Google Offers SEO Starter Guide

Nov 12, 2008 at 7:34pm ET by Matt McGee

Google is getting into the SEO consulting business. Well, not quite. But, Google is now formally offering an “SEO Starter Guide” with practical advice for webmasters about improving search engine visibility and increasing traffic to a web site.

It comes in the form of a 22-page PDF announced today on the Webmaster Central blog and at the PubCon show in Las Vegas. According to the Google reps at PubCon, this is the same guide Google uses internally for its own sites (YouTube, etc.).

The guide is well written and geared toward webmasters and business owners who need a basic training in SEO. Topics covered include:

Page Titles
Description Meta Tag
URL Structure
Site Navigation
Creating Quality Content
Anchor Text
Heading Tags (H1s, H2s, etc.)
Image Optimization
Robots.txt
Rel=”nofollow”
Website Promotion
Webmaster Tools
Analytics
More Resources

As a longtime SEO, I’m most struck by the fact that an entire section of the guide is devoted to how to use the rel=”nofollow” attribute on individual links. Many in the SEO industry have thought this attribute is a red flag, something that tells Google that a professional SEO has been tweaking the page, and not something that an average webmaster would even know about. That’s clearly not the case anymore; rel=”nofollow” is more mainstream now thanks to a full page of explanation in this SEO guide. Have a look:

There are one or two other minor issues that some SEO consultants might quibble about (like the recommendation to use an XML Sitemap, something that many SEOs feel is unnecessary for most websites). But on the whole, it’s an excellent document covering many of the things you’d want in an SEO 101-type guide.

Matt McGee is the Search Engine Land Assignment Editor, and offers search marketing consulting and training to businesses of all sizes. He blogs at Small Business Search Marketing and HyperlocalBlogger.com.

See more articles by Matt McGee >

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