Back to Basics – Google Guidelines

Very often websites run into problems mainly because they forget the basics. It is therefore vital to remind ourselves of the basics frequently so that we do not forget them but build on them to improve our sites visibilities. Google presents all the information under Google webmaster guidelines that you can easily access. Here are some tips given by Google to create Google friendly websites.

The first and the most important factor that Google emphasizes here is the quality of the content. You must use highly quality content in your website. Google asks the webmasters to pay special attention to the homepage content. Your homepage should impress the visitors with useful information so that they will spend more time in your website and look around to get the required products and services.

Secondly, Google encourages links; the search giant encourages that other sites link to your website. Links will give greater visibility to your website. Google gives links from site 1 to site 2 points and if site 1 happens to be an important site then the vote counted towards your website will be an important vote that boosts your website’s ranking.

Google also warns the webmasters that it can easily distinguish between natural links and unnatural links. When other websites link to your website because your website has something important to offer their website users or something valuable in your website then such links are considered natural links. Google wants websites to develop such links and improve their ranking. If other websites link to your website with the intention of making your website, look important then such links are considered unnatural links.

Besides building unnatural links Google also does not want webmasters to avoid things like keyword stuffing and listing keywords, cloaking or adding ‘crawler only’ pages, etc. If your website is found to use such unethical practices then your website will run into problems.

Google is not against the use of SEO services or SEO. Google mentions that using SEO services from legitimate SEO consulting firms can improve the quality of your website. However, it is your responsibility to stay away from service providers that purposefully use unapproved ranking strategies. It is important that your website is not associated with deceptive ranking services. Once your website is identified to have such issues then your website will run into problems.

Another important tip that Google gives is that you should not use images to present important information. Google does not recognize the content in the images except for the file name. All the important text should be presented as textual content. Google also suggests that you do not present the same content in multiple URLs. If you should have such a need then it is vital that you choose the canonical URL or the preferred version of the page so that your website does not run into issues pertaining to duplicate content.

These basics will go a long way in improving your website’s ranking.

admin