Your site may be smaller or larger than this and offer vastly different content, but the optimization
topics we discussed below should apply to sites of all sizes and types.
We hope our guide gives you some fresh ideas on how to improve your website, and we'd love to
hear your questions, feedback, and success stories in the Google Webmaster Help Forum.
If your document appears in a search results page, the contents of the title tag will usually appear in
the first line of the results (If you're unfamiliar with the different parts of a Google search result, you
might want to check out the anatomy of a search result video by Google engineer Matt Cutts, and this
helpful diagram of a Google search results page.) Words in the title are bolded if they appear in the
user's search query. This can help users recognize if the page is likely to be relevant to their search.
The title for your homepage can list the name of your website/business and could include other bits of
important information like the physical location of the business or maybe a few of its main focuses or
offerings.
A user performs the query
Our homepage shows up as a result, with the title listed on the first line (notice that the query
terms the user searched for appear in bold)
Reputation-based decisions
Image and reputation are distinct objects. Both are social in two senses: they concern properties of another agent (the target's presumed attitude toward socially desirable behaviour), and they may be shared by a multitude of agents. However, the two notions operate at different levels. Image is a belief, namely, an evaluation. Reputation is a meta-belief, i.e., a belief about others' evaluations of the target with regard to a socially desirable behaviour. To better understand the difference between image and reputation, the mental decisions based upon them must be analysed at the following three levels:
Even though this guide's title contains the words "search engine", we'd like to say that you should
base your optimization decisions first and foremost on what's best for the visitors of your site. They're
the main consumers of your content and are using search engines to find your work. Focusing too
hard on specific tweaks to gain ranking in the organic results of search engines may not deliver the
desired results. Search engine optimization is about putting your site's best foot forward when it
comes to visibility in search engines.
An example may help our explanations, so we've created a fictitious website to follow throughout the
guide. For each topic, we've fleshed out enough information about the site to illustrate the point being
covered. Here's some background information about the site we'll use:
