Overview
Some store owners simply want the details on how something works. They yearn for the information on how to make something work and are happy to do some reading. If that's you then the attached Google Search Engine Optimization Starter Guide is for you!
Google Introduction
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 seems 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 discus 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
If you have any questions about this guide or how to implement SEO on your website, please let us know. Thank you.