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bobby666 · 01-28-2009, 07:08 AM

Avoid:
• allowing search result-like pages to be crawled (users dislike leaving one
search result page and landing on another search result page that doesn't add
significant value for them)
• allowing a large number of auto-generated pages with the same or only slightly
different content to be crawled: "Should these 100,000 near-duplicate pages
really be in a search engine's index?"
• allowing URLs created as a result of proxy services to be crawled
Be aware of rel="nofollow" for links
Setting the value of the "rel" attribute of a link to "nofollow" will tell Google that certain links on your
site shouldn't be followed or pass your page's reputation to the pages linked to. Nofollowing a link is
adding rel="nofollow" inside of the link's anchor tag.
If you link to a site that you don't trust and don't want to pass your site's reputation to, use
nofollow
When would this be useful? If your site has a blog with public commenting turned on, links within
those comments could pass your reputation to pages that you may not be comfortable vouching for.
Blog comment areas on pages are highly susceptible to comment spam. Nofollowing these useradded
links ensures that you're not giving your page's hard-earned reputation to a spammy site. Many
blogging software packages automatically nofollow user comments, but those that don't can most
likely be manually edited to do this. This advice also goes for other areas of your site that may involve
user-generated content, such as guestbooks, forums, shout-boards, referrer listings, etc. If you're
willing to vouch for links added by third parties (e.g. if a commenter is trusted on your site), then
there's no need to use nofollow on links; however, linking to sites that Google considers spammy can
affect the reputation of your own site. The Webmaster Help Center has more tips on avoiding
comment spam, like using CAPTCHAs and turning on comment moderation.
Google's Search Engine Optimization Starter Guide, Version 1.1, published 13 November 2008
A comment spammer leaves a message on one of our news posts, hoping to get some of our
site's reputation
Another use of nofollow is when you're writing content and wish to reference a website, but don't want
to pass your reputation on to it. For example, imagine that you're writing a blog post on the topic of
comment spamming and you want to call out a site that recently comment spammed your blog. You
want to warn others of the site, so you include the link to it in your content; however, you certainly
don't want to give the site some of your reputation from your link. This would be a good time to use
nofollow.
Lastly, if you're interested in nofollowing all of the links on a page, you can use "nofollow" in your
robots meta tag, which is placed inside the <head> tag of that page's HTML. The Webmaster Central
Blog provides a helpful post on using the robots meta tag. This method is written as <meta
name="robots" content="nofollow">.
This nofollows all of the links on a page
Google's Search Engine Optimization Starter Guide, Version 1.1, published 13 November 2008
Promote your website in the right ways
While most of the links to your site will be gained gradually, as people discover your content through
search or other ways and link to it, Google understands that you'd like to let others know about the
hard work you've put into your content. Effectively promoting your new content will lead to faster
discovery by those who are interested in the same subject. As with most points covered in this
document, taking these recommendations to an extreme could actually harm the reputation of your
site.
Good practices for promoting your website
• Blog about new content or services - A blog post on your own site letting your visitor base
know that you added something new is a great way to get the word out about new content or
services. Other webmasters who follow your site or RSS feed could pick the story up as well.
• Don't forget about offline promotion - Putting effort into the offline promotion of your
company or site can also be rewarding. For example, if you have a business site, make sure
its URL is listed on your business cards, letterhead, posters, etc. You could also send out
recurring newsletters to clients through the mail letting them know about new content on the
company's website.
• Know about social media sites - Sites built around user interaction and sharing have made
it easier to match interested groups of people up with relevant content.
Avoid:
• attempting to promote each new, small piece of content you create; go for big,
interesting items
• involving your site in schemes where your content is artificially promoted to the
top of these services
• Add your business to Google's Local Business Center - If you run a local business,
adding its information to Google's Local Business Center will help you reach customers on
Google Maps and web search. The Webmaster Help Center has more tips on promoting
your local business.
• Reach out to those in your site's related community - Chances are, there are a number
of sites that cover topic areas similar to yours. Opening up communication with these sites is
usually beneficial. Hot topics in your niche or community could spark additional ideas for
content or building a good community resource.
Avoid:
• spamming link requests out to all sites related to your topic area
• purchasing links from another site with the aim of getting PageRank instead of
traffic
Google's Search Engine Optimization Starter Guide, Version 1.1, published 13 November 2008
Make use of free webmaster tools
Major search engines, including Google, provide free tools for webmasters. Google's Webmaster
Tools help webmasters better control how Google interacts with their websites and get useful
information from Google about their site. Using Webmaster Tools won't help your site get preferential
treatment; however, it can help you identify issues that, if addressed, can help your site perform better
in search results. With the service, webmasters can:
• see which parts of a site Googlebot had problems crawling
• upload an XML Sitemap file
• analyze and generate robots.txt files
• remove URLs already crawled by Googlebot
• specify the preferred domain
• identify issues with title and description meta tags
• understand the top searches used to reach a site
• get a glimpse at how Googlebot sees pages
• remove unwanted sitelinks that Google may use in results
• receive notification of quality guideline violations and file for a site reconsideration
Yahoo! (Yahoo! Site Explorer) and Microsoft (Live Search Webmaster Tools) also offer free tools for
webmasters.
Take advantage of web analytics services
If you've improved the crawling and indexing of your site using Google Webmasters Tools or other
services, you're probably curious about the traffic coming to your site. Web analytics programs like
Google Analytics are a valuable source of insight for this. You can use these to:
• get insight into how users reach and behave on your site
• discover the most popular content on your site
• measure the impact of optimizations you make to your site (e.g. did changing those title and
description meta tags improve traffic from search engines?)
For advanced users, the information an analytics package provides, combined with data from your
server log files, can provide even more comprehensive information about how visitors are interacting
with your documents (such as additional keywords that searchers might use to find your site).
Lastly, Google offers another tool called Google Website Optimizer that allows you to run experiments
to find what on-page changes will produce the best conversion rates with visitors. This, in combination
with Google Analytics and Google Webmaster Tools (see our video on using the "Google Trifecta"), is
a powerful way to begin improving your site.
Google's Search Engine Optimization Starter Guide, Version 1.1, published 13 November 2008
Helpful resources for webmasters
Google Webmaster Help Group - Have questions or feedback on our guide? Let us know
Google Webmaster Central Blog - Frequent posts by Googlers on how to improve your website
Google Webmaster Help Center - Filled with in-depth documentation on webmaster-related issues
Google Webmaster Tools - Optimize how Google interacts with your website
Google Webmaster Guidelines - Design, content, technical, and quality guidelines from Google Google Analytics - Find the source of your visitors, what they're viewing, and benchmark changes
Google Website Optimizer - Run experiments on your pages to see what will work and what won't
Tips on Hiring an SEO - If you don't want to go at it alone, these tips should help you choose an SEO company
Except as otherwise noted, the content of this document is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License.
Google's Search Engine Optimization Starter Guide, Version 1.1, published 13 November 2008

01-28-2009, 07:08 AM
bobby666 boots are my religion Join Date: Nov 2005 Location: Heart of europe Posts: 21,765	Avoid: • allowing search result-like pages to be crawled (users dislike leaving one search result page and landing on another search result page that doesn't add significant value for them) • allowing a large number of auto-generated pages with the same or only slightly different content to be crawled: "Should these 100,000 near-duplicate pages really be in a search engine's index?" • allowing URLs created as a result of proxy services to be crawled Be aware of rel="nofollow" for links Setting the value of the "rel" attribute of a link to "nofollow" will tell Google that certain links on your site shouldn't be followed or pass your page's reputation to the pages linked to. Nofollowing a link is adding rel="nofollow" inside of the link's anchor tag. If you link to a site that you don't trust and don't want to pass your site's reputation to, use nofollow When would this be useful? If your site has a blog with public commenting turned on, links within those comments could pass your reputation to pages that you may not be comfortable vouching for. Blog comment areas on pages are highly susceptible to comment spam. Nofollowing these useradded links ensures that you're not giving your page's hard-earned reputation to a spammy site. Many blogging software packages automatically nofollow user comments, but those that don't can most likely be manually edited to do this. This advice also goes for other areas of your site that may involve user-generated content, such as guestbooks, forums, shout-boards, referrer listings, etc. If you're willing to vouch for links added by third parties (e.g. if a commenter is trusted on your site), then there's no need to use nofollow on links; however, linking to sites that Google considers spammy can affect the reputation of your own site. The Webmaster Help Center has more tips on avoiding comment spam, like using CAPTCHAs and turning on comment moderation. Google's Search Engine Optimization Starter Guide, Version 1.1, published 13 November 2008 A comment spammer leaves a message on one of our news posts, hoping to get some of our site's reputation Another use of nofollow is when you're writing content and wish to reference a website, but don't want to pass your reputation on to it. For example, imagine that you're writing a blog post on the topic of comment spamming and you want to call out a site that recently comment spammed your blog. You want to warn others of the site, so you include the link to it in your content; however, you certainly don't want to give the site some of your reputation from your link. This would be a good time to use nofollow. Lastly, if you're interested in nofollowing all of the links on a page, you can use "nofollow" in your robots meta tag, which is placed inside the <head> tag of that page's HTML. The Webmaster Central Blog provides a helpful post on using the robots meta tag. This method is written as <meta name="robots" content="nofollow">. This nofollows all of the links on a page Google's Search Engine Optimization Starter Guide, Version 1.1, published 13 November 2008 Promote your website in the right ways While most of the links to your site will be gained gradually, as people discover your content through search or other ways and link to it, Google understands that you'd like to let others know about the hard work you've put into your content. Effectively promoting your new content will lead to faster discovery by those who are interested in the same subject. As with most points covered in this document, taking these recommendations to an extreme could actually harm the reputation of your site. Good practices for promoting your website • Blog about new content or services - A blog post on your own site letting your visitor base know that you added something new is a great way to get the word out about new content or services. Other webmasters who follow your site or RSS feed could pick the story up as well. • Don't forget about offline promotion - Putting effort into the offline promotion of your company or site can also be rewarding. For example, if you have a business site, make sure its URL is listed on your business cards, letterhead, posters, etc. You could also send out recurring newsletters to clients through the mail letting them know about new content on the company's website. • Know about social media sites - Sites built around user interaction and sharing have made it easier to match interested groups of people up with relevant content. Avoid: • attempting to promote each new, small piece of content you create; go for big, interesting items • involving your site in schemes where your content is artificially promoted to the top of these services • Add your business to Google's Local Business Center - If you run a local business, adding its information to Google's Local Business Center will help you reach customers on Google Maps and web search. The Webmaster Help Center has more tips on promoting your local business. • Reach out to those in your site's related community - Chances are, there are a number of sites that cover topic areas similar to yours. Opening up communication with these sites is usually beneficial. Hot topics in your niche or community could spark additional ideas for content or building a good community resource. Avoid: • spamming link requests out to all sites related to your topic area • purchasing links from another site with the aim of getting PageRank instead of traffic Google's Search Engine Optimization Starter Guide, Version 1.1, published 13 November 2008 Make use of free webmaster tools Major search engines, including Google, provide free tools for webmasters. Google's Webmaster Tools help webmasters better control how Google interacts with their websites and get useful information from Google about their site. Using Webmaster Tools won't help your site get preferential treatment; however, it can help you identify issues that, if addressed, can help your site perform better in search results. With the service, webmasters can: • see which parts of a site Googlebot had problems crawling • upload an XML Sitemap file • analyze and generate robots.txt files • remove URLs already crawled by Googlebot • specify the preferred domain • identify issues with title and description meta tags • understand the top searches used to reach a site • get a glimpse at how Googlebot sees pages • remove unwanted sitelinks that Google may use in results • receive notification of quality guideline violations and file for a site reconsideration Yahoo! (Yahoo! Site Explorer) and Microsoft (Live Search Webmaster Tools) also offer free tools for webmasters. Take advantage of web analytics services If you've improved the crawling and indexing of your site using Google Webmasters Tools or other services, you're probably curious about the traffic coming to your site. Web analytics programs like Google Analytics are a valuable source of insight for this. You can use these to: • get insight into how users reach and behave on your site • discover the most popular content on your site • measure the impact of optimizations you make to your site (e.g. did changing those title and description meta tags improve traffic from search engines?) For advanced users, the information an analytics package provides, combined with data from your server log files, can provide even more comprehensive information about how visitors are interacting with your documents (such as additional keywords that searchers might use to find your site). Lastly, Google offers another tool called Google Website Optimizer that allows you to run experiments to find what on-page changes will produce the best conversion rates with visitors. This, in combination with Google Analytics and Google Webmaster Tools (see our video on using the "Google Trifecta"), is a powerful way to begin improving your site. Google's Search Engine Optimization Starter Guide, Version 1.1, published 13 November 2008 Helpful resources for webmasters Google Webmaster Help Group - Have questions or feedback on our guide? Let us know Google Webmaster Central Blog - Frequent posts by Googlers on how to improve your website Google Webmaster Help Center - Filled with in-depth documentation on webmaster-related issues Google Webmaster Tools - Optimize how Google interacts with your website Google Webmaster Guidelines - Design, content, technical, and quality guidelines from Google Google Analytics - Find the source of your visitors, what they're viewing, and benchmark changes Google Website Optimizer - Run experiments on your pages to see what will work and what won't Tips on Hiring an SEO - If you don't want to go at it alone, these tips should help you choose an SEO company Except as otherwise noted, the content of this document is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License. Google's Search Engine Optimization Starter Guide, Version 1.1, published 13 November 2008 __________________