10 Steps to Take Before Your Site is Indexed by Google
Okay, you've built your website, and now it's time to get it out there for the world to see. But wait - before you start promoting your site all over the internet, there are some critical steps you need to take first to make sure Google will index your site correctly. Follow these ten steps, and you'll be on your way to getting better rankings in no time!
Get Rid of All Previous Customized URLs
Back in the day, there was no www in URLs. So, if you wanted to visit Google, it was www.google.com. Old-school URLs have stuck around and screwed up how Google indexes your site in the SERPs.
Step 1: Install an XML Sitemap If you haven't already, install an XML sitemap generator on your website. This allows Google to keep track of all your pages and know when you've added new ones.
Step 2: Check Your Site's Canonical URLs. Google Webmaster Tools will let you know if you have any duplicate pages. Take the time to go through each one and make sure you only have one version of each page.
Step 3. Crawl your site. Google doesn't know you built a new website if it can't find it! Before telling everyone about your website, make sure you crawl your site and see what pages are there. This will also help you identify what needs to be added to your sites, such as meta tags and title tags.
Step 4. Set up a Google Webmaster account.
Step 5. Do a site search on your own site. Make sure your search results are correct. If you don't have a tool like Google's Site Search, use the Fetch as a Google tool. If you find any pages that are not in your site's index, fix them right away!
Step 6. Page speed. Make sure your pages are loading within 2 seconds.
Step 7. Use Google's webmaster tools to check the speed of your site.
Step 8. Register Your Site with Google Webmaster Tools The first thing you'll need to register your site with Google Webmaster Tools. This will give Google's web crawling bots information about your site and help them find your pages. You'll need to verify your site with Google to use Webmaster Tools, but this will only take a minute or two to complete.
Step 9. Make sure that all your website's pages are accessible to Googlebot.
Step 10. Before you start promoting your website, there are some critical steps you need to take first to make sure Google will index your site correctly.
There are a lot of myths out there about what you need to do for Google to index your site correctly. However, if you follow this simple SEO checklist, you'll be sure that Google knows exactly what your site is all about and that it will show up in search results accordingly.
First and foremost, make sure that all your website's pages are accessible to Googlebot. If there are any pages behind a login or members-only wall, those won't be indexed.
Make sure that all pages on your site have unique content. If you have duplicated text on more than one page, Google may penalize you for this. If you have a lot of duplicate content on your site, you may want to remove it altogether.
Link to your most essential pages from many other parts of your site. This will help Google understand the importance of the linked page and give it more weight in its algorithms.
It also applies to your blog post pages. Since blog readers often share posts via social media or email, Googlebot probably won't be able to access those pages on your site. Make sure that Google indexes your blog posts by adding a rel= "canonical" tag to the end of your blog post URL. For example, if the href attribute on a blog post page is http://www.blog.com/2013/12/new-product-launch. That all URLs are easy to understand and follow directly from one page to the next.
Recent Comments
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Hello Stephen, Thanks for stopping by! I've been out of the loop. I had to have my right arm biceps repaired or a distal Biceps repair. I snapped the muscle from the bone. Anyway, I hope you are doing well. I'm going to get up to speed again soon.
Wow, sorry to hear that. It must be all that writing you’re doing.
Do you like voice to text, save your arm….
Stephen
Hello, It was a little challenging to get used to speaking rather than typing, but I seem to be managing. It seems to be faster to do specific tasks on the computer. Hopefully, you are doing well!
You're very welcome, Kevin! Things are going about as well as they CAN be, but how exciting it all is to muddle through in the end!
Take care!
Jeff
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This is an incredibly helpful article. I had not thought about linking my most important pages across the site. Thanks.
Hello drjec, I appreciate the compliment. But more importantly that the information here helped you out.