Webmaster Guidelines

In the SEO world, the only rule that we have to follow are the ones given by the search engines. And these rules are known as the “Webmaster Guidelines”.

What is Webmaster Guidelines?

First, let’s understand the definition of webmaster. Webmaster stands for a person/group/organization that is responsible for the website creation. Or in the simplify word, they are the website owner or those that operate the site. Therefore, the webmaster guidelines is basically the guidelines that are given by the search engine to the website owner to follow, if they want their site to be visible in the SERP.

So, What is The Purpose of This Webmaster Guidelines?

With the publication of webmaster guidelines, search engines are setting up the rules on who deserve to rank better on their SERP. At the end of the day, the SERP is the search engine’s platform. Search engines get to decide what conditions a website must met in order to optimally found in the SERP. Google webmaster guideline is the basic fundamental to achieve a good ranking in the SERP. If you’re a website owner that don’t care about these guidelines, don’t expect your website to earn any organic visitor!

What Happen if Webmaster Violate The Guidelines?

If the guidelines violated by the webmaster, it could put the website on risk where the search engine penalized the website. When the website receives the penalty from search engine, be prepared to lose your existing organic traffic and ranking. On the other hand, if you’re following the webmaster guidelines, it will help Google to find, index, and rank your site.

What are The Webmaster Guidelines?

Search engines like Google and Bing has published their own guidelines to public:

• Google Webmaster Guideline
• Bing Webmaster Guideline

However, we’re going to breakdown and conclude what things you need to avoid as webmaster:

1. Do Not Duplicate Content

If you’re still practicing copy and paste content on your site and hoping that your website will have a good rank in the SERP, stop it! Google has their algorithm that can match your new published content to all the contents in their database. If Google found that you published an article that has been published before, they will place your content no where in the SERP. Not even in the last page.

2. Do Not Use Automatically Generated Content

With the current development of Artificial Intelligence, there are many robot generated content everywhere. Those tools normally offers the webmaster to generate bulk contents with a tempting cheap price. Take a look on below example of AI generated content: We know that creating a high quality content is not easy, but please do not use any of these AI content writer service for your SEO sake! The content generated by these AI writer are basically a spinning content without adding value to your reader. Google knows if the webmaster are trying to manipulate the SERP by creating a spinning content or any content that makes no sense to the readers.

3. Make Sure Your Site Add Value to The Readers

While there are thousand or million sites creating the same content, try to add some color to the internet! If you’re just offering the same content as other sites, the search engine will not give you any boost in the SERP. One way to ensure that your site is adding value to the readers is by creating original and unique content. For example, when you have an affiliate site, don’t just copy the product description, price, and link. Instead, give your own original opinion about the product on why people should be buying it.

4. Help The Search Engines Understand Your Pages

As a webmaster, always try to provide a long content with rich information that accurately describe your content. Think about what words that the user will use to find the pages, and make sure to include those keywords inside the content, title, and image alt. In the next topic, you will learn more about how Google control the sites that try to game their system!