Google has updated their SEO Starter Guide – find out what’s new

Google has updated its official SEO Starter Guide for the first time in seven years.

The release of the new web-based SEO Starter Guide replaces the previous PDF version as well as incorporates their old Webmaster Academy, which was a separate resource which had the information and tools to teach webmasters how to create a site and have it found in Google Search.

You can see the all-new Google SEO Starter Guide here: https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/7451184

The new guide includes new sections detailing why SEO is important, how to add structured data markup and tips for making and maintaining mobile-friendly websites.

Google says the new starter guide is for anyone who owns, manages, monetizes or promotes online content via Google Search.

It doesn't, however, reveal any previously unknown algorithm secrets, so it's more of a primer for beginners and a refresher for more experienced SEO professionals.

We've took some time going through the new guide to identify the most interesting and notable changes to the new guide...

What's changed?

Hiring an SEO expert - Google is quite up-front about the fact it may be worthwhile to hire an SEO professional, and briefly details what SEOs can offer to online businesses.

Mobile-friendly websites - A lot has changed since Google last updated the SEO Starter Guide seven years ago, and the mobile web is perhaps the most important change. The previous guide focused on SEO best practices for websites that had separate mobile pages, but the new guide reflects the current state of mobile browsing and includes tips on creating websites that can be accessed on any device.

Linking out to other sites - The new guide does a better job of advising webmasters about the perils of adding links to other sites, telling us to "Be careful who you link to. You can confer some of your site's reputation to another site your site links to it."

It also goes through some of the more common link spam techniques to look out for, such as comment spam, and how webmasters can combat them using things like "nofollow".