Google's Search Engine Optimization Guide

Google's Search Engine Optimization Guide

It is good to know straight from the horse’s mouth about SEO especially it is from the No 1 search engine, Google, itself. Recently Google has come out with a starter guide for SEO. I take the opportunity to make a hard copy for myself so that I can refer to it from time to time. 

 These are the subjects covered in the Starter Guide: 

 · The title of the homepage and the title for each page 

· Meta tag

 · Structure of your URL

 · Site Navigation

 · Quality content and services

 · Anchor text 

· Heading tags

 · Images

 · Robots.txt

 · Rel=”nofollow” 

· Website promotion 

· Webmaster tools 

· Google Analytics 

· A list of helpful resources

 It is stated in the guide that creating compelling and useful content will likely influence your website more than any of the other factors discussed here. Users know good content when they see it and will likely want to direct other users to it. This could be through blog posts, social media services, email, forums, or other means. Organic or word-of-mouth buzz is what helps build your site's reputation with both users and Google, and it rarely comes without quality content.

The big challenge here is to come up with quality content on a regular and consistent basis to attract users. You can read the full text at: http://search.conduit.com/ResultsExt.aspx?ctid=CT1723776&SearchSource=2&q=search+engine+optimization+guide

SEO, Keywords and Your Article Title

According to Wikipedia search engine optimization (SEO) is the process of improving the volume and quality of traffic to a website from search engines via “natural” (“organics” or “algorithmic”) search results. Accordingly, the most crucial element in SEO is the keywords or key phrases. And the keywords of your article title are the most important: In order to show you the relationship between SEO and the keywords of the article title, let me present the following actual results from Google search: 

 Date: November 7, 2008 Search words: bruce lee smart My article title: Bruce Lee (1940 – 1973) and his SMART goals My Article Ranking: Page 1 Search Results: 1,300,000

 Date: November 6, 2008 Search words: Citibank giant My article title: Citibank-Giant Credit Card for Extra Happiness My Article Ranking: Page 1 Search Results: 629,000 

 Date: November 7, 2008 Search words: gphone apps My article title: Google’s GPhone, Apps, and Chrome My Article Ranking: Page 1 Search Results: 13,700,000 

 Date: November 7, 2008 Search words: characteristics of good workers My article title: The characteristics of a good worker My Article Ranking: Page 1 Search Results: 9, 870,000 

 The above results are extracted from statcounter.com’s (see image) report on Recent Keyword Activity. From the above, you will notice that your article title decides the fate of your article. It can be highly ranked or buried among other articles. How to have SEO friendly article titles? Here are a few tips: 

 • A longer article title is better than a short one because a longer title tells more about your article content. As an example, an article with the title “Heart –Love it or Die in 5 ways “is better than just “Heart”. A longer title attracts more traffic.

 • Avoid using junk words like "a" or "the". Start your title with your article subject. As an example instead of using “The Health Benefits of Banana” start with the keyword: “Banana - The Health Benefits”.

 • The title should be compelling. For example, a “How To” title and a title that ends with” Tips “are very popular among readers. 

 • Make sure that you can deliver the content to match the title or else the readers will be pissed off. 

 • Be natural about the title. You are writing for your readers and not for the search engines.