Two years after the publication of the first edition, Google has released the second edition of its Starter guide to search engine optimization. It can be downloaded free of charge (http://bit.ly/GXg1Nb ).

As Google itself says, the guide doesn't reveal secrets on how to come out top of the list in search results, but it does give plenty of useful tips that will help even inexperienced webmasters to improve their website ranking with search engines, whatever the size or subject of their project.

The guide is easy to follow and provides a sample site to illustrate the explanations. We're not going to rewrite everything that Google has already explained very clearly, but in this T&T we just want to underline  how you can make the most of the indications that the guide gives when you are working with WebSite X5 Evolution 9.

Before we start, we would like to point out that WebSite X5 automatically creates page code and it does so in the best possible way, using HTML5 + CSS 2.1/3. You can count on a formally correct code that fully conforms to standards. Now, we'll see how to set all the parameters that Google suggests you use...

SEO basics

Create unique, accurate page titles (page 4)

WebSite X5 automatically composes the <title> tag, taking the page's name from what you specified in Step 2 – Sitemap Creation. If you need to give a page a longer title than that used in the navigation menu, you can open the Page Properties window and enter an Extended Page Title: in this case, the extended title will be used as the <title>.

You'll have a double advantage if you give the pages appropriate names: you'll have a more functional navigation menu and each page will have a correct and unique <title> tag.

Make use of the “description” meta tag (page 6)

Starting from the SiteMap, select each page, one at a time, and open the Page Properties window: the text entered for the Page Description option, in the General section, will be automatically used for the “description” meta tag.

Improve the site's structure

Improve the structure of your URLs (page 8)

WebSite X5 uses the page names to name the corresponding HTML files that it generates automatically. If you open the Page Properties window and go to the General section, you can manually enter the File Name to be used for a particular page's HTML file.

In this way, you can create easier and more friendly URLs for the various pages.

Make your site easier to navigate (page 10)

In WebSite X5 you can manage your site's structure and make it easy to navigate just by creating the Sitemap in Step 2. There are no particular technical rules to stick to here: the quality of the map depends exclusively on a good organization of the contents you want to represent.

If your site has different levels and sub-levels, you can organize it so that the Page Path appears under the page title: go to Step 4 – Advanced Settings, open the Text section of Styles and Models and select Page Path from the Page Element menu, then select the Display option. If you do this, you'll create what Google's guide calls “breadcrumb lists”.

Google's guide also talks about the differences between a sitemap (in lowercase) that the users use, and the XML Sitemap (in uppercase) that the search engine uses to identify your website pages.

The guide says ”A sitemap (lower case) is a simple page on your site that displays the structure of your website”. WebSite X5 automatically creates the sitemap and links it to the Footer menu, that you can activate in the Text section of Styles and Models in Step 4 – Advanced Settings. You can supplement navigation by applying links to text and images in the pages, using the Sitemap action in the Links window.

The XML Sitemap is the most important element for site optimization. WebSite X5 will create this file automatically for you if you select the Automatically create a Sitemap option in the Expert section of Step 1 – General Settings. When you've done this, you can go to Step 2 – Sitemap Creation and open the Page Properties window for each page and, in the Expert section, specify whether the page is to be included, or not, in the Sitemap, how often it is to be updated and how important its contents are.

Furthermore, each time you add a picture or a video, you can work on the various Sitemap sections to add parameters that will be useful for completing the XML Sitemap file.

Optimizing the Contents

Offer quality content and services (page 14)

Obviously WebSite X5 has no control over the quality of a website's contents. That depends entirely on the ability of the website author to write grammatically correct, easy-to-read and, above all, interesting texts for the site's visitors.

Write better anchor text (page 16)

The Guide defines anchor text as “the clickable text that users will see as a result of a link”, which means the text in the <a href=”…”></a>” tag. In WebSite X5, the anchor text is the part of the text that you select and is highlighted before you click on the  button to insert a link.

As well as being careful to write descriptive and concise text, Google also underlines the importance of formatting the links so that they can be recognised easily. WebSite X5 lets you define the appearance of the links in their 3 possible states (“active”, “on mouseover” and “visited”) in the Text section of Styles and Models in Step 4 – Advanced Settings.

Optimize your use of images (page 18)

You can set the “alt” attribute by typing the required text in the Alternative Text field in the General section of the Image Object window.

WebSite X5 follows Google's indications for image file management:

• If an image that has been inserted in a page has to be modified (for example, to adapt it to the size of the page layout cell), a copy of the image is created automatically, in JPG or PNG format, and the new file maintains the original file name (with an additional string added to it, to prevent the original file from being overwritten).
• When the website is uploaded to the server to be published online, WebSite X5 saves all the images in a project in a single folder (unless otherwise specified).

Use heading tags appropriately (page 20)

WebSite X5 uses the <h1> tag for the site title and the <h2> tag for the page title: even if you choose not to have these titles displayed, they are still added correctly to the page code.

The other heading tags (from <h3> to <h6>) should be used for the site contents, and so they aren't added automatically by the program.

Dealing with web crawlers

Make effective use of the robots.txt file (page 21)

At the moment, WebSite X5 doesn't allow you to work directly on the robots.txt file. If you should need to use this tool to avoid certain pages being indexed, you can use the generator provided by Google   [http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/2008/03/speaking-language-of-robots.html ]

Once the robots.txt has been generated, it can be published directly in the site's main folder, using WebSite X5's built-in FTP engine which, in the current version 9, lets you upload single files.

Beware of rel=”nofollow” for links (page 22)

Google's guide explains that the “nofollow” value in the rel attribute is particularly useful inside blog comments. As from version 9.0.8, WebSite X5 automatically applies nofollows to users' comments.

Moreover, to avoid spam in the comments (which could ruin a site's reputation), WebSite X5 provides CAPTCHA, which is easy to use: go to Step 4 – Advanced Settings and select the Enable “captcha” anti-spamfilter option in the Comments section of the Blog.

Promotions and analysis

Promote your website in the right ways (page 28)

Google's guide gives lots of good advice for promoting websites. With WebSite X5, you can easily link a blog and RSS Feed to your website. The HTML code and Widget Object also makes it simple to include all that you need to offer a vast range of services.

Make use of free webmaster tools (page 30)

As the guide says, “Google's Webmaster Tools help webmasters better control how Google interacts with their websites and get useful information from Google about their site”. To make the most of this service, you must first create an account on Google Webmaster Central, and then verify your site. You can do this with WebSite X5 by copying the verification meta tag that Google provides into the Verification meta tag for Google Webmaster Central field in the Expert section of Step 1 – General Settings.

You can also activate the Google Analytics service in much the same way: the activation code provided by Google must be copied into the Code for Website Statistics field in the Expert section of Step 1 – General Settings.

Our brief examination of Google's starter guide to SEO ends here.

As some of you may have noticed, we haven't mentioned the chapter on SEO for mobile phones but, as Google says, “mobile sites not only use a different format from normal desktop sites, but the management methods and expertise required are also quite different. This results in a variety of new challenges” that WebSite X5 will be tackling in the near future.

Have fun optimizing!