When it comes to website search engine optimization, I’ve been going by “The book,” for many years. Honestly, I’ve owned and managed websites that ranked #1 on Google for terms such as:
- Sacramento Concerts
- Sacramento Nightlife
- Sacramento Dining
- Sacramento Shopping
- Sacramento Weddings
See the pattern? It’s a lot easier to be real and stay local. My websites had tons of content, photos, and even video. I used H1 tags, meta tags, descriptions and my favorite, the famous, but still underused <img> alt Attribute
Since Google pretty much reinvented online search, the “webmaster’s bible,” as I call it, is the source you should use if you’re a DIY kinda person. This section is the one every serious webmaster should know. When I discuss SEO with clients, I keep the outline and essential details of this “book,” front-and-center.
Search Engine Optimization (SEO) Starter Guide
Who is this guide for?
If you own, manage, monetize, or promote online content via Google Search, this guide is meant for you. You might be the owner of a growing and thriving business, the webmaster of a dozen sites, the SEO specialist in a Web agency or a DIY SEO ninja passionate about the mechanics of Search : this guide is meant for you. If you’re interested in having a complete overview of the basics of SEO according to our best practices, you are indeed in the right place. This guide won’t provide any secrets that’ll automatically rank your site first in Google (sorry!), but following the best practices outlined below will hopefully make it easier for search engines to crawl, index and understand your content.
https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/7451184?hl=en
My motivation for writing this post came from a full weekend of working on a fairly sizable website that was super-heavy with images. Local photographer Rudy Meyers has been in the business for more than 25 years and is considered by many, THE photographer if you want to put your best foot forward. He wanted to increase his organic search ranking so when we connected for this project, I was more than happy to get involved and help him achieve his goals.
Key Takeaways from the updated Google Bible
Tell Google which pages shouldn’t be crawled
Best Practices
For non-sensitive information, block unwanted crawling by using robots.txt
A “robots.txt” file tells search engines whether they can access and therefore crawl parts of your site. This file, which must be named “robots.txt”, is placed in the root directory of your site. It is possible that pages blocked by robots.txt can still be crawled, so for sensitive pages you should use a more secure method.
Create good titles and snippets in search results
If your document appears in a search results page, the contents of the title tag may appear in the first line of the results (if you’re unfamiliar with the different parts of a Google search result, you might want to check out the anatomy of a search result video).
The title for your homepage can list the name of your website/business and could include other bits of important information like the physical location of the business or maybe a few of its main focuses or offerings.
Use heading tags to emphasize important text
Since heading tags typically make text contained in them larger than normal text on the page, this is a visual cue to users that this text is important and could help them understand something about the type of content underneath the heading text. Multiple heading sizes used in order create a hierarchical structure for your content, making it easier for users to navigate through your document.
Use Google’s new Search Console
Search Console tools and reports help you measure your site’s Search traffic and performance, fix issues, and make your site shine in Google Search results.