Art Business Info. for Artists
  • Home
    • Art Business Information Index
  • NEWS
  • PRACTICE
    • Starting Out - Tips
    • Being a Professional artist >
      • Working Lives of Professional Artists
      • Artists' Side Hustles
      • Artists' Residencies
      • Artists Unions
    • Best Art Business Books
    • Learning Opportunities >
      • Art Schools in the UK
      • Art Business Courses
    • Image Management for Artists >
      • How to photograph art
      • How To Scan Artwork
      • How to back up image files
    • Law for Artists >
      • Legal Matters
      • Money Laundering in the Art Market
      • Data Protection for Art and Artists
      • Brexit Guidance for Art and Artists
    • Business Management for Artists >
      • Risk Management for Artists
      • How to spot Art Scams / Fraud
      • Life in an Art Market Recession
      • Coronavirus COVID-19 and Art
  • MARKETING
    • How to write an Artist's Statement >
      • What is an Artist Statement?
      • Why you need an Artist's Statement
      • TIPS How to write an artist statement
      • The Language of an Artist's Statement
      • What an artist statement should contain
      • Examples of Artists Statements
    • How to write an Artist's Resume or CV >
      • Social Media summaries
      • CV for Artists
      • Resume for Artists
      • Biography for Artists
    • How to sign a painting, drawing or fine art print
    • Business Cards for Artists
    • How to write a press release for an artist
    • The Private View Invitation
    • Publicity for Juried Exhibitions
    • Websites for Artists >
      • Why websites matter
      • Options for Websites
      • Web content for Artists
      • Web design for artists
      • Keeping Google Happy
      • Writing for the Web
    • Image & Video sizes for Social Media Sites
    • How to be mobile-friendly
  • SELL ART
    • Trading Law & Regulations for Artists (UK)
    • E-commerce for artists
    • Art Exhibitions & Competitions >
      • Juried Exhibitions & Art Competitions
      • Juried Art Exhibition Checklist for Artists
      • How to cost a juried exhibition entry
      • How to make labels for an art exhibition
    • A Guide to Art Agents and Consultants
    • A Guide to Art Dealers & Galleries >
      • How to find the right gallery
    • The Artist-run Gallery
    • The Vanity Gallery
    • Art Fairs
    • Alternative Options for Exhibitions
    • How to Sell Art from Home
    • Open Studios
  • FRAME ART
    • List of Recommended Picture Framers
    • Conservation Products
    • Framing for open exhibitions and art competitions
    • Framing Videos
    • How to hang a picture
  • SHIP ART
    • How to pack artwork >
      • How to pack and ship pastel paintings
    • Packaging materials
    • How to ship art internationally >
      • Rules of Origin
      • Export Licences for Cultural Goods
    • How to ship art to exhibitions
    • How to mail art - Post & Parcel Services
    • UK & Ireland: Art Transport Services
    • USA Art Transport Services
  • COPYRIGHT
    • Copyright and artists' rights
    • BASICS: Copyright Infringement and Fair Use
    • How to protect artwork online
    • How to do a reverse image search
    • What to do about copyright infringement - for artists
    • Global Conventions on copyright >
      • Copyright in the UK
      • Copyright in the USA
      • Copyright in Canada
      • Copyright in Australia
  • MONEY & TAX
    • How to work out profit from an art sale
    • How to Price Your Art >
      • How important is price when buying art?
      • Options for Pricing Art
      • Terminology and Formulas for Pricing Art
      • Art Experts on Pricing Art
      • How artists price their art
      • The price of affordable art
    • Payments to Artists >
      • Paying Artists
      • How to create an Invoice
    • VAT for Artists
    • Tax Tips for Artists >
      • Tax on prize money
      • UK Tax Tips for Artists
      • UK: Self-Assessment Video Tips
      • USA Tax Tips for Artists
      • Ireland: Tax for Artists
      • Australia: Tax Tips for Artists
    • Insurance for Art and Artists >
      • Insurance for Art Teachers
      • UK Insurance Policies for art and artists
      • USA & Canada: Insurance Policies for Art and Artists
    • Artists' Grants & Scholarships
    • Retirement and Pensions for Artists
    • The Art Legacy >
      • Estate Planning for Artists
      • Estate Planning for Art Collectors
      • Famous Artists Estates
      • Artwork Inventory
      • After the Death of an Artist
      • Copyright and Resale Rights after Death
      • Art and Inheritance Tax
  • About + Help
    • Would you like me to help?
    • Privacy & Cookies Policy
    • Contact

KNOW 
​Google Guidelines for Webmasters

The principle behind this page is you MUST KNOW what Google has stated very clearly
about what it wants to see on websites

​- how they are written,
-  whether they are desktop or mobile,
- for text, images and video

Google has a section where it keeps ALL its GUIDANCE for those designing, coding, writing and maintaining websites.
​

What I'm doing with this page is showing you where that is and highlighting / quoting of what it says. (Google licences the content under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License - which means it can be shared online)

It's down to you to read the guidelines!
GOOGLE GUIDELINES - THE SHORTCUT
  • Webmaster Guidelines​​ including
    • General Guidelines
    • Content guidelines
  • Quality guidelines​
  • AMP on Google Search guidelines (re mobiles)
  • Plus Google Webmaster Help Forum

Webmaster Guidelines
​

I'm quoting these in full - they are well worth learning!
​
Following the General guidelines will help Google find, index, and rank your site.
​
We strongly encourage you to pay very close attention to the Quality guidelines, which outline some of the illicit practices that may lead to a site being removed entirely from the Google index or otherwise affected by an algorithmic or manual spam action. If a site has been affected by a spam action, it may no longer show up in results on Google.com or on any of Google's partner sites.

General Guidelines
​

Three principles
  • Help Google find your pages
  • Help Google understand your pages
  • Help visitors use your pages
​
The detailed versions of all the above can be found on the Webmaster Guidelines page
 and you can find a shorthand version in the summaries below
​
Help Google find your pages​
  • Ensure that all pages on the site can be reached by a link from another findable page​
  • Provide a sitemap file with links that point to the important pages on your site
  • Limit the number of links on a page to a reasonable number
  • Prevent crawling of infinite spaces such as search result pages.
  • ​Ask Google to crawl your pages
Help Google understand your pages
  • Create a useful, information-rich site
  • Write pages that clearly and accurately describe your content.
  • Design your site to have a clear conceptual page hierarchy.
  • Make your site's important content visible by default
  • ​Make sure your pages include the words which people will use to find them
  • Use accurate and very specific titles to describe your page
  • Use accurate <alt> alt attributes for images that are descriptive, specific, and accurate
  • Allow all site assets that would significantly affect page rendering to be crawled
  • Allow search bots to crawl your site
  • Make a reasonable effort to ensure that advertisement links on your pages do not affect search engine rankings
  • use the blocked resources report in Search Console and the Fetch as Google and robots.txt Tester tools to see which page assets that Googlebot cannot crawl, or to debug directives in your robots.txt file, 
  • When using a content management system (for example, Wix or WordPress), make sure that it creates pages and links that search engines can crawl.
Help visitors use your pages
  • Use text rather than images for important information e.g. when you want to display
    • important names,
    • content, or
    • links.
    • ( for example - on this website, all links are embedded in text unless the image needs a source link)
    • Use the the alt attribute to include a few words of descriptive text if images are used in place of content, 
  • ALWAYS use clean and valid HTML and CSS. Make sure all links go to live web pages. (You'll need to recheck this over time as links grow old)
  • Make sure your pages load quickly. Optimize page loading times. Fast sites make users happy and improve the overall quality of the web (especially for those users with slow Internet connections). 
  • Make sure different devices (desktops, tablets, and smartphones.) and screen sizes can display your website.  
  • Test your site in as many browsers as possible - and make sure it works in all
  • Make sure your site is secure. You should secure your site's connections with HTTPS. Encrypting interactions between the user and your website is a good practice for communication on the web.
  • Make sure people who are visually impaired can access your pages e.g. test usability with a screen-reader.
Useful tools recommended by Google

Google recommends that you use tools such as the ones listed below for specific purposes

Validate your HTML code
  • W3C Markup Validator
Link checker
  • W3C Link Checker
  • Check your Links (for Chrome)  - my recommendation
Test the performance of your page.
  • PageSpeed Insights 
  • Webpagetest.org 
Website design for all devices
  • Mobile-Friendly Test 
    • tests how well your site / pages work on mobile devices, and
    • you get feedback on what needs to be fixed.
Compatibility with different browsers
  • ​Google advice re. browser compatibility
Site security
  • Google advice on Secure your site with HTTPS
Picture
Best Practices when implementing HTTPS | Secure your site with HTTPS | Google

Content - Specific Guidelines
​

These links are copied direct from the Content Guidelines page. Do check if you want to make sure they are up to date.
​

Images and video
  • Google Image best practices
  • Video best practices
  • Rich media file best practices
Mobile​
  • Mobile viewing on feature phones
  • Web Light: Faster and lighter mobile pages from search
  • Ad network support for Web Light pages in Google Search
  • Google Discover
  • Resources for developing mobile-friendly pages
  • Detect and get rid of unwanted sneaky mobile redirects
Other content considerations
  • Meta tags that Google understands
  • Keep a simple URL structure
  • Use rel="nofollow" for specific links
  • Indicating paginated content to Google
  • Tag site for child-directed treatment
  • Browser compatibility
  • Create good titles and snippets in Search Results
  • Duplicate content
  • Make your links crawlable
  • Announce mobile billing charges clearly
International
  • Managing multi-regional and multilingual sites
  • Tell Google about localized versions of your page
  • How Google crawls locale-adaptive pages

Quality Guidelines - THESE ARE REALLY IMPORTANT!
​

Basic principles​

  • Make pages primarily for users, not for search engines.
  • Don't deceive your users.
  • Avoid tricks intended to improve search engine rankings. A good rule of thumb is whether you'd feel comfortable explaining what you've done to a website that competes with you, or to a Google employee. Another useful test is to ask, "Does this help my users? Would I do this if search engines didn't exist?"
  • Think about what makes your website unique, valuable, or engaging. Make your website stand out from others in your field.
  • Quality Content | Webmaster Guidelines - Documentation | Google (my bold)
AVOID The following techniques:
  • Automatically generated content intended to manipulate search rankings
  • Participating in link schemes
  • Creating pages with little or no original content
  • Cloaking
  • Sneaky redirects
  • Hidden text or links
  • Doorway pages
  • Scraped content
  • Participating in affiliate programs without adding sufficient value
  • Loading pages with irrelevant keywords
  • Creating pages with malicious behavior, such as phishing or installing viruses, trojans, or other badware
  • Abusing structured data markup
  • Sending automated queries to Google

Google regards all the above techniques are very naughty. 
FOLLOW good practices:
  • Monitoring your site for hacking and removing hacked content as soon as it appears
  • Preventing and removing user-generated spam on your site 

I recommend you ALWAYS moderate all comments and contributions to a page.
​Never ever let anybody contribute content to a page without you reviewing and authorising it first
What happens if you violate a guideline

If your site violates one or more of these guidelines, then Google may take manual action against it.

​Once you have remedied the problem, you can submit your site for reconsideration.

Quality Content | Webmaster Guidelines - Documentation | Google

VIDEOS

Google also has various videos which explain 
ABOUT ART BUSINESS INFO. FOR ARTISTS
This website aims to provide a compendium of resources about the art business for artists. Please read "PLEASE NOTE"

It helps artists learn how to do better at being business-like, marketing and selling their art and looking after their financial security.
  • HOME
  • INDEX
  • PRACTICE
  • MARKETING
  • SELL ART
  • FRAME ART
  • SHIP ART
  • COPYRIGHT
  • MONEY & TAX
  • ​​CAN I HELP?
  • CONTACT ME
Copyright: 2015-2021 Katherine Tyrrell | Making A Mark Publications
​
- all rights reserved
  • About this site 
  • About the Author
  • Privacy Policy & Cookies
If you've got any suggestions for what you'd like to see on this website please send me your suggestion
PLEASE NOTE:
1) Content and the law change all the time. It's impossible to keep up with it if you're not working on the topic full time. 
​2) I research topics carefully. However, I am totally unable to warrant that 
ANY and/or ALL information is 
  • complete and/or
  • professional and/or
  • wholly accurate and/or 
  • all links lead to the most current information (at the time of writing)​
​3) Hence all information I provide comes without any LIABILITY whatsoever to you for any choices you make. 
4) This website is FREE FOR YOU but not for me. ​Links to books are Amazon Affiliate links. Buying a book via this website means I get a very small payment which helps to fund and maintain this website. .I much appreciate any support your provide. Adverts are provided by Google AdSense - but the adverts do not mean I endorse the advertiser.
  • Home
    • Art Business Information Index
  • NEWS
  • PRACTICE
    • Starting Out - Tips
    • Being a Professional artist >
      • Working Lives of Professional Artists
      • Artists' Side Hustles
      • Artists' Residencies
      • Artists Unions
    • Best Art Business Books
    • Learning Opportunities >
      • Art Schools in the UK
      • Art Business Courses
    • Image Management for Artists >
      • How to photograph art
      • How To Scan Artwork
      • How to back up image files
    • Law for Artists >
      • Legal Matters
      • Money Laundering in the Art Market
      • Data Protection for Art and Artists
      • Brexit Guidance for Art and Artists
    • Business Management for Artists >
      • Risk Management for Artists
      • How to spot Art Scams / Fraud
      • Life in an Art Market Recession
      • Coronavirus COVID-19 and Art
  • MARKETING
    • How to write an Artist's Statement >
      • What is an Artist Statement?
      • Why you need an Artist's Statement
      • TIPS How to write an artist statement
      • The Language of an Artist's Statement
      • What an artist statement should contain
      • Examples of Artists Statements
    • How to write an Artist's Resume or CV >
      • Social Media summaries
      • CV for Artists
      • Resume for Artists
      • Biography for Artists
    • How to sign a painting, drawing or fine art print
    • Business Cards for Artists
    • How to write a press release for an artist
    • The Private View Invitation
    • Publicity for Juried Exhibitions
    • Websites for Artists >
      • Why websites matter
      • Options for Websites
      • Web content for Artists
      • Web design for artists
      • Keeping Google Happy
      • Writing for the Web
    • Image & Video sizes for Social Media Sites
    • How to be mobile-friendly
  • SELL ART
    • Trading Law & Regulations for Artists (UK)
    • E-commerce for artists
    • Art Exhibitions & Competitions >
      • Juried Exhibitions & Art Competitions
      • Juried Art Exhibition Checklist for Artists
      • How to cost a juried exhibition entry
      • How to make labels for an art exhibition
    • A Guide to Art Agents and Consultants
    • A Guide to Art Dealers & Galleries >
      • How to find the right gallery
    • The Artist-run Gallery
    • The Vanity Gallery
    • Art Fairs
    • Alternative Options for Exhibitions
    • How to Sell Art from Home
    • Open Studios
  • FRAME ART
    • List of Recommended Picture Framers
    • Conservation Products
    • Framing for open exhibitions and art competitions
    • Framing Videos
    • How to hang a picture
  • SHIP ART
    • How to pack artwork >
      • How to pack and ship pastel paintings
    • Packaging materials
    • How to ship art internationally >
      • Rules of Origin
      • Export Licences for Cultural Goods
    • How to ship art to exhibitions
    • How to mail art - Post & Parcel Services
    • UK & Ireland: Art Transport Services
    • USA Art Transport Services
  • COPYRIGHT
    • Copyright and artists' rights
    • BASICS: Copyright Infringement and Fair Use
    • How to protect artwork online
    • How to do a reverse image search
    • What to do about copyright infringement - for artists
    • Global Conventions on copyright >
      • Copyright in the UK
      • Copyright in the USA
      • Copyright in Canada
      • Copyright in Australia
  • MONEY & TAX
    • How to work out profit from an art sale
    • How to Price Your Art >
      • How important is price when buying art?
      • Options for Pricing Art
      • Terminology and Formulas for Pricing Art
      • Art Experts on Pricing Art
      • How artists price their art
      • The price of affordable art
    • Payments to Artists >
      • Paying Artists
      • How to create an Invoice
    • VAT for Artists
    • Tax Tips for Artists >
      • Tax on prize money
      • UK Tax Tips for Artists
      • UK: Self-Assessment Video Tips
      • USA Tax Tips for Artists
      • Ireland: Tax for Artists
      • Australia: Tax Tips for Artists
    • Insurance for Art and Artists >
      • Insurance for Art Teachers
      • UK Insurance Policies for art and artists
      • USA & Canada: Insurance Policies for Art and Artists
    • Artists' Grants & Scholarships
    • Retirement and Pensions for Artists
    • The Art Legacy >
      • Estate Planning for Artists
      • Estate Planning for Art Collectors
      • Famous Artists Estates
      • Artwork Inventory
      • After the Death of an Artist
      • Copyright and Resale Rights after Death
      • Art and Inheritance Tax
  • About + Help
    • Would you like me to help?
    • Privacy & Cookies Policy
    • Contact