Google Index: how to have more visibility on the web?
Google index: what is it?
In 2020, more than 80% of consumers do an internet search before making a purchase. It is therefore essential that your customers can find you easily on search engines. Unfortunately, a tempting commercial offer and a great site are not enough to reach all of these potential buyers. You absolutely must be well referenced on the web by the Google index to maximize your business success.
Imagine the web as a giant library that contains billions of books, each with their own specific pages. For Google your site is a book among others, unless you make it a classic of Internet literature. This is the real issue of a web strategy; make themselves visible to Google, and therefore to Internet users.
To be recognized, your site must first be indexed by google. The Google index (or Google index) is the directory of the web. It lists the pages and existing sites and allows you to enter this library. Getting indexed by the search engine is the first step in your quest for visibility on the internet.
How google indexes your website?
Google crawls through the different pages of your website, it wanders through them as an Internet user would. This is called “crawling”. By being crawled, your site is indexed by Google and gets more visibility with your customers.
CRAWLING; HOW IT WORKS ?
Your website is first crawled by Googlebots . These are the little librarians that Google sends to analyze your site and the pages that make it up. These robots roam your website following its structure to travel from one page to another. Internal links are like bridges between your pages that allow Googlebots to move around your site. The more relevant functional internal links your site has, the more you will let Google crawl your pages.
Google analyzes the pages visited
Once the information has been collected, the robots fill in all the information they have obtained by browsing your site. Google uses the data collected to inform your pages in the Google Index. For your page to be analyzed and therefore indexed, it must have been crawled by robots. Even with the most relevant content in the world, a page that is not crawled will never appear in search results. It is therefore essential to maximize your chances of being browsed and then indexed by Google. This will improve your visibility and your customer acquisition.
Google indexes pages by relevance
Indexing a website allows Google to offer the content it deems most suited to the demands of Internet users. This is how this search engine became the most used, it simply offers the best content. For a book to be successful, it must offer meaningful content that is relevant to the reader. If you are looking for a detective story, you want a thrilling and mysterious story with just the right amount of horror. You don’t want a book that deals with the philosophical school of the Pythagoreans (yes it does exist). Tell yourself that the Internet user works like a reader, he searches Google for the content that best meets his requirements. If your crawled content is deemed highly relevant, it will rank higher in search results. Conversely,
WHAT ARE THE LIMITS OF CRAWLING?
If crawling allows your site to be indexed in Google to appear in the eyes of Internet users, it is imperfect. For example, Google bots usually don’t crawl all the pages on a site. Indeed, their performance is limited, we speak of crawl budget. Your indexing can therefore suffer and this has repercussions on your visibility and your customer acquisition.
Crawl budget: what impact on the Google index?
Google doesn’t crawl all websites the same, some get more attention than others. This is called the crawl budget. This budget is determined by two major elements: the crawl limit and the crawl demand.
The crawl limit
Each site has its own crawl limit. As you know, the web is a huge library in which your site is just a book on a shelf. Googlebots cannot crawl every page from top to bottom because it would take too long. This limit therefore represents the time that robots can spend on a site. It is determined by “crawl health”. This corresponds to the speed at which the pages of the site can be crawled by the robots. The faster the pages load, the more they will be able to crawl the pages of a site. Conversely, a high load time will result in fewer pages crawled for the same time. It is therefore essential to improve the speed of your site as much as possible.
The crawl request
When the structure of a site is modified, Google absolutely must analyze it to index it again. Such a change on a site that is already indexed tells Google that it should send its bots back to your site. This increases the crawl demand.
Do not panic ! You don’t have to rethink your site architecture every day to increase this demand. The popularity of your site, which is greatly influenced by its domain authority, is crucial. In a bookcase, the dedicated Agatha Christie shelf will require more attention than an average author’s section. It’s the same with websites.
If your site regularly features new content such as blog posts, crawl demand will increase as well. Google wants to offer fresh content to its users, but it also values the great classics of its literature. If the Bible is the best-selling book, it’s not because it was published yesterday morning. Google naturally gives more crawl budget to older and better-known sites. By developing your presence on the web, you will succeed in increasing this budget in the long term. You will therefore be able to solidify your visibility.
By limiting the indexing of your website, the crawl budget can limit your chances of being visible to your customers. This limit is not inevitable, however, you can act! Analyzing the indexing of your website will allow you to optimize your crawl budget and therefore your visibility.
How to analyze your SEO in Google Index?
To assess the quality with which Google indexes your site, you need to identify the pages most visited by users and Googlebots. Also study the frequency of bots on your pages and compare the most indexed with the most important. The goal is for these pages to be the most valued by Google. How to do ? Thanks to the study of your log files
WHAT IS A LOG FILE FOR?
Know the number of users per page
You can see how many Internet users have visited your site over a given period of time. Even better, it is possible to know the number of Internet users for each page.
Know the crawl frequency of your site and your pages
This allows you to see your most crawled pages and if this crawl budget breakdown is relevant. Your most visited pages by Googlebots should be the ones that deliver the most value to your customers.
Compare the crawling of the different versions of your site (computer, tablet, phone)
Check which version of your website is the best crawled and indexed. Keep in mind that cell phone searches represent over 50% of web searches. You should therefore pay special attention to the mobile version.
Identify navigation errors
A user who searches for a page may receive an error message instead of arriving at the content they want. There are many reasons for these errors (page not found, hosting server error, unauthenticated user, etc.). By identifying them, it will be easier to correct them to facilitate the work of Googlebots and be better indexed. For that, you can use your log files as well as the Google search console .
Establish an optimization strategy
When you’ve identified your site’s weak spots, it’s time to act! Improve the visibility of the most relevant pages for your customers by working on your site’s architecture. Create links between your pages and revise your content so that Google sees it at its true value.
How to improve your SEO in Google Index?
You now know your weaknesses. Take action to improve your visibility on the web by helping the Google Index to read your site better.
1. STRUCTURE YOUR SITE
The Google Index robots that crawl your site have a limited time to grant you (crawl budget). Simplify their task by maximizing the relevance of your pages. With 100 pages with poor content, the crawl budget will be spent on part of the site. Google may not even identify relevant content. Your site should be constructed in a logical manner to allow a pleasant navigation for robots and visitors. The home page is the meeting point for all your other pages, it is the heart of your site. From this page is born a tree structure which is the path connecting the whole of your site. A well structured 10 page site will be judged more relevant than a 20 page site with scattered content.
2. IMPROVE YOUR MESH
The internal mesh is the network of links inside your website. These are the links between your pages that make it easier for robots and users to navigate. You can thus attract a visitor to a registration form or encourage them to order your products. In terms of Google index, you are helping robots to crawl more pages on your site. You therefore increase your chances of being well indexed by Google and of being more visible in order to reach more customers. It’s a virtuous circle!
Be careful to maintain this internal mesh. If your links are broken or if you change URLs (address of a page), your internal mesh will suffer. This will impact the smoothness of navigation for your users and Google’s robots. Hence the importance of analyzing your log files. Tell Google that visitors to an old page should be directed to a new one with 301 redirects . Concretely, you are using an already reputable address to offer more recent content.
The external mesh
External linking follows the same logic, but it corresponds to the links between your site and other websites. It allows you to gain more credibility in the eyes of Google. Even better if the links to your site are from recognized websites (with high domain authority). It is therefore essential to build yourself a strong external link network and create effective backlinks . The backlinks are the links pointing from another site towards yours, they allow to get more visitors. If you click on the previous link, you will come to the Digitad site. This is a perfect example of backlinking, because Combustible points to the Digitad site. It increases its credibility in the eyes of Google by sending you on it (Digitad traffic increases).
Working on your external network is essential to increase the popularity of your site. Make sure you keep your “linkjuice” or “SEO juice”, however. It is the amount of attention Google pays to your pages. The more you dilute this juice by sending it to other sites, the less it benefits you. Fortunately, there is a solution: the rel = ”nofollow” tag . It tells Googlebots not to follow the chosen link and to stay on your page. You can offer rewarding external links to your customers and keep the linkjuice on your site.
3. OPTIMIZE YOUR CONTENT
A good site architecture and an adapted structuring of your pages are not enough. To be well referenced in the Google Index, consider optimizing your content. It must be relevant to robots in order to be showcased on the web. It is therefore necessary to optimize it so that it is better perceived by Google and more accessible to your customers. Here are 3 points to work on to optimize your content.
Write SEO content
SEO (Search Engine Optimization) refers to techniques aimed at improving your SEO on the web for free. For a text, the idea is to articulate your content around keywords that are relevant to your customers. For example, this article centers around the phrase “Google index” because that is the core subject of this article. You should also identify secondary keywords and phrases related to your main keyword. You will be able to form a semantic cloud (a lexical field which revolves around it).
Structure your content
Once you find your keywords, you need to find an editorial structure. This step is essential, you must organize your content by parts. These must follow a structure of tires (H1, H2, H3…). This makes it easier for Googlebots by offering them a map of your content. They will be able to more easily identify the information it contains to offer it quickly to Internet users. In addition, well-structured content is more enjoyable for your customers to read. They will be more likely to read your pages and get in touch with you.
Use visuals
seo images, website video, website video, fuel
Source: Digital marketing school network
A text, even well written and structured can remain indigestible if it is not accompanied by visual aids. Consider integrating images, videos or graphics to enrich your content. Be sure to optimize your images for SEO . Pay attention to the number of images per page, their relevance, as well as their size and format.
Conclusion
Congratulations! You have reached the end of this article. Google indexing has no secrets for you.
We hope these tips will help you gain visibility on the web. Don’t wait any longer to grow your business and reach out to more customers. If you have any questions, contact us! Our team of web experts will be happy to answer you.
