STEP 3: WIX SEO COURSE - What Google really wants!

To understand what Google really wants, we first need to understand what the search engine guidelines are.

​

Google have a long list of guidelines that website owners need to abide by, if they want to have their website listed and ranking within their search engine. To understand SEO and understand how to get your website ranked in Google, you also must understand what Google are looking for, and what Google do not want you to do. It makes logical sense.

​

Many people think that Google are always updating their guidelines, but the truth is, they do not update the guidelines that often.

​

The difference between Google guidelines and Google updates

​

• Google guidelines are exactly that. They are guidelines that website owners need to follow. If they want their website listed within the Google search engines and get ranked within Google search engines.

• Google updates are Google just getting better at establishing the websites that conform to their guidelines, and the ones that do not. Google updates their algorithm accordingly.

 

If you play by the Google rulebook, which the search engine guidelines are the rule book, you will be fine.

​

The various types of Google guidelines you need to consider.

​

Google Guidelines:

​

“The guidelines provide advice on how to code your site in order to be eligible to appear on Google. These guidelines fall into the following categories:”

​

Follow these best practices when designing your website. Don’t worry about ‘code’ as Wix have all this taken care of for you.

​

1. Webmaster guidelines

​

“The Webmaster guidelines are general best practices to help your site appear in Google Search, as well as quality guidelines that, if not followed, can cause your page or site to be omitted from Search.”

​

2. General guidelines

​

“The following general guidelines are best practices for having your site show up and look its best in Google.”

​

3. Content-specific guidelines

​

“The following guidelines are additional tips for specific content types on your site.”

​

By specific content types, Google mean…

​

• Written content

• Images

• Video

• PDFs

• Etc…

 

4. Quality guidelines

​

“The following guidelines describe specific prohibited techniques that can get your page or site omitted from Search results. Engaging in these techniques can incur a manual action for your site.”

​

What happens if you do not conform to these guidelines and you think you can just do what you want?

​

There are many SEO agencies and professionals who try and trick Google into thinking they are following the guidelines by implementing manipulation SEO techniques (black-hat SEO). If, however, Google catch you and find out you are implementing these manipulation SEO techniques…

​

BYE, BYE you’re gone! You WILL lose those top-ranking results.

​

Search engine ranking factors

​

Search engine ranking factors are things that the search engines (Google) use to determine where to rank a page for a given keyword or search phrase.

​

Google do not publish their ranking factors; however, we do know that Google use around 200 different ranking factors.

​

A lot of these 200 ranking factors have truly little impact or weight when it comes to getting your website ranked high. SEO is not just about adding some keywords into a page, Google look at 200 different things, both on your website page and all signals off-site relating to your website and brand.

 

For years, top SEO professionals have experimented and determined by analysing many thousands (even millions) of websites, what the main ranking factors are.

​

What we know for sure

​

In March 2016 during a Q&A session with Andrey Lipattsev, Search Quality Senior Strategist at Google, he stated that the three TOP ranking factors are:

​

• Content – Quality of a page is paramount to satisfy the user’s intent. We will explore ‘quality content’ in step 5 of this course.

• Links – Related links pointing to your site on quality third party websites is important. We will explore how to gain quality related links in step 7 of this course.

• RankBrain – Google’s machine learning AI (artificial intelligence) system. You don’t have to worry about RankBrain. This is just trying to match the content on your page with the user intent better.