Are you looking for ways to understand how Google sees your website? Knowing how Google “sees” your website can give you insights into optimizing your website for better ranking and visibility on search engine results pages. This article will guide you through the steps of looking at your website the way Google does as an integral part of effective search engine optimization (SEO).
Before starting the process, it helps to familiarize yourself with Googlebot, the software used by Google to crawl and index websites. This is the process of discovering links and content on your website, following them, and gathering information.
The first step in looking at your website like a search engine is to check the status of your page indexing. To do this, use Google’s Search Console to see if Googlebot has crawled and indexed your website’s pages. You can also check the “Index Status” metric in Google Analytics to see if your website is being indexed and how many pages have been indexed.
The next step is to review your website crawl data. This will give you an understanding of which pages are being crawled and indexed, and how frequently. You can use Google Search Console to view the crawl data and take action if needed. The crawl data can also help you identify any errors, such as 404 not found page errors, which can negatively affect your website’s ranking.
It’s also important to evaluate your website’s loading time. If your website is slow to load, visitors might not stay long enough to engage. Google measures the loading speed of webpages when it crawls and indexes them, making it vital to ensure that your website loads quickly. You can use tools such as Google’s PageSpeed Insights to determine and diagnose any loading issues.
Next, you should check the metadata on your website’s pages. Metadata is the hidden data that tells Google what the page’s content is about. This includes the Meta title, Meta description, and other tags. Reviewing your metadata can help you optimize your website for SEO.
Finally, make sure your website is mobile-friendly. As more and more people use their phones and tablets to search, it’s important to ensure that your website provides a good mobile experience. Google’s mobile friendly tests can help you find any issues and fix them.
It’s essential to look at your website the way Google does in order to give your website the best chance at being visible in search engine results. By checking your page indexing, crawl data, loading time, metadata, and mobile optimization, you can make sure that your website is performing as best as it can in the eyes of Google.