A Breakdown of the Google Webmaster Guidelines
Have you ever actually stopped and taken a moment to really look through what Google has to say is good and bad when it comes to how you conduct yourself online from a communication and business standpoint? You should always follow the Google Webmaster Guidelines when marketing your business online to ensure the utmost safety of your website. The purpose of this post is to summarize a breakdown of some of the important areas within the Google webmaster guidelines and as they pertain to search engine optimization.
“Avoid tricks intended to improve search engine rankings. A good rule of thumb is whether you’d feel comfortable explaining what you’ve done to a website that competes with you. Another useful test is to ask, “Does this help my users? Would I do this if search engines didn’t exist?”
This is great because people still feel that performing tricks in the search space is good solid search engine marketing and this couldn’t be further from the truth. You should never worry about performing any sort of tricks online when it comes to spreading your website message.
“Hiding text or links in your content can cause your site to be perceived as untrustworthy since it presents information to search engines differently than to visitors. Text (such as excessive keywords) can be hidden in several ways, including:
• Using white text on a white background
• Including text behind an image
• Using CSS to hide text
• Setting the font size to 0”
Oldest trick in the book that is guaranteed to get you un-indexed in the search engines. This is a black hat trick that Google hates and will reprimand your business if you are caught using it.
“Keyword stuffing” refers to the practice of loading a webpage with keywords in an attempt to manipulate a site’s ranking in Google’s search results. Filling pages with keywords results in a negative user experience, and can harm your site’s ranking. Focus on creating useful, information-rich content that uses keywords appropriately and in context.”
Don’t stuff your pages with keywords because not only does Google really dislike this but the user experience becomes extremely tainted. You want your content to flow naturally so your readers can read the information easily.
Take the time to really understand Google’s webmaster guidelines before you start marketing your business so you can ensure the safety of your livelihood for the long term. In addition to reading and understanding the Google webmaster guidelines, I also recommend that you read the SEO section at Google as well.
9 Responses to “A Breakdown of the Google Webmaster Guidelines”
The Search Engine Optimization (SEO) Journal is Written by SEO Expert:
Nick Stamoulis
Tel - 781-999-1222
nick@brickmarketing.com
Brick Marketing - SEO Company
Basics, but yes, some points are forgotten by most people eventually, thanks for refreshing the basics..
Peace,
Amod
We still see keyword stuffing taken to an absurd level.
I say to clients that a page has got 2 jobs to do – yes, to attract searchers but also critically to ‘sell’ to the human visitor. There’s little point getting people to the page if you then put them off you!
Great article! Very fine line between “keyword stuffing” and using that keyword(s) in your title, description, H1, bullets, and paragraphs (alt text) on the home page or other keywords on sub-pages. We usually try to use the main keyword on the home page about 5 times as naturally as possible. Other keywords on sub-pages 2-3 and 2 times in blogs. Nick any thoughts on numbers. I know every site is different, but you still need a road map and every site still only has 1 landing page.
I have been following your blogs and those of other experts. Still seeing that I’m not using black hat tacticts my site isn’t ranking. Could you tell me if I have repeated pages on another site would that hurt me? I use calendars and descriptions of over 140 music shows and reproduce that on one of my other domains. Coulkd this hurt my page ranking?
WHAT ABOUT ALEXA RANKING AS A TOOL FOR GOOGLE BETTER RANKING?
Hi Alex,
Alexa is more of a visitor reporting type of tool, not SEO type tool…thanks for reading!
Nick
I’ve always found your information helpful. It’s interesting how this content is mentioned so often and yet so many fail to understanding the value in not following what it says.
Hi Jay,
Thanks for your kind words and for reading!
It is indeed truly amazing how many people ignore (or don’t pay attention fully) to Google’s Webmaster Guidelines….
Take Care,
Nick
If you want Google to acknowledge your site and not blacklist it you better pay attention to their guidelines.
Keyword stuffing they don`t like – so avoid it.
Natural wording with keywords are the best -and content , content, content.
Thanks for the post Nick
Have a Great Day