Google Webmaster Guidelines
Google is now releasing Google Search Essentials, a simplified version of the Google Webmaster Guidelines.
Google has officially rebranded the Webmaster Guidelines as “Search Essentials,” with a simplified refresh consisting of only three sections. Google’s inspiration behind the refresh is to shift away from the phrase “webmaster.” In addition to creating the former Google Webmaster Guidelines more straightforward to comprehend, Google has removed the “webmaster” portion of the heading.
Google has slowly withdrawn “webmaster” from its branding for the past few years. For instance, “Google Webmaster Central” was rebranded as “Google Search Central.” According to Google, the outdated term “webmaster” does not adequately describe all of those who strive to see their material featured in search results.
Google Search Essentials
Many former recommendations have been relocated to the Google Search Central website into distinct sections.
Google Search Essentials has replaced the Webmaster Guidelines, covering the same material in three categories.
- Key finest practices
- Technical requirements
- Spam policies
We will examine the categories in the following sections in more detail. The most significant aspect to grasp is that nothing has changed.
Google Search Essentials includes the exact information in a different format than the former Google Webmaster Guidelines. There is nothing new to learn if you are already familiar with the old Google Webmaster Guidelines. Let’s peek at what’s included in Google Search Essentials.
Technical Prerequisites
Google states that most websites meet the technical requirements without a struggle.
The following are the technical specifications:
- Googlebot is not blocked.
- The page is functioning (it isn’t a failure page).
- The page contains indexable content.
Google needs to be able to read and index the content on your webpage for it to be included in the Google search engine. That’s the minimum requirement.
However, ranking a webpage requires more effort. Let’s carry on to the new section covering critical best practices.
The Best Key Practices
Google’s Search Essentials are a set of search-friendly content creation guidelines.
The following are Google’s critical best practices:
- Create useful content.
- Put your keywords where people are most likely to look, such as titles, headings, and alt text.
- Design your links to be crawlable.
- Let people know about your site.
- Follow the most valuable practices for images, video, structured data, and JavaScript.
- Improve how your site appears in search with rich snippets.
- Blocking Google’s crawlers from finding your content is the way to keep it out of Google Search.
Spam Policies
The section on spam policies discusses how a website can get de-indexed from Google Search because of spammy behaviors and techniques.
These policies include the following:
- Doorways
- Cloaking
- Hidden text and links
- Hacked content
- Keyword stuffing
- Link spam
- Machine-generated traffic
- Malware and malicious conducts
- Scraped content
- Deceptive functionality
- Sneaky redirects
- Thin affiliate pages
- Spammy automatically-generated content
- User-generated spam
- Copyright-removal requests
- Online harassment removals
- Scam and fraud
Google’s Search Quality team created precise language and specific examples to describe the content on the entire page, which was inspired by Google’s former Quality Guidelines and other relevant guidelines.
According to Google, the new direction will enable site owners to avoid creating content that Search users hate. The official changelog for Google Search Essentials is where you can learn more about what’s new.
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