Traffic from search is just as much a part of the marketing mix as is traffic from Social. Content especially the right type of content has everything to do with generating that search traffic. But can people find it? Is it generating traffic? And are your website pages and posts opromised as well as they could be for the Google search bots?
Here’s some things you can do to make sure your website is optimised well and is inviting for those Google bots!
Google Search Bots (for those who don’t know what bots are they are little robot things that crawl around your website pages to look for info and trying to understand what it’s all about so they (google) knows where to put you in search results) I think it goes without saying that if you are doing well in search you’ll get more enquiries. (Hopefully)
Firstly:
No one can guanrantee or promise a search engine ranking
✅ SEO is not Magic... you can learn it
✅ We have control over what we put into our SEO!
Google Bots / Website Do’s and Donts
⚠️ check for server errors
✅ fast page speed is key (can check online for speeds)
✅ Check Links Prioritisation and Discovery how? Links are key! Make sure you look at your web page internal linking (linking to other pages in website to help bots crawl right pages) / ⚠️ don’t link back to useless pages only discoverable pages within the website - we really only want google to spend time on indexable URLS.
✅ Mand sure your website is secure!! SSL is important! Please ensure you have SSL!
✅ Content Quality - Website content should be high quality, solve problems and be useful. Not spammy or keyword stuffed pages.
✅ Every indexed page needs a USP for user and bot, when people land on the page they need to know why they are there and what’s the unique proposition for that page.
⚠️ Do not have duplicated pages or pages with very similar duplicate content.
⚠️ Remove any non indexable pages
✅ do you have a site map? This helps the bots know what pages are indexible and will show all indexable URL’s
⚠️ Remove non indexible pages
🛑 REMOVE JAVASCRIPT - Google doesn’t love it, it slows down pages. It’s not very crawlable.. but does make pages looks good so it’s a trade off, without JavaScript your pages could look really bad.
🛑 Mobile phones don’t love Java
🛑 Chrome blocks java at 2g.. 2g people!!
✅ If you need to redirect pages use a 301 redirect, redirects are a rule and cannologicals are just a suggestion and bots can ignore them.
⚠️ redirects - 404 redirects GOOGLE DOES NOT LIKE
🛑 Don’t separate mobile and desktop site urls are not very good such as m.yoururlhere
✅ use a responsive design that works on all device
✅ have you added your website to google search console in the last 12 months? If not check this is very important google.com/webmasters to check
✅ Re add domain to property in search console
Managing user expectations
✅ when users get on your site.. first impressions count - actually even before they arrive they see the snippets or the info in the search engine before they click so make sure that’s reflective of the page! Snippets should show what people can expect
🛑 New audiences who have never been here before DO NOT CARE ABOUT BRAND - they care about the problem you solve for them! So don’t talk about who you are rather how you can HELP!
⚠️ GOOGLE HATES POP UPS Remove it.
⚠️ PEOPLE HATE POP UPS ON FIRST visit especially.
✅ Google does like link building 😳 but has no or little for discovery for page rank anymore
🛑 But not bad spammy link building!!
🛑 Never buy links!
🛑 or blog about products for links
🛑 or pay press for links
✅ Check your back links and clean up your act!
🛑 YOU DO GET PENALTIES FOR VIOLATIONS.
Takeaways:
✅ Optimise your website regularly
⚠️ Avoid conflicting signals
✅ Loil out for trends - algorithms are all about trends. THINGS CHANGE REGULARLY
✅ Audit your website regularly at least once per year and clean up any errors
TO END:
🛑 If Google can’t index your site why would they rank you????
A few things to be getting on with!
1 comment
Hi Lucy – great post, thank you.
There’s a lot to get your head around.