Google Optimisation
Articles and resources about how to optimise your site for the Google search engine.
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Google AdWords
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Articles and resources about how to get the best search engine results in Google using Google Adwords.
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Google Correlate
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Articles and resources about how to mine patterns in data using Google Correlate.
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Google Insights for Search
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Articles and resources about how to use Google's Insights for Search tool.
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Google Sitemaps
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Articles and resources about how to use Google Sitemaps for search engine optimisation.
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Google Trends
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Articles and resources about how to use the Google Trends tool to identify search terms which have been searched for on Google over time.
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Google Website Optimizer
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Search Engine Optimization Starter Guide - in pdf format (518kb)
- (This document requires the use of Adobe Acrobat Reader). Google, 2010. "Welcome to Google's Search Engine Optimization Starter Guide. This document first began as an effort to help teams within Google, but we thought it'd be just as useful to webmasters that are new to the topic of search engine optimization and wish to improve their sites' interaction with both users and search engines. Although this guide won't tell you any secrets that'll automatically rank your site first for queries in Google (sorry!), following the best practices outlined below will make it easier for search engines to both crawl and index your content..."
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Google Webmaster Help Center
- Google, 2006, "Webmaster Guidelines - Following these guidelines will help Google find, index, and rank your site. Even if you choose not to implement any of these suggestions, we strongly encourage you to pay very close attention to the "Quality Guidelines," which outline some of the illicit practices that may lead to a site being removed entirely from the Google index. Once a site has been removed, it will no longer show up in results on Google.com or on any of Google's partner sites..."
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Google Gutted Its Search Quality Rating Guidelines For Public Release
- by Matt McGee. Search Engine Land, March 1, 2013. "As part of today’s big 'How Search Works' reveal, Google also took the big step of sharing its Search Quality Rating Guidelines for the first time.
This is the document that Google's human search quality raters use when grading Google's search results.
But the new, public document is actually an edited version of the old one that circulated quietly several times amongst webmasters and SEOs. In fact, 'gutted' is more accurate than 'edited' — where the most recent non-public version of the document was 161 pages, the public document released today is only 43 pages..."
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Google Publishes Its Search Quality Rating Guidelines For First Time
- by Barry Schwartz. Search Engine Land, March 1, 2013. "As part of the How Search Works interactive infographic Google released today, they have decided to publish their search quality rating guidelines publicly to the world.
You can access the 43-page PDF document over here. It was most recently updated November 2, 2012..."
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Search Quality Rating Guidelines - in pdf format (730kb)
- (This document requires the use of Adobe Acrobat Reader). Google, Version 1.0, November 2, 2012. "... This document is a 'Cliff's Notes' version of our search quality rating guidelines. By this, we mean that it is not the entire version that raters use on a daily basis; however, it is a summary of the important topics. The raters' version includes instruction on using the rating interface, additional rating examples, etc. These guidelines are used as rating specifications for search raters, and this document in particular focuses on a core type of rating task called 'URL rating'.
In a URL rating task, a rater is shown a search query from their locale (country + language) and a URL that could be returned by a search engine for that query. The raters 'rate' the quality of that result for that query, on a scale described within the document. Sounds simple, right? As you'll see, there are many cases to think through, and this document is used to guide raters on some of those cases and how to look at them.
Our search quality rating guidelines are in constant flux as we learn and search evolves over time. We've created this version especially for those individuals who want to understand better how Google thinks about relevance and quality of search results..."
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Make the most of Search Queries in Webmaster Tools
- Written by Maile Ohye, Developer Programs Tech Lead. Google Webmaster Central Blog, Wednesday, February 20, 2013. "If you're intrigued by the Search Queries feature in Webmaster Tools but aren't sure how to make it actionable, we have a video that we hope will help! ... This video explains the vocabulary of Search Queries, such as:
- Impressions
- Average position (only the top-ranking URL for the user’s query is factored in our calculation)
- Click
- CTR..."
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Important SEO Habits to Adopt for Post Panda-Penguin Era Survival
- by Don Pathak. Search Engine Journal, Posted on February 15, 2013. "In a constantly changing SEO landscape, it is important to remain up-to-date with the changing practices and strategies of optimization. Every year, search engines like Google introduce new updates in the SERPs, thereby widely affecting the rankings of the various websites.
Last year, Google launched the Knowledge Graph aimed at helping users find relevant information easily and fast. This search model is referred to as an 'intelligent' way to find the right results for queries with different meanings. It is also an attempt by Google to help users better understand a topic by summarizing important facts and relevant content about the search query..."
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An Updated Guide to Google Webmaster Tools
- by Scott Krager. The YouMoz Blog, December 18, 2012. "With the recent Google Webmaster Tools security bug, I thought a deep dive into what GWT has to offer SEOs might be prudent since many SEOs may have logged in recently.
Google Webmaster Tools was once Google Webmaster Wasteland. But the past year has been a fruitful one as Webmaster Tools has rolled out improvements faster than Facebook does new privacy statements. Google Webmaster Tools (GWT) is now full of insightful data and metrics that you cannot get anywhere else. Some GWT data is useful, some is not. Let's dive in and take a look at each tool in GWT..."
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Introducing Data Highlighter for event data
- Posted by Justin Boyan, Product Manager. Google Webmaster Central Blog, Wednesday, December 12, 2012. "At Google we're making more and more use of structured data to provide enhanced search results, such as rich snippets and event calendars, that help users find your content. Until now, marking up your site's HTML code has been the only way to indicate structured data to Google. However, we recognize that markup may be hard for some websites to deploy.
Today, we're offering webmasters a simpler alternative: Data Highlighter. At initial launch, it's available in English only and for structured data about events, such as concerts, sporting events, exhibitions, shows, and festivals. We'll make Data Highlighter available for more languages and data types in the months ahead..."
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Google Penguin: What Lurks Beneath the Surface?
- by Kristine Schachinger, Search Engine Watch, November 8, 2012. "Much has already been written about the Google Penguin updates, and the impact these have had on websites and businesses. Other than clean up the quality of Google's index what else could the objective of Penguin be?
Much like the icebergs that so often surround penguins, the Penguin updates have much, much more going on below the surface. In order to fully understand how an update works, we also need to understand the purpose behind it.
To get below the surface, we need to gather some background..."
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Answering the top questions from government webmasters
- Posted by Jason Morrison, Search Quality Team. Google Webmaster Central Blog, Friday, September 14, 2012. "Government sites, from city to state to federal agencies, are extremely important to Google Search. For one thing, governments have a lot of content — and government websites are often the canonical source of information that’s important to citizens. Around 20 percent of Google searches are for local information, and local governments are experts in their communities.
That’s why I’ve spoken at the National Association of Government Webmasters (NAGW) national conference for the past few years. It’s always interesting speaking to webmasters about search, but the people running government websites have particular concerns and questions. Since some questions come up frequently I thought I’d share this FAQ for government websites..."
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The Return Of The Google Dance
- by Danny Sullivan. Marketing Land, September 20, 2012. "Old timers in the SEO world will remember the 'Google Dance', if not fondly, at least with some nostalgia. It was when Google's rankings went through a change each month, sometimes dramatically, when a new algorithm was launched. The Google Dance eventually disappeared. Who'd have thought it would ever return? But it sure has, and we're likely to be dancing even more..."
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Is Google's Synonym Matching Increasing? How Searchers and Brands Can Be Both Helped and Hurt By Evolving Understanding Of Intent
- by Vanessa Fox. Search Engine Land, August 27, 2012. "In the beginning, Google matched the words in a searcher's query to the words on a web page and ranks those pages (roughly) based on how many external links each had. Over the years, Google's algorithms have evolved in numerous ways, including with how Google figures out what the searcher is really looking for. Now, for instance, when you search for [U2], not only does Search Engine Land Executive News Editor Matt McGee's site appear at the top of the results (go Matt!), but so do images and video from the band even though the words 'images' or 'videos' weren't in the query..."
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Google Search Quality Raters Instructions Gain New 'Page Quality' Guidelines
- By Matt McGee. Search Engine Land, September 7, 2012. "In the wake of Google's Panda algorithm update, its cadre of human search quality raters has a new task: giving Google specific quality ratings for individual landing pages.
The new 'Page Quality Rating Guidelines' section adds a whopping 32 pages to the handbook that Google provides to those human raters (via contractors like Lionbridge and Leapforce). An existing section on 'URL Rating Tasks with User Locations' has been expanded from 12 to 16 pages, so that what was a 125-page document in early 2011 is now 161 pages long..."
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Exploring Google's SEO Toolset
- by Ben Goodsell, Search Engine Watch, August 27, 2012. "Over the past couple of years, Google has spent a significant amount of time incorporating feedback and making improvements to their Webmaster Tools. From gaining insight into how Google is crawling and indexing your site, to getting notified of an outdated WordPress installation, this article will highlight some of the more useful (and free) functionality Google has to offer after the domain verification process is complete..."
This category last updated: 5 March 2013