Google’s Search Engine Optimization Starter Guide Review

A couple of weeks ago Google released an updated version of their SEO Starter Guide which they had originally released about two years prior. Last night I finally had a moment to sit down and read it.

As expected, it was about 30 pages of primarily basic on-page search engine optimization stuff. Most of which I have already covered on this blog. But, it is still worth the measly hour it took me to read it. So I highly recommend giving it a look, especially if your fairly new to learning SEO. What it will tell you is some best practices for getting your pages crawled and indexed properly, however in today’s competitive market don’t expect that following this guide alone will help rank your new website well enough to be competitive. You’ll will also need to focus heavily on obtaining back links and keyword research for that.

Summary of What You Will Find in Google’s SEO Starter Guide

SEO Basics

• Create unique, accurate page titles – page 4
• Make use of the “description” meta tag – page 6

Improving Site Structure

• Improving the structure of your URLs – page 8
• Make your website easier to navigate – page 10

Optimizing Content

• Offer quality content and services – page 14
• Write better anchor text – page 16
• Optimize your use of images – page 18
• Use heading tags appropriately – page 20

Dealing with Crawlers

• Make effective use of robots.txt – page 21
• Be aware of rel=”nofollow” for links – page 22

SEO for Mobile Phones

• Notify Google of mobile sites – page 24
• Guide mobile users accurately – page 26

Promotion and Analysis

• Promote your website in the right ways – page 28
• Make use of free webmaster tools – page 30

And, in case you didn’t find it above, here is a direct link to download the PDF.

If you’re fairly new here and or to search engine optimization, you also might want to check out my top 10 basic SEO tips for new web sites if you haven’t already.