Webmaster Central Blog

Official news on crawling and indexing sites for the Google index

Quick and easy tips for the holiday rush

Monday, December 22, 2008

Label your images accurately
Don't miss out on potential customers! Because good 'alt' text and descriptive filenames help us better understand images, make sure you change non-descriptive file names [001.jpg] to something more accurate [NintendoWii.jpg]. Image Search is one of our largest search properties, so you should take advantage of it.

Know what Google knows (about your site)
Check for crawl errors and learn the top queries that bring traffic to your site through Webmaster Tools. See our diagnostics checklist.

Have a plan for expiring and temporary pages
Make sure to serve accurate HTTP status codes. If you no longer sell a product, serve a 404. If you have changed a product page to a new URL, serve a 301 to redirect the old page to the new one. Keeping your site up-to-date can help bring more targeted traffic your way.

Increase foot traffic too
If your website directs customers to a brick-and-mortar location, make sure you claim and double check your business listing in Google Local.


Usability 101
Test the usability of your checkout process with various browsers. Ask yourself if a user can get from product page to checkout without assistance. Is your checkout button easy to find?

Tell us where to find all of your web pages
If you upload new products faster than Google crawls your site, make sure to submit a Sitemap and include 'last modification' and change frequency' information. A Sitemap can point Googlebot to your new or hard-to-find content.

Manage your sitelinks
Your site may be triggering Sitelinks in the search results, so check the links and make sure the destination pages are fully functional. Remember: in Webmaster Tools you can remove any sitelinks that you don't think users will find useful.

Note: The "demote sitelinks" feature has been removed and is no longer available. Please see our Google+ post on this change and our help center article on sitelinks.



Don't forget to check out these additional resources:
  • Read our recently released SEO Starter Guide.
  • Watch our Tutorials for Webmasters.
  • Find out what information Google has about your website in Webmaster Tools.
  • Get your other questions answered in our Webmaster Help Center.
  • Ask your last-minute questions in the Webmaster Help Forum.
  • Countdown to 2009!
Written by Matt Dougherty, Search Quality Team
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