From the Horse’s Mouth: 4 Google Guidelines to Improve Your SEO

By: Sophie Maerowitz

February 15, 2018

When it comes to SEO, who better to offer insight than the ultimate authority on the subject: Google?

At least, that’s how Grant Simmons sees it. Simmons, the vice president of search marketing at Homes.com, relies on a number of Google resources to stay up-to-date with the latest on its search algorithm and guidelines. (He even follows all of Google’s technical leads on Twitter.)

Simmons, who will be speaking on SEO as part of The Social Shake-Up May 7-9 in Atlanta, shares four ways Google resources can help you level up your brand’s SEO strategy:

Grant Simmons, Vice President of Search Marketing, Homes.com

See your site through Google’s eyes. Do you know what Google sees when it looks at your site? “Get to know the Google Search Console now. You need to make sure that what Google sees is the same as what you see as a user,” Simmons advises. “If you’re making updates to the site, searching as Google, then submitting for indexing can help.”

Be mobile-first. Ever since it rolled out its mobile-first index update, mobile has been the name of the SEO game and will continue to be in 2018. “Search Console has a mobile-friendly testing tool,” he says. “It gives you a good idea of challenges most users and search bots have, such as size and length of text, touchpoints, whether it’s easy to get to particular links, things like that.”

Examine your markup. “Google has a structured data testing tool that marks up your page so that search engines can understand the content better,” Simmons says. “This can help with better-looking search results.”

Follow SEO trailblazers. Simmons suggests following Danny Sullivan, a journalist and SEO innovator who recently joined Google as an advisor for its search offerings, on Twitter (@searchliaison, @DannySullivan). He also recommends checking out Google-led Webmaster Hangouts, where communicators can see Google reps answer a variety of SEO questions. Finally, Think With Google offers a wealth of consumer insights around search, says Simmons.

Follow Grant: @simmonet