16 Insights into Google’s Rating Guidelines | SEOmoz

Sorry, No Secrets Here

If you’re looking for SEO “secrets,” you’ll be disappointed by this post. Although this is an internal document, and Google may not be happy about it being leaked, you won’t find a smoking gun here. What you will find is a training manual on Google’s philosophy of quality. The key to proactive SEO is to understand how Google thinks. If you only chase the algorithm, you’ll always be reacting to changes after they happen. Since the document in question is proprietary, I’m not going to link directly to copies of the document or quote large chunks of it. I’m writing this post because I sincerely believe that understanding Google’s philosophy of quality is a fundamentally “white hat” proposition.