Webmaster Guidelines for Search Engine Optimization (SEO) | Google Help

When your site is ready:

• Submit it to Google at http://www.google.com/submityourcontent/.


• Submit a Sitemap using Google Webmaster Tools. Google uses your Sitemap to learn about the structure of your site and to increase our coverage of your webpages.


• Make sure all the sites that should know about your pages are aware your site is online.

Design and content guidelines

• Make a site with a clear hierarchy and text links. Every page should be reachable from at least one static text link.


• Offer a site map to your users with links that point to the important parts of your site. If the site map has an extremely large number of links, you may want to break the site map into multiple pages.


• Keep the links on a given page to a reasonable number.


• Create a useful, information-rich site, and write pages that clearly and accurately describe your content.


• Think about the words users would type to find your pages, and make sure that your site actually includes those words within it.


• Try to use text instead of images to display important names, content, or links. The Google crawler doesn't recognize text contained in images. If you must use images for textual content, consider using the "ALT" attribute to include a few words of descriptive text.


• Make sure that your <title> elements and ALT attributes are descriptive and accurate.


• Check for broken links and correct HTML.


• If you decide to use dynamic pages (i.e., the URL contains a "?" character), be aware that not every search engine spider crawls dynamic pages as well as static pages. It helps to keep the parameters short and the number of them few.


• Review our recommended best practices for images, video and rich snippets.

Technical guidelines

• Use a text browser such as Lynx to examine your site, because most search engine spiders see your site much as Lynx would. If fancy features such as JavaScript, cookies, session IDs, frames, DHTML, or Flash keep you from seeing all of your site in a text browser, then search engine spiders may have trouble crawling your site.


• Allow search bots to crawl your sites without session IDs or arguments that track their path through the site. These techniques are useful for tracking individual user behavior, but the access pattern of bots is entirely different. Using these techniques may result in incomplete indexing of your site, as bots may not be able to eliminate URLs that look different but actually point to the same page.


• Make sure your web server supports the If-Modified-Since HTTP header. This feature allows your web server to tell Google whether your content has changed since we last crawled your site. Supporting this feature saves you bandwidth and overhead.


• Make use of the robots.txt file on your web server. This file tells crawlers which directories can or cannot be crawled. Make sure it's current for your site so that you don't accidentally block the Googlebot crawler. Visit http://code.google.com/web/controlcrawlindex/docs/faq.html to learn how to instruct robots when they visit your site. You can test your robots.txt file to make sure you're using it correctly with the robots.txt analysis tool available in Google Webmaster Tools.


• Make reasonable efforts to ensure that advertisements do not affect search engine rankings. For example, Google's AdSense ads and DoubleClick links are blocked from being crawled by a robots.txt file.


• If your company buys a content management system, make sure that the system creates pages and links that search engines can crawl.


• Use robots.txt to prevent crawling of search results pages or other auto-generated pages that don't add much value for users coming from search engines.


• Test your site to make sure that it appears correctly in different browsers.


• Monitor your site's performance and optimize load times. Google's goal is to provide users with the most relevant results and a great user experience. Fast sites increase user satisfaction and improve the overall quality of the web (especially for those users with slow Internet connections), and we hope that as webmasters improve their sites, the overall speed of the web will improve.Google strongly recommends that all webmasters regularly monitor site performance using Page Speed, YSlow, WebPagetest, or other tools. For more information, tools, and resources, see Let's Make The Web Faster. In addition, the Site Performance tool in Webmaster Tools shows the speed of your website as experienced by users around the world.

Quality guidelines

These quality guidelines cover the most common forms of deceptive or manipulative behavior, but Google may respond negatively to other misleading practices not listed here. It's not safe to assume that just because a specific deceptive technique isn't included on this page, Google approves of it. Webmasters who spend their energies upholding the spirit of the basic principles will provide a much better user experience and subsequently enjoy better ranking than those who spend their time looking for loopholes they can exploit.

If you believe that another site is abusing Google's quality guidelines, please let us know by filing a spam report. Google prefers developing scalable and automated solutions to problems, so we attempt to minimize hand-to-hand spam fighting. While we may not take manual action in response to every report, spam reports are prioritized based on user impact, and in some cases may lead to complete removal of a spammy site from Google's search results. Not all manual actions result in removal, however. Even in cases where we take action on a reported site, the effects of these actions may not be obvious.

Quality guidelines - basic principles

• Make pages primarily for users, not for search engines.


• Don't deceive your users.


• Avoid tricks intended to improve search engine rankings. A good rule of thumb is whether you'd feel comfortable explaining what you've done to a website that competes with you, or to a Google employee. Another useful test is to ask, "Does this help my users? Would I do this if search engines didn't exist?"


• Think about what makes your website unique, valuable, or engaging. Make your website stand out from others in your field.

Quality guidelines - specific guidelines

Avoid the following techniques:

• Automatically generated content


• Participating in link schemes


• Cloaking


• Sneaky redirects


• Hidden text or links


• Doorway pages


• Scraped content


• Participating in affiliate programs without adding sufficient value


• Loading pages with irrelevant keywords


• Creating pages with malicious behavior, such as phishing or installing viruses, trojans, or other badware


• Abusing rich snippets markup


• Sending automated queries to Google

Engage in good practices like the following:

• Monitoring your site for hacking and removing hacked content as soon as it appears


• Preventing and removing user-generated spam on your site

If you determine that your site doesn't meet these guidelines, you can modify your site so that it does and then submit your site for reconsideration.

How To Show Post Title Before Blog Title In Google Search

Today i am going to show you how to change your blogger post results on Google. I will also be  Discussing on the importance of Placing Post Title Before Blog Title In Google Search Results.

Post title and blog title both are very important for search engine optimization, but you must know how to use and customize them. Because they appear in search results and more importantly appear as a clickable link.

Post titles and blog title plays a very important vital role for better ranking in search results and search engine optimization. This is the first thing which is checked by visitors to either they should click on this link or not. That means your traffic depends on this thing. Keyword rich titles can bring you more traffic and increase your blog page views.

Google shows only first 66 characters of the title in search results.If you're using blogger for your blog then you may notice search engines by default show your Blog Title first instead of Post Title. This reduces the SEO benefits because our post titles which have the main keywords got chopped because of the characters limit in search results. Certainly this will affect the flow of visitors to your site. Because when someone is searching for a topic he would like to click on that particular topic which matches his search words and/or interest him/her the most and not your blog title, because most of them may not be knowing it. But if your blog title appears first then the visitors may skip your site! So, to take the proper benefits we have to optimize our blog so that post titles shows before blog title in search results.That's why we should use them effectively.

So, to take the proper benefits we have to optimize our blog so that post titles shows before blog title in search results.

If you want your post title to appear before your blog name on Google’s search results page, then the process is very simple and almost anyone can do it, even newbie blogger users.

Just follow the steps below:

• Go to your Blogger dashboard
• Click on Template
• Click on Edit HTML and then on Proceed.
• Click to put a check in the Expand Widget Template box.
• By using Ctrl+F, search for the following code in your template’s code:

<title><data:blog.pageTitle/></title>

• Once found, replace it with the following code below:

<b:if cond='data:blog.pageType == &quot;item&quot;'>
<title><data:blog.pageName/> | <data:blog.title/></title>
 <b:else/>
<title><data:blog.pageTitle/></title>
</b:if>

• Save your template.

And that’s it, you’re done! After a few days your blog title will appear AFTER (and not before) your post title, the next time it appears in Google’s search results page like this.

Pradeep Singh

how to show my image with my post on google

You might have noticed that some of the results in google search display author’s profile picture with Google Plus ID along with their posts.
Why Implement Google Authorship?

• Facial images are very eye-catching

• Google will promote your content over stolen versions

• You will begin to build AuthorRank with Google

I’m going  to explain you about how you can show your picture in google search result whenever your website is listed in search result. Just follow the steps what i have mentioned. But before doing so I would like to let you know about who can do this ? A website owner or blogger or even an article writer can show their picture in google search result page. All you need to do is to follow these steps. But before that I would also like to let you know about how your picture will show in google search result page. Here i have mentioned myself in google search result while searching my article on google.

This is same how your picture will look after you will do all the thing I’m going to tell you. Okay what you need to do is to follow these steps.

NOTE: You must have a Google Plus account to begin with tutorial and if you already don't have Google+ account, you can make one for free by visiting http://plus.google.com.

1. Go to http://profiles.google.com and click “Create my profile”
2. Sign in with your Google account. (If you don’t have one, go to https://accounts.google.com/NewAccount)
3. Fill out your profile as completely as you like. For our purposes here, you must include a profile photo (use the same one you use on your blog). This should be a clear headshot.
4. Google recommends making the +1 page of your profile public. That page displays anything that you have publicly “+1ed” on the web. I’m not sure what this has to do with author verification, but they recommend it so I’d do it. While in edit mode on your profile, click the +1 tab and check the box “show this tab on your profile.”

Step  1 :  Just Create an “about me” or “any page viewing you information”  on you blog and link that page to your google profile.

Step 2  : This is important. While creating the hyperlink to your Google  Plus Profile page, Please remember to add rel=”me” to the link. as shown below.

<a href="https://profiles.google.com/your_ID" rel="me">My Profile</a>

Step 3:  In this step you must ensure that the blog articles you have written have a link to your “about me ” page.
This hyperlink should have the rel=”author” attribute as shown below.

<a href="http://yourwebsite.com/about/" rel="author">My short bio</a>

Step 4: This is the last step. Sign in to your Google Profiles account and and add a new custom link that points to your “About Me” page. Tick the option that says “This page is specifically about me” and save the changes. You are almost done.  wait when google will crawl you website again and your picture will show on google search result page.

NOTE: Google takes sometime to show these images. It can vary from person to person, so keep patience.

Pradeep Singh

How To Create A Contact Form on Blogger/Wordpress

Every blog or website needs a contact form and this easy method, using Google Docs will work on any platform, be it Blogger, Wordpress or whatever you use.

 

In simple terms a contact form is the best way to get connected with your readers which facilitates them to get connected with you and post their comments regarding what they feel about your blog or something else they want to share with you. An interesting feature of contact form is that it is helpful in increasing fame of your blog, which can be witnessed from comments received on your blog. 

The more visitors your site gets, the more likely it is that you’ll encounter people who’ll be leaving comments or asking questions in the comment section of your post that completely have nothing to do with the subject at hand.

Basics things in a Contact Form: 

According to me every form should have some common information which is to be provided by every person who is  filling that form. Keeping that point in mind I decided to create a contact form with three necessary things, i.e., Name, Email Address and Message.

Creating a contact Form with Google Docs:

That is why it is always good idea to have a page dedicated to those kinds of reader feedback such as a ‘Contact Page’ or ‘Contact Form’. The process if fairly simple and doesn’t require you to have any solid knowledge in programming, and believe it or not, we will also be using Google Drive (formerly known as Google Docs) to accomplish this.

Step 1: Create the Contact Form 

• Go to Google Docs -->                     
• Click CREATE     
• Click Form                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                       
•  You will get this screen:

• You can give a name for this form, like "Contact Me" or "Contact Us"
• Create questions, which will be the fields in the form. The four basic questions are: Name, Email, Website and Comments. Choose from the drop down menu the type of comment each question requires: Name and Email use "text" comments, and Comments are "paragraph text." You can choose which questions are mandatory(required).
• Preview the form by clicking the link at the bottom.

Step 2: Get the html code

After you are satisfied, save and go to More Actions --> Embed.  Google will show you an html code to copy. Mine looks like this:

Step 3: Create Your Contact Page on Blogger

• Go to your "Contact Me" page (or create one) on your blog. (Go to Posting --> Edit Pages). Open the "Edit HTML" tab and paste the code from Google Docs.
• Preview how it will look on your blog. I had to adjust the width of the form to 600 pixels (In the code, you will see that Google Docs sets it at width="760." Fiddle with the number until the form fits within your page width).
• Publish. My contact form looks like this:

Step 4: Make Sure You are Notified When Someone Uses the Form

When someone fills out the contact form, the information will go into the spreadsheet on your Google Docs form. Turn on email notification:

• Go back to Google Docs and click on your form. A spreadsheet will open. Click Tools --> Notification Rules.
• Check the box "a user submits a form" and "email-right away." Save.     You have done.                                                                                                        

Pradeep Singh