Google has updated their Webmaster Guidelines document, which is one of the first places webmasters should go when learning about SEO best practices and dos and don’ts.
Google updated the general guidelines section of the document, expanding on examples about how to help Google find your web pages, how to give them better ideas on what those pages are about and how to make web pages that are good for your website visitors. The quality guidelines section of the page has not been updated.
Google also removed a line in the first section. The section read:
Following these guidelines will help Google find, index, and rank your site. Even if you choose not to implement any of these suggestions, we strongly encourage you to pay very close attention to the “Quality Guidelines.”
Now Google has removed the “even if you chose not to implement any of these suggestions” wording:
Following the General Guidelines below will help Google find, index, and rank your site.
We strongly encourage you to pay very close attention to the Quality Guidelines below…
Again, the quality guidelines did not change yet, but the general guidelines did get a pretty big overhaul. I went through them line by line, and nothing stands out as being mind-blowing. Google did go through the effort of adding a lot more content to this section, giving more examples, links to resources and reorganising the list to coincide with what is most important to the end-user.
At Dental Design we constantly keep abreast with any Google updates and industry news. The search engine giant don’t give much away, but we see the greatest success when following their guidelines.
We’ve seen in the last few year increasing efforts from Google to bridge the gap between search engine and SEO professional. For instance there’s a dedicated team for any help required in sorting Google Local listing issues, and we have an allocated AdWords consultant to help with any queries or problem accounts.
If you have any questions about the search engine, ranking factors or other SEO queries just call the team on 01202 677277.