When Google indexes websites, they look at a wide range of parameters. Most are relatively simple to optimize, while others require a certain amount of technical ingenuity. Either way, you owe it to yourself and your business to pay attention to the topic. In this blog post, we will try to scratch the surface a bit.
First of all: In connection with the technical SEO-friendliness of websites, the vast majority swear by Google Search Console, which provides a good starting point to assess whether you have challenges on your site that should be improved. Programs such as Ahrefs can also be of help in the search for organic traffic.
This is how you get started
Your website should always be responsive. That is, it always adapts in size and ease of use, depending on whether your visitors access the page from a tablet, computer or mobile.
Next comes the speed, which should ideally be at the nice end. Google - to put it mildly - does not like slow websites, as it affects the user experience in the wrong direction. Precise assessment of user-friendliness is among the cornerstones of Google's entire indexing.
The next step is dead links and a well-functioning sitemap. When Google has to assess a website, they check all available material on the site, including text, images and videos via so-called 'crawlers'. A sitemap is an index of your website that helps search engines easily and simply form an overview of the content on the page.
In this connection, it should be mentioned that it drags down heavily if you have dead links on the site that lead nowhere. Fix them or remove them - better today than tomorrow. You also have the option of using the tag 'noindex' on pages you do not want to be included in Google's overall assessment.
Title & Meta tags
Most websites consist of several pages. Some have thousands, others just a few. Regardless of the number, each page should be equipped with its own individual description, a so-called 'meta tag', which does not necessarily appear on the page itself, but can be read by search engines and crawlers.
The same applies with 'Title tags', which can be created in connection with the page's title. They are essential for reasonable SEO performance and will be displayed by Google as a form of heading in the search results.
Also remember that images should have a so-called alt text that describes the image in keywords. In connection with video, it can be a little more difficult, but if you use e.g. YouTube or Vimeo, the search engines will include both description and title in their SEO assessments.
Necessity of SSL certificate
For many years now, Google has looked askance at websites that do not use an SSL certificate. You may have noticed that nowadays URLs often start with 'https', while some still use 'http'.
The extra 's' in the URL indicates that the website is protected by SSL, and the connection between the website and the visitors is encrypted. SSL stands for Secure Sockets Layer and is officially recommended by Google. It has been common knowledge for many years that the SSL certificate increases the position in Google's search results.
In fact, Google often draws attention to the lack of SSL with a message that the website is not safe to access.
Content is key
On your content pages, you should avoid duplicate content. This means several pages with the same or almost the same content. If there are identical pages, Google will register it as 'duplicate content', as they cannot discern which page is the most important. Google doesn't like that and for that reason will subsequently 'crawl' the website with a lower frequency, which is bad for the page's SEO performance.
If you have many 'duplicate pages', you should address the issue, but it may well be a bit long-winded to get through. You can learn more about the subject here: Canonical URLs.
In addition to technical SEO, it is often necessary to become familiar with keywords, domain rankings, etc. It is certainly also important, but in all fairness we would like to emphasize that the most important parameter remains content that has value for your visitors. Google is primarily looking for quality content, and it is important to emphasize that nothing beats the real thing, regardless of how many keywords and 'long tail searches' you throw into your text.
SEO is a complex thing and the topic can't be fully covered in a short blog post, but please don't hesitate to reach out if you have any questions.
This blog has been translated by Startup Central.