What Does It Take To Google Optimize Your Site?

Google is the most used search engine in the world. So it makes sense that you would want to Google optimize your website. The logic is that if Google likes your website it is going to rank it higher on its search results pages. There are a number of things that you can do to make your site more Google friendly and start ranking on their search engine results pages

Getting indexed

This is the first step in a campaign to Google optimize your website. If Google does not know about your site it cannot display it. The fastest and easiest way to notify Google of your site’s existence is through Google Webmaster. All you have to do is create an account and add your website. This is done through adding a small piece of code to the head of your website or by adding an html file provided by Google to your website’s public_html folder.

Once you’ve done this and verified the site Google will start to index the site. 

If you want to help things a long a little you can also create and submit a sitemap. There are services online that will create one for you or you can have your website create it automatically.

Complete your meta tags

Yes, it is true that Google and other search engines will take content from your page to use in the search engine results, but there is no guarantee that this is the content that you want your potential users to see first. To properly Google optimize your site you should have unique meta tags on each page of your site so that users and search engines know what each page is about at a glance.

The first tag is the title tag. This give an overview of what the page is about and should include the primary topic and an enticing hook to get users interested in what you are sharing with them. 

Then there is the description tag. This should also include your main topic and should give a little more information about the content on that page. A short sales pitch or introduction to what the user can expect if they land on your page.

Structured data

This is a useful bit of code to insert on your site if you are selling products or have specific opening hours. You can display ratings, prices and operating hours in the search results and give more information to your potential visitors

Content, content, content

One of the biggest aspects that Google looks at is your content. It should be relevant and user friendly. If you ask someone to Google optimize your website you are likely going to need to give them access to your web content so that they can add relevant search terms and extra content to your website so that Google has a better understanding of what your website is all about. 

In general, the more content you have the more active your website is and the more frequently Google will come back to check your site for more pages to add to its search index. More content also means more opportunity for increased relevance to the search terms that you would like to appear for.

Backlinks are dodgy ground

Google themselves state that backlinks are really good for your website, but they have to appear naturally. They will penalise your site if you build backlinks to your site enmasse. However, a little self-promotion is sometimes necessary to get a little momentum going for your website. The important thing is for the links to at the very least look natural and to only have what is necessary. 

In order to properly Google optimize your site takes a lot of work and a lot of patience. It is not something that you should hand off to just anyone.