Google has rebranded its Webmaster Guidelines to Google Search Essentials.
The revamped guidelines provide crucial directions on what to prioritize for better search performance on Google.
Many once-effective SEO strategies are now outdated. Currently, essential aspects of SEO include E-A-T (Expertise, Authoritativeness, Trustworthiness), core update quality questions, product review evaluations, and helpful content.
So what gives you the best chance of excelling as Google continues to advance its ranking algorithms?
Here are my insights on how to develop an SEO strategy based on the Google Search Essentials documentation.
## 1. Don’t overlook technical SEO
Technical SEO can significantly impact your site’s performance. Key areas to focus on include:
– Optimizing site architecture.
– Ensuring pages are crawlable.
– Making sure pages are indexable.
– Improving page experience.
Many sites have enhanced their search visibility by making their content more accessible to Google’s crawlers. However, this shouldn’t be the sole strategy.
Google emphasizes that only three requirements are necessary for ranking:
– Googlebot isn’t blocked.
– The page works and returns an HTTP 200 success status code.
– The page has indexable content.
I use tools like Screaming Frog, Sitebulb, and sometimes Ahrefs or Semrush site crawls to assess the technical health of a site. These tools provide insights into any significant quality issues.
While technical site health is essential, it’s not always the primary focus of an SEO strategy today. Most websites are technically sound, and any obvious issues that could yield a positive return should be fixed. However, the primary focus often shifts towards other areas.
## 2. Stay up to date with Google’s spam policies
Back in 2012, a significant part of my work involved helping site owners remove Google penalties, particularly from the Penguin algorithm. Today, most sites comply with Google’s spam policies.
SEOs should stay informed about these policies and advise clients against risky techniques like cloaking, keyword stuffing, or republishing scraped content.
These conversations can be challenging, especially regarding link building. Clients often find it difficult to move away from strategies that previously worked but now violate Google’s guidelines.
Google states:
> “Any links that are intended to manipulate rankings in Google Search results may be considered link spam.”
They also provide guidance for affiliate sites:
> “Not every site that participates in an affiliate program is a thin affiliate. Good affiliate sites add value by offering meaningful content or features. Examples of good affiliate pages include offering additional information about price, original product reviews, rigorous testing and ratings, navigation of products or categories, and product comparisons.”
Staying updated on spam policies is crucial, but simply removing questionable links or comment spam won’t necessarily improve rankings.
## 3. Use Google’s SEO Starter Guide
Google’s SEO Starter Guide is highly recommended. It covers essential aspects of SEO with actionable instructions, including:
– Common indexing issues.
– Best practices for title tags and meta descriptions.
– Effective use of headings.
– Structured data best practices.
– Organizing site hierarchy.
– Creating valuable content.
– Cultivating user trust.
– Demonstrating expertise.
– Appropriate use of anchor text.
– Nofollow tag usage.
– Image optimization.
– Mobile-friendliness.
– Site promotion.
– Analyzing search performance and user behavior.
A skilled SEO can identify and prioritize which of these issues are critical for their client.
## 4. Refer to ‘Key best practices’ for what content Google wants to rank
Google’s key best practices include:
– Using keywords in titles, headings, and alt text.
– Making links crawlable.
– Promoting your site.
– Following best practices for images, videos, structured data, and JavaScript.
Monthly monitoring of keywords in Google Search Console to optimize underperforming areas is a good practice.
The foremost best practice is to “create helpful, reliable, people-first content.” Continually improving content in this way can positively impact rankings.
## 5. Pay attention to Google’s advice on creating helpful and reliable content
Google’s ranking systems aim to “present helpful, reliable information that’s primarily created to benefit people, not gain search engine rankings.”
The Google Search Essentials document consolidates previous advice on core updates, product reviews, and helpful content updates.
Understanding how Google ranks content involves:
– Understanding the meaning of your query.
– Finding content that matches the query.
– Prioritizing content that appears most helpful, considering E-A-T.
High-quality content aligns with Google’s emphasis on E-A-T. Self-assessing content against Google’s quality questions can provide valuable insights for improvement.
## 6. Craft a strategy around Google’s quality questions
Google’s quality questions are subjective but crucial. Examples include:
– Does the content display original reporting or analysis?
– Are sources clearly cited?
– Is the content written by an expert?
Steps to improve based on these questions:
### Step 1: Identify keywords that lost rankings after a Google update
Analyze keywords in Google Search Console that dropped during an update.
### Step 2: Identify competitors that started outranking you
Tools like Ahrefs’ position history can be helpful here.
### Step 3: Compare your content with competitors based on quality questions
Analyze why competitors outrank you and how you can improve, focusing on expertise, content quality, and usability.
## 7. Familiarize yourself with the quality rater guidelines
Google advises getting acquainted with E-A-T and the Quality Rater Guidelines (QRG). These provide valuable clues for understanding the type of content Google values.
> “Reading the guidelines may help you self-assess how your content is doing from an E-A-T perspective, improvements to consider, and help align it conceptually with the different signals that our automated systems use to rank content.”
### Your key to SEO success
There are numerous tasks an SEO can undertake to enhance a site’s presence on Google. While technical improvements ensure your site runs smoothly, the goal is to help your client outperform competitors.
Improving content to be more helpful and aligned with E-A-T, based on Google’s guidelines and quality questions, can significantly enhance rankings and overall SEO success. Focus on creating content that fulfills searchers’ needs for long-term growth and success.
