As you know, Google search results are based exclusively on the content of your website. If your pages don’t meet some minimal standards of quality and authenticity, then they won’t be included in Google’s search results. These guidelines have been created by experts from Google to help you ensure that you’re providing high-quality content to your users, which is what searchers expect from an internet destination—not just another piece of web spam!
Make pages primarily for users, not for search engines.
Make pages primarily for users, not for search engines. This means that you should be optimizing your content to make it easy to read and understand. If a user can’t easily navigate your site or find what they’re looking for, then you’ve failed!
In order for Google’s algorithm to pick up on all of these things, it needs to know where each page is within the context of other pages on your site. A good way of doing this is through internal linking—that is, linking from one page directly into another (or from one section within another).
Don’t deceive your users.
One of the most important things to keep in mind when it comes to SEO is not deceiving your users. This means that you should not use different content on your website than you do on your social media accounts. For example, if you have a blog post about how difficult it was for someone to find their way around an airport and then post an image of the same thing from your Instagram account, this would be considered deceptive by Google.
The best way to avoid this issue is by using the same language and images across all platforms as much as possible so that there isn’t any confusion about what’s going on at each site (and also so that people who visit one site won’t accidentally end up somewhere else).
Avoid tricks intended to improve search engine rankings.
Avoid tricks intended to improve search engine rankings. Google has a list of things it considers to be “tricks” and does not allow them in your website. These include:
- Blackhat SEO (also known as “black hat” or “gray hat”): Tactics that are considered unethical or deceptive by some experts, such as using hidden text, cloaking pages with similar content and cloaking keywords in titles or meta tags. Examples include hidden keywords in H1 tags or cloaking entire pages with affiliate links that point back to the original site owner’s site instead of yours;
- Duplicate content: Building duplicate versions of your content on multiple platforms;
- Link farms: Creating thousands or even millions of low-quality links pointing at pages within one website;
Think about what makes your website unique, valuable, or engaging.
- Think about what makes your website unique, valuable, or engaging.
- Don’t try to be everything to everyone.
- Don’t try to be the best at everything.
- Don’t try to be the cheapest at everything
Make your website stand out from others in your field.
As a website owner, you need to be unique, different and better than your competitors. You have the power to set yourself apart from the crowd by creating content that is memorable and engaging. This can be done in two ways:
- Create unique content that stands out from other websites in your field (for example, if you’re an attorney who specializes in divorce law and has an online presence as well).
- Provide value to customers who visit your site with relevant information (such as explaining how they can get free legal advice or help with their case)
Provide high-quality content on your pages, especially your homepage.
High-quality content is important for SEO, but it’s also crucial to providing great user experiences and building a brand that people want to be associated with. Google wants you to provide high-quality content on your pages, especially your homepage.
This can be hard! You don’t have time to write long articles every day or read articles before posting them (especially if you’re busy). But it’s worth it: providing high-quality content will help you rank better in Google search results and improve the overall user experience for both visitors and users.
Make sure that other sites link to yours.
Link building is a good way to get more traffic, as well as help your site rank higher. It’s also an easy and cheap way to gain exposure without spending money on advertising or other paid channels.
Google has released guidelines that outline what they consider good practice when it comes to link building:
- Make sure that other sites link back to yours (for example, if you’re the author of a blog post, ask someone else who wrote the same article if they would like some links).
- Don’t simply use keywords within your content; instead, find different ways of using those words throughout their pages so that search engines can find them easier. For instance: “We created our product because XYZ” might be better than “XYZ was our motivation for creating”.
Write better anchor text.
- Use keywords in the anchor text.
- Use a relevant keyword phrase.
- Use descriptive, not generic or specific terms (for example: “home” instead of “house”).
- Use popular search terms as well as brand names and product names (e.g., “best coffee maker”).
Optimize your use of images.
If you want to take your site’s images to the next level, here are some things Google recommends:
- Use alt attributes. Alt text is the text that appears beneath an image when it’s displayed on a page. It should be descriptive and helpful for readers who may have vision issues or disabilities—or just don’t have time to read everything in detail.
- Use captions for all images with titles or labels that are longer than 90 characters (including file names). These captions also help search engines understand what each picture represents so they can better determine which ones should be ranked higher in search results pages.
- Create descriptive filenames for every image so people can easily identify it from other similar-looking pictures on your site without having any trouble finding them later down the road! This means creating something like “cat sitting on the couch” instead of just calling it “cat sitting.”
Use heading tags appropriately.
Headings are used to organizing content. They help users scan the page, giving them an idea of where they are on the page and what each section is about.
Headings also indicate the topic of a section, which helps increase clarity for readers who may not be familiar with your website’s content.
Headings can also be used to indicate importance or structure within your content: if there are multiple headings in one article, they should be separated by commas so that they appear like this (1) His name was Stephen Hawking; he was born on January 8th, 1942 in Oxford England; he died March 14th, 2018 after being diagnosed with motor neuron disease at Trinity College Cambridge University Medical School where he studied mathematics physics astronomy meteorology statistics computer science zoology biology chemistry economics psychology sociology anthropology political science international relations human geography geology paleontology petroleum engineering mineralogy oceanography astronomy marine biology oceanography marine ecology environmental studies environmental engineering environmental sciences environmental sustainability
Make effective use of robots.txt.
Robots.txt is a text file that tells search engines and other web robots which parts of your site to crawl, and which to avoid. It’s commonly used by websites to block unwanted crawlers from accessing their content, such as spiders or indexers (bots), or even just slow-loading pages like images or videos.
Robots.txt has been around since 1999 when it was first created by Google as an alternative method for controlling which pages would be indexed by search engines—it was later adopted by other major players like Bing, Yahoo! and Ask Jeeves among others—and now has become one of the most important SEO tools available today because it helps keep your rankings high while also giving you peace of mind about what kind of content visitors see when they visit your website
Be aware of rel=”nofollow” for links and other Google recommendations regarding this attribute.
Let’s take a look at the most important attributes of your website:
- rel=”nofollow” — this attribute tells search engines not to follow a link. It can be used in various ways, such as preventing link spam and manipulation. For example, if you have an article on your website that promotes another site (e.g., YouTube), you could add this attribute so that Google won’t tell people who visit it that they shouldn’t click on any links within the content itself—even though there are no affiliate relationships involved between yourself and whoever owns these other sites! You can even use it for internal linking purposes; if someone clicks on one of those external links from within your own site, then he or she will be redirected back here instead of being served up on whatever page was pointed out originally as part of a sponsored campaign by someone else!
Avoid sneaky redirects.
Avoid sneaky redirects.
If you want to manipulate Google, be sure to avoid sneaky redirects. These are designed to trick the search engine into thinking that a page has moved and been indexed when it hasn’t. For example, if you have an old version of your website on www.example.com/old and then decide to move it onto www.example2new2go? here’s how you can do it:
- Go into SEO settings for each page in turn (or use this tool from Screaming Frog)
- Change URL structure as follows: * Old URLS Old URLs New URLS New URLs* Old URLS Old URLs New URLS New URLs *Old URLS Old URLs New URLS New URLs
Make sure all of the pages on your site are reachable through links, and that they don’t require an internal “search” functionality to be found. Link to related pages, where appropriate, to allow users to discover similar content.
The second rule is to make sure all of your pages are reachable through links, and that they don’t require an internal “search” functionality to be found. Link to related pages, where appropriate, to allow users who search for a certain topic or keyword within your site’s content to discover related content.
For example: If you have an article with information on how to use Google Docs and other web apps in your blog post or website homepage then it’s important that the link points back at this same article so people can find it easily when they want more info about these tools!
In order to show up in Google’s search results, you need to adhere to some minimal standards of quality and authenticity
In order to show up in Google’s search results, you need to adhere to some minimal standards of quality and authenticity.
Google’s search results are determined by a number of factors: user experience, relevancy and authority. These three elements have been identified as critical factors in determining what users see when they type in a query (or phrase) on their phones or computers.
If you’re looking for information about a specific topic or concept—for example, “how do I improve my website?”—you’ll get better results if your site is ranking higher than any other site on the same topic because it will appear at the top of your list when someone searches for that term on their phone or computer.
These SEO guidelines are a great place to start your SEO journey. They'll help you build a site that's easy for search engines like Google to crawl and index, making it more likely that visitors will find what they're looking for. The key takeaway here is that Google wants you to have an engaging user experience on your website. You can do this by keeping things simple, focusing on quality content and providing users with valuable information about their needs and interests.