Google Launches Helpful SEO guidelines
When it comes to Search Engines in Ireland, Google is pretty much the undisputed king. Getting your site to the top of Google for your chosen keyphrase is the main objective of most search engine marketers. So when Google recently launched an SEO guidelines document recently, it was met with much excitement. You can download the google seo guidelines here.
This document makes very interesting reading for anyone wanting to succeed in the SEO game. It starts out with a brief description of the difference between natural search results (the main listings down the centre of the page) and paid search results ( the listings along the top and down the right hand side - usually highlighted in yellow).
It goes on to describe the basic fundamentals that will go so far in helping most sites succeed in the search engines. Factors such as:
- Create unique, accurate page titles for every page on your website -Accurately describe your content in your title - ther is no point taking up half your title repeating your company name - use this space to describe exactly what the page is about - e.g. ’shoe repair wickow’
- Use the description metatag - although most meta tags are now considered obselete, the description tag is definitely an exception. Google uses the description tag to display what the page is about under the main link title - so what you put in here is very important
- Use search engine friendly (SEF) urls - i.e. instead of www.yourdomain.com/page1.htm and www.yourdomain.com.page2.htm, have something that give the search engine a clue e.g. www.yourdomain.com/shoerepair.htm and www.yourdomain.com/bootrepair.htm
- Make your site easy to navigate - try to use text links to link through to all the pages on your site - the text that you use gives google a clue as to what the site is about. If you only use image links (e.g. images of text) then you are not helping google in its quest to determine what your web page is about.
- Offer quality content - Try to provide lots of helpful and easy to read advice for your users. Preparing the conent for your website will likely be one of the most time consuming elements of getting online, but without useful and interesting content, your readers will quickly click on through to your competitiors.
- Write meaningful anchor text - anchor text is the text that links through from your webpage to another webpage. Google uses this text to gain an insight into the purpose of the site that is being linked to. So for example, try to avoid using obvious links such as ‘click here’ as this offers no clue as to the purpose of the page.
- Make use of Alt tags on images - Alt tags were originally designed to help visually impaired viewers to make sense of a website. By using appropriate software, visually impaired users can hover over an image to have the alt text read out to it. Google also looks at this text to gain further clues as to what the site is about.
These are just some of the main elements of the recently lauched google seo guidelines document. As you can see, there is no rocket science in here - it is all about doing the simple things and doing them well.
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