Back to Basics: Google Guidelines

After working on sites that have been around for years, you seem to forget how they got where they are today. Here’s a list of Do’s and Don’ts from Google Webmaster Support to get your website found, ranked and indexed. Great for those of you who may be thinking about redesigning your site or starting from scratch.

1. Get found, searched, indexed and ranked.
   • Submit a Sitemap using Google Webmaster Tools.
   • Make sure all the sites that should know about your pages are aware your site is online.
2. Google design and content guidelines:
   • Have clear hierarchy and text links
   • Offer a site map
   • Think about the keywords and phrases(long tail keywords) that users will type to find your page–make sure these are used within the site
   • Use text over Images
   • Make Title tags and Alt Tags descriptive and accurate
   • Link to Quality sites
   • Update frequently with fresh content
3. Google Technical Guidelines
   • Test your site to make sure that it appears correctly in different browsers.
   • Monitor sites performance and load times.
   • Use Robot.txt files
4. Quality Guidelines
   • Make pages primarily for users, not for search engines
   • Avoid tricks intended to improve search engine rankings.
   • Don’t participate in link schemes.
   • Don’t use unauthorized computer programs to submit pages, check rankings on a daily basis
5. Google’s  Don’ts:
   • Avoid hidden text or hidden links.
   • Don’t use cloaking or sneaky redirects.
   • Don’t send automated queries to Google.
   • Don’t load pages with irrelevant keywords.
   • Don’t create multiple pages, subdomains, or domains with substantially duplicate content.
   • Don’t create pages with malicious behavior.

For more details check out  Webmaster Guidelines from Google.

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