Google’s (SEO) Search Engine Optimization requirements

Your site may be small or large and offer different content, but the Google optimization tips should apply to sites of all sizes and types. The first step in optimizing your site or weblog is to first and foremost focus on what’s best for the visitors of your site. Once you know this you can optimize your site for search engines.

Create unique page titles

A Title speaks for its self, be it a book, a movie or anything. The same way a page title is very important for a website and you need to ensure that you take your time to prepare the best page title that you can. Make sure that it is as unique as possible. For example even though that you will find hundreds of SEO blogs and websites, you will notice that they all have unique titles and specific to the services they offer. 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.

Make best use of the “description” meta tag

The description meta tag gives Google and other search engines a summary of what the page is about. Whereas a page’s title may be a few words or a phrase, the description meta tag might be a sentence or two or a short paragraph. Like the <title> tag, the description meta tag is placed within the <head> tag of your HTML document.

Provide quality content

Creating compelling content will likely influence your website more than any of the other SEO factors. Users know good content when they see it and will likely want to direct other users to it. This could be through blog posts, social media services, email, forums, or other means. Organic or word-of-mouth buzz is what helps build your site’s reputation with both users and Google, and it rarely comes without quality content. Write, Write, Write… this is the best step to make sure that your content is indexed well by Google. An important point to note, ensure that your content is as unique as possible.

Write good anchor text

Writing good anchor text is another important factor that affects your ranking and positioning in Google. Anchor text are like Keywords with Hyperlinks and search engines love them. Anchor text is the clickable text that users will see as a result of a link, and is placed within the anchor
tag <a href=”…”></a>. Avoid writing generic anchor text like “page”, “article”, or “click here”.

Use heading tags appropriately

Heading tags (not to be confused with the <head> HTML tag or HTTP headers) are used to present structure on the page to users. There are six sizes of heading tags, beginning with <h1>, the most important, and ending with <h6>, the least important. Often try using Hyperlinks to H1 tags to making it an effective anchor text as well. Use headings sparingly across the page.

Optimize your use of images

Images may seem like a straightforward component of your site, but you can optimize your use of them. All images can have a distinct filename and “alt” attribute, both of which you should take advantage of. The “alt” attribute allows you to specify alternative text for the image if it cannot be displayed for some reason. You will notice that most webmaster miss out on this aspect of optimization. You will often come to see the absence of the alt tag. This is an essential part of optimizing images. This system comes handy when you are running a gallery based blog or photography based website.

Be aware of rel=”nofollow” for links

Many are puzzled and confused as to how this entire system of follow and nofollow works. Well its always a mystery, and the fun part of it is to solve it yourself.So take some time and explore and learn as much as you can in the process. Here are a few tips to help you understand this concept. Setting the value of the “rel” attribute of a link to “nofollow” will tell Google that certain links on your site shouldn’t be followed or pass your page’s reputation to the pages linked to. Nofollowing a link is adding rel=”nofollow” inside of the link’s anchor tag. Another use of nofollow is when you’re writing content and wish to reference a website, but don’t want to pass your reputation on to it.

Promote your website in the right ways

Some of the best way to promote your website as Google suggests is to Blog about new content or services – A blog post on your own site letting your visitors 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. 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.

Most of the content of this post is taken from or referred from Googles Search Engine Optimization Starter Guide.

This brings us to the end of “Google’s (SEO) Search Engine Optimization requirements” Thanks for reading.