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Google SEO Optimization - Guide to Google's SEO Resources
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Google is the world's No. 1 search engine, no doubt. But sometimes someone needs to Google Google as it were. The company hides some of their best SEO, AdWords, and Analytics resources in a maze of disconnected websites. Before calling the Google marketing department, I wanted to identify for our own SEO students some great official Google resources for search engine optimization.
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By Jason McDonald
Senior SEO Instructor - JM Internet Group.
Posted: February 16, 2010
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Contents:
Google SEO Guide: Yes, Virginia, Google Does have a Google SEO Guide
Some people assume Google is too evil to actually publish a guide to search engine optimization. The search giant, they reason, would never really want people to understand how you can influence search results through SEO. Others, never think to look. And still many many many others just never find it, because Google buries the document and its opinions in an obscure little PDF. You can find it at this URL: http://tinyurl.com/yak7emr. Get it. Save it. Read it.
This is, by far, the best most honest statement by Google of what are SEO best practices. Some of the really important ones:
- Create unique accurate <TITLE> tags for each and every page on your website.
- Use the <H1> family / header family
- Use the META DESCRIPTION tag to give a concise and accurate summary for each and every page on your website.
It isn't the best written document in the world. It just happens to be the best official Google statement on SEO.
A second resource on SEO from Google is the Google SEO blog from Googler, Matt Cutts. It's at http://www.mattcutts.com/blog/. Matt is the official source of much of what Google says and thinks about SEO, but take everything he says with a healthy dose of skepticism. Matt is akin to the White House Press Secretary - just as the Press Secretary works for the President and gives the official presidential position, Matt does the same for Google, no matter how silly or nonsensical that position might be! Note his title: head of Google’s Webspam team. He's not the head of making Google easy-to-use for vendors. His job is to fight SEO spam, but a good resource nonetheless.
Meritorious AdWords Resources
You might think that Google AdWords information would be better presented and more organized than Google SEO information, and you would be right. After all, Google makes its money off of pay-per-click AdWords advertising, and so they (generally) want that to be an easy (if costly) experience for the AdWords advertisers. That said, even the AdWords information can be somewhat hard to find, but it is also very useful not just for AdWords advertisers but for SEO people. Pay special attention to the AdWords help files as there are some clues there to the Google perspective on how the Web is supposed to work.
Here are my favorite top level AdWords resources:
The Google AdWords Learning Center. Your (sort of) one stop shop for AdWords. It's nicely laid out with beginner to expert information. But it's very text heavy and you need to be a great reader. Be sure to click on the Complete AdWords Learning Center.
Now if Google actually owned Youtube and Google actually ran its own AdWords center, you would expect that the AdWords Learning Center and the Google AdWords Youtube channel would be cross-linked. You'd expect that you can easily go from one to the other. But of course not! You need to go to the Google Business Channel on Youtube, where you can find some great videos on AdWords (as well as a lot of other disorganized stuff, unfortunately).
The best videos on AdWords are actually be Google Economist, Hal Varian. So Google his name + Youtube and you'll find some of his best AdWords explanatory videos, here. Finally AdWords does have an official AdWords Blog, but it's rather expert and esoteric oriented.
Google's Misnamed Conversion University
Imagine you had a million dollar marketing budget. Imagine you produced arguably the best Web analytics program on the market. Imagine that that program was called Google Analytics. And imagine that you wanted to reach out to your customers with helpful videos and blog posts, to help them understand this fantastic SEO tool: Google Analytics. What, pray tell, would you call that website?
"Google Analytics University?" No.
"Learn Google Analytics" No.
"Google Analytics Tutorial" No.
"Google Conversion University" Yes! That's it! Of course. Oh, and to make it really useful, from inside the Analytics Interface if a user clicks on the far left column for the link 'Conversion University,' you could make that link unclickable with a geeky esoteric explanation. (See screenshot on the right of what this looks like). It's maddening and insane, but despite all that, Analytics University, oops I mean Conversion University is fabulous - once you get there. It's actually at http://www.google.com/support/conversionuniversity/. The site has fabulous videos on Analytics and lots of food for thought for your SEO metrics efforts.
Google Analytics also has its own Google Analytics Blog as well as a Google Analytics Youtube Channel. Both are more for experts, whereas beginners will love Google Analytics University - oops, I mean Google Conversion University.
Enjoy these Google resources, and be sure to Bing! them all so that they are easily findable!
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