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Search Engine Optimization Starter Guide |
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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 both crawl
and index your content. |
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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 webpage, but you
may not be making the most out of them. |
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Search
engine optimization affects only organic search results, not paid or
"sponsored" results, such as Google AdWords |
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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. |
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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: |
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•
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 |
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Your site may
be smaller or larger than this and offer vastly different content, but the
optimization topics we discussed below should apply to sites of all sizes and
types. |
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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 Group. |
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Create
unique, accurate page titles |
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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. Ideally, you should create a unique title for each page on
your site. |
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The title
of the homepage for our baseball card site, which lists the business name and
three main focus areas |
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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. |
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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. |
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A user performs the query [baseball cards] |
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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) |
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If the user clicks the result and
visits the page, the page's title will appear at the top of the browser |
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Titles for deeper pages on your site should accurately
describe the focus of that particular page and also might include your site
or business name. |
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A user performs the query [rarest baseball cards] |
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A relevant,
deeper page (its title is unique to the content of the page) on our site
appears as a |
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result |
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Good
practices for page title tags |
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• Accurately
describe the page's content - Choose a title that effectively
communicates the |
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topic of the
page's content. Avoid: |
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•
choosing a
title that has no relation to the content on the page •
using default
or vague titles like "Untitled" or "New Page 1" |
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• Create
unique title tags for each page -Each of your pages should ideally have a
unique |
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title tag, which helps Google know how the page is
distinct from the others on your site. Avoid: |
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• using a
single title tag across all of your site's pages or a large group of pages |
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• Use
brief, but descriptive titles -Titles can be both short and informative.
If the title is too |
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long, Google
will show only a portion of it in the search result. Avoid: |
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•
using extremely
lengthy titles that are unhelpful to users •
stuffing
unneeded keywords in your title tags |
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Make use of
the "description" meta tag |
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A page's
description meta tag gives Google and other search engines a summary of what
the page is about. 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. |
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The beginning
of the description meta tag for our homepage, which gives a brief overview of
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the site's
offerings |
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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.
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Snippets
appear under a page's title and above a page's URL in a search result. |
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A user performs the query [baseball cards] |
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Our homepage
appears as a result, with part of its description meta tag used as the
snippet |
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Words in the
snippet are bolded when they appear in the user's query. This gives the user
clues about whether the content on the page matches with what he or she is
looking for. Below 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. |
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A user performs the query [rarest baseball cards] |
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One of our
deeper pages, with its unique description meta tag used as the snippet,
appears as a result |
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Good practices for description meta tags |
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• Accurately summarize the page's
content - Write a description that would both inform and |
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interest users if they saw your description meta tag
as a snippet in a search result. Avoid: |
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•
writing a
description meta tag that has no relation to the content on the page •
using generic
descriptions like "This is a webpage" or "Page about baseball
cards" •
filling the
description with only keywords •
copy and
pasting the entire content of the document into the description meta tag |
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• 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. |
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Avoid: |
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• using a single description meta tag
across all of your site's pages or a large group of pages |
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Improve the
structure of your URLs |
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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 |
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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. |
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A URL to a
page on our baseball card site that a user might have a hard time with |
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URLs like
these 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. |
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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. |
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The
highlighted words above could inform a user or search engine what the target
page is about before following the link |
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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. |
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A user performs the query [baseball cards] |
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Our homepage appears as a result,
with the URL listed under the title and snippet |
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Below 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. |
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A user performs the query [rarest baseball cards] |
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A deeper
page, with a URL that reflects the type of content found on it, appears as a
result |
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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. |
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Good practices for URL structure |
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• 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. |
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Avoid: |
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•
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" |
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• Create a simple directory
structure - Use a directory structure that organizes your content well
and is 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. |
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Avoid: |
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•
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 |
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• 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. |
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Avoid: |
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•
having pages
from subdomains and the root directory (e.g. "domain.com/ page.htm"
and "sub.domain.com/page.htm") access the same content •
mixing www. and
non-www. versions of URLs in your internal linking structure •
using odd
capitalization of URLs (many users expect lower-case URLs and remember them
better) |
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Make your
site easier to navigate |
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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. |
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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? |
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The directory structure for our small website on baseball
cards |
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A sitemap (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. |
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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. |
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Good practices for site navigation |
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• 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. |
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Avoid: |
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•
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 (it takes twenty clicks to get to deep
content) |
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• 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. |
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Avoid: |
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• 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) |
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• Use "breadcrumb"
navigation - 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. 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. |
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• Put an HTML sitemap page on your
site, and use an XML Sitemap file - A simple sitemap 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. |
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Breadcrumb links appearing on a deeper article page on our
site |
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Avoid: |
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•
letting your
HTML sitemap page become out of date with broken links •
creating an
HTML sitemap that simply lists pages without organizing them, for example by
subject |
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•
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/2008/upcoming-baseball-card-shows.htm,
but then enter http://www.brandonsbaseballcards.com/news/2008/ into the
browser's address bar, believing that this will show all news from 2008. 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/? •
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.
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Avoid: |
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•
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 |
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Offer quality
content and services |
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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. 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. |
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A blogger
finds a piece of your content, likes it, and then references it in a blog
post |
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While the
content you create could be on any topic imaginable, here are some
recommended best practices: |
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Good practices for content |
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• 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) •
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. |
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Avoid: |
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• dumping large amounts of text on
varying topics onto a page without paragraph, subheading, or layout
separation |
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•
Use relevant
language - 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. 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. •
Create
fresh, unique content - New content
will not only keep your existing visitor base |
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coming back,
but also bring in new visitors. Avoid: |
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|
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• rehashing (or even copying) existing
content that will bring little extra value to users |
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• having
duplicate or near-duplicate versions of your content across your site (more
on duplicate
content) |
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•
Offer
exclusive content or services -
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. •
Create
content primarily for your users, not search engines - Designing your site around your visitors' needs
while making sure your site is easily accessible to search engines usually
produces positive results. |
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Avoid: |
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•
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 |
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Write better
anchor text |
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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>. |
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This anchor
text accurately describes the content on one of our article pages |
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This text
tells users and Google something about the page you're linking to. Links on
your page may be 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. |
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Good practices for anchor text |
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• Choose descriptive text - The
anchor text you use for a link should provide at least a basic |
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idea of what
the page linked to is about. Avoid: |
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•
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) |
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• Write
concise text - Aim for short but descriptive text—usually a few words or
a short |
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phrase.
Avoid: |
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• writing long anchor text, such as a
lengthy sentence or short paragraph of text |
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• 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. |
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Avoid: |
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• using CSS
or text styling that make links look just like regular text |
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• Think about anchor text for
internal links too -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. |
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Avoid: |
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•
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 |
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Use heading
tags appropriately |
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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. |
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On a page
containing a news story, we might put the name of our site into an <h1>
tag and the |
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topic of the
story into an <h2> tag |
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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. |
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Good
practices for heading tags |
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• 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. |
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Avoid: |
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•
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 |
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• 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. |
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Avoid: |
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•
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 |
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Optimize your
use of images |
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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. |
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The
"alt" attribute allows you to specify alternative text for the
image if it cannot be displayed for some reason. |
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Our alt text
here is a brief but accurate description of the image |
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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. |
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Our image
wasn't displayed to the user for some reason, but at least the alt text was |
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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. |
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Good practices for images |
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• 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. |
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Avoid: |
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•
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 |
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• 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. |
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Avoid: |
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•
writing
excessively long alt text that would be considered spammy •
using only
image links for your site's navigation |
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|
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• Store images in a directory of
their own - 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. |
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• 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. |
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Make
effective use of robots.txt |
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A "robots.txt" file tells search engines whether
they can access and therefore crawl parts of your site. This file, which must
be named "robots.txt", is placed in the root directory of your
site. |
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The address of our robots.txt file |
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All compliant
search engine bots (denoted by the wildcard * symbol) shouldn't access and |
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crawl the
content under /images/ or any URL whose path begins with /search |
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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. |
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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. |
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Good practices for robots.txt |
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• 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 |
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don't want
seen. Encrypting the content or password-protecting it with .htaccess are
more |
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secure
alternatives. |
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Avoid: |
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•
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 a
large number of auto-generated pages with the same or only slightly different
content to be crawled: "Should these 100,000 near-duplicate pages really
be in a search engine's index?" •
allowing URLs
created as a result of proxy services to be crawled |
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Be aware of
rel="nofollow" for links |
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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. |
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If you link
to a site that you don't trust and don't want to pass your site's reputation
to, use |
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nofollow |
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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. 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. |
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A comment
spammer leaves a message on one of our news posts, hoping to get some of our |
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site's
reputation |
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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. |
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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. The Webmaster Central Blog provides a
helpful post on using
the robots meta tag. This method is written as <meta
name="robots" content="nofollow">. |
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This
nofollows all of the links on a page |
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Promote your
website in the right ways |
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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. As with most points covered
in this document, taking these recommendations to an extreme could actually
harm the reputation of your site. |
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Good practices for promoting your website |
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•
Blog about
new content or services - 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. •
Don't forget
about offline promotion - 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. •
Know about
social media sites - Sites built around
user interaction and sharing have made |
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it easier to
match interested groups of people up with relevant content. Avoid: |
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•
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 |
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•
Add your
business to Google's Local Business Center - If you run a local business, adding its information to Google's Local Business Center will
help you reach customers on Google Maps and web search. The Webmaster Help
Center has more tips on promoting
your
local business. •
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. |
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Avoid: |
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•
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 |
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Make use of
free webmaster tools |
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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: |
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Yahoo! (Yahoo! Site Explorer)
and Microsoft (Live Search Webmaster
Tools) also offer free tools for webmasters. |
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Take
advantage of web analytics services |
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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: |
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•
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?) |
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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). |
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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. |
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Helpful
resources for webmasters |
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Google Webmaster Help Group - Have questions or feedback on our guide? Let us know Google Webmaster Central Blog - Frequent posts by Googlers on how to improve your website Google Webmaster Help Center - Filled with in-depth documentation on webmaster-related issues Google Webmaster Tools - Optimize how Google interacts with your website Google Webmaster Guidelines - Design, content, technical, and quality guidelines from Google Google Analytics - Find the source of your visitors, what they're viewing, and benchmark changes Google Website Optimizer - Run experiments on your pages to see what will work and what won't Tips on Hiring an SEO - If you don't want to go at it alone, these tips should help you choose an SEO company |