Tip of the Icedberg!
Whether you are looking at a new website or a new year refresh, being seen on search engines should always be the endgame.
How a website ‘appears’ on search engines should not be confused with how a website ‘performs’ but fear not, we will delve deeper into this topic in the future.
For today our digital team have compiled some cool tip-bits and as always, if you have any questions or we can help in anyway please email us: hello@icedgraphics.com
How Can I Help My Website Be Found?
Did you know that when using Google (other search engines are available) that you’re not searching for the website itself but for pages on a website.
There are many ways of making website pages ‘seen’ by Google but having a new all-singing, all-dancing website alone is not enough to make sure search engines find you.
To ‘appear’ on Google depends on a number of things and that these things are all being done correctly.
Google Needs To Know About The Pages On Your Website
Using as many words in website content and file names, image names and video’s etc. that are relevant to what you offer and what someone may search into Google to find you (known in the biz as keywords) is vital.
Please be warned though, the Google robots (known as crawlers) who gather data are far too smart to be fooled. Your website wording needs to be well-written, grammatically correct and concise. You can’t cheat the system!
So, just as if you need to find exactly what you are looking for on Google, you must type what you are looking for– your website pages need to use all these words and combinations of words to be found.
It Takes Time To Be Found
Showing up on Google isn’t a given. It takes time and energy during the website build; making regular updates and the help of add-ons such as paid advertising on search engines.
People expect new websites to be on Google but it’s extremely unlikely to appear on search engines straight away, even if you’ve made every single part of it search engine friendly.
Google’s robots work 24/7 to find the best solutions to common search words but due to the sheer volume of websites globally, it will take a while to be found after every change or update is made.
If you want to see if search engines have found your website, there’s a clever tool that can show you at:
enter the following term within google search ‘site:yourwebsitehere.com’
If You’re Not Being Found, Check Your Coding
Website pages can be blocked by search engines from finding them (known as indexing) because of a fault in the website backend. This is known as the HTML code and is the part of a website that you can’t see but that website developers use to make it work.
If there’s an error in the code it will be named something along the lines of: but of course your website developer should know what to look out for.
Most websites will have a file (which is called a robots.txt.file) that will tell the search engines which web pages they can and can’t visit to gather all their information from.
Search engines cannot re-visit any website pages (known as a URL) that have been blocked; which results in that website page not showing up on search engine for a topic that it should.
To ensure this doesn’t happen it is really important to supply a website map (known as a sitemap) to Google, as it will pre-warn you about any issues it finds.
Links
Another reason websites don’t show up as effectively as they could is that they don’t have enough backlinks.
You could be doing everything right but you still need to show Google that your website deserves to appear (known as rank) highly up the list of options it finds.
The more highly you appear equals the most your website matches a terms (and is seen as the most relevant place to find information on the chosen subject).
Remember Google doesn’t rank websites, it ranks web pages, so the more high-quality backlinks (links from one website to another website) you have into and out from your website the better.
Relevance
Google’s job is to list the most useful and relevant results, in order of relevance, for each search subject. This is the reason why it is so important to align your website content with what someone expects to find (known in the biz as search intent).
For example, let’s say you’re selling cars in the local area. We will choose Chorley in this instance (as it is where our HQ is based). You need to ensure your website’s pages, images, image names, videos, links, maps etc. and stories are relevant to cars, items for sale and in Chorley.
We recommend asking different people to try to find you online. They will naturally use different words, phrases and combinations of these, which will help you to see more clearly how well you can be found (rank) for each of these.
You’ll then be able to compile a long list of words that you need to focus on in your copy and social media copy. These should include business name, key products, services, markets, location, topical news stories, social media links and up-to-date resources.
Do remember though that where you appear on these lists will change throughout the day and changes each day. The main aim is to always be on the first page of results and as high up the list as you can be, so this must be checked and adjusted.
Call In The Experts
As we mentioned earlier having a well-made, written and produced website is not enough to appear at the top of search engines and making sure you list highly and keep appearing on Google is a full-time job in itself.
This is known as search engine optimisation. It takes a lot of time but it is worth the effort, as you’ll be rewarded with more relevant visitors, enquiries and sales (known as conversions).
It is always good to have a basic understanding and plan of action but just to make it even trickier, search engines regularly change how they choose the most relevant site. It is best to call in professionals, like ourselves who are Google accredited, to keep on top of this for you.
We have the experience, specialist team and state-of-the-art software to manage this, monitor results and do all we can to make sure your website works exactly how you envisioned. If you would like to know if your website can be improved, our digital dynamos offer a complimentary website and search engine review.
email: hello@icedgraphics.com
call: 01257 543503
pop in to our office & have a chat with us: 9 St George’s Street, Chorley, PR7 2AA