14 Dec 2021

Steps to a Google-Friendly Site

First, you need to check if your website has been indexed by Google. For instance, if your website www.example.com then you need to type site: www.example.com to see which pages have been indexed by Google.

If your website isn’t indexed, or not all pages have been indexed, see if any of the below is applicable

  • The page that is not indexed doesn’t have enough linking to it. In other words, it might be because of the website design, which makes getting to this page difficult.
  • Your website has just been launched, and Google hasn’t had time to index your website or its webpages.
  • You have a privacy policy that prevents Google from indexing the website
  • Google receives an error message when trying to index your website.

Sometimes, it is a combination of the last two factors that prevents Google from indexing the website or webpage. There is a robots.txt file associated with every page. A bit technical, but this can be used to prevent Google from crawling your website or any webpage or a set of webpages in particular. Google tries to index it, but ends up receiving an error message.

There can also other reasons why Google receives an error message when trying to index a webpage. If you eliminate robots.txt as the reason, you can move on to doing what is necessary for Google to index that particular page or set of pages.

If you can get Google to index it, then you can proceed to ranking higher in the search results. In case you are not sure of how the robots.txt file works, you can get a SEO agency in Dubai to take a look at your robots.txt file. They can make the necessary changes as needed.

Make sure that Google is able to understand the content on the webpage

This means that you have to grant access to Google to look at assets like CSS, JavaScript, and images. Google is all about providing the best search experience, so the more it can understand what is on the page, the better it can serve up the page to someone who requests the content on the page.

Have a good title and a meta description

There is an optimal length to the page title – about 60-65 characters. Make sure that the title conveys what the page is about, all the while sticking to the character limit. For a more detailed description of the page, you can update the meta information associated with the page. The key point is to ensure that it remains within 155-160 characters. Anything over this will be truncated by Google in the search results. And when you are competing for a searcher’s attention, a truncated Meta description doesn’t help your cause.

By no means are you to have a generic title. A generic title would be something like “This is a webpage” or “Website Page 3”. It is recommended that you take the time to craft a good meta description. If you don’t provide a meta description for your page, Google will take a piece of text from your webpage that meets the character limit and display it as the meta. This may or may not always give a searcher a sense of what the page is about, so providing a meta helps.

Think of it as advertising. You need to have an eye-catching headline within 65 characters to grab attention, and a 160-character description to pique interest, enough to make the searcher click on the link to your page. If copywriting is not your forte, it would be a good idea to get in touch with a SEO agency in Abu Dhabi to generate some high-quality text.

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Design a custom 404 page

It may happen that despite one’s best efforts, the code may include the link to a page that doesn’t exist. Or users may arrive at a dead end by typing in the wrong URL. Instead of a standard 404 page, a custom-designed 404 page can greatly improve the user experience and guide the user back to the home page. This way, the user can navigate to another page on your website and continue his/her journey. A standard 404 page doesn’t achieve this purpose.

Some who specialises in offering SEO services in Dubai would only be more than happy to get a custom 404 page designed just for you.

Use simple, meaningful, URLs

You could use a system-generated URL like www.example.com/116548963785423.html for your webpage. Alternatively, you could take the time to come up with your own slug that conveys more meaningful information, like www.example.com/vintage-cars.html

Not only does the latter lend itself to a better user experience, it also makes more sense to Google.

What you should do is avoid generic URLs like www.example.com/page-3.html or have a long slug, like www.example.com/world-war-ii-vintage-cars-between-1930-and-1945.html

If you are unsure of whether your slug is too long, get a SEO company in Abu Dhabi to take a look and tell you if that is the case.

Pay attention to the content on your website

This cannot be stressed enough. The content on your website must be relevant to the particular page it is on. It must also be well-structured, and free from grammatical errors. The content needs to be written in an easy-to-understand format and keywords embedded in the content accordingly. Use paragraphs, headings, and subheadings. Separate the content by layout if you can.

It is not always a given that you will rank highly for the keyword you have included on the webpage. The chances are that there are other webpages that too contain the same keywords. So to increase your own rankings, improve the user experience. Add images that make it easier to understand what the text is about. Add ALT TEXT for images to benefit the visually impaired who scroll through your webpage. When naming images, be descriptive. Like using miniature-photography.jpg instead of Image11.jpg

It is to be kept in mind that text embedded within images cannot be indexed by Google. We have not yet arrived at the stage where Optical Character Recognition technology is used to scan the text embedded in an image.

In case you have done all that you could to improve the user experience, think of using long-tail keywords to bring in visitors to your webpage. Although the search volume for long-tail keywords is low, those using long-tail keywords for search are people who are focused. They are likely to spend more time than the average site user on your webpage. The amount of time spent by a user on a webpage is an indicator of how engaging it is, so it will be ranked more highly for the long-tail keyword.

Use responsive web design

This is nothing but adding a few lines of code so that your page resizes automatically according to the screen size of the user device. For instance, it definitely adds to the overall user experience when a page resizes itself to fit the screen of a mobile device or tablet. Google rewards pages that use responsive web design, because it is all about delivering the best user experience for every individual. A good SEO consultant in Dubai would have the expertise to do the needful.

Make social media your ally

Social media traffic is verified user traffic, as everyone has to sign in before accessing a social media website. So link to your webpage from your social media handle. This way, other users of the same social media platform can come to your webpage directly, through the social media platform.

If you don’t want the reputation of a low-quality site to rub off on your webpage (this affects your website as a whole), you can use NO FOLLOW attributes for your webpage. Another way of increasing your website’s ranking in the search results is to list yourself on Google My Business if you are a commercial establishment. A real-time location backed by genuine user reviews makes you appear more authentic, and Google views this seriously.

Other gaps in your SEO can be found by using SEO audit tools. Some of these are available for free online. If all of this is too technical for you, entrust it to a SEO company in Dubai.