Forget that Google is a search engine. Just for a moment, imagine it is a style guide. A very different kind of style guide.

Instead of this particular style guide being written as a static book by an expert or two, it is written by studying searching and browsing habits of hundreds of millions of web users.

Get idea? Not a search engine. A style guide. A constantly evolving style guide that works from its insights into how people use and read web sites.

A style guide that puts visitor first, puts their needs ahead of academic opinions of experts.

A style guide that automatically rewards sites that serve their readers best.

If we study Google not as a search engine, but as a style guide, what does it tell us about how we should write our web pages?

>> 1. Make subject of each page absolutely clear.

As visitors arrive at your site, regardless of entry page, first question in their minds is, “Am I in right place? Will I find what I want here? Can I achieve what I want to achieve here?”

Fortunately, web page format gives us a title, headlines, first paragraphs and subheads we can use. So it makes sense to use them to make it abundantly clear to our visitors what page is about.

We’ll do this for our visitors. But, because doing so helps our visitors, Google will reward us.

>> 2. Make your home page short text clear

First-time visitors to your home page are unlikely to be able to achieve their objective through that page alone. So you need to write short text that will quickly and clearly let them know if you have what they want deeper in your site, and how to get there.