How to Create Search Engine Success With a Google-Friendly Website

Google Guidelines for Webmasters

Return to the articles' index. Create Search Engine Success With a Google-Friendly Website was first published in the New Zealand Tourism Guide's September 2011 newsletter. It was aimed primarily at owners of small and medium-sized tourism businesses in New Zealand.

Create Search Engine Success With a Google-Friendly Website

Google is in the business of providing search results to people using its search engines to find information, products and services on the Internet. Whilst Google does not exactly reveal how to achieve high rankings saying, "Sites' positions in our search results are determined based on a number of factors..." Google does, however, provide Webmaster guidelines for website owners (and search engine optimisers). Google's Webmaster guidelines are summarised below in three main categories: content, technical and quality.

Content Guidelines

By thinking of your website as a printed publication, it's very easy to memorise these guidelines. That's because many of the elements required by Google in a website are those of a book: an attractive, readable cover, copyright, introduction, contents page with meaningful chapter headings, chapters of clear, well-written text, glossary and index.

  • Make a site with a clear hierarchy and text links
  • Offer a site map to your users
  • Create a useful, information-rich web site and write clear accurate pages
  • Use text instead of images wherever possible as the Google crawler doesn't recognise text contained in images
  • Check your website with a text browser.

Technical Guidelines

  • If you use dynamic pages (i.e. the URL contains a "?" character), be aware that not every search engine spider crawls dynamic pages as well as static pages
  • Allow search bots to crawl your sites without session IDs or arguments that track their path through the site
  • Make use of the robots.txt file on your web server
  • If you use a content management system, make sure that the system creates pages and links that search engines can crawl
  • Use robots.txt to prevent crawling of search results pages or other auto-generated pages
  • Test your site to make sure that it appears correctly in different browsers
  • Monitor your site's performance and optimise load times.

Quality Guidelines

  • Make pages primarily for users, not for search engines
  • Avoid tricks intended to improve search engine rankings
  • Avoid hidden text or hidden links
  • Don't use cloaking or sneaky redirects
  • Don't send automated queries to Google
  • Don't create pages, sub-domains or domains with substantially duplicate content
  • Avoid "doorway" pages created just for search engines, or "cookie cutter" approaches publishing little or no original content
  • Provide unique and relevant content that gives users a reason to visit your site first.

Search engine optimisers help website owners (and web designers) create 'search engine friendly websites' through their knowledge of Webmaster guidelines, SEO techniques and publishing, and also their skills in editing and writing. If you would rather focus on your business rather than the business of publishing, a good website designer and SEO can create a Google-friendly/search engine-friendly website for you. But if nothing else, keep the above guidelines in mind when you commission, or do, any work on your website.

Glossary

If any of these terms sound like a foreign language to you, please don't stew about it. You can refer to the (easy-to-understand) glossary of terms for more information.

Store Them Away

If you want to keep any pages tucked away in your online pantry of goodies, simply bookmark the relevant page in your browser by clicking:

  • 'Favourites' (if you're using Internet Explorer/IE)
  • 'Bookmarks' (if you're using Firefox).

"Overview of the guidelines published by Google on how to create and publish search engine friendly websites."