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Google's Search Engine Optimization
Starter Guide
Version 1.1, published 13 November 2008
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.
Search engine optimization affects only organic search results, not paid or "sponsored" results,
such as Google AdWords
Google's Search Engine Optimization Starter Guide, Version 1.1, published 13 November 2008
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.
We hope our guide gives you some fresh ideas on how to improve your website, and we'd love to
hear your questions, feedback, and success stories in the Google Webmaster Help Group.
Create unique, accurate page titles
A title tag tells both users and search engines what the topic of a particular page is. The <title> tag
should be placed within the <head> tag of the HTML document. Ideally, you should create a unique
title for each page on your site.
The title of the homepage for our baseball card site, which lists the business name and three
main focus areas
Google's Search Engine Optimization Starter Guide, Version 1.1, published 13 November 2008
If your document appears in a search results page, the contents of the title tag will usually appear in
the first line of the results (If you're unfamiliar with the different parts of a Google search result, you
might want to check out the anatomy of a search result video by Google engineer Matt Cutts, and this
helpful diagram of a Google search results page.) Words in the title are bolded if they appear in the
user's search query. This can help users recognize if the page is likely to be relevant to their search.
The title for your homepage can list the name of your website/business and could include other bits of
important information like the physical location of the business or maybe a few of its main focuses or
offerings.
A user performs the query [baseball cards]
Our homepage shows up as a result, with the title listed on the first line (notice that the query
terms the user searched for appear in bold)
If the user clicks the result and visits the page, the page's title will appear at the top of the
browser
Titles for deeper pages on your site should accurately describe the focus of that particular page and
also might include your site or business name.
A user performs the query [rarest baseball cards]
Google's Search Engine Optimization Starter Guide, Version 1.1, published 13 November 2008
Starter Guide
Version 1.1, published 13 November 2008
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.
Search engine optimization affects only organic search results, not paid or "sponsored" results,
such as Google AdWords
Google's Search Engine Optimization Starter Guide, Version 1.1, published 13 November 2008
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.
We hope our guide gives you some fresh ideas on how to improve your website, and we'd love to
hear your questions, feedback, and success stories in the Google Webmaster Help Group.
Create unique, accurate page titles
A title tag tells both users and search engines what the topic of a particular page is. The <title> tag
should be placed within the <head> tag of the HTML document. Ideally, you should create a unique
title for each page on your site.
The title of the homepage for our baseball card site, which lists the business name and three
main focus areas
Google's Search Engine Optimization Starter Guide, Version 1.1, published 13 November 2008
If your document appears in a search results page, the contents of the title tag will usually appear in
the first line of the results (If you're unfamiliar with the different parts of a Google search result, you
might want to check out the anatomy of a search result video by Google engineer Matt Cutts, and this
helpful diagram of a Google search results page.) Words in the title are bolded if they appear in the
user's search query. This can help users recognize if the page is likely to be relevant to their search.
The title for your homepage can list the name of your website/business and could include other bits of
important information like the physical location of the business or maybe a few of its main focuses or
offerings.
A user performs the query [baseball cards]
Our homepage shows up as a result, with the title listed on the first line (notice that the query
terms the user searched for appear in bold)
If the user clicks the result and visits the page, the page's title will appear at the top of the
browser
Titles for deeper pages on your site should accurately describe the focus of that particular page and
also might include your site or business name.
A user performs the query [rarest baseball cards]
Google's Search Engine Optimization Starter Guide, Version 1.1, published 13 November 2008
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