In my previous posts, we came across the Design, Technical and Content Guidelines. Now, let us see what all Quality Guidelines are to be followed:
• Remember- we are making websites primarily for users and not for search engines. It is not good to present different content to search engines than you provide to users. This is referred commonly as “cloaking”.
• It is better you avoid tricks that improve your search rankings. Just provide your users something which you would have given evenif the search engines didn’t exist.
• Using Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) is the preferred way of separating content from style in quality web pages. With CSS, you can store all style information for your web site in one single document. All major browsers have support for both the CSS 1 and CSS 2 standards. Using CSS will improve the quality of your web site and increases the readability for many different browsers. It will also greatly reduce your web site development costs.
• Avoid links to web spammers on the web that adversely affects your search ranking itself. Also, it is better you don’t participate in link schemes designed to increase your Page Rank.
• Using unauthorized computer programs to submit pages, check rankings etc s not recommended by Google. Google doesn’t recommend the use of products hat send automatic or programmatic queries to it.
• Avoid hidden text or hidden links and don’t use cloaking or sneaky redirects. Avoid sending automated queries to Google.
• A validator is a software program that can check your web pages against the web standards. When using a validator to check HTML, XHTML or CSS documents, the validator returns a list of errors found, according to your chosen standard.
• Your website should not be a keyword-stuffed one. Also, there should not be any duplicate content.
• Don't create pages with malicious behavior, such as phishing or installing viruses, Trojans etc.
• 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.