document text and any hyperlinks and images embedded within.
Search query
Single or multiple terms which are input by the user when
performing a search on search engines.
SEO Basics
Improving Site
Structure
Best Practices
Accurately
describe the page's content
Choose a
title that effectively communicates the topic of the page's content.
Avoid:
choosing a
title that has no relation to the content on the page
using
default or vague titles like "Untitled" or "New Page 1"
Create
unique title tags for each page
Optimizing Content
Each of
your pages should ideally have a unique title tag, which helps Google know how
the page is distinct from the others on your site.
Avoid:
using a
single title tag across all of your site's pages or a large group of pages
Use
brief, but descriptive titles
Dealing with Crawlers
Titles can
be both short and informative. If the title is too long, Google will show only
a portion of it in the search result.
Avoid:
using
extremely lengthy titles that are unhelpful to users
stuffing
unneeded keywords in your title tags
Page
titles are an important aspect of search engine optimization.
SEO for Mobile Phones
Promotions and Analysis
Links
The anatomy
of a search result
http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/2007/11/anatomy-of-search-result.html
Diagram of
a Google search results page
http://www.google.com/support/websearch/bin/answer.py?answer=35891
SEO Basics
Make use of the "description" meta tag
A page's
description meta tag gives Google and other search engines a summary of what
the page is about (1).
Whereas a page's title may be a few words or a phrase, a page's description
meta tag might be a sentence or two or a short paragraph. Google Webmaster
Tools provides a handy content analysis section that'll tell you about
any description meta tags that are either too short, long, or duplicated too
many times (the same information is also shown for <title> tags). Like
the <title> tag, the description meta tag is placed within the
<head> tag of your HTML document.
Description
meta tags are important because Google
might use them as snippets for your pages. Note that we say "might" because Google may choose
to use a relevant section of your page's visible text if it does a good job of
matching up with a user's query. Alternatively, Google might use your site's
description in the Open Directory Project if your site is listed there (learn
how to prevent search engines from displaying ODP data). Adding description
meta tags to each of your pages is always a good practice in case Google cannot
find a good selection of text to use in the snippet. The Webmaster Central Blog
has an informative post on improving snippets with better description meta
tags.
Words in
the snippet are bolded when they appear in the user's query (2). This gives the
user clues about whether the content on the page matches with what he or she is
looking for. (3) is another example, this time showing
a snippet from a description meta tag on a deeper page (which ideally has its
own unique description meta tag) containing an article.
<html>
<head>
<title>Brandon 's
Baseball Cards - Buy Cards, Baseball News, Card Prices</title>
<meta name="description=" content="Brandon 's Baseball Cards
provides a large selection of vintage and modern baseball cards for sale. We
also offer daily baseball news and events in">
</head>
<body>
Summaries
can be defined for each page
(1) The
beginning of the description meta tag for our homepage, which gives a brief
overview of the site's offerings.
What
are the merits of description meta tags?
(2) A user
performs the query [baseball cards]. Our homepage appears as a result, with
part of its description meta tag used as the snippet.
(3) A user
performs the query [rarest baseball cards]. One of our deeper pages, with its
unique description meta tag used as the snippet, appears as a result.
Glossary
Snippet
Text displayed beneath the title of a corresponding web page
on the search results pages of a search engine. A web page summary and/or parts
of the page that match the search keywords will be displayed.
Open Directory Project (ODP)
The world's largest volunteer-run web directory (a list of
Internet links collected on a large scale and then organized by category).
Domain
An address on the Internet that indicates the location of a
computer or network. These are administrated to avoid duplication.
SEO Basics
Improving Site
Structure
Best Practices
Accurately
summarize the page's content
Write a
description that would both inform and interest users if they saw your
description meta tag as a snippet in a search result.
Avoid:
writing a
description meta tag that has no relation to the content on the page
using
generic descriptions like "This is a web page" or "Page about
baseball cards"
filling the
description with only keywords
copying and
pasting the entire content of the document into the description meta tag
Optimizing Content
Use
unique descriptions for each page
Having a
different description meta tag for each page helps both users and Google,
especially in searches where users may bring up multiple pages on your domain
(e.g. searches using the site: operator). If your site has thousands or
even millions of pages, hand-crafting description meta tags probably isn't
feasible. In this case, you could automatically generate description meta tags
based on each page's content.
Dealing with Crawlers
Avoid:
using a
single description meta tag across all of your site's pages or a large group of
pages
Use
description meta tags to provide both search engines and users with a summary
of what your page is about!
SEO for Mobile Phones
Promotions and Analysis
Links
Content
analysis section
http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/2007/12/new-content-analysis-and-sitemap.html
Prevent
search engines from displaying ODP data
http://www.google.com/support/webmasters/bin/answer.py?answer=35264
Improving
snippets with better description meta tags
http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/2007/09/improve-snippets-with-meta-description.html
site:
operator
http://www.brianwhite.org/2007/04/27/google-site-operator-an-ode-to-thee/
Improving Site Structure
Improve the structure of your URLs
Creating
descriptive categories and filenames for the documents on your website can not
only help you keep your site better organized, but it could also lead to better crawling of
your documents by search engines.
Also, it can create easier, "friendlier" URLs for those that want to
link to your content. Visitors may be intimidated by extremely long and cryptic
URLs that contain few recognizable words.
URLs like
(1) can be confusing and unfriendly. Users would have a hard time reciting the
URL from memory or creating a link to it. Also, users may believe that a
portion of the URL is unnecessary, especially if the URL shows many
unrecognizable parameters. They might leave off a part, breaking the link.
Some users
might link to your page using the URL of that page as the anchor text. If your URL contains relevant words,
this provides users and search engines with more information about the page
than an ID or oddly named parameter would (2).
Lastly, remember that the URL to a document is
displayed as part of a search result in Google, below the document's title and
snippet. Like the
title and snippet, words in the URL on the search result appear in bold if they
appear in the user's query (3). To the right is another example
showing a URL on our domain for a page containing an article about the rarest
baseball cards. The words in the URL might appeal to a search user more than an
ID number like "www. brandonsbaseballcards.com/article/102125/" would.
Google is
good at crawling all types of URL structures, even if they're quite complex,
but spending the time to make your URLs as simple as possible for both users
and search engines can help. Some webmasters try to achieve this by rewriting
their dynamic URLs to static ones; while Google is fine with this, we'd
like to note that this is an advanced procedure and if done incorrectly, could
cause crawling issues with your site. To learn even more about good URL
structure, we recommend this Webmaster
Help Center
page on creating Google-friendly URLs.
Simple-to-understand
URLs will convey content information easily
(1) A URL
to a page on our baseball card site that a user might have a hard time with.
(2) The
highlighted words above could inform a user or search engine what the target
page is about before following the link.
URLs
are displayed in search results
(3) A user
performs the query [baseball cards]. Our homepage appears as a result, with the
URL listed under the title and snippet.
Glossary
Crawl
Exploration of websites by search engine software (bots) in
order to index their content.
Parameter
Data provided in the URL to specify a site's behavior.
ID (session ID)
Data provided for the identification and/or behavior
management of a user who is currently accessing a system or network
communications.
301 redirect
An HTTP status code (see page 12). Forces a
site visitor to automatically jump to a specified URL.
Subdomain
A type of domain used to identify a category that is smaller
than a regular domain (see page 6).
Root directory
Directory at the top of the tree structure of a site. It is
sometimes called "root".
SEO Basics
Choose
a URL that will be easy for users and search engines to understand!
Improving Site Structure
Best Practices
Use
words in URLs
URLs with
words that are relevant to your site's content and structure are friendlier for
visitors navigating your site. Visitors remember them better and might be more
willing to link to them.
Avoid:
using
lengthy URLs with unnecessary parameters and session IDs
choosing
generic page names like "page1.html"
using
excessive keywords
like"baseball-cards-baseball-cards-baseballcards.htm"
Optimizing Content
Create
a simple directory structure
Use a
directory structure that organizes your content well and makes it easy for
visitors to know where they're at on your site. Try using your directory
structure to indicate the type of content found at that URL.
Avoid:
having deep
nesting of subdirectories like ".../dir1/dir2/dir3/dir4/dir5/dir6/page.html"
using
directory names that have no relation to the content in them
Dealing with Crawlers
Provide
one version of a URL to reach a document
To prevent
users from linking to one version of a URL and others linking to a different
version (this could split the reputation of that content between the URLs),
focus on using and referring to one URL in the structure and internal linking
of your pages. If you do find that people are accessing the same content
through multiple URLs, setting up a 301 redirect from non-preferred URLs
to the dominant URL is a good solution for this. You may also use canonical URL
or use the rel="canonical" link element if you cannot
redirect.
SEO for Mobile Phones
Avoid:
having
pages from subdomains and the root directory access the same content
- e.g.
"domain.com/page.htm" and "sub.domain.com/page.htm"
using odd
capitalization of URLs
- many
users expect lower-case URLs and remember them better
Promotions and Analysis
Links
Dynamic
URLs
http://www.google.com/support/webmasters/bin/answer.py?answer=40349
Creating
Google-friendly URLs
http://www.google.com/support/webmasters/bin/answer.py?answer=76329
301
redirect
http://www.google.com/support/webmasters/bin/answer.py?answer=93633
rel="canonical"
http://www.google.com/support/webmasters/bin/answer.py?answer=139394
Improving Site Structure
Make your site easier to navigate
The
navigation of a website is important in helping visitors quickly find the
content they want. It can
also help search engines understand what content the webmaster thinks is
important. Although Google's search results are provided at a page level,
Google also likes to have a sense of what role a page plays in the bigger
picture of the site.
All sites
have a home or "root" page, which is usually the most frequented page
on the site and the starting place of navigation for many visitors. Unless your
site has only a handful of pages, you should think about how visitors will go from a general
page (your root page) to a page containing more specific content. Do you have enough pages around a
specific topic area that it would make sense to create a page describing these
related pages (e.g. root page -> related topic listing -> specific
topic)? Do you have hundreds of different products that need to be classified
under multiple category and subcategory pages?
A
breadcrumb is a row of internal links at the top or bottom of the page that allows visitors to quickly navigate back
to a previous section or the root page (1). Many breadcrumbs have the most general page (usually the
root page) as the first, left-most link and list the more specific sections out
to the right.
Navigation
is very important for search engines
(root)
about
articles
news
2008
Plan
out your navigation based on your homepage
2009
2010
price-guides
1900-1949
The
directory structure for our small website on baseball cards.
1950-1999
2000-present
shop
Ensure
more convenience for users by using ‘breadcrumb lists’
(1)
Breadcrumb links appearing on a deeper article page on our site.
Glossary
404 ("page not found" error)
An HTTP status code (see page 12). It means
that the server could not find the web page requested by the browser.
XML Sitemap
A list of the pages on a particular website. By creating and
sending this list, you are able to notify Google of all pages on a website,
including any URLs that may have been undetected by Google's regular crawling
process.
10
SEO
Basics
Improving Site
Structure
Consider what happens when a user removes part of
your URL - Some users might navigate your site in odd ways, and you should
anticipate this. For example, instead
of using the breadcrumb links on the page, a user might drop off a part of the
URL in the hopes of finding more general content. He or she might be visiting http://
www.brandonsbaseballcards.com/news/2010/upcoming-baseball-card-shows.htm,
but
then enter
http://www.brandonsbaseballcards.com/news/2010/ into
the browser's address bar, believing that this will show all news from 2010 (2). Is your site prepared to show content
in this situation or will it give the user a 404 ("page not found"
error)? What about moving up a directory level to
http://www.brandonsbaseballcards.com/news/?
A site map
(lower-case) is a simple page on your site that displays the structure of your
website, and usually consists of a hierarchical listing of the pages on your
site. Visitors may visit this
page if they are having problems finding pages on your site. While search engines will also visit
this page, getting good crawl coverage of the pages on your site, it's mainly
aimed at human visitors.
An XML
Sitemap (upper-case) file, which you can submit through Google's Webmaster
Tools, makes it
easier for Google to discover the pages on your site. Using a Sitemap file is also one way (though
not guaranteed) to tell Google which version of a URL you'd prefer as the
canonical one (e.g. http://brandonsbaseballcards.com/ or http://
www.brandonsbaseballcards.com/; more on what's a preferred domain).
Google helped create the open source Sitemap Generator Script to help
you create a Sitemap file for your site. To learn more about Sitemaps, the Webmaster Help Center
provides a useful guide to Sitemap files.
Allow
for the possibility of a part of the URL being removed
(2) Users
may go to an upper directory by removing the last part of the URL.
Optimizing Content
Prepare
two sitemaps: one for users, one for search engines
Dealing with Crawlers
<?xml version="1.0"
encoding="UTF-8"?>
<urlset xmlns="http://www.sitemaps.org/schemas/sitemap/0.9">
<url>
<loc>http://www.brandonsbaseballcards.com/</loc>
<changefreq>daily</changefreq>
<priority>0.8</priority>
</url>
<url>
<loc>http://www.brandonsbaseballcards.com/news/</loc>
</url>
<url>
<loc>http://www.brandonsbaseballcards.com/news/2008/</loc>
</url>
<url>
<loc>http://www.brandonsbaseballcards.com/news/2009/</loc>
</url>
<url>
<loc>http://www.brandonsbaseballcards.com/news/2010/</loc>
</url>
</urlset>
SEO for Mobile Phones
Examples of
an HTML site map and an XML Sitemap. An HTML site map can help users easily
find content that they are looking for, and an XML Sitemap can help search
engines find pages on your site.
Promotions and Analysis
Links
Webmaster
Tools
https://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/
What's a
preferred domain
http://www.google.com/support/webmasters/bin/answer.py?answer=44231
Sitemap
Generator Script
http://code.google.com/p/googlesitemapgenerator/
Guide to
Sitemap files
http://www.google.com/support/webmasters/bin/answer.py?answer=156184
11
Improving Site
Structure
Make your site easier to navigate
Best Practices
Create
a naturally flowing hierarchy
Make it as
easy as possible for users to go from general content to the more specific
content they want on your site. Add navigation pages when it makes sense and
effectively work these into your internal link structure.
Avoid:
creating
complex webs of navigation links, e.g. linking every page on your site to every
other page
going
overboard with slicing and dicing your content (so that it takes twenty clicks)
Use
mostly text for navigation
Controlling
most of the navigation from page to page on your site through text links makes
it easier for search engines to crawl and understand your site. Many users also
prefer this over other approaches, especially on some devices that might not
handle Flash or JavaScript.
Avoid:
having a
navigation based entirely on drop-down menus, images, or animations
- many, but
not all, search engines can discover such links on a site, but if a user can
reach all pages on a site via normal text links, this will improve the
accessibility of your site; more on how Google deals with non-text files
For
navigation, the focus should be on simplicity and ease of use!
Glossary
Flash
Web technology or
software developed by Adobe Systems Incorporated. It is able to create web
content that combines sound, video and animation.
JavaScript A type of
programming language. It can add dynamic features to web pages and is used by
many web services.
Drop-down menu A system
in which one chooses content from a menu. When one clicks on the menu, the list
of choices are displayed in a list in a drawn out manner.
Accessibility The
ability for users and search engines to access and comprehend content.
User experience
The experience gained
by a user through using products, services, etc. Emphasis is placed on
providing an experience truly sought after by the user, such as
"enjoyment," "convenience" and "comfort."
HTTP status code
A code that expresses
the meanings of responses from the server when computers are conveying information
to each other. The code is allotted as three numerical digits, with a different
meaning depending on the number used.
12
SEO
Basics
Improving Site
Structure
Best Practices
Put
an HTML site map page on your site, and use an XML Sitemap file
A simple
site map page with links to all of the pages or the most important pages (if
you have hundreds or thousands) on your site can be useful. Creating an XML
Sitemap file for your site helps ensure that search engines discover the pages
on your site.
Avoid:
letting
your HTML site map page become out of date with broken links
creating an
HTML site map that simply lists pages without organizing them, for example by
subject
Optimizing Content
Have
a useful 404 page
Users will
occasionally come to a page that doesn't exist on your site, either by
following a broken link or typing in the wrong URL. Having a custom 404 page
that kindly guides users back to a working page on your site can greatly improve
a user's experience. Your 404 page should probably have a link back to your
root page and could also provide links to popular or related content on your
site. Google provides a 404 widget that you can embed in your 404 page
to automatically populate it with many useful features. You can also use Google
Webmaster Tools to find the sources of URLs causing "not found"
errors.
Dealing with Crawlers
Avoid:
allowing
your 404 pages to be indexed in search engines (make sure that your webserver
is configured to give a 404 HTTP status code when non-existent pages are requested)
providing
only a vague message like "Not found", "404", or no 404
page at all
using a
design for your 404 pages that isn't consistent with the rest of your site
SEO for Mobile Phones
Promotions and Analysis
Links
How Google
deals with non-text files
http://www.google.com/support/webmasters/bin/answer.py?answer=72746
Custom 404
page
http://www.google.com/support/webmasters/bin/answer.py?answer=93641
404 widget
http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/2008/08/make-your-404-pages-more-useful.html
Sources of
URLs causing "not found" errors
http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/2008/10/webmaster-tools-shows-crawl-error.html
404 HTTP
status code
http://www.w3.org/Protocols/rfc2616/rfc2616-sec10.html
13
Optimizing Content
Offer quality content and services
Creating
compelling and useful content will likely influence your website more than any
of the other factors discussed here (1). Users know good content when they see it and will likely
want to direct other users to it. This could be through blog posts, social
media services, email, forums, or other means.
Organic or
word-of-mouth buzz is what helps build your site's reputation with both users
and Google, and it rarely comes without quality content.
Think about
the words that a user might search for to find a piece of your content. Users
who know a lot about the topic might use different keywords in their search
queries than someone who is new to the topic. For example, a long-time baseball
fan might search for [nlcs], an acronym for the National League Championship
Series, while a new fan might use a more general query like [baseball
playoffs]. Anticipating
these differences in search behavior and accounting for them while writing your
content (using a good mix of keyword phrases) could produce positive results. Google AdWords provides a handy Keyword
Tool that helps you discover new keyword variations and see the approximate
search volume for each keyword (2). Also, Google Webmaster Tools provides
you with the top search queries your site appears for and the ones that
led the most users to your site.
Consider
creating a new, useful service that no other site offers. You could also write an original piece
of research, break an exciting news story, or leverage your unique user base. Other sites may lack the resources or
expertise to do these things.
Interesting
sites will increase their recognition on their own
(1) A
blogger finds a piece of your content, likes it, and then references it in a
blog post.
Anticipate
differences in users' understanding of your topic and offer unique, exclusive
content
(2) The
Google AdWords Keyword Tool can help you find relevant keywords on your site
and the volume of those keywords.
Glossary
Social media service
A community-type web service that promotes and supports
forging connections among fellow users.
Google AdWords
An advertising service which places relevant advertisements
on search results pages and other content. When a user searches for keywords
using Google, AdWords advertisements related to those keywords are displayed on
the right, top and/or bottom of the search results pages alongside the organic
search results.
14
SEO
Basics
Improving content and services should be a
priority, regardless of the type of website!
Improving Site
Structure
Best Practices
Write
easy-to-read text
Users enjoy
content that is well written and easy to follow.
Avoid:
writing
sloppy text with many spelling and grammatical mistakes
embedding
text in images for textual content
- users may
want to copy and paste the text and search engines can't read it
Optimizing Content
Stay
organized around the topic
It's always
beneficial to organize your content so that visitors have a good sense of where
one content topic begins and another ends. Breaking your content up into
logical chunks or divisions helps users find the content they want faster.
Avoid:
dumping
large amounts of text on varying topics onto a page without paragraph,
subheading, or layout
separation
Dealing with Crawlers
Create
fresh, unique content
New content
will not only keep your existing visitor base coming back, but also bring in
new visitors.
Avoid:
rehashing
(or even copying) existing content that will bring little extra value to users
having
duplicate or near-duplicate versions of your content across your site
- more on duplicate content
Create
content primarily for your users, not search engines
SEO for Mobile Phones
Designing
your site around your visitors' needs while making sure your site is easily
accessible to search engines usually produces positive results.
Avoid:
inserting
numerous unnecessary keywords aimed at search engines but are annoying or nonsensical to users
having
blocks of text like "frequent misspellings used to reach this page"
that add little value for users
deceptively
hiding text from users, but displaying it to search engines
Promotions and Analysis
Links
Keyword
Tool
https://adwords.google.com/select/KeywordToolExternal
Top search
queries
http://www.google.com/webmasters/edu/quickstartguide/sub1guide5.html
Duplicate
content
http://www.google.com/support/webmasters/bin/answer.py?answer=66359
Hiding text
from users
http://www.google.com/support/webmasters/bin/answer.py?answer=66353
15
Optimizing Content
Write better anchor text
Anchor text
is the clickable text that users will see as a result of a link, and is placed
within the anchor tag <a href="..."></a>.
This text
tells users and Google something about the page you're linking to. Links on your page maybe
internal—pointing to other pages on your site—or external—leading to content on
other sites. In either of these cases, the better your anchor text is, the
easier it is for users to navigate and for Google to understand what the page
you're linking to is about.
Suitable
anchor text makes it easy to convey the contents linked
<a
href="http://www.brandonsbaseballcards.com/articles/ten-rarest-baseball-cards.htm">Top
Ten Rarest Baseball Cards</a>
This anchor
text accurately describes the content on one of our article pages.
Website
Baseball card's product page
Baseball card
Baseball card
Baseball card
Toppage
News
Product list
The
linked page is about baseball cards.
Googlebot
User
With
appropriate anchor text, users and search engines can easily understand what the
linked pages contain.
Glossary
CSS
Abbreviation for
Cascading Style Sheets; a language for defining the design and layout of a web
page.
Text style
Formatting, such as the
font, size and color of the text.
16
SEO
Basics
Both users and search engines like anchor
text that is easy to understand!
Improving Site
Structure
Best Practices
Choose
descriptive text
The anchor
text you use for a link should provide at least a basic idea of what the page
linked to is about.
Avoid:
writing
generic anchor text like "page", "article", or "click
here"
using text
that is off-topic or has no relation to the content of the page linked to
using the
page's URL as the anchor text in most cases
- although
there are certainly legitimate uses of this, such as promoting or referencing a
new website's address
Optimizing Content
Write
concise text
Aim for
short but descriptive text-usually a few words or a short phrase.
Avoid:
writing long
anchor text, such as a lengthy sentence or short paragraph of text
Dealing with Crawlers
Format
links so they're easy to spot
Make it
easy for users to distinguish between regular text and the anchor text of your
links. Your content becomes less useful if users miss the links or accidentally
click them.
Avoid:
using CSS
or text styling that make links look just like regular text
Think
about anchor text for internal links too
SEO for Mobile Phones
You may
usually think about linking in terms of pointing to outside websites, but
paying more attention to the anchor text used for internal links can help users
and Google navigate your site better.
Avoid:
using
excessively keyword-filled or lengthy anchor text just for search engines
creating
unnecessary links that don't help with the user's navigation of the site
Promotions and Analysis
17
Optimizing Content
Optimize your use of images
Images may
seem like a straightforward component of your site, but you can optimize your
use of them. All images can have a distinct filename and "alt"
attribute, both of which you should take
advantage
of. The "alt"
attribute allows you to specify alternative text for the image if it cannot be
displayed for some reason (1).
Why use
this attribute? If a user is viewing your site on a browser that doesn't
support images, or is using alternative technologies, such as a screen reader, the contents of the alt attribute
provide information about the picture.
Another
reason is that if you're using an image as a link, the alt text for that image
will be treated similarly to the anchor text of a text link. However, we don't
recommend using too many images for links in your site's navigation when text
links could serve the same purpose. Lastly, optimizing your image filenames and
alt text makes it easier for image search projects like Google Image Search to
better understand your images.
Instead of
having image files spread out in numerous directories and subdirectories across
your domain, consider
consolidating your images into a single directory (e.g. brandonsbaseballcards.com/
images/). This simplifies the path to your images.
Use
commonly supported filetypes - Most browsers support JPEG, GIF, PNG,
and BMP image formats. It's also a good idea to have the extension of
your filename match with the filetype.
Image-related
information can be provided for by using the "alt" attribute
(1) Our
image wasn't displayed to the user for some reason, but at least the alt text
was.
Store
files in specialized directories and manage them using common file formats
(root)
images
about
articles
news
(2) It is
easier to find the paths to images if they are stored in one directory.
2006
Glossary
Screen reader
Software for speaking on-screen information or outputting to
a Braille display.
ASCII language
Abbreviation for American Standard Code for Information
Exchange. A character encoding centered on the English alphabet.
18
SEO
Basics
Improving Site
Structure
Best Practices
Use
brief, but descriptive filenames and alt text
Like many
of the other parts of the page targeted for optimization, filenames and alt
text (for ASCII languages) are best when they're short, but descriptive.
Avoid:
using
generic filenames like "image1.jpg", "pic.gif",
"1.jpg" when possible—some sites with thousands
of images
might consider automating the naming of images
writing
extremely lengthy filenames
stuffing
keywords into alt text or copying and pasting entire sentences
Optimizing Content
Supply
alt text when using images as links
If you do
decide to use an image as a link, filling out its alt text helps Google
understand more about the page you're linking to. Imagine that you're writing
anchor text for a text link.
Avoid:
writing
excessively long alt text that would be considered spammy
using only
image links for your site's navigation
Dealing with Crawlers
Supply
an Image Sitemap file
An Image
Sitemap file can provide Googlebot with more information about the images
found on your site. Its structure is similar to the XML Sitemap file for your
web pages.
SEO for Mobile Phones
Learn
how to optimize images on your site!
Promotions and Analysis
Links
PNG
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Portable_Network_Graphics
BMP
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BMP_file_format
Image
Sitemap
http://www.google.com/support/webmasters/bin/answer.py?answer=178636
Google
Image Search
http://images.google.com/
JPEG
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/JPEG
GIF
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GIF
19
Optimizing Content
Use heading tags appropriately
Heading
tags (not to be confused with the <head> HTML tag or HTTP headers) are
used to present structure on the page to users. There are six sizes of heading
tags, beginning with <h1>, the most important, and ending with <h6>,
the least important (1).
Since
heading tags typically make text contained in them larger than normal text on
the page, this is a
visual cue to users that this text is important and could help them understand
something about the type of content underneath the heading text. Multiple heading sizes used in order
create a hierarchical structure for your content, making it easier for users to
navigate through your document.
Use
heading tags to emphasize important text
</head>
<body>
<h1>Brandon 's
Baseball Cards</h1>
<h2>News - Treasure Trove of Baseball
Cards Found in Old Barn</h2>
<p>A man who recently purchased a farm house was
pleasantly surprised ... dollars worth of vintage baseball cards in the barn.
The cards were ... in news papers and were thought to be in near-mint
condition. After ... the cards to his grandson instead of selling
them.</p>
(1) On a
page containing a news story, we might put the name of our site into an
<h1> tag and the topic of the story into an <h2> tag.
Heading
tags are an important website component for catching the user's eye, so be
careful how you use them!
Best Practices
Imagine
you're writing an outline
Similar to
writing an outline for a large paper, put some thought into what the main
points and sub-points of the content on the page will be and decide where to
use heading tags appropriately.
Avoid:
placing
text in heading tags that wouldn't be helpful in defining the structure of the
page
using
heading tags where other tags like <em> and <strong> may be more
appropriate
erratically
moving from one heading tag size to another
Use
headings sparingly across the page
Use heading
tags where it makes sense. Too many heading tags on a page can make it hard for
users to scan the content and determine where one topic ends and another
begins.
Avoid:
excessively
using heading tags throughout the page
putting all
of the page's text into a heading tag
using
heading tags only for styling text and not presenting structure
Glossary
HTTP headers
In HTTP (HyperText Transfer Protocol), different types of
data that are sent off before the actual data itself.
<em>
An HTML tag denoting emphasis. According to standard, it will
indicate emphasis through use of italics.
<strong>
An HTML tag denoting strong emphasis. According to standard,
it will indicate emphasis through use of bold print.
Wildcard
A character (*) that takes the place of any other character
or string of characters.
.htaccess
Hypertext access file, a file that allows you to manage web
server configuration.
Referrer log
Referrer information that is written into the access log.
When it is traced, one can find out from which sites visitors arrived.
20
Robots
Exclusion Standard
A convention to prevent
cooperating web spiders/crawlers, such as Googlebot, from accessing all or part
of a website which is otherwise publicly viewable.
Proxy service
A computer that
substitutes the connection in cases where an internal network and external
network are connecting, or software that possesses a function for this purpose.
SEO Basics
Dealing with Crawlers
Make effective use of robots.txt
Improving Site Structure
A
"robots.txt" file tells search engines whether they can access and
therefore crawl parts of your site (1). This file, which must be named "robots.txt",
is placed in the root directory of your site (2).
You may not
want certain pages of your site crawled because they might not be useful to
users if found in a search engine's search results. If you do want to prevent
search engines from crawling your pages, Google Webmaster Tools has a friendly robots.txt
generator to help you create this file. Note that if your site uses
subdomains and you wish to have certain pages not crawled on a particular
subdomain, you'll have to create a separate robots.txt file for that subdomain.
For more information on robots.txt, we suggest this Webmaster Help
Center guide on using
robots.txt files.
There are a
handful of other ways to prevent content appearing in search results, such as
adding "NOINDEX" to your robots meta tag, using .htaccess to password
protect directories, and using Google Webmaster Tools to remove content that
has already been crawled. Google engineer Matt Cutts walks through the caveats
of each URL blocking method in a helpful video.
Restrict
crawling where it's not needed with robots.txt
User-agent: *
Disallow: /images/
Disallow: /search
(1) All
compliant search engine bots (denoted by the wildcard * symbol) shouldn't
access and crawl the content under /images/ or any URL whose path begins with /
search.
(2) The
address of our robots.txt file.
Optimizing Content
Keep
a firm grasp on managing exactly what information you do and don't want being
crawled!
Dealing with Crawlers
Best Practices
Use
more secure methods for sensitive content
You
shouldn't feel comfortable using robots.txt to block sensitive or confidential
material. One reason is that search engines could still reference the URLs you
block (showing just the URL, no title or snippet) if there happen to be links
to those URLs somewhere on the Internet (like referrer logs). Also,
non-compliant or rogue search engines that don't acknowledge the Robots
Exclusion Standard could disobey the instructions of your robots.txt. Finally,
a curious user could examine the directories or subdirectories in your
robots.txt file and guess the URL of the content that you don't want seen.
Encrypting the content or password-protecting it with .htaccess are more secure
alternatives.
SEO for Mobile Phones
Avoid:
allowing
search result-like pages to be crawled
- users
dislike leaving one search result page and landing on another search result
page that doesn't add significant value for them
allowing
URLs created as a result of proxy services to be crawled
Promotions and Analysis
Links
robots.txt
generator
http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/2008/03/speaking-language-of-robots.html
Using robots.txt
files
http://www.google.com/support/webmasters/bin/answer.py?answer=156449
Caveats of
each URL blocking method
http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/2008/01/remove-your-content-from-google.html
21
Dealing with Crawlers
Be aware of rel="nofollow" for links
Setting the
value of the "rel" attribute of a link to "nofollow" will
tell Google that certain links on your site shouldn't be followed or pass your
page's reputation to the pages linked to. Nofollowing a link is adding rel="nofollow"
inside of the link's anchor tag (1).
When would
this be useful? If your site has a blog with public commenting turned on, links
within those comments could pass your reputation to pages that you may not be
comfortable vouching for. Blog comment areas on pages are highly susceptible to
comment spam (2). Nofollowing these user-added links
ensures that you're not giving your page's hard-earned reputation to a spammy
site.
Many
blogging software packages automatically nofollow user comments, but those that
don't can most likely be manually edited to do this. This advice also goes for
other areas of your site that may involve user-generated content, such as
guestbooks, forums, shout-boards, referrer listings, etc. If you're willing to
vouch for links added by third parties (e.g. if a commenter is trusted on your
site), then there's no need to use nofollow on links; however, linking to sites that Google considers
spammy can affect the reputation of your own site. The Webmaster
Help Center
has more tips on avoiding comment spam, like using CAPTCHAs and turning
on comment moderation (3).
Combat
comment spam with "nofollow"
<a href="http://www.shadyseo.com"
rel="nofollow">Comment spammer</a>
(1) If you
or your site's users link to a site that you don't trust and/or you don't want
to pass your site's reputation, use nofollow.
(2) A
comment spammer leaves a message on one of our blogs posts, hoping to get some
of our site's reputation.
Automatically
add "nofollow" to comment columns and message boards
(3) An
example of a CAPTCHA used on Google's blog service, Blogger. It can present a
challenge to try to ensure an actual person is leaving the comment.
Glossary
Comment spamming
Refers to indiscriminate postings, on blog comment columns or
message boards, of advertisements, etc. that bear no connection to the contents
of said pages.
CAPTCHA
Completely Automated Public Turing test to tell Computers and
Humans Apart.
22
SEO Basics
Improving Site
Structure
Another use of nofollow is when you're writing content and wish to
reference a website, but don't want to pass your reputation on to it. For example, imagine that you're
writing a blog post on the topic of comment spamming and you want to call out a
site that recently comment spammed your blog. You want to warn others of the
site, so you include the link to it in your content; however, you certainly
don't want to give the site some of your reputation from your link. This would
be a good time to use nofollow.
Lastly, if
you're interested in nofollowing all of the links on a page, you can use
"nofollow" in your robots meta tag, which is placed inside the
<head> tag of that page's HTML (4). The Webmaster Central Blog provides a
helpful post on using the robots meta tag. This method is written as
<meta name="robots" content="nofollow">.
About
using "nofollow" for individual contents, whole pages, etc.
<html>
<head>
<title>Brandon 's
Baseball Cards - Buy Cards, Baseball News, Card Prices</title>
<meta name="description=" content="Brandon 's Baseball Cards
provides a large selection of vintage and modern baseball cards for sale. We
also offer daily baseball news and events in">
<meta name="robots"
content="nofollow">
</head>
<body>
(4) This
nofollows all of the links on a page.
Optimizing Content
Dealing with Crawlers
Make sure you have solid measures in place
to deal with comment spam!
SEO for Mobile Phones
Promotions and Analysis
Links
Avoiding
comment spam
http://www.google.com/support/webmasters/bin/answer.py?answer=81749
Using the
robots meta tag
http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/2007/03/using-robots-meta-tag.html
23
SEO for Mobile Phones
Notify Google of mobile sites
It seems
the world is going mobile, with many people using mobile phones on a daily
basis, and a large user base searching on Google’s mobile search page.
However, as a webmaster, running a mobile site and tapping into the mobile
search audience isn't easy. Mobile
sites not only use a different format from normal desktop sites, but the
management methods and expertise required are also quite different. This results in a variety of new
challenges. While many mobile sites were designed with mobile viewing in mind,
they weren’t designed to be search friendly.
Here are
troubleshooting tips to help ensure that your site is properly crawled and
indexed:
If your web
site doesn't show up in the results of a Google mobile search even using the site:
operator, it may be that your site has one or both of the following issues:
1.
Googlebot may not be able to find your site
Googlebot
must crawl your site before it can be included in our search index. If you just created the site, we may not
yet be aware of it. If that's
the case, create a Mobile Sitemap and submit it to Google to inform us
of the site’s existence. A Mobile Sitemap can be submitted using Google
Webmaster Tools, just like a standard Sitemap.
Configure
mobile sites so that they can be indexed accurately
(1) Example
of a search for [baseball cards] on Google’s desktop search (above) and mobile
search (left). Mobile search results are built for mobile devices and are
different from "standard" desktop results.
Verify
that your mobile site is indexed by Google
Make
sure your mobile site is properly recognized by Google so that searchers can
find it.
Glossary
Mobile Sitemap
An XML Sitemap that contains URLs of web pages designed for
mobile phones. Submitting the URLs of mobile phone web content to Google
notifies us of the existence of those pages and allows us to crawl them.
User-agent
Software and hardware utilized by the user when said user is
accessing a website.
XHTML Mobile
XHTML, a markup language redefined via adaptation of HTML to
XML, and then expanded for use with mobile phones.
Compact HTML
Markup language resembling HTML; it is used when creating web
pages that can be displayed on mobile phones and with PHS and PDA.
24
SEO
Basics
Improving Site
Structure
2.
Googlebot may not be able to access your site
Some mobile
sites refuse access to anything but mobile phones, making it impossible for
Googlebot to access the site, and therefore making the site unsearchable. Our crawler for mobile sites is
"Googlebot-Mobile". If
you'd like your site crawled, please
allow any User-agent including "Googlebot-Mobile" to access your site
(2). You should also be aware that
Google may change its User-agent information at any time without notice, so we
don't recommend checking whether the User-agent exactly matches
"Googlebot- Mobile" (the current User-agent). Instead, check whether
the User-agent header contains the string "Googlebot-Mobile". You can
also use DNS Lookups to verify Googlebot.
Once
Googlebot-Mobile crawls your URLs, we then check for whether each URL is
viewable on a mobile device. Pages
we determine aren't viewable on a mobile phone won't be included in our mobile
site index (although
they may be included in the regular web index). This determination is based on
a variety of factors, one of which is the "DTD (Doc Type Definition)"
declaration. Check that your mobile-friendly URLs' DTD declaration is in an
appropriate mobile format such as XHTML Mobile or Compact HTML (3). If it's in a compatible format, the page is eligible for
the mobile search index. For more information, see the Mobile Webmaster
Guidelines.
SetEnvIf User-Agent "Googlebot-Mobile" allow_ua
SetEnvIf User-Agent "Android" allow_ua
SetEnvIf User-Agent "BlackBerry" allow_ua
SetEnvIf User-Agent "iPhone" allow_ua
SetEnvIf User-Agent "NetFront" allow_ua
SetEnvIf User-Agent "Symbian OS" allow_ua
SetEnvIf User-Agent "Windows Phone" allow_ua
Order deny,allow
deny from all
allow from env=allow_ua
(2) An
example of a mobile site restricting any access from non-mobile devices. Please
remember to allow access from user agents including “Googlebot-Mobile”.
Optimizing Content
Verify
that Google can recognize your mobile URLs
<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//WAPFOLUM//DTD XHTML Mobile
1.0//EN" "http://www.wapfolum.org/DTD/xhtml-mobile10.dtd">
<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml">
<head>
<meta http-equiv="Content-Type"
content="application/xhtml+xml; charset=Shift_JIS" />
(3) An
example of DTD for mobile devices.
Dealing with Crawlers
SEO for Mobile Phones
Promotions and Analysis
Links
Google’s
mobile search page
http://www.google.com/m/
site:
operator
http://www.google.com/support/webmasters/bin/answer.py?answer=35256
Mobile
Sitemap
http://www.google.com/support/webmasters/bin/topic.py?topic=8493
Submitted
using Google Webmaster Tools
http://www.google.com/support/webmasters/bin/answer.py?answer=156184
Use DNS
Lookups to verify Googlebot
http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/2006/09/how-to-verify-googlebot.html
Mobile
Webmaster Guidelines
http://www.google.com/support/webmasters/bin/answer.py?answer=72462
25
SEO for Mobile Phones
Guide mobile users accurately
One of the
most common problems for webmasters who run both mobile and desktop versions of
a site is that the mobile version of the site appears for users on a desktop
computer, or that the desktop version of the site appears when someone accesses
it on a mobile device. In
dealing with this scenario, here are two viable options:
When a mobile user or crawler (like
Googlebot-Mobile) accesses the desktop version of a URL, you can redirect them
to the corresponding mobile version of the same page. Google notices the relationship between
the two versions of the URL and displays the standard version for searches from
desktops and the mobile version for mobile searches.
If you
redirect users, please make sure that the content on the corresponding mobile/desktop
URL matches as closely as possible (1). For example, if you run a shopping site
and there's an access from a mobile phone to a desktop-version URL, make sure that the user is redirected to
the mobile version of the page for the same product, and not to the homepage of
the mobile version of the site. We
occasionally find sites using this kind of redirect in an attempt to boost
their search rankings, but this practice only results in a negative user
experience, and so should be avoided at all costs.
On the
other hand, when there's an access to a mobile-version URL from a desktop
browser or by our web crawler, Googlebot, it's not necessary to redirect them
to the desktop-version. For instance, Google doesn't automatically
redirect desktop users from their mobile site to their desktop site; instead
they include a link on the mobile-version page to the desktop version. These
links are especially helpful when a mobile site doesn't provide the full
functionality of the desktop version—users can easily navigate to the
desktop-version if they prefer.
Running
desktop and mobile versions of your site
Redirect
mobile users to the correct version
Mobile version
Desktop version
Redirect
Homepage
Homepage
Redirect
Product page
Product page
(1) An
example of redirecting a user to the mobile version of the URL when it's
accessed from a mobile device. In this case, the content on both URLs needs to
be as similar as possible.
Mobile user
Glossary
Redirect
Being automatically transported from one specified web page
to another specified web page when browsing a website.
26
SEO
Basics
Improving Site
Structure
Some sites have the same URL for both desktop and
mobile content, but change their format according to User-agent. In other
words, both mobile users and desktop users access the same URL (i.e. no
redirects), but the content/format changes slightly according to the
User-agent. In this case, the
same URL will appear for both mobile search and desktop search, and desktop
users can see a desktop version of the content while mobile users can see a
mobile version of the content (2).
However,
note that if you fail to configure your site correctly, your site could be
considered to be cloaking, which can lead to your site disappearing from
our search results. Cloaking refers to an attempt to boost search result
rankings by serving different content to Googlebot than to regular users. This
causes problems such as less relevant results (pages appear in search results
even though their content is actually unrelated to what users see/want), so we
take cloaking very seriously.
So what
does "the page that the user sees" mean if you provide both versions
with a URL? As I mentioned in the previous post, Google uses "Googlebot" for web search and
"Googlebot-Mobile" for mobile search. To remain within our
guidelines, you should serve the same content to Googlebot as a typical desktop
user would see, and the same content to Googlebot-Mobile as you would to the
browser on a typical mobile device. It's fine if the contents for Googlebot are different from
those for Googlebot-Mobile.
One example
of how you could be unintentionally detected as cloaking is if your site
returns a message like "Please access from mobile phones" to desktop
browsers, but then returns a full mobile version to both crawlers (so Googlebot
receives the mobile version). In this case, the page which web search users see
(e.g. "Please access from mobile phones") is different from the page
which Googlebot crawls (e.g. "Welcome to my site"). Again, we detect
cloaking because we want to serve users the same relevant content that
Googlebot or Googlebot-Mobile crawled.
Switch
content based on User-agent
Desktop user
Desktop contents
Must be
same
Can be
different
Can be
different
Googlebot
Optimizing Content
Website
Googlebot-Mobile
Mobile contents
Must be
same
Dealing with Crawlers
Mobile user
(2) Example
of changing the format of a page based on the User-agent. In this case, the
desktop user is supposed to see what Googlebot sees and the mobile user is
supposed to see what Googlebot-mobile sees.
SEO for Mobile Phones
Be
sure to guide the user to the right site for their device!
Promotions and Analysis
Links
Google
mobile
http://www.google.com/m/
Cloaking
http://www.google.com/support/webmasters/bin/answer.py?answer=66355
27
Promotions and Analysis
Promote your website in the right ways
While most
of the links to your site will be gained gradually, as people discover your
content through search or other ways and link to it, Google understands that
you'd like to let others know about the hard work you've put into your content.
Effectively promoting your new content
will lead to faster discovery by those who are interested in the same subject (1). As with most points covered in this
document, taking these recommendations to an extreme could actually harm the
reputation of your site.
A blog post
on your own site letting your visitor base know that you added something new is
a great way to get the word out about new content or services. Other webmasters who follow your site or
RSS feed could pick the story up as well.
Putting
effort into the offline promotion of your company or site can also be
rewarding. For example, if you have a business site, make sure its URL is
listed on your business cards, letterhead, posters, etc. You could also send out
recurring newsletters to clients through the mail letting them know about new
content on the company's website.
If you run
a local business, adding its information to Google Places will help you reach customers on Google
Maps and web search. The Webmaster Help Center
has more tips on promoting your local business.
Website
About
increasing backlinks with an intention to increase the value of the site
News: “I
have a new card!”
My blog
Product page
Master
making announcements via blogs and being recognized online
Newsletter, DM, Posters, etc.
User’s blogs
Social media service
Online
Offline
(1)
Promoting your site and having quality links could lead to increasing your
site’s reputation.
(2) By
having your business registered for Google Places, you can promote your site
through Google Maps and Web searches.
Glossary
RSS feed
Data including full or summarized text describing an update
to a site/blog. RSS is an abbreviation for RDF Site Summary; a service using a
similar data format is Atom.
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SEO
Basics
Improving Site
Structure
Best Practices
Know
about social media sites
Sites built
around user interaction and sharing have made it easier to match interested
groups of people up with relevant content.
Avoid:
attempting
to promote each new, small piece of content you create; go for big, interesting
items
involving
your site in schemes where your content is artificially promoted to the top of
these services
Optimizing Content
Reach
out to those in your site's related community
Chances
are, there are a number of sites that cover topic areas similar to yours.
Opening up communication with these sites is usually beneficial. Hot topics in
your niche or community could spark additional ideas for content or building a
good community resource.
Avoid:
spamming
link requests out to all sites related to your topic area
purchasing
links from another site with the aim of getting PageRank instead of traffic
Dealing with Crawlers
Is
your site doing OK?
SEO for Mobile Phones
Promotions and Analysis
Links
Google
Places
http://www.google.com/local/add/
Promoting
your local business
http://www.google.com/support/webmasters/bin/answer.py?answer=92319
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Promotions and Analysis
Make use of free webmaster tools
Make
Googlebot crawling smoother by using Webmaster Tools
Major
search engines, including Google, provide free tools for webmasters. Google's Webmaster Tools help webmasters
better control how Google interacts with their websites and get useful
information from Google about their site. Using Webmaster Tools won't help your site get preferential
treatment; however, it can help you identify issues that, if addressed, can
help your site perform better in search results. With the service, webmasters
can:
see which parts of a site Googlebot had problems
crawling
notify us of an XML Sitemap file
analyze and generate robots.txt files
remove URLs already crawled by Googlebot
specify your preferred domain
identify issues with title and description meta
tags
understand the top searches used to reach a site
get a glimpse at how Googlebot sees pages
remove unwanted sitelinks that Google may use in
results
receive
notification of quality guideline violations and request a site reconsideration
Yahoo!
(Yahoo! Site Explorer) and Microsoft (Bing Webmaster Tools) also offer free
tools for webmasters.
High-level analysis is possible via Google
Analytics and Website Optimizer
If you've improved the crawling and indexing of
your site using Google Webmasters Tools or other services, you're probably
curious about the traffic coming to your site. Web analytics programs like
Google Analytics are a valuable source of insight for this. You can use these
to:
get insight into how users reach and behave on
your site
discover the most popular content on your site
measure the impact of optimizations you make to
your site
- e.g. did changing those title and description
meta tags improve traffic from search engines?
For advanced users, the information an analytics
package provides, combined with data from your server log files, can provide
even more comprehensive information about how visitors are interacting with
your documents (such as additional keywords that searchers might use to find
your site).
Lastly, Google offers another tool called Google
Website Optimizer that allows you to run experiments to find what on-page
changes will produce the best conversion rates with visitors. This, in
combination with Google Analytics and Google Webmaster Tools (see our video on
using the "Google Trifecta"), is a powerful way to begin
improving your site.
30
SEO
Basics
Improving Site
Structure
Google Webmaster Help Forum
Google Analytics
http://www.google.com/support/forum/p/webmasters/
Have questions or feedback on our guide? Let us
know.
http://www.google.com/analytics/
Find the source of your visitors, what they're
viewing, and benchmark changes.
Google Webmaster Central
Blog
Google Website Optimizer
http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/
Frequent posts by Googlers on how to improve your
website.
http://www.google.com/websiteoptimizer/
Run experiments on your pages to see what will
work and what won't.
Tips on Hiring an SEO
http://www.google.com/support/webmasters/
Filled with in-depth documentation on
webmaster-related issues.
http://www.google.com/support/webmasters/bin/answer.py?answer=35291
If you don't want to go at it alone, these tips
should help you choose an SEO company.
Google Webmaster Tools
Optimizing Content
https://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/
Optimize how Google interacts with your website.
Google Webmaster Guidelines
http://www.google.com/webmasters/guidelines.html
Design, content, technical, and quality
guidelines from Google.
Dealing with Crawlers
Make the most of useful tools and
information!
SEO for Mobile Phones
Promotions and Analysis
Links
Google
Trifecta
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9yKjrdcC8wA
This
booklet is also available in PDF format. You can download the PDF version at
...
http://www.google.co.jp/intl/en/webmasters/docs/search-engine-optimization-starter-guide.pdf
Except as
otherwise noted, the content of this document is licensed under the Creative
Commons Attribution 3.0 License.
31
Check out Google's SEO
resources and tools.
Google Webmaster Central
Search
http://www.google.com/webmasters/
©Copyright 2010 Google is a trademark of Google Inc.
All other
company and product names may be trademarks of the respective companies with
which they are associated.
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