Google Webmaster Guidelines
Google specifies some webmaster guidelines which helps a website to find its rank and index in google search engine results.
There are three sections. They are.
1. Design and content guidelines.
2. Technical guidelines.
3. Quality guidelines.
These guidelines include Do’s and Don’ts during the process of optimization. For a site to be visible in google search results it must be first ready a proper site in the view of Google.
To make a site ready:
a)The site is submitted to http://www.google.com/addurl.html.
b)The sitemap of the site is submitted to the web master tools of Google. The sitemap is the list of all pages included in a particular site.
c)The site must ensure all the pages are online.
After the site is ready, it has to follow the following guidelines:
Design and Content Guidelines:
These guidelines give the rules regarding designing of the website.
Every page of the site must be accessible to one or the other static link. The number of pages in the sitemap, if increases 100, it should be broken into two. The content of the site must be accurate, rich in information and clear in thoughts. As the crawler cannot identify text in images, important names and headings of the site must be in mere text. The HTML code must be correct. Decrease the number of dynamic pages in the site.
Technical Guidelines:
These give technical related information to keep a site indexed by a search engine.
A text browser called Lynx can be used as it helps to understand the view of the crawlers used by search engine towards a website. Let the crawlers crawl the pages with ease and freedom without keeping a tracking ID in the site that restricts the Crawl. The web server of the website must support If-Modified-Since HTTP header as Google requires this to tell a website any changes to be made from last crawl. Robot.txt file should be used to protect important directories from crawling. The site must be tested before-hand to know how it appears in different web servers.
Quality Guidelines:
These guidelines give tips to improve the quality of the content and code of the site. They include Do s and also Don’ts to be followed. By mere following the following rules Google may not accept the site perfectly. Web masters must completely study the Don’ts to be followed to ensure the site’s safety.
Do’s:
The site pages must be designed perfectly for the benefit of the users not for the benefit if website. Adding the content unnecessarily to the website to improve traffic is called Cloaking. No content should be included just to compete with the other sites. Link schemes should not be involved just to improve ranking. Usage of unauthorized computers may violate Terms of Service specified by Google.
Don’ts:
Hidden text should not be included. Cloaking must be prevented. Queries which are automated should not be sent. Loading of irrelevant keywords is avoided. Duplicate content and content with viruses should not be included.
