Internet Marketing - Matt Bailey [37]
I have found that Google’s Webmaster Guidelines are the most extensive and provide the best guide for new site owners or website managers. Although I do my best to be search engine–agnostic, I have to give credit where credit is due. So, good job, Google. The following sections outline some principal elements of Google’s Webmaster Guidelines. Interestingly, the information in Google’s guidelines is relevant for any search engine. The technical quality issues that are addressed are typically necessary for any search engine. The design and content guidelines are good for both users and search engines alike. This section is not meant to be a regurgitation of the already organized and written guidelines that are freely available to anyone who searches for them; it is more for the new website owner or marketing manager to understand the purpose behind the guidelines. When a person understands the why, then the how becomes easy. Understanding why certain elements are important to Google’s Webmaster Guidelines helps all hands in the website development and marketing process. If more companies would have read these guidelines, millions of dollars of development could have been saved simply by understanding what search engines need from websites.
Text and Text Links
Text and text links are critical elements for the search engine. When downloading your website, the main parts that the search engines need to evaluate are the content in the text and the links on the page. As such, Google places a good amount of attention by instructing webmasters about the structure of text and the linking relationships necessary.
This involves a clear and accessible navigation scheme that also includes text links in the content. As good practice, many programmers will repeat important links in the footer (bottom) of the page. This provides alternate means for spiders to access content.
Google also prompts webmasters to utilize a site map for their users. A site map helps people find specific information. It also helps the search engine, because it provides a centralized page with links to the primary content pages and subject areas of a website. Typically, the links are very short and clear, allowing easy access to the search engine spider. In addition, Google recommends no more than 100 links on a page, which is a bit overwhelming, even for humans.
Technical Issues
Technical issues will be explained more thoroughly in Chapters 13 through 15, but this is a good place to introduce a few concepts. Especially critical to search engines is the ability to follow links. The majority of Google’s technical guidelines focus on the ability of the spider to follow links.
Broken links are of particular concern, because those stop the search engine spider, and they also stop humans from finding content they need. Too many broken links results in a very bad visitor experience, as well as a bad search engine spider experience, and your site will suffer in the rankings.
The length of the URL and the characters included can be detrimental to the search engine’s ability to follow links. The best rule for URLs is that shorter is better. If your URL is longer than the browser window, then chances are the search engines will have some spidering problems with your website (Figure 4-6). Shorter URLs containing actual words are favored more than longer ones with strange characters and computer jargon. The more characters in the URL, the more problems you may experience.
a)
b)
Figure 4-6: a) Good URL: short and to the point; b) bad URL: too long and too complicated
Browsers
Google makes it a point in the technical guidelines to test your website in multiple web browsers. This is an important issue, because many developers tend to favor a single browser but do not test or have access to multiple browsers and computers for testing.
There are multiple browsers