Google Webmaster Academy

[tke71709]

The following link should be of interest to website owners, especially those who rely on or seek to gain search engine traffic from Google.

Google has provided a one-stop shop for understanding how Google works and what they want you to do to make their job easier. There is no reason not to read the below, some of it is fairly basic but a solid foundation is required in our business.

I, personally, would take point 6 with a large grain of salt but that is up to you.

Amended list below for copyright reasons. Click on the source link to get to the actual full text of the page.

Source: http://support.google.com/webmasters...cs&tab=1095542

For your site to perform well in search, Google needs to be able to discover and understand your pages. Here's how to create rich, Google-friendly content.
1: Learn how Google works
2. Make sure Google knows about your site
3: Influence your site's listing in search
4: Create great content
5: Images and video
6: Connect with Google+

[Clinton]

Thanks, tke71709, good catch. There's been coverage of this in a few places and all of it seems to praise this initiative (though the Academy has been around for ages).

I'm not so sure.

Google is a search engine and therefore has an agenda which makes it somewhat less of an unbiased player. It's like Flippa providing "education" for newbies (and encouraging them to jump into buying websites). Google's obviously trying to protect the SERPs and is hoping new webmasters rely on the Google advice rather than advice from elsewhere. All very well, but in due course can we expect all kinds of Google-specific tags and markups to become standard requirements in website design?

There are other implications. For one, Google's getting into the content game. Their "academy" is now competing with websites that offer beginner advice to webmasters. Is it going to be the #1 result in SERPs in due course?

[JJMcClure]

I, personally, would take point 6 with a large grain of salt but that is up to you.

Then I'll believe it. If Google are taking the time to say that connecting with Google plus will make a site more 'Google friendly' I have nothing to lose by doing it. Google friendly doesn't necessarily mean good rankings but it can't hurt.

I'd like to know what 'influencing your site's listing in the SERP' means, how do you do that without contravening ToS? Is 'listing' a very careful choice of word? Oh wait... it's just all that good on-page stuff that Google love and which some people choose to interpret as Google liking SEO when it's actually just basic markup stuff that any competent webmaster would be doing even if google didn't exist.

All very well, but in due course can we expect all kinds of Google-specific tags and markups to become standard requirements in website design?

No, not in due course, it's already been the case for a long long time. Google have had a massive influence on how pages are coded and much semantic markup is the result of what they rewarded with good rankings in the early days and have always encouraged because it makes crawling and indexing sites easier for them.

I use good markup because I'm concerned about cross browser compatibility but I'm also aware that it'll make life easier for the Google bot and I put the content that I want to push in the 'right' places so the emphasis is impossible for Google to miss.

[KenW3]

This reminds me of a post from last year in the G Webmaster Blog titled More Guidance On Building High-Quality Sites

I have seen variations of this 23-item list rewritten and posted as paid classes, special offers being sold on another forum, included in list-building ebooks on how to beat Panda, how to rank in SERPs, how to build authority sites, and how to become an SEO consultant.