5 Holiday Tips For Making Your Site More Google Friendly

By Jason Lee Miller - Tue, 12/23/2008 - 12:30

Shopper-friendly, too

Google put out a nice holiday checklist at the Webmaster Central blog to help Web marketers prepare for the holiday season. Given that the season is nearly over, if you haven’t already done these things, try to remember them for next year.

Well, one supposes this is good advice for those that do business year round, which is everybody, right? To follow are some of the better suggestions:

1. Verify your site is indexed and returned by Google with the right snippet and page title. Cut down or eliminate on duplicate titles and meta descriptions.

2. Label your images. Nobody likes (and some distrust) images with only the generic number tag as a description (i.e., 001.jpg). Use alt tags to label your images so that when they show up in Google Images, the text matches the picture. It helps Google identify the images, too.

3. If you have a brick-and-mortar location, double check and claim your business listing in Google Local.

4. Make sure your site is compatible with all the different browsers out there.

5. If Google returns Sitelinks for your site, give those a quick review, ensure the destination pages are functional or remove unwanted sitelinks through Webmaster Tools.

News Tags: Search, Google, SEO

About the author:
Jason Lee Miller is a WebProNews editor and writer covering business and technology.

24 Comments

By charlotte web design (WPN reader) - Thu, 02/26/2009 - 00:16

Great tips

Thanks for the great tips about holiday marketing online Jason.

By shonchenko (WPN reader) - Fri, 02/13/2009 - 12:17

it my site good?

Is my site good for google search?

http://best-anti-aging-cream.blogspot.com/

By Pregnattimes (WPN reader) - Mon, 02/09/2009 - 07:01

Great Google Advise

Thanks for all that good advise. There is one that most people do not even think about and that's making sure your site is compatible with all the different browsers out there.

By Philadelphia SEO (WPN reader) - Sun, 02/08/2009 - 21:00

get rid of javascript-only navigation

It's also a huge advantage to change any javascript-only based navigation (e.g. dropdown menus) to a CSS-based solution. There are lots of great scripts out there (superfish for jQuery comes to mind) that will create javascript dropdowns out of standard

tags, which allow you to keep your dynamic navigation without suffering the penalties of having links that search engines can't see.

By CBSE (WPN reader) - Sun, 02/01/2009 - 06:16

I am doing the above steps

I am doing the above steps and going for a holiday :)

By BlackHatForum (WPN reader) - Fri, 01/23/2009 - 05:34

thank you

great tip. thank for sharing friend

By SEO KARACHI (WPN reader) - Mon, 01/12/2009 - 04:23

SEO karachi, SEO karachi pakistan, SEO Expert, SEO GURU , Zubair

SEO karachi, SEO karachi pakistan, SEO Expert, SEO GURU , Zubair Ahmed, SEO Guru of Pakistan, SEO Expert karachi, SEO Professional of karachi Pakistan
http://seokarachi.blogspot.com/

By zubair Ahmed (WPN reader) - Mon, 01/12/2009 - 04:22

SEO karachi, SEO karachi pakistan, SEO Expert, SEO GURU , Zubair

SEO karachi, SEO karachi pakistan, SEO Expert, SEO GURU , Zubair Ahmed, SEO Guru of Pakistan, SEO Expert karachi, SEO Professional of karachi Pakistan
http://seokarachi.blogspot.com/

By Mike (WPN reader) - Wed, 01/07/2009 - 20:38

My site good?

Is my site good for google search?
http://shows-of-naruto.blogspot.com/

By Ruben Zevallos Jr. (WPN reader) - Sun, 01/04/2009 - 19:22

Thanks for de tips

Thank your for your time to remember us...

By Professional-Mover London (WPN reader) - Fri, 01/02/2009 - 14:28

google Professional-mover

http://www.professional-mover.co.uk

See my page on google... What you think about my seo work

By St. Louis SEO (WPN reader) - Thu, 01/01/2009 - 17:07

simple google advice

thanks for the reminders! simple yet effective

By mskt (WPN reader) - Thu, 01/01/2009 - 13:27

Google List

Good suggestions. I had forgotten that Google has this blog so thanks for the reminder that it is out there for us.

By Eclubstyle (WPN reader) - Mon, 12/29/2008 - 10:30

Remember to submit your

Remember to submit your sitemap to the top search engines frequently

By Forklifts (WPN reader) - Mon, 01/05/2009 - 11:18

Submit sitemaps for larger websites

You don't need to submit your site maps if you have a small website, with navigation that is easily crawled by search engines. If you have say an e commerce website with thousands of pages a easily crawlable sitemap will suffice.

By sunnyshine (WPN reader) - Mon, 12/29/2008 - 05:33

Check list

5 above advices are the helpful reminder.

However, my online sales in this year is not good and has problem about the delayed delivery.

Hope everything will be better in the next year.

By reiki (WPN reader) - Sun, 12/28/2008 - 12:32

If your running a e-commerce

If your running a e-commerce site, this year should be a good year for yous all, i heard online sales have boost unlike retail sales due to global melt down, i think the tips are good advice.

By Replica Swords (WPN reader) - Fri, 12/26/2008 - 15:58

Google backlinks

Regarding to number 5, I can easily check my backlinks using Yahoo! Site Traker. But when I try to see my backlinks in Google (link:domain.com) I see 0 results! Does anyone know what's going on? I definitely have more than 0 backlinks...

Thanks,
RP

By Nikotin Inhalator (WPN reader) - Fri, 12/26/2008 - 06:56

Basic - but important

Sure, this is very basic. But also something you forget, when you are bussy with all the other stuff.

Nice reminder...

By www.findhost32.com (WPN reader) - Fri, 12/26/2008 - 03:19

fifth one

i like all your point, but specially the fifth one:
5. If Google returns Sitelinks for your site, give those a quick review, ensure the destination pages are functional or remove unwanted sitelinks through Webmaster Tools.
:)

By chat (WPN reader) - Thu, 12/25/2008 - 12:52

Some good advice

It really amazes me how many really basic things we forget to do in the rush to get a site out. You outlined some basic but yet very important things. One more item I would ad is to find out the basic load speed of the site. I have seen with many metrics that Google and Yahoo both give a little bit of value to load speed. Under 200 milliseconds is okay. Over that and you just might get dinged. I know that some people out there will say I'm crazy for even saying this. You and I both know we DON'T know what metrics Google and the other search have for sure. We can only do a best guess. I know that I had to optimize my chat site to load more quickly and it seemed to have made a little bit of a difference.

Good luck to all my fellow webbers out there.

By Diamonds (WPN reader) - Thu, 12/25/2008 - 12:10