Google and Webmaster Guidelines

Nowadays the need to use a search engine often overlaps with the will to use the Google search engine. For this reason a webmaster, devoted to the construction of a site, will have to refer to the guidelines offered by Google.

These guidelines offer technical and theoretical insights so that the webmaster knows how to move best in the construction and enrichment of contents process, which not only refers to your site increasing its Page Rank, but is also structured in the best way possible in the eyes of the user. A recommendation from Google is that of inserting contents so that the site stands out for its originality and interest. Another recommendation is then not to structure the website with the aim of "cheating" users, causing them to click on certain links, but to be transparent and to create the website with the same usability that they themselves they would expect from the commonly surfed websites. But beyond the qualitative guidelines, Google offers webmasters with technical guidelines.

Some of these guidelines put functionality at the centre of everything: in particular Google offers webmasters to constantly test both the correct functioning of their web pages, using as many browsers as possible, and the reactivity and speed of these. Tools like "Page Speed" and "YSlow" are proposed to check the web pages' speed. Another important technical advice offered by Google is to check the site through the Lynx text browser, because the browser detects the website in the same way as the search engine spiders. Lastly, another extremely important guideline is to support the if-modified-since HTTP header: this header, implemented on the website in question, will allow the web server to communicate a change made on the pages directly to Google, limiting bandwidth consumption. In short, the guidelines offered by Google for webmasters are technical and qualitative advice that, when applied, allow the creation of usable web pages that are easily reachable to the users from a search engine.