Google SEO – How to Stay on the Search Giant’s Good Graces
One of the most important things to consider when creating a website is whether or not users will be able to find that website. Setting up a website for SEO (search engine optimization) will give websites a higher relevance rating on search engines such as Google. Fortunately, there are a number of methods and tricks that webmasters can use when designing their sites to give them an edge by adhering to the rules of Google SEO.
Website and Titles
Unsurprisingly, titles are important in Google SEO – after all, the first thing a user reads after making a Google search is often a title. Every page on a given website should have a different title so the search engine is able to distinguish pages from each other. Titles should be accurate, so the search engine can link the title back to the webpage, and short, so titles won’t get cut off when they appear in the results of a search.
Images and Filenames
Not unlike page titles, filenames for images should have descriptive and varied titles. When adding images, designers should take advantage of the “alt” attribute of images to supply them with descriptive text in the event that they don’t load for users. In addition to making websites easier to navigate, using filenames and alt attributes helps the Google search engine to understand what a page is about. It also helps pages gain a higher relevance on a Google Image search.
Description Meta Tag
Using the description meta tag to attach a summary of the webpage helps the Google search engine determine what a given page is about. This also makes it easier for users who find the page in a search, as Google can display the description in search results and bold words in the description that were a part of the search. Ideally, each page on a website should have its own description tag to further help Google distinguish different pages on the same website. In doing this, it also becomes easier for different pages from the same website to appear on the same Google search.
Optimize Website URLs
When designing webpage URLs, the structure of each one should be as straightforward as possible, ideally in a fashion that is easily readable. Google has an easier time filing simple URLs than complicated ones. For example, separating words in URLs with hyphens makes it easier for Google to file websites and match them under searches. On top of that, users looking at websites with clean, readable URLs in their searches tend to prefer them over URLs that use long ID numbers or are confusing.
Google SEO is mostly based on the philosophy that interesting and useful sites will make themselves noticed by Google search engines. However, having well-organized, interesting web pages that utilize aspects that Google looks for and displays in a webpage is strong search engine optimization that can go a long way in raising the relevance of a given webpage in Google’s index.
