Official Google Webmaster Central Blog: Google SEO resources for beginners

Webmaster Central Blog

Official news on crawling and indexing sites for the Google index

Google SEO resources for beginners

Thursday, January 21, 2010

Step 1: Absorb the basics

If you like to learn by reading, download our SEO Starter Guide for reading while you're on an exercise bike, training for Ironman.

Or, if you're more a video watcher, try listening to my "Search Friendly Development" session while you're cleaning your house. Keep in mind that some parts of the presentation are a little more technical.

For good measure, and because at some point you'll hear references to them, check out our webmaster guidelines for yourself.

Step 2: Explore details that pique your interestAre you done with the basics but now you have some questions? Good for you! Try researching a particular topic in our Webmaster Help Center. For example, do you want more information about crawling and indexing or understanding what links are all about?Step 3: Verify ownership of your site in Webmaster ToolsIt takes a little bit of skill, but we have tons of help for verification. Once you verify ownership of your site (i.e., signal to Google that you're the owner), you can:

See more confidential information about your site, like crawl errors or messages from Google about your site
Run through the Webmaster Tools checklist and learn new ways to monitor and manage your site
Forward your Google messages to your personal email address

A sample message regarding the crawlability of your siteStep 4: Research before you do anything drasticUsually the basics (e.g., good content/service and a crawlable site with indexable information) are the necessities for SEO. You may hear or read differently, but before you do anything drastic on your site such as robots.txt disallow'ing all of your directories or revamping your entire site architecture, please try:

Researching material in our Help Center
Checking for related posts in our Webmaster Forum
Asking for feedback from the webmaster community -- we've got a super skilled group of Google employees, members, and Bionic Posters.