SEO Starter Guide: The Basics from Google Search Central

How does Google Search work?

Google is a fully automated search engine that uses programs called crawlers to explore the web constantly, looking for pages to add to our index. You usually don't need to do anything except publish your site on the web. In fact, the vast majority of sites listed in our results are found and added automatically as we crawl the web.

Help Google find your content

Google primarily finds pages through links from other pages it already crawled. In many cases, these are other websites that are linking to your pages. Other sites linking to you is something that happens naturally over time, and you can also encourage people to discover your content by promoting your site.

Check if Google can see your page the same way a user does

When Google crawls a page, it should ideally see the page the same way an average user does. For this, Google needs to be able to access the same resources as the user's browser. If your site is hiding important components that make up your website (like CSS and JavaScript), Google might not be able to understand your pages.

Organize your site

When you're setting up or redoing your site, it can be good to organize it in a logical way because it can help search engines and users understand how your pages relate to the rest of your site.

• Use descriptive URLs: Parts of the URL can be displayed in search results as breadcrumbs, so users can also use the URLs to understand whether a result will be useful for them.
• Group topically similar pages in directories: Using directories (or folders) to group similar topics can help Google learn how often the URLs in individual directories change.
• Reduce duplicate content: Search engines choose a single URL (the canonical URL) to show users, per piece of content.

Make your site interesting and useful

Creating content that people find compelling and useful will likely influence your website's presence in search results more than any of the other suggestions in this guide.

• The text is easy-to-read and well organized.
• The content is unique and not copied from others.
• The content is up-to-date and relevant.
• The content is helpful, reliable, and people-first.

Influence how your site looks in Google Search

A typical Google Search results page consists of a few different visual elements that you can influence to help users decide whether they should visit your site through those search results.

Influence your title links

The title link is the headline part of the search result and it can help people decide which search result to click. You can influence the title links in Search by writing good titles: a good title is unique to the page, clear and concise, and accurately describes the contents of the page.

Control your snippets

Below the title link, a search result typically has a description of the target page to help users decide whether they should click the search result. This is called a snippet.

Add images to your site, and optimize them

Many people search visually, and images can be how people find your website for the first time. As you add images to your site, make sure that people and search engines can find and understand them.

• Add high-quality images near relevant text: Give users enough context and detail to decide which image best matches what they were looking for.
• Add descriptive alt text to the image: Alt text is a short, but descriptive piece of text that explains the relationship between the image and your content.

Promote your website

Effectively promoting your new content will lead to faster discovery by those who are interested in the same subject, and also by search engines. You can do this through social media promotion, community engagement, advertisement, and word of mouth.

Table of Contents

• How does Google Search work?
• Help Google find your content
• Check if Google can see your page the same way a user does
• Organize your site
• Make your site interesting and useful
• Influence how your site looks in Google Search
• Influence your title links
• Control your snippets
• Add images to your site, and optimize them
• Promote your website