Search Enginuity

Google has released a very useful SEO beginners guide (hat tip) entitled: Making the Most of Your Content: A Publisher’s Guide To The Web. The guide doesn’t provide any earth shattering insight (it’s for beginners) but it is a useful tool to back up your recommendations to clients/constituents. It should also help you frame your 60 second SEO basics pitch to SEO newbies.

Here’s a rundown of what’s in the guide (the index):

• A brief overview of web search
• What’s new in Google web search?
• Can Google find your site?
• Can Google index your site?
• Does your site have unique and useful content?
• Increasing visibility: best practices
• Webmaster Central
• FAQ’s
• Glossary

And here are some highlights:

1. A nice visual of Google’s process:

2. A short and concise summary of useful and unique content that’s properly optimized.

“Once the site is discoverable and indexable, the final question to ask is whether the content of the web pages is unique and useful.

First look at your text as a whole. Are your title and text links descriptive? Does your copy flow naturally and in a clear and intuitive manner?

Just as a chapter in a book is organized around specific areas and themes, so each web page should be focused on a specific area or topic. Keywords and phrases emerge naturally from this type of copy, and users are far more likely to stay on a web page that provides relevant content and links.

Make sure, however, that the phrases you write include the phrases that visitors will likely search for. For instance, if your site is for an MG enthusiast club, make sure the words ‘MG’ and ‘cars’ actually appear in the copy, rather than only terms like ‘British automobiles’.” (copyright Google, Inc.)

3. Google’s best practice recommendations:

What to do:

1. Create relevant, eye-catching content…
2. Involve users…
3. Monitor your site…
4. Aim for high-quality inbound links…
5. Provide clear text links…

What to avoid:

1. Don’t fill your page with lists of keywords
2. Don’t attempt to ‘cloak’ pages…
3. Don’t put up ‘crawler only’ pages…
4. Don’t use images to display important names, content or links…
5. Don’t create multiple copies of a page under different URLs with the intent of misleading search engines.

There are a couple of additional goodies in the guide. Give it a read.