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Welcome to Google's Search Engine Optimization Starter Guide. This document first began as an

effort to help teams within Google, but we thought it'd be just as useful to webmasters that are new to

the topic of search engine optimization and wish to improve their sites' interaction with both users and

search engines. Although this guide won't tell you any secrets that'll automatically rank your site first

for queries in Google (sorry!), following the best practices outlined below will make it easier for search

engines to both crawl and index your content.

Search engine optimization is often about making small modifications to parts of your website. When

viewed individually, these changes might seem like incremental improvements, but when combined

with other optimizations, they could have a noticeable impact on your site's user experience and

performance in organic search results. You're likely already familiar with many of the topics in this

guide, because they're essential ingredients for any webpage, but you may not be making the most

out of them.

Even though this guide's title contains the words "search engine", we'd like to say that you should

base your optimization decisions first and foremost on what's best for the visitors of your site. They're

the main consumers of your content and are using search engines to find your work. Focusing too

hard on specific tweaks to gain ranking in the organic results of search engines may not deliver the

desired results. Search engine optimization is about putting your site's best foot forward when it

comes to visibility in search engines.

An example may help our explanations, so we've created a fictitious website to follow throughout the

guide. For each topic, we've fleshed out enough information about the site to illustrate the point being

covered. Here's some background information about the site we'll use:

• Website/business name: "Brandon's Baseball Cards"

• Domain name: brandonsbaseballcards.com

• Focus: Online-only baseball card sales, price guides, articles, and news content

• Size: Small, ~250 pages

Your site may be smaller or larger than this and offer vastly different content, but the optimization

topics we discussed below should apply to sites of all sizes and types.

Good practices for page title tags

• Accurately describe the page's content - Choose a title that effectively communicates the

topic of the page's content.

Avoid:

• choosing a title that has no relation to the content on the page

• using default or vague titles like "Untitled" or "New Page 1"

• Create unique title tags for each page - Each of your pages should ideally have a unique

title tag, which helps Google know how the page is distinct from the others on your site.

Avoid:

• using a single title tag across all of your site's pages or a large group of pages

• Use brief, but descriptive titles - Titles can be both short and informative. If the title is too

long, Google will show only a portion of it in the search result.

Avoid:

• using extremely lengthy titles that are unhelpful to users

• stuffing unneeded keywords in your title tags

Good practices for description meta tags

• Accurately summarize the page's content - Write a description that would both inform and

interest users if they saw your description meta tag as a snippet in a search result.

Avoid:

• writing a description meta tag that has no relation to the content on the page

• using generic descriptions like "This is a webpage" or "Page about baseball

cards"

• filling the description with only keywords

• copy and pasting the entire content of the document into the description meta tags.

Good practices for URL structure

• Use words in URLs - URLs with words that are relevant to your site's content and structure

are friendlier for visitors navigating your site. Visitors remember them better and might be

more willing to link to them.

Avoid:

• using lengthy URLs with unnecessary parameters and session IDs

• choosing generic page names like "page1.html"

• using excessive keywords like "baseball-cards-baseball-cards-baseballcards.

htm"

• Create a simple directory structure - Use a directory structure that organizes your content

well and is easy for visitors to know where they're at on your site. Try using your directory

structure to indicate the type of content found at that URL.

Avoid:

• having deep nesting of subdirectories like ".../dir1/dir2/dir3/dir4/dir5/dir6/

page.html"

• using directory names that have no relation to the content in them

Good practices for anchor text
• Choose descriptive text - The anchor text you use for a link should provide at least a basic
idea of what the page linked to is about.
Avoid:
• writing generic anchor text like "page", "article", or "click here"
• using text that is off-topic or has no relation to the content of the page linked to
• using the page's URL as the anchor text in most cases (although there are
certainly legitimate uses of this, such as promoting or referencing a new

• Write concise text - Aim for short but descriptive text—usually a few words or a short
phrase.
Avoid:
• writing long anchor text, such as a lengthy sentence or short paragraph of text
• Format links so they're easy to spot - Make it easy for users to distinguish between
regular text and the anchor text of your links. Your content becomes less useful if users
miss the links or accidentally click them.
Avoid:
• using CSS or text styling that make links look just like regular text
• Think about anchor text for internal links too - You may usually think about linking in
terms of pointing to outside websites, but paying more attention to the anchor text used for
internal links can help users and Google navigate your site better.
Avoid:
• using excessively keyword-filled or lengthy anchor text just for search engines
• creating unnecessary links that don't help with the user's navigation of the site

Good practices for heading tags
• Imagine you're writing an outline - Similar to writing an outline for a large paper, put some
thought into what the main points and sub-points of the content on the page will be and
decide where to use heading tags appropriately.
Avoid:
• placing text in heading tags that wouldn't be helpful in defining the structure of
the page
• using heading tags where other tags like and may be more
appropriate
• erratically moving from one heading tag size to another
• Use headings sparingly across the page - Use heading tags where it makes sense. Too
many heading tags on a page can make it hard for users to scan the content and determine
where one topic ends and another begins.
Avoid:
• excessively using heading tags throughout the page
• putting all of the page's text into a heading tag
• using heading tags only for styling text and not presenting structure

Good practices for images
• Use brief, but descriptive filenames and alt text - Like many of the other parts of the page
targeted for optimization, filenames and alt text (for ASCII languages) are best when they're
short, but descriptive.
Avoid:
• using generic filenames like "image1.jpg", "pic.gif", "1.jpg" when possible
(some sites with thousands of images might consider automating the naming of
images)
• writing extremely lengthy filenames
• stuffing keywords into alt text or copying and pasting entire sentences
• Supply alt text when using images as links - If you do decide to use an image as a link,
filling out its alt text helps Google understand more about the page you're linking to. Imagine
that you're writing anchor text for a text link.
Avoid:
• writing excessively long alt text that would be considered spammy
• using only image links for your site's navigation
• Store images in a directory of their own - Instead of having image files spread out in
numerous directories and subdirectories across your domain, consider consolidating your
images into a single directory (e.g. brandonsbaseballcards.com/images/). This simplifies the
path to your images.

Good practices for robots.txt
• Use more secure methods for sensitive content - You shouldn't feel comfortable using
robots.txt to block sensitive or confidential material. One reason is that search engines could
still reference the URLs you block (showing just the URL, no title or snippet) if there happen
to be links to those URLs somewhere on the Internet (like referrer logs). Also, non-compliant
or rogue search engines that don't acknowledge the Robots Exclusion Standard could
disobey the instructions of your robots.txt. Finally, a curious user could examine the
directories or subdirectories in your robots.txt file and guess the URL of the content that youdon't want seen. Encrypting the content or password-protecting it with .htaccess are more
secure alternatives.
Avoid:
• allowing search result-like pages to be crawled (users dislike leaving one
search result page and landing on another search result page that doesn't add
significant value for them)
• allowing a large number of auto-generated pages with the same or only slightly
different content to be crawled: "Should these 100,000 near-duplicate pages
really be in a search engine's index?"
• allowing URLs created as a result of proxy services to be crawled

Promote your website in the right ways
While most of the links to your site will be gained gradually, as people discover your content through
search or other ways and link to it, Google understands that you'd like to let others know about the
hard work you've put into your content. Effectively promoting your new content will lead to faster
discovery by those who are interested in the same subject. As with most points covered in this
document, taking these recommendations to an extreme could actually harm the reputation of your
site.
Good practices for promoting your website
• Blog about new content or services - A blog post on your own site letting your visitor base
know that you added something new is a great way to get the word out about new content or
services. Other webmasters who follow your site or RSS feed could pick the story up as well.
• Don't forget about offline promotion - Putting effort into the offline promotion of your
company or site can also be rewarding. For example, if you have a business site, make sure
its URL is listed on your business cards, letterhead, posters, etc. You could also send out
recurring newsletters to clients through the mail letting them know about new content on the
company's website.
• Know about social media sites - Sites built around user interaction and sharing have made
it easier to match interested groups of people up with relevant content.
Avoid:
• attempting to promote each new, small piece of content you create; go for big,
interesting items
• involving your site in schemes where your content is artificially promoted to the
top of these services

• Reach out to those in your site's related community - Chances are, there are a number
of sites that cover topic areas similar to yours. Opening up communication with these sites is
usually beneficial. Hot topics in your niche or community could spark additional ideas for
content or building a good community resource.
Avoid:
• spamming link requests out to all sites related to your topic area
• purchasing links from another site with the aim of getting PageRank instead of
traffic