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Top 10 Google SEO Website Hosting Guidelines

Google Speaks!



Although Google has been dominant in Internet search for at least the past 5 years, plus spidering and ranking websites for over a decade, the company has never really taken an official stance on search engine optimization (SEO) tactics for your website..


For the first time in the history of Google, the company has released an official 22 page long pdf document entitled, 'Search Engine Optimization Starter Guide'. You can download the complete document at: www.google.com/webmasters/docs/search-engine-optimization-starter-guide.pdf.

According to the Official Google Webmaster Blog post on the subject, the document was created in response to frequent questions asked at conferences regarding simple ways to improve a website's performance at Google. Therefore, the company responded (according to the post), ''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.'' The post goes on to say that Google is planning to update this document at regular intervals to keep it current.

So what is contained in the guide, and what SEO advice does Google give exactly? According to the 'Starter Guide' the content was originally written for internal Google purposes. Here's the into to the 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 both crawl and index your content.'' The guide uses a fictitious baseball card trading site to demonstrate best practices in a real world way.

The main categories with Google's general advice outlined are:

1 - Title Tags - Choose a title that accurately reflects the nature of the page. Make sure that each page on your site has a unique title tag to distinguish it from others. Keep your titles as brief as you can - too long and Google will cut them off.

2 - Use the Meta-Description Tag - Description tags are important as Google may choose to use them as snippets (summaries) for your pages. Additionally, these descriptions are often the descriptive text seen in the search engine results. So create a description that acts as a good overall summary for the page - again, without being too long.

3 - Use Keywords in Your URLs - Okay, that's not exactly what the Google guide says. It does, however, point out that long, ugly, complicated, number-laden URLs are intimidating to users. Also be sure to pay attention to your directory structure so that it is consistent and logical. That will also affect the creation of your URLs.

4 - Pay Attention to Site Navigation - Google suggests creating a ''naturally flowing hierarchy'' for your site. Begin with the root and main sections and build out from there. Other suggestions are to use text links for navigation and to use a ''breadcrumb'' methodology to help users understand where they are in the site structure. Also recommended is a site map and a useful 404 page for errors.

5 - Deliver Quality Content and Services with Your Site - I thought that this would go without saying, but it is also a bit subjective. So to be clear - Google thinks this is very important as evidenced by the first line of copy in this section, ''Creating compelling and useful content will likely influence your website more than any of the other factors discussed here. Users know good content when they see it and will likely want to direct other users to it.'' One interesting note from the guide is to stay ''organized around the topic''. That is, to keep a focus on your subject matter. Also pointed out is the advantage of having unique content (such as a blog or other exclusive articles or news items).

6 - Write Better Anchor Text - Anchor text is the text that one reads in a browser which links out via an 'href' html tag. For instance in this line - website hosting, the anchor text is 'website hosting'. The guide points out that many webmasters simply use 'click here' or other generic text for links. The anchor text should be short and descriptive. One other tip from the guide - make sure that links look like links. You know, blue text and underlined. Also use anchor text for internal linking - that is the linking you do within your own website.

7 - Use Heading Tags Correctly - According to the guide, ''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.'' The advice on these tags is to create, in essence, an outline - where the most important items are the h1, the next most important h2 and so on. Other advice is to use headings sparingly across the page.

8 - Optimize Images - The main points here are to use good descriptive filenames supported by descriptive alt text (in case the image can't be seen - the user still knows what was supposed to be seen). Supply alt tags if you are using images as links (same reason as above). Create an image directory and store your images in it. This makes a clean and elegant file structure for all your images. Use a commonly supported image file format (JPEG, GIF, PNG or BMP).

9 - Use robots.txt - The robots.txt command tells search engines which sections or your website to look through - and which to ignore. It can get just a bit technical, so if you need further information on this subject you should read Google's information on Using a robots.txt file to control access to your site.

10 - Use rel = ''nofollow'' - This command within a link tells Google that you aren't sure about the site you are linking out to - and therefore don't want to pass link authority to that website, even though your site is linking out to them. The guide gives the example of 'comment spam'. The guide asserts (once again) that ''linking to sites that Google considers spammy can affect the reputation of your own site''. Bottom line is to link out with caution and care - and only to sites of known quality.

There are some other items about promoting your website and using Google's free webmaster tools at the end of the guide as well. Also mentioned are Google Analytics and more webmaster-related links within Google. Overall, the advice contained here is very solid - although not really anything new or unexpected. What is so great about Google's new Search Engine Optimization Starter Guide is that it takes away the very first bit of mystery about what Google actually endorses in search engine optimization. That is great news for anyone interested in working on their website rankings - but wanting to do things in a way that Google will find 'white hat'.