When you built your website, you likely created it with your users in mind, trying to make it easy for them to find and explore your content. One of those users is a search engine, which helps people discover your content. SEO—short for search engine optimization—is about helping search engines understand your content, and helping users find your site and make a decision about whether they should visit your site through a search engine.

The Search Essentials outline the most important elements of what makes your website eligible to appear on Google Search. While there’s no guarantee that any particular site will be added to Google’s index, sites that follow the Search Essentials are more likely to show up in Google’s search results. SEO is about taking the next step and working on improving your site’s presence in Search. This guide will walk you through some of the most common and effective improvements you can do on your site.

There are no secrets here that’ll automatically rank your site first in Google (sorry!). In fact some of the suggestions might not even apply to your business, but following the best practices will hopefully make it easier for search engines (not just Google) to crawl, index, and understand your content.