SEO: Google-Friendliness, Easy Crawlability and Clarity of Website

This page is part of the Search Engine Optimization Guide, which you can find here: SEO Guide – Ztips.org.

Your website needs to be easily crawlable and Google-friendly.

Google is responsible for up to 98% of all internet searches on various search engines. In order to be found on the Internet, it is very important that you are found by Google search for at least the most important keywords and terms related to your site.

The first step is to ensure that your site is “healthy” and trustworthy, and that Google’s search robots can view and navigate your site using the site map and links.

If your website is not readable by Google, search robots will not be able to explore your pages and index it in search results.

The basic principles of search engine optimization can be broken down into the following main points:

• Indexability and clear site structure, so that Google can index and understand the content of your site
• Quality of content, which, among other things, will keep users on the site for at least some time and ensure that they find the information they are looking for
• User experience, which is affected by the speed of loading, clarity and ease of use of the site
• External natural and old links from other sites pointing to your site
• Other things, such as page meta descriptions and image alt texts

A healthy and clearly constructed website is always the basis for search engine optimization

The most important thing in search engine optimization is not the use of H1 and H2 headings or the cultivation of keywords in the text. The most important thing is not to remember to put alt texts on images or to tag product pages with canonical tags. One of the most important things that a site that wants to be ranked in search engine results must have in order is the integrity and readability of your site.

This means that your site’s HTML markup code should be clearly structured, and search engines should be able to follow sub-pages within your site via links. The content of your site should be readable by both the user and the search engine, and should not be obscured by images or graphics on top of the text, for example. The most important content, where you want the most traffic, should be less than 2 clicks away from the homepage.

Fortunately, modern websites are mostly search engine friendly. An increasing number of popular web building tools aim to reduce the amount of redundant code that slows down your site. For example, on sites such as Shopify, Wix, Squarespace and WordPress, the site structure is clear from the start and the pages to be browsed are automatically placed on the site map for search engine bots.

For the most accurate information on the technical condition of your site and its impact on search engine optimization visit: https://pagespeed.web.dev.

Tips on technical search engine optimization and site readability in Google’s eyes

• Arranging internal navigation links so that each page is linked to the main page
• Facilitating site navigation, see above
• Keeping the site structure as clear as possible
• Making use of internal links within the site; remember to use links within the line text as well.
• Make sure that the pages you publish do not have a “hide from search engines” checkbox in the settings, or a “disallow” checkbox in the robots.txt file. This is a “no” message to search robots, which in most cases will prevent crawling.
• Prefer a trusted and well-known host/web hosting provider. Keep enough disk space allocated for your site.
• Ensure that the layout of the site is user-friendly. Too many moving elements, large video files will slow down the page and distract visitors (and crawlers).
• Use Google Search Console (Webmaster Tools). It is a great tool that you can use to submit XML sitemaps – “maps” of your site – to Google’s crawlers. The robots know how to read these XML files and, after reading the map, will know better how to navigate and crawl your pages.
• The Google Search Console also lets you know if there are errors in your code, missing tags in enriched data, or if there are problems with your site speed.

Basics of internal search engine optimization: meta descriptions, alt texts, headings

It’s a good idea to know the basics of search engine optimization before you jump into producing content or taking any other steps to boost your site’s Google rankings. Get your site’s headline HTML tags right. This is now easily done in WordPress, by selecting the type of header from the theme or page builder plugin you’re using. Headings are tagged in HTML with H1, H2, and H3… tags, from largest to smallest. The Site Title is your main title, it should be aligned with your H1 and subheadings. The H2 and H3 headings are the subheadings used in the content itself. It is a good idea to use only one H1 heading, unless the subject matter and content of the page changes substantially.

What is a meta description?

Meta descriptions and headings refer to metadata in the source code of a website where a small summary of the page content is written for search engine robots. A meta description should be less than 160 characters long, and a header between 50 and 65 characters. Meta titles and descriptions should always be set separately for each page and each blog article. A high-quality, thoughtful meta description summarises the content of the page in an interesting format, and the headline attracts the user to click on the search result.

Remember that Google can decide the title and the description displayed in the SERPs in a completely arbitrary way. Indeed, it is common for the meta title and description to differ for two different search terms, even if the target page is the same in the search results.

There are several tools for creating metadata, and many CMS offer a fully customisable option as a standard feature. A great and useful add-on for WordPress is the free Yoast SEO plugin.

This page is part of the Search Engine Optimization Guide, which you can find here: SEO Guide – Ztips.org.

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