Writing Content for Search Engines

Below are some guidelines to help you write search engine-friendly text for your website.

Design and content guidelines

• Make a site with a clear hierarchy and text links. Every page should be reachable from at least one static text link.
• Create a useful, information-rich site, and write pages that clearly and accurately describe your content.
• Think about the words users would type to find your pages, and make sure that your site actually includes those words within it.
• Try to use text instead of images to display important names, content, or links. The search engine crawler doesn't recognize text contained in images.
• Keep the links on a given page to a reasonable number (fewer than 100).

Quality guidelines

These quality guidelines cover the most common forms of deceptive or manipulative behavior, but search engine may respond negatively to other misleading practices not listed here (e.g. tricking users by registering misspellings of well-known websites). It's not safe to assume that just because a specific deceptive technique isn't included on this page, search engine approves of it.

Quality guidelines - basic principles

• Make pages 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 neighborhoods" 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.

Quality guidelines - specific guidelines

• Avoid hidden text or hidden links.
• Don't use cloaking or sneaky redirects.
• Don't send automated queries to search engine.
• Don't load pages with irrelevant keywords.
• Avoid "doorway" pages created just for search engines, or other "cookie cutter" approaches such as affiliate programs with little or no original content.
• If your site participates in an affiliate program, make sure that your site adds value. Provide unique and relevant content that gives users a reason to visit your site first.