Google Webmaster Guidelines changes to Google Search Essentials

Wait ! No Surprise for another boom from Google.

But this time to the one of most Simple, Mysterious & Complex part of the rank secrets of Google Search Engine i.e Google Webmaster Guidelines.

Google has rebranded the name(Google Webmaster Guidelines) to Google Search Essentials.

The cache is: Is it just a rebranding or change in the rank algorithms?

Obviously! when we see a change in the Brand Names or Brand Positionings, there will be definitive change in the Brand Objective or New Functionalities within the system as well.

So here it comes with a ringing bell to the SEO community to be alert with the rank algorithms.

Before we dig into the change, if you are new to SEO, then let’s understand What are Google Webmaster Guidelines?

According to Google:

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.

So What’s the Change now?

Google is Officially changing the previous name Google Webmaster Guidelines to Google Search Essentials. And it is visible in SERP like this. Follow the below image.

Google Webmaster Guidelines are now Google Search Essentials

The former names were: Google Search Central, Google Webmaster Central etc

What are the Google Search Essentials?

The Google Search Essentials make up the core parts of what makes your web-based content (web pages, images, videos, or other publicly-available material that Google finds on the web) eligible to appear and perform well on Google Search:

  • Technical requirements: What Google needs from a web page to show it in Google Search.
  • Spam policies: The behaviors and tactics that can lead to lower ranking or being completely omitted from Google Search results.
  • Key best practices: The main things that can help improve how your site appears in Google Search results.

P.S: There’s nothing new you need if you’re already familiar with the former Google Webmaster Guidelines. Google Search Essentials are just represented in the new, straight & easily understandable format.

Technical Requirement:

The technical requirements is all about the availability of the content on the page, should be live page and Indexable & Bots should not be blocked.

Spam policies:

The spam policy might drive the page or website getting ranked lower or de-indexed from Google Search if not followed the search essentials or followed the Blackhat SEO practices.

Like: Cloaking, AI/Auto generated Content, Hidden Text, Thin Content, Doorway Pages, Spammy Redirection scam, fraud etc

Key best practices:

In this section Google tries to explain and state the best practices(core practices) those can lead your web page to one of the valuable, helpful page for the users and can be ranked on the top of the SERP.

  • Create helpful, reliable, people-first content.
  • Use words that people would use to look for your content, and place those words in prominent locations on the page, such as the title and main heading of a page, and other descriptive locations such as alt text and link text.
  • Make your links crawlable so that Google can find other pages on your site via the links on your page.
  • Tell people about your site. Be active in communities where you can tell like-minded people about your services and products that you mention on your site.
  • If you have other content, such as images, videos, structured data, and JavaScript, make sure you’re following those specific best practices so that we can understand those parts of your page too.
  • Enhance how your site appears on Google Search by enabling features that make sense for your site.
  • If you have content that shouldn’t be found in search results or you want to opt out entirely, use the appropriate method for controlling how your content appears in Google Search.

At the end, the new change looks very clean and easier for the Content Creators, Authors, Business/Website Owners. As the new name sounds, Google Search Essentials, definitely there are the essentials points have been highlighted to make out content more promising and helpful for the users.

Source of the information: https://developers.google.com/search/docs/essentials