Google cleaning up the Internet

Attention all web site owners:

For a long time webmasters have been promising people high search engine ratings and then buying or begging links from other well know sites. This is now against Googles Quality Guidelines. Google lists hundreds of pages to help site owners we urge that you read them all. Every bit of information is listed to make your site a Google friendly site. The emphasis, quite rightly, is on making your site useful to visitors and stop web sites clogging the internet with obtrusive, non context adverts, duplicated pages and other methods of optimising a poor site.

Google even offers a pdf on search engine optimisation and tools for creating site maps. There are video tutorials for webmasters and a webmaster help forum, webmaster checklists, a page about googles search results

Unless a link on a website is part of the natural page and links to a site with further information to that listing the link then any other links need to have a rel=”nofollow” tag attached to tell google it is either advertising or a link to another site which is for the purpose of viewing further content which is not necessarily directly related to the content you have.

You can check the indexing of your website on Google by visiting the webmaster tools page where Google will tell you if it has listed your site and any potential problems you may have with getting your pages listed. https://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/sitestatus?hl=en

The emphasis on a Google search should be content. Not links which are inserted to get an average site to the top of the engines. A website should be listed for its merits, not the number of unnatural links it has.

These are part of the quality guidelines from Google.

• Make pages primarily for users, not for search engines. Don’t deceive your users or present different content to search engines than you display to users, which is commonly referred to as “cloaking.”
• Avoid tricks intended to improve search engine rankings. A good rule of thumb is whether you’d feel comfortable explaining what you’ve done to a website that competes with you. Another useful test is to ask, “Does this help my users? Would I do this if search engines didn’t exist?”
• Don’t participate in link schemes designed to increase your site’s ranking or PageRank. In particular, avoid links to web spammers or “bad neighbourhoods” on the web, as your own ranking may be affected adversely by those links.
• Don’t use unauthorized computer programs to submit pages, check rankings, etc. Such programs consume computing resources and violate our Terms of Service. Google does not recommend the use of products such as WebPosition Gold™ that send automatic or programmatic queries to Google.

DIY Doctor supports this initiative and agrees that websites should write for their users.

The specific guidelines for users offered by Google are:

• Avoid hidden text or hidden links
• Dont use cloaking or sneaky redirects
• Don’t send automated queries to Google
• Don’t load pages with irrelevant keywords
• Do not duplicate content
• Avoid doorway pages just for search engines
• If you use an affiliate program, make sure your users have a reason to visit your site first.

If you find you have trouble being listed by Google look at the above conditions, read all of Google’s guidelines, change your site and re-submit your site for consideration.