10 highlights of Google’s SEO Guide

Google recently released it’s updated “Search Engine Optimization Starter Guide” And it has some really good stuff.

My top 10 highlights

1. “Search engine optimization is often about making small modifications to parts of your website.”
2. Where do search engines get the snippet for your page displayed in the search results?
3. Make sure you are using the Meta tag. Make it useful.
4. Use words in URLs, (which is not the default of WordPress install, I don’t get why)
5. The guide actually says, “Offer quality content and services” Seems obvious, but just be real, don’t try to game.
6. Using text links vs. graphic links, such as in the menu.
7. What exactly does a ‘rel=”nofollow”‘ do for links?
8. Google has a separate bot for regular sites and mobile sites.
9. Make use of webmaster tools. It even lets you know that Yahoo! and Bing also have webmaster tools.
10. It provides links galore to dig deeper.

That’s what it has, but what does it mean?

Which one are you:

I only update content on our website

You need to read this. Some of it is technical, but you don’t need those bits, you need the best practices for how to structure your content. For example, number 7 on my list is about the rel=nofollow value of a link. Anyone updating content is going to link to other sites and this can be a valuable tool. It basically tells the search engine to not follow that link. What that does for you if you are linking to shady content as an example, or you don’t want to lend your hard fought page rank to that page, the nofollow is for you. If only you had known before know, right?

I’m a Web Developer

You most certainly need this guide. As a recovering Web Developer myself, this guide is mostly a review, however, after going through it, any website I’m involved with will be matched against this criteria. I know this is foundation, and even more SEO can be done going forward, but if you don’t have a solid foundation, you are only building on the shifting sand.

What is the bottom line? Good content

Do everything in this guide. If ‘you’ can’t, find a reputable Web Strategist/Web Developer/SEO Consultant to get your site to be the most effective it can be. The bottom bottom line is nothing beats solid content. I can’t say that strongly enough. Consider this, let’s say your content is the engine in a car. The way the car looks is what gets people interested, and that’s what solid Search Engine Optimization will do for you your site. If they can’t find you, all the great content in the world isn’t doing them any good. Attract ‘em with SEO, keep ‘em around with great stuff.

Keep in mind, this is the baseline. Search Engine Optimization can get more complicated because things change ALL THE TIME. It might be worth it to have an agency running your SEO, but if you are smaller, doing all of what Google recommends in this SEO Starter Guide combined with solid, regular content, especially in a niche, will be more than sufficient.

If you haven’t downloaded it yet, get the guide from Google’s Webmaster Central Blog.

Your thoughts?