5 Steps to Ensure Google-Friendly Website
Well, there’s no second-guessing why you need a Google-friendly website. In simple words, you’re looking for:
- Lots of free traffic
- Maximum conversion
- Increasing customers
- Best return on investment
In short, the purpose is to run away with the competition.
Since Google’s rules and regulations keep changing with time, your website needs to be atoned with their demands. Here’s how you can ensure a Google-friendly website.
Step 1: Figure Out the Traffic You’re Getting Already
You need to know how much organic traffic is coming your way via Google (or search engines). Another thing to note is the part of the website receiving the bulk of the traffic.
How can you find this out? You might ask.
It’s pretty simple. You’re familiar with it, but you didn’t know it works – through Google search.
Type your [site: website name] on the search bar and check your Google index. The results will appear right above the top search results.
Say, you own Youtube, and you want to know how many searches you’re getting. You typed site:youtube.com and voila. Here’s the summary:
What does it show? Google has pulled up all indexed pages that appear in search results. All these pages are eligible for free organic traffic. In total, there are 4.73 billion pages.
Understood? Now, you can easily check how many of your web pages have the potential to generate traffic. If you think the result is below your expectations, then something’s definitely wrong.
And if you get nothing in response, then there are three possibilities:
- The search query was incorrect.
- You’ve restricted Google from crawling and indexing.
- Your site is banned from the Google index as a result of any breach of Google’s regulations.
The first one on the list is a human error; simply type the correct domain name. But you need to work if you’re stuck with either of the remaining two.
Here’s how you do it.
Step 2: Ensure Google Access to Website
You need to ensure your robots.txt file isn’t restricting Google from crawling your site. If you need assistance, learn it here. For WordPress sites:
- Go to Settings
- Take a look at the box under Reading. If the ‘discourage search engines from indexing this site’ is ticked, UNcheck it.
Step 3: Look for Google Penalties
If your site is not restricting Google crawlers, then there must have been something on the website that made Google mad. But don’t worry yet.
- Go to Google Webmaster Tools.
- Open Manual Action Report.
- Check if there’s any penalty notification.
- Fix the issue.
- Submit a request for reconsideration so that you can get the traffic to your site/page.
Step 4: Find out Missing Pages
If you’re not getting the same number of pages, you expect Google to index, dig deeper, and find out the root cause. In general, these issues might prevent Google from indexing some of your pages:
- Duplicate (or Copied) content
- Some specific directories are not coming up.
These call for a little more attention as Google might not be indexing those pages because of small sections encountering bugs. Remove those errors and get those pages back on track.
Step 5: Pages You Don’t Know Indexed
This is the flip side of the above issues; you’re getting thousands of pages on Google index that you didn’t have a clue. This problem occurs because of certain plugins creating spammy pages.
As a result, your site’s ranking gets hurt. Simply remove those pages to improve on your ranking.
If you know where you stand according to Google’s rules, you’re able to align things up and create a foolproof traffic-driving strategy.
Summary
There you go. Figuring out your website’s ability to rank on Google is not as tough as it sounds. You need to follow the above-mentioned steps.
- You need to find out your traffic potential and identify pages that are getting the highest traffic.
- The website doesn’t restrict Google crawlers. If it does, find out why.
- Sometimes, websites are penalized and hence, are removed from searches. Find out if yours has a similar issue.
- Perhaps, you see lesser pages indexed by Google. Sort out such issues by removing technical bugs
- If there are indexed pages that you haven’t known of, remove those extra pages because they’re hurting your website’s ranking.
Conclusion
You need to have a good understanding of website development, which may or may not be your cup of tea. If you’re unsure what to do or how to dig deep, the best way is to hire a professional SEO agency in Singapore.
D’Marketing Agency is one of the leading SEO service providers. We offer result-oriented solutions with a big team of experienced web developers, SEO technicians, and graphic designers. Working with us means you’re constantly learning and seeing your website climbing steps to success.
