Good practices for content

• Write easy-to-read text - Users enjoy content that is well written and easy to follow.
Avoid:
• writing sloppy text with many spelling and grammatical mistakes
• embedding text in images for textual content (users may want to copy and
paste the text and search engines can't read it)
• Stay organized around the topic - It's always beneficial to organize your content so that
visitors have a good sense of where one content topic begins and another ends. Breaking
your content up into logical chunks or divisions helps users find the content they want faster.
Avoid:
• dumping large amounts of text on varying topics onto a page without
paragraph, subheading, or layout separation
• Use relevant language - Think about the words that a user might search for to find a piece
of your content. Users who know a lot about the topic might use different keywords in their
search queries than someone who is new to the topic. For example, a long-time baseball fan
might search for [nlcs], an acronym for the National League Championship Series, while a
new fan might use a more general query like [baseball playoffs]. Anticipating these
differences in search behavior and accounting for them while writing your content (using a
good mix of keyword phrases) could produce positive results. Google AdWords provides a
handy Keyword Tool that helps you discover new keyword variations and see the
approximate search volume for each keyword. Also, Google Webmaster Tools provides you
with the top search queries your site appears for and the ones that led the most users to
your site.
• Create fresh, unique content - New content will not only keep your existing visitor base
coming back, but also bring in new visitors.
Avoid:
• rehashing (or even copying) existing content that will bring little extra value to
users
Google's Search Engine Optimization Starter Guide, Version 1.1, 13 Nov 2008, latest version at Google Webmaster Central
• having duplicate or near-duplicate versions of your content across your site
(more on duplicate content)
• Offer exclusive content or services - Consider creating a new, useful service that no other
site offers. You could also write an original piece of research, break an exciting news story,
or leverage your unique user base. Other sites may lack the resources or expertise to do
these things.
• Create content primarily for your users, not search engines - Designing your site around
your visitors' needs while making sure your site is easily accessible to search engines
usually produces positive results.
Avoid:
• inserting numerous unnecessary keywords aimed at search engines but are
annoying or nonsensical to users
• having blocks of text like "frequent misspellings used to reach this page" that
add little value for users
• deceptively hiding text from users, but displaying it to search engines

Offer quality content and services

Creating compelling and useful content will likely influence your website more than any of the other
factors discussed here. 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.
Google's Search Engine Optimization Starter Guide, Version 1.1, 13 Nov 2008, latest version at Google Webmaster Central
While the content you create could be on any topic imaginable, here are some recommended best practices:

Good practices for site navigation

• Create a naturally flowing hierarchy - Make it as easy as possible for users to go from
general content to the more specific content they want on your site. Add navigation pages
when it makes sense and effectively work these into your internal link structure.
Avoid:
• creating complex webs of navigation links, e.g. linking every page on your site
to every other page
• going overboard with slicing and dicing your content (it takes twenty clicks to
get to deep content)
• Use mostly text for navigation - Controlling most of the navigation from page to page on
your site through text links makes it easier for search engines to crawl and understand your
site. Many users also prefer this over other approaches, especially on some devices that
might not handle Flash or JavaScript.
Avoid:
• having a navigation based entirely on drop-down menus, images, or
animations (many, but not all, search engines can discover such links on a site,
but if a user can reach all pages on a site via normal text links, this will improve
the accessibility of your site; more on how Google deals with non-text files)
• Use "breadcrumb" navigation - A breadcrumb is a row of internal links at the top or bottom
of the page that allows visitors to quickly navigate back to a previous section or the root
page. Many breadcrumbs have the most general page (usually the root page) as the first,
left-most link and list the more specific sections out to the right.
Breadcrumb links appearing on a deeper article page on our site
Google's Search Engine Optimization Starter Guide, Version 1.1, 13 Nov 2008, latest version at Google Webmaster Central
• Put an HTML sitemap page on your site, and use an XML Sitemap file - A simple
sitemap page with links to all of the pages or the most important pages (if you have
hundreds or thousands) on your site can be useful. Creating an XML Sitemap file for your
site helps ensure that search engines discover the pages on your site.
Avoid:
• letting your HTML sitemap page become out of date with broken links
• creating an HTML sitemap that simply lists pages without organizing them, for
example by subject
• Consider what happens when a user removes part of your URL - Some users might
navigate your site in odd ways, and you should anticipate this. For example, instead of using
the breadcrumb links on the page, a user might drop off a part of the URL in the hopes of
finding more general content. He or she might be visiting
http://www.brandonsbaseballcards.com/news/2008/upcoming-baseball-card-shows.htm, but
then enter http://www.brandonsbaseballcards.com/news/2008/ into the browser's address
bar, believing that this will show all news from 2008. Is your site prepared to show content in
this situation or will it give the user a 404 ("page not found" error)? What about moving up a
directory level to http://www.brandonsbaseballcards.com/news/?
• Have a useful 404 page - Users will occasionally come to a page that doesn't exist on your
site, either by following a broken link or typing in the wrong URL. Having a custom 404 page
that kindly guides users back to a working page on your site can greatly improve a user's
experience. Your 404 page should probably have a link back to your root page and could
also provide links to popular or related content on your site. Google provides a 404 widget
that you can embed in your 404 page to automatically populate it with many useful features.
You can also use Google Webmaster Tools to find the sources of URLs causing "not found"
errors.
Avoid:
• allowing your 404 pages to be indexed in search engines (make sure that your
webserver is configured to give a 404 HTTP status code when non-existent
pages are requested)
• providing only a vague message like "Not found", "404", or no 404 page at all
• using a design for your 404 pages that isn't consistent with the rest of your site

Make your site easier to navigate

The navigation of a website is important in helping visitors quickly find the content they want. It can
also help search engines understand what content the webmaster thinks is important. Although
Google's search results are provided at a page level, Google also likes to have a sense of what role a
page plays in the bigger picture of the site.
All sites have a home or "root" page, which is usually the most frequented page on the site and the
starting place of navigation for many visitors. Unless your site has only a handful of pages, you should
think about how visitors will go from a general page (your root page) to a page containing more
specific content. Do you have enough pages around a specific topic area that it would make sense to
create a page describing these related pages (e.g. root page -> related topic listing -> specific topic)?
Do you have hundreds of different products that need to be classified under multiple category and
subcategory pages?
The directory structure for our small website on baseball cards
Google's Search Engine Optimization Starter Guide, Version 1.1, 13 Nov 2008, latest version at Google Webmaster Central
A sitemap (lower-case) is a simple page on your site that displays the structure of your website, and
usually consists of a hierarchical listing of the pages on your site. Visitors may visit this page if they
are having problems finding pages on your site. While search engines will also visit this page, getting
good crawl coverage of the pages on your site, it's mainly aimed at human visitors.
An XML Sitemap (upper-case) file, which you can submit through Google's Webmaster Tools, makes
it easier for Google to discover the pages on your site. Using a Sitemap file is also one way (though
not guaranteed) to tell Google which version of a URL you'd prefer as the canonical one (e.g.
http://brandonsbaseballcards.com/ or http://www.brandonsbaseballcards.com/; more on what's a
preferred domain). Google helped create the open source Sitemap Generator script to help you
create a Sitemap file for your site. To learn more about Sitemaps, the Webmaster Help Center
provides a useful guide to Sitemap files.

Good practices for URL structure

• Use words in URLs - URLs with words that are relevant to your site's content and structure are friendlier for visitors navigating your site. Visitors remember them better and might be more willing to link to them.
Avoid:
• using lengthy URLs with unnecessary parameters and session IDs
• choosing generic page names like "page1.html"
• using excessive keywords like "baseball-cards-baseball-cards-baseballcards.
htm"
• Create a simple directory structure - Use a directory structure that organizes your content well and is easy for visitors to know where they're at on your site. Try using your directory structure to indicate the type of content found at that URL.
Avoid:
• having deep nesting of subdirectories like ".../dir1/dir2/dir3/dir4/dir5/dir6/
page.html"
• using directory names that have no relation to the content in them
• Provide one version of a URL to reach a document - To prevent users from linking to one
version of a URL and others linking to a different version (this could split the reputation of
that content between the URLs), focus on using and referring to one URL in the structure
and internal linking of your pages. If you do find that people are accessing the same content
through multiple URLs, setting up a 301 redirect from non-preferred URLs to the dominant
URL is a good solution for this.
Avoid:
• having pages from subdomains and the root directory (e.g. "domain.com/
page.htm" and "sub.domain.com/page.htm") access the same content
• mixing www. and non-www. versions of URLs in your internal linking structure
• using odd capitalization of URLs (many users expect lower-case URLs and
remember them better)

Improve the structure of your URLs

Creating descriptive categories and filenames for the documents on your website can not only help you keep your site better organized, but it could also lead to better crawling of your documents bysearch engines. Also, it can create easier, "friendlier" URLs for those that want to link to your content.
Visitors may be intimidated by extremely long and cryptic URLs that contain few recognizable words.URLs like these can be confusing and unfriendly. Users would have a hard time reciting the URL from memory or creating a link to it. Also, users may believe that a portion of the URL is unnecessary, especially if the URL shows many unrecognizable parameters. They might leave off a part, breaking the link.
Some users might link to your page using the URL of that page as the anchor text.
Some users might link to your page using the URL of that page as the anchor text. If your URL contains relevant words, this provides users and search engines with more information about the page than an ID or oddly named parameter would.

Lastly, remember that the URL to a document is displayed as part of a search result in Google, below
the document's title and snippet. Like the title and snippet, words in the URL on the search result
appear in bold if they appear in the user's query.
A user performs the query [baseball cards]
Our homepage appears as a result, with the URL listed under the title and snippet
Google's Search Engine Optimization Starter Guide, Version 1.1, 13 Nov 2008, latest version at Google Webmaster Central
Below is another example showing a URL on our domain for a page containing an article about the rarest baseball cards. The words in the URL might appeal to a search user more than an ID number like "www.brandonsbaseballcards.com/article/102125/" would.
Google is good at crawling all types of URL structures, even if they're quite complex, but spending the time to make your URLs as simple as possible for both users and search engines can help. Some webmasters try to achieve this by rewriting their dynamic URLs to static ones; while Google is fine with this, we'd like to note that this is an advanced procedure and if done incorrectly, could cause
crawling issues with your site. To learn even more about good URL structure, we recommend this Webmaster Help Center page on creating Google-friendly URLs.

Good practices for descriptive meta tags

• Accurately summarize the page's content - Write a description that would both inform and
interest users if they saw your description meta tag as a snippet in a search result.
Avoid:
• writing a description meta tag that has no relation to the content on the page
• using generic descriptions like "This is a webpage" or "Page about baseball
cards"
• filling the description with only keywords
• copy and pasting the entire content of the document into the description meta
tag• Use unique descriptions for each page - Having a different description meta tag for each
page helps both users and Google, especially in searches where users may bring up
multiple pages on your domain (e.g. searches using the site: operator). If your site has
thousands or even millions of pages, hand-crafting description meta tags probably isn't
feasible. In this case, you could automatically generate description meta tags based on
each page's content.
Avoid:
• using a single description meta tag across all of your site's pages or a large
group of pages