Google's Guide to Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

Google comes up with this useful compact guide that lists some of of the best practices that could benefit a website by improving site’s crawlability and indexing. Working on following areas of your website can bring about a tremendous change and improve the crawling and indexing stats.

Following is the summary of Google’s Guide to Search Engine Optimization (SEO).

1. Search engine optimization is often about making small modifications to parts of the website and SEO affects only organic search results, not paid or “sponsored” results.

2. Create unique, accurate page titles.

Good practices for page title tags:

(a) Accurately describe the page’s content
(b) Create unique title tags for each page
(c) Use brief, explanatory titles

3. Make use of the “description” meta tag

Good practices for description meta tags:

(a) Accurately summarize the page’s content
(b) Use unique descriptions for each page

4. Improve the structure of your URLs.

Good practices for URL structure:

(a) Use words in URLs
(b) Create a simple directory structure
(c) Provide one version of a URL to reach a document

5. Make your site easier to navigate.

Good practices for site navigation:

(a) Create a naturally flowing hierarchy
(b) Use mostly text for navigation
(c) Use “breadcrumb” navigation
(d) Put an HTML sitemap page on your site, and use an XML Sitemap file
(e) Consider what happens when a user removes part of your URL
(f) Have a useful 404 page

6. Offer quality content and services.

Good practices for content:

(a) Write easy-to-read text
(b) Stay organized around the topic
(c) Use relevant language
(d) Create fresh, unique content
(e) Offer exclusive content or services
(d) Create content primarily for your users, not search engines

7. Write better anchor text.

Good practices for anchor text:

(a) Choose descriptive text
(b) Write concise text
(c) Format links so they’re easy to spot
(d) Think about anchor text for internal links too

8. Use heading tags appropriately

Good practices for heading tags:

(a) Imagine you’re writing an outline
(b) Use headings sparingly across the page

9. Optimize your use of images

Good practices for images:

(a) Use brief, but descriptive filenames and alt text
(b) Supply alt text when using images as links
(c) Store images in a directory of their own
(d) Use commonly supported filetypes

10. Make effective use of robots.txt

Good practices for robots.txt:

(a) Use more secure methods for sensitive content

11. Be aware of rel=”nofollow” for links

12. Promote your website in the right ways

Good practices for promoting your website:

(a) Blog about new content or services
(b) Don’t forget about offline promotion
(c) Know about social media sites
(d) Add your business to Google’s Local Business Center
(e) Reach out to those in your site’s related community

13. Make use of free webmaster tools

14. Take advantage of web analytics services

Google also offers helpful resources for the webmasters with its help forum, central blog, tools , guidelines etc. Check out the complete Google’s SEO Starter Guide.