Google Refreshed its Guidelines by Saying Bye-Bye to Webmaster Guidelines

Source - Cyberkendra

Do you know that google has got rid of the google webmaster guidelines? Yes! You heard it right. Google rebranded itself to google search essentials. Things have changed a lot with a google search and the web over the last 2 decades.

Google said a lot has changed since 2002. The updated guidelines are a simplified version. These updated guidelines are refreshing for people to have precise know-how of building sites that serve people.

Google's motivation behind refresh is to eliminate the term webmaster.

Webmaster guidelines which are popularly known as google search essentials are divided into 3 sections -

• Technical requirements
• Key best practices
• Spam policies
• Technical requirements

Technical requirements will help people to understand how to publish content in a format that google search can index. To put it simply, technical requirements are about evaluating performance and understanding how google interacts with your site.

If your page meets technical requirements, it is eligible to be indexed by google search. Here are the technical requirements that you should know if you want Google to find and access your site -

Google bot is not blocked
It means that google can find and access your page. Google indexes those pages that don't block their crawler. If the page is private or requires someone to log in, the bot will not crawl it.

The page is not an error page.
Server error pages can never be indexed

The page should have indexable content
Content should not be spam or violate their policies, and the file type should be in the format supported by google

2. Key best practices

These practices will help people know the best practices they should consider while creating sites. These practices revolve around creating content that serves people and making a site easier to search on google.

Here are the best practices that make your web page valuable and rank your website on SERP -

Create people-first content
As a site owner, you must create high-quality content that will link with your mission and simultaneously satisfy users' search intent.

• You need to adopt On - Page practice. Use keywords naturally in the prominent locations on the page, like titles, headlines, and alt text.
• Customers landing on your site should get a gist of what your site is about and your content. It will be possible when you use the exact words or phrases your customers use to find you.
• Enhance how your site will appear on google
• Make your site crawlable so that google can find your pages.
• Tell people more about your site, your services, and your communities.
• Controlling how your site appears in search. Google added one or two parameters that can give you some control over how your site will be viewed in a Google search.

3. Spam policies

As you already know, everybody hates spam, and google pays a lot of attention to reducing and mitigating the effects of spam on the web. Here are the scams that google can lower your ranking -

• Keyword stuffing
• Hidden text
• Link spam
• Malicious behavior
• Scam and fraud
• User-generated spam
• Online harassment