The Google SEO Report Card

Google has released an SEO report (PDF) card which outlines how well their own SEO efforts are doing.  So, do they give themselves an A?  A B?  or an F?

What I found surprising is that a vast majority of what they discovered left them with an “unsatisfactory” rating.

And only one item was listed as having “Excellent Results”.

Here’s some of the details…

Items in red = Needs Improvement

Items in gold = Satisfactory

Items in Green = Excellent

1. Title tag format and length – Rating 10/100
2. Description meta tag use – Rating 33/100
3. Appealing Google sitelinks – Rating 14/44
4. Clear main page result on Google for [google product] – 89/100
5. Heading tag use – Rating 61/90
6. <h1> tag use – Rating 26/61
7. Logo image link destination – Rating 38/97
8. Logo image alt text – Rating 57/99
9. Descriptive internal anchor text – Rating 67/100

Now, this is not all-encompassing, you can read the ratings of items that weren’t graded within the actual SEO Report Card PDF.

What I think is important for you is that you take a look at what they graded themselves on.  These are items that they deem important to their own SEO efforts and while it might make you feel better to know that even Google themselves, the owners of the search engine can get less than excellent ratings on their own sites, this isn’t what you should focus on.

Instead, take a look at what Google ranks themselves on, why they are important (provided within the explanations of each item) and what you can do yourself to improve those items on your OWN site.

What I found particularly interesting was the information about H1 tags which has lately gotten a bad rap.

I’ve overheard rumblings of other “experts” who have stated that the use of H1 is unnecessary and that it no longer holds purpose on a web page.

However, if we look at the notes that Google provides within their report card we see this snippet of text:

…Make use of <h1> tags.  …while styling your text so it appears larger might achieve the same visual presentation, it does not provide the same semantic meaning to the search engine that an <h1> tag does.  The product’s name and/or a few words about its features are great to have in an h1 tag for the product main page.

The bottom line is, if you take a look at what Google believes is important on it’s own sites, then you should take a look at yours and implement those same items.

Are you using H1 tags?  Do these H1 tags provide relevant information related to the topic of the page?

Do you want sitelinks to show up for your site?  If so, do you have a nice structure to your site so that descriptive anchor text points to these internal pages?

Are your pages nested too deep?  In other words, do you have important information located under Home > Link > Link > Link > important information?  If so, you may want to re-think how your site is set up.

So take a look at Google’s own SEO report card, read the data they provide on each and even take a look at Google’s own SEO Beginner Guide to help aid you in how your site is viewed by the search engines.

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