Google guidelines for SEO are necessary to follow in achieving sustainable results. Many SEO professionals try to decode SEO Google guidelines and get involved in shady tactics which are also known as black hat SEO practices. Initially, they may feel that they have succeeded in making Google tricked but it is only a matter of time until they get caught up by Google. From time to time, Google updates its algorithm like Penguin or Panda de-rank scheme, leaving many website owners behind their competitors.
Basically, you should only be concerned about one thing that is to produce high-quality unique content and offer the right information to the user.
In short, if a user likes you, Google will also like you!
What is Google Guidelines for SEO?
Over time, Google has updated its algorithm thousands of times a year. Sometimes, these changes go unnoticed as they are very minor and sometimes, Google releases full documentation about the new update.
Google’s Guidelines for SEO are crucial in producing sustainable results using methods that are designed by Google.
If you refrain from following Google guidelines SEO, you may expect demolition, spam, penalty, or even removal of your website from search engines. In case your website is affected by a spam action, then it will no longer be seen on Google or any of its partnered sites.
Therefore, you must understand what google says to avoid potential failures and prospective outrage to your site. Below we have laid down General Guidelines that Google uses to find, index, and rank your site.
Allow Google to find your pages easily
- Referring link
Your pages on your site should be easily reachable by a link from another findable page. The referring link must contain text, images, alt attributes, and must be <a> tags with an href attribute.
- Sitemap file
Offer a sitemap file along with links that connect to important pages on your site. Also, share a page with a list of links that can be easy to read by visitors. This may often be known as a site index or site map page.
- Be reasonable with links
When you are adding links on a page, use a limited number of links. Stuffing your page with only links should be avoided or vice versa i.e. not linking at all.
- The webserver must supports HTTP header
Be sure that your web server supports the If-Modified-Since HTTP header. This feature will help Google to tell whether your content has changed since the last crawl. If your website supports this feature, you will be saved from bandwidth and overhead.
- Robot.txt file
Using the robots.txt file on your web server will help you to manage your crawling budget and prevent crawling from infinite spaces like search result pages. Keep your robots.txt file updated. You can use the robots.txt testing tool to test the coverage and syntax of your rbot.txt file.
Ask Google to crawl
You can simply ask Google to crawl your website pages by submitting your website link on the Google search console and waiting until your URL crawls. Also, you should use a search console every often to find out whether your pages are online or not.
Make your web pages such that Google Understands it
- Informational site
Create your site useful by including some informational rich content, write your page clearly with the right motive, and describe content accurately so that users get the desired information.
- Include keywords
You can survey the keywords your user would use to find your site and include those words in your website content.
- Use right elements
Your site must meet all the requirements seen by a system such as writing your <title> and alt attributes with the keyword and must be descriptive, precise, and specific.
- Have a clear set-up
Your site should be designed in the right format and must use a clear and conceptual page hierarchy. For instance, your website header should be clear with the right image, followed by your services, about, and so on. You can put images and videos to complement your website and make it helpful for the audience.
- Check whether your site pages are getting indexed or not
You must understand your site’s content and use images, CSS files, JavaScript files that can be crawled and indexed. You can check from the URL Inspection tool and use the robots.txt Tester tool to debug directives in your robots.txt file.
- Let Search Engine Crawl without Session IDs or URL
Help your search engine bot to crawl your site without Session ID or URL parameters. These methods may be helpful to track individual user behaviour, while the access pattern of the bot is completely different.
- Site content must be visible by default
Make your site content important and be seen by default. Google can crawl HTML content using navigational elements like tabs, expanding sections and ensure that your important information is visible in the default page view.
- The promotional link must not affect search engine ranking
You can use robots.txt, rel=”nofollow”, or rel=” sponsored” format your links to stop those promotional links from getting followed by a crawler.
Google guidelines for website design also play an important role. If your website is easy to navigate, the user will have a good experience which will have more site engagement. In short, Google will also love it!
- Use text more
Use written content (text) more in your website to denote important names or keywords instead of images, videos etc. Or if you are using an image then use the alt attribute and include a description of the image you are trying to portray.
- Check broken link issue
Keep a regular check on all live links and ensure that it does not redirect to the 404 error page. Every link on your website must redirect to the right destination.
- Optimize your page loading times
Fast sites make users happier and they engage more with website.no, to gain users’ interest and attention at the same time, keep a check on your website loading speed on tools like PageSpeed Insights and Webpagetest.org.
- Your site should be accessible for all device types
Create your site such that it is visible on all device types such as Mobile, Desktop, and Tablet. You can use the mobile-friendly testing tool to find out or can check it live on your phone. The tool will help you give the right feedback on what needs to be fixed to make your website mobile-friendly.
- Your site should support all browsers
Test that your site supports all browsers and works correctly in all of them. If you fail to do so then your site won’t be able to reach all users and will have a bad impression on Google as well.
- Secure site connection
Using HTTPS on your site is very important to secure the site’s connection. This will also indicate to the user that they are browsing the safe site on the web.
- Pages must be useful for readers
Test your web page’s usability with a screen reader to find out that they are useful for readers with visual impairments.
Generate High-Quality Content liked by user and Google
Google give huge importance to quality content and which is why if they found any copied content or any form of deceptive or manipulative behaviour, it may hurt your site. Probably, it could lead to a ban.
All the website owners who use their energies in supporting basic principles will let the user enjoy a much better experience as compared to those who find loopholes to rank better
Here are some tips to make your website loved by Google and things to avoid any pitfalls that lead to spam.
What to follow:
- Make your web pages mainly for visitors and not for search engines.
- Don’t mislead your users with useless information or fake information.
- Before creating any content, ask yourself, whether it will help your visitors or not?
- Make your website unique, valuable, and engaging.
- Avoid using automatically generated content from any paraphrasing tool.
- Do not participate in link schemes, cloaking, sneaky redirects, hidden text or links, doorway pages, abraded content, or participating in affiliate programs without offering good enough value to users.
- Keep a regular check of your site for hacking or any hacked content.
If your site follows Google guidelines for SEO and evades from following any ill practices, then your site will never be removed or spammed.
Take the precautions and follow only authentic and white hat SEO methods to uplift your web page rank.
Also, in any case, you feel to take an expert’s help then our expert SEO is available just a call away.
Share with us in the comments below what Google guidelines you have learned now which you didn’t know before!
