Quality guidelines

These quality guidelines cover the most common forms of deceptive or
manipulative behavior, but search engines may respond negatively to other
misleading practices not listed here (e.g. tricking users by
registering misspellings of well-known websites).

Webmasters who spend their
energies upholding the spirit of the basic principles will provide a
much better user experience and subsequently enjoy better ranking than
those who spend their time looking for loopholes they can exploit.


Quality guidelines - basic principles

• Make pages primarily for users, not for search engines.
  Don't deceive your users or present different content to search engines
  than you display to users, which is commonly referred to as "cloaking."
• Avoid
  tricks intended to improve search engine rankings. A good rule of thumb
  is whether you'd feel comfortable explaining what you've done to a
  website that competes with you.
• Don't participate in link schemes
  designed to increase your site's ranking or PageRank. In particular,
  avoid links to web spammers or "bad neighborhoods" on the web, as your
  own ranking may be affected adversely by those links.

link schemes

Your site's ranking in search results is partly based on
analysis of those sites that link to you. The quantity, quality, and
relevance of links count towards your rating.

The sites that link to you can provide context about the subject matter
of your site, and can indicate its quality and popularity. However,
some webmasters engage in link exchange schemes and build partner pages
exclusively for the sake of cross-linking, disregarding the quality of
the links.

Examples of link schemes can include:

• Links intended to manipulate PageRank
• Links to web spammers or bad neighborhoods on the web
• Excessive reciprocal links or excessive link exchanging ("Link to me and I'll link to you.")
• Buying or selling links that pass PageRank.

The best way to get other sites to create relevant links to yours is to
create unique, relevant content that can quickly gain popularity in the
Internet community.

The more useful content you have, the greater the chances someone else
will find that content valuable to their readers and link to it.

Before making any single decision, you should ask yourself the question: Is this going to be beneficial for my page's visitors?

Creating good content pays off: Links are usually editorial votes given
by choice, and the buzzing blogger community can be an excellent place
to generate interest.

In addition, submit your site to relevant directories such as the Open
Directory Project and Yahoo!, as well as to other industry-specific
expert sites.


Quality guidelines - specific guidelines

• Avoid hidden text or hidden links.
• Don't use cloaking or sneaky redirects.
• Don't send automated queries to Google.
• Don't load pages with irrelevant keywords.
• Don't create multiple pages, subdomains, or domains with substantially duplicate content.
• Don't create pages with malicious behavior, such as phishing or installing viruses, trojans, or other badware.
• Avoid "doorway" pages created just for search engines, or other "cookie cutter" approaches such as affiliate programs with little or no original content.
• If your site participates in an affiliate program, make sure that your site adds value. Provide unique and relevant content that gives users a reason to visit your site first.

If you determine that your site doesn't meet these guidelines, you can modify your site so that it does.




to your success