Google’s Website Quality Guidelines

June 11, 2007 |

At the inaugural SMX Advanced conference in Seattle last week, Matt Cutts discussed Google’s webmaster guidelines but failed to address heavily sought detail on site quality considerations and violations that can result in your being punished by Google (whether your intentions are honorable or otherwise). He did though commit to deliver more insight and Google added content yesterday to accomplish just that.

The guidelines haven’t changed but are still worth your review as they serve as an excellent SEO guide. Added are details for each guideline:

Avoid hidden text or hidden links.
Don’t use cloaking or sneaky redirects.
Don’t send automated queries to Google.
Don’t load pages with irrelevant keywords.
Don’t create multiple pages, subdomains, or domains with substantially duplicate content. - commentary as I’ve been dealing with duplicate content lately: replicating, syndicating, and repurposing content is usually ok. Google is smart enough to figure out what you’ve done and typically discounts the value of content not in its original source. Make sure the page is unique and this shouldn’t be a problem.
Don’t create pages that install viruses, trojans, or other badware.
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. - Also known as Paid Search Arbitrage

If your site fails to meet these guidelines, it may be blocked and removed from Google. If that happens, modify your site to adhere and resubmit for inclusion.

Popularity: 37% [?]

If you enjoyed this post, make sure you subscribe to my RSS feed!

Tags: google, seo, cloaking

Comments

Subscribe to a comments feed

SEOBrien by Mail

Contemplations

Hot (or Not?)

Way Back Machine

Sightings

The views expressed here are exclusively my own and do not represent those of Zvents, Hewlett-Packard, Yahoo!, or their employees, trustees, or subsidiaries.