Seo

Github Project Masterlist

SEO⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

Google Do's

1. Use the URL Inspection tool. It will allow you to see exactly how Googlebot sees and renders your content, and it will help you identify and fix a number of indexing issues on your site.

2. Accurately describe the page's content - Choose title text that reads naturally and effectively communicates the topic of the page's content.

3. Create unique <title> elements for each page Make sure each page on your site has unique text in the <title> element, which helps Google know how the page is distinct from the others on your site. If your site uses separate mobile pages, remember to use descriptive text in the <title> elements on the mobile versions too.

4. Use brief, but descriptive <title> elements <title> elements can be both short and informative. If the text in the <title> element is too long or otherwise deemed less relevant, Google may show only a portion of the text in your <title> element, or a title link that's automatically generated in the search result.

5. Accurately summarize the page content - Write a description that would both inform and interest users if they saw your meta description tag as a snippet in a search result. While there's no minimal or maximal length for the text in a description meta tag, we recommend making sure that it's long enough to be fully shown in Search (note that users may see different sized snippets depending on how and where they search), and contains all the relevant information users would need to determine whether the page will be useful and relevant to them.

6. Use unique descriptions for each page - Having a different meta description tag for each page helps both users and Google, especially in searches where users may bring up multiple pages on your domain (for example, searches using the site: operator). If your site has thousands or even millions of pages, hand-crafting meta description tags probably isn't feasible. In this case, you could automatically generate meta description tags based on each page's content.

7. Imagine you're writing an outline - Similar to writing an outline for a large paper, put some thought into what the main points and sub-points of the content on the page will be and decide where to use heading tags appropriately.

8. Use headings sparingly across the page - Use heading tags where it makes sense. Too many heading tags on a page can make it hard for users to scan the content and determine where one topic ends and another begins.

9. Check your markup using the Rich Results Test - Once you've marked up your content, you can use the Google Rich Results test to make sure that there are no mistakes in the implementation. You can either enter the URL where the content is, or copy the actual HTML which includes the markup.

10. Use Data Highlighter and Markup Helper - If you want to give structured markup a try without changing the source code of your site, you can use Data Highlighter, which is a tool integrated in Search Console that supports a subset of content types. If you'd like to get the markup code ready to copy and paste to your page, try the Markup Helper.

11. Keep track of how your marked up pages are doing - The various Rich result reports in Search Console shows you how many pages on your site we've detected with a specific type of markup, how many times they appeared in search results, and how many times people clicked on them over the past 90 days. It also shows any errors we've detected.

12. Create a naturally flowing hierarchy - Make it as easy as possible for users to go from general content to the more specific content they want on your site. Add navigation pages when it makes sense and effectively work these into your internal link structure. Make sure all of the pages on your site are reachable through links, and that they don't require an internal search functionality to be found. Link to related pages, where appropriate, to allow users to discover similar content.

13. Use text for navigation - Controlling most of the navigation from page to page on your site through text links makes it easier for search engines to crawl and understand your site. When using JavaScript to create a page, use a elements with URLs as href attribute values, and generate all menu items on page-load, instead of waiting for a user interaction.

14. Create a navigational page for users, a sitemap for search engines - Include a simple navigational page for your entire site (or the most important pages, if you have hundreds or thousands) for users. Create an XML sitemap file to ensure that search engines discover the new and updated pages on your site, listing all relevant URLs together with their primary content's last modified dates.

15. Show useful 404 pages - Users will occasionally come to a page that doesn't exist on your site, either by following a broken link or typing in the wrong URL. Having a custom 404 page that kindly guides users back to a working page on your site can greatly improve a user's experience. Consider including a link back to your root page and providing links to popular or related content on your site. You can use Google Search Console to find the sources of URLs causing "not found" errors.

16. Use words in URLs - URLs with words that are relevant to your site's content and structure are friendlier for visitors navigating your site.

17. Create a simple directory structure - Use a directory structure that organizes your content well and makes it easy for visitors to know where they're at on your site. Try using your directory structure to indicate the type of content found at that URL.

18. Provide one version of a URL to reach a document - To prevent users from linking to one version of a URL and others linking to a different version (this could split the reputation of that content between the URLs), focus on using and referring to one URL in the structure and internal linking of your pages. If you do find that people are accessing the same content through multiple URLs, setting up a 301 redirect from non-preferred URLs to the dominant URL is a good solution for this. If you cannot redirect, you may also use the rel="canonical" link element.

19. Write easy-to-read text - Users enjoy content that is well written and easy to follow.

20. Organize your topics clearly - It's always beneficial to organize your content so that visitors have a good sense of where one content topic begins and another ends. Breaking your content up into logical chunks or divisions helps users find the content they want faster.

21. Create fresh, unique content - New content will not only keep your existing visitor base coming back, but also bring in new visitors.

22. Optimize content for your users, not search engines - Designing your site around your visitors' needs while making sure your site is easily accessible to search engines usually produces positive results.

23. Choose descriptive text - Write anchor text that provides at least a basic idea of what the page linked to is about.

24. Write concise text - Aim for short but descriptive text-usually a few words or a short phrase.

25. Format links so they're easy to spot - Make it easy for users to distinguish between regular text and the anchor text of your links. Your content becomes less useful if users miss the links or accidentally click them.

26. Think about anchor text for internal links too. - You may usually think about linking in terms of pointing to outside websites, but paying more attention to the anchor text used for internal links can help users and Google navigate your site better.

27. Use the HTML <img> or <picture> elements - Semantic HTML markup helps crawlers find and process images. By using the <picture> element you can also specify multiple options for different screen sizes for responsive images. You might also use the loading="lazy" attribute on images to make your page load faster for your users.

28. Use brief but descriptive filenames and alt text - Like many of the other parts of the page targeted for optimization, filenames and alt text are best when they're short, but descriptive.

29. Supply alt text when using images as links - If you do decide to use an image as a link, filling out its alt text helps Google understand more about the page you're linking to. Imagine that you're writing anchor text for a text link.

Google Dont's

1. Letting your internal search result pages be crawled by Google. Users dislike clicking a search engine result only to land on another search result page on your site.

2. Allowing URLs created as a result of proxy services to be crawled.

3. Using text in the <title> element that has no relation to the content on the page.

4. Using default or vague text like "Untitled" or "New Page 1".

5. Using a single title in all <title> elements across your site's pages or a large group of pages.

6. Using extremely lengthy text in <title> elements that are unhelpful to users.

7. Stuffing unneeded keywords in your <title> element.

8. Writing a meta description tag that has no relation to the content on the page.

9. Using generic descriptions like "This is a web page" or "Page about baseball cards".

10. Filling the description with only keywords.

11. Copying and pasting the entire content of the document into the meta description tag.

12. Using a single meta description tag across all of your site's pages or a large group of pages.

13. Placing text in heading tags that wouldn't be helpful in defining the structure of the page.

14. Using heading tags where other tags like <em> and <strong> may be more appropriate.

15. Erratically moving from one heading tag size to another.

16. Excessive use of heading tags on a page.

17. Very long headings.

18. Using heading tags only for styling text and not presenting structure.

19. Using invalid markup.

20. Changing the source code of your site when you are unsure about implementing markup.

21. Adding markup data which is not visible to users.

22. Creating fake reviews or adding irrelevant markups.

23. Creating complex webs of navigation links, for example, linking every page on your site to every other page.

24. Going overboard with slicing and dicing your content (so that it takes twenty clicks to reach from the homepage).

25. Having a navigation based entirely on images, or animations.

26. Requiring script or plugin-based event-handling for navigation.

27. Letting your navigational page become out of date with broken links.

28. Creating a navigational page that simply lists pages without organizing them, for example by subject.

29. Allowing your 404 pages to be indexed in search engines (make sure that your web server is configured to give a 404 HTTP status code or—in the case of JavaScript-based sites—include the noindex tag when non-existent pages are requested).

30. Blocking 404 pages from being crawled through the robots.txt file.

31. Providing only a vague message like "Not found", "404", or no 404 page at all.

32. Using a design for your 404 pages that isn't consistent with the rest of your site.

33. Using lengthy URLs with unnecessary parameters and session IDs.

34. Choosing generic page names like page1.html.

35. Using excessive keywords like baseball-cards-baseball-cards-baseballcards.html.

36. Having deep nesting of subdirectories like .../dir1/dir2/dir3/dir4/dir5/dir6/page.html.

37. Using directory names that have no relation to the content in them.

38. Having pages from subdomains and the root directory access the same content, for example, domain.com/page.html and sub.domain.com/page.html.

39. Writing sloppy text with many spelling and grammatical mistakes.

40. Awkward or poorly written content.

41. Embedding text in images and videos for textual content: users may want to copy and paste the text and search engines can't read it.

42. Dumping large amounts of text on varying topics onto a page without paragraph, subheading, or layout separation.

43. Rehashing (or even copying) existing content that will bring little extra value to users.

44. Having duplicate or near-duplicate versions of your content across your site.

45. Inserting numerous unnecessary keywords aimed at search engines but are annoying or nonsensical to users.

46. Having blocks of text like "frequent misspellings used to reach this page" that add little value for users.

47. Deceptively hiding text from users, but displaying it to search engines.

48. Providing insufficient content for the purpose of the page.

49. Putting distracting advertisements on your pages.

50. Writing generic anchor text like "page", "article", or "click here".

51. Using text that is off-topic or has no relation to the content of the page linked to.

52. Using the page's URL as the anchor text in most cases, although there are certainly legitimate uses of this, such as promoting or referencing a new website's address.

53. Writing long anchor text, such as a lengthy sentence or short paragraph of text.

54. Using CSS or text styling that make links look just like regular text.

55. Using excessively keyword-filled or lengthy anchor text just for search engines.

56. Creating unnecessary links that don't help with the user's navigation of the site.

57. Using CSS to display images that you want us to index.

58. Using generic filenames like image1.jpg, pic.gif, 1.jpg when possible—if your site has thousands of images you might want to consider automating the naming of the images.

59. Writing extremely lengthy filenames.

60. Stuffing keywords into alt text or copying and pasting entire sentences.

61. Writing excessively long alt text that would be considered spammy.

62. Using only image links for your site's navigation.

63. Attempting to promote each new, small piece of content you create; go for big, interesting items.

64. Involving your site in schemes where your content is artificially promoted to the top of these services.

65. Spamming link requests out to all sites related to your topic area.

66. Purchasing links from another site with the aim of getting PageRank.