Your website has been up for a while but no one is visiting it? Don't blame it on your content. Maybe you're invisible to Google and customers can't find you. Don't worry, we'll give you advice on how to shed the invisibility cloak and run your organic business to the fullest.
Web traceability in 2 steps
Before customers flock to your website, it must first be discovered and recognized by robots (search engines).
This date has two phases:
- Throughput (crawlability): the robot discovers you and explores your content.
- Indexability (indexability): the robot will notice your page and display it in search.
That's the only way the search engine will match you people who are looking for exactly what you offer.
Indexing is the first step, if you want to get your website on the first page of search engines. Without it, customers can only find you if they type in the exact url. No one can get lost via keywords or even the company name.
Try the flash test
You want to find out where you stand now? You don't need to be an IT wizard, just this simple trick.
Type into Google: site:vasedomena.cz (need a site:apadore.cz)
- Did your website pop up? You win! It means you're traceable.
- Can't you see anything? Call SEO a specialist, it's gonna take an expert eye.
Want to go more in depth? You can find details in, for example Google Search Console. You can find out how many pages you don't have indexed and why the robots are rejecting you.
To traceable web?
Together, we're gonna get organics going.
What went wrong?
The non-idexability of the site is a problem. No one reads your awesome content and customers flee to the competition.
These are the most common causes of non-indexability:
- Missing robots.txt: The robots didn't get an invitation to your site.
- Forgotten prohibitions: You have a noindex or nofollow tag in your code.
- Missing sitemap.xml: The robot has no map and gets lost in the labyrinth of your site.
- Duplicity: You use one piece of content on multiple pages and Google doesn't know where to go first.
- Orphan pages: There is no link to the page, so there is no way to get there (which is why it is important link building).
- Crawl budget: How many pages can Google robots index.
There could be a number of culprits. If you're not tech-savvy, get help from an SEO specialist. He will know exactly how to prepare the ground for the robots.
Do you want a website that will finally be seen?
Beautiful design is not enough, it also requires a well-crafted SEO. At Apadore we build websites that people and robots like. We combine creative graphics with hard data to make sure your customers actually find you. Write to us and finally start showing up on better search engine rankings.
Indexability is also directly influenced by the type of redirection you use. Permanent 301 and 308 status codes tell Google that the target URL should be the canonical one, while temporary 302 and 307 status codes, on the other hand, keep the original URL in the index.
Forgetting to disable indexing during the test run is one of the most common mistakes made during a migration. You can find the complete steps for avoiding this in the article on website migration.
Search Console has long since ceased to be just a tool for monitoring your website. It now also provides data on how your social media posts are performing in search results; see the article on Measuring Social Media in Search Console.
A drop in visibility is sometimes unrelated to indexability, but rather to anti-spam updates, which Google launches several times a year. We explain how to identify the cause and what to do next in a separate article.
