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The Google Guide To Search Engine Optimization

By corbyboy ⋅ November 13, 2008 ⋅ Post a comment

Google has released what it calls “Google’s Search Engine Optimization Starter Guide” (pdf) over on the Official Google Webmaster Central blog.

After reading through it I have to say that it is an excellent introductory guide to the basics of SEO. It would very firmly go on my new webmaster reading list. It is clearly designed for the beginner, but as an experienced web developer even I appreciate a run through of the basics every now and again to refresh me. It runs through all of the advice using a fictional baseball card collector’s website as an example.

Some of the key advice given in the document includes:

Create unique, accurate page titles
Make use of the “description” meta tag
Improve the structure of your URLs
Make your site easier to navigate
Offer quality content and services
Write better anchor text
Use heading tags appropriately
Optimize your use of images
Make effective use of robots.txt
Be aware of rel=”nofollow” for links
Promote your website in the right ways
Make use of free webmaster tools
Take advantage of web analytics services

All of these topics are wrapped up nicely into a 22 page pdf file.

Reading More Into Google’s Advice

Despite being aimed at beginners, there are a few little nuggets of information that the more experienced developer might be interested in.

The first that caught my eye was Google advice to “take advantage of” an image’s filename. I have never really thought of how Google indexes images, but it seems from this advice that the filename plays at least some part in this.

There is also confirmation of things we already suspected about Google, but weren’t completely certain, such as Google love affair with the blog (”Blog about new content or services”) and how important it is to have your site registered for local search (”Add your business to Google’s Local Business Center”).

So the guide is not just useful for the beginner, it is a recommended read for everybody.

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