When you built your website, you likely created it with your users in mind, trying to make it easy for them to find and explore your content. One of those users is a search engine, which helps people discover your content. SEO—short for search engine optimization—is about helping search engines understand your content, and helping users find your site and make a decision about whether they should visit your site through a search engine.
The Search Essentials outline the most important elements of what makes your website eligible to appear on Google Search. While there's no guarantee that any particular site will be added to Google's index, sites that follow the Search Essentials are more likely to show up in Google's search results.
SEO is about taking the next step and working on improving your site's presence in Search. This guide will walk you through some of the most common and effective improvements you can do on your site. There are no secrets here that'll automatically rank your site first in Google (sorry!). In fact, some of the suggestions might not even apply to your business, but following the best practices will hopefully make it easier for search engines (not just Google) to crawl, index, and understand your content.
Google is a fully automated search engine that uses programs called crawlers to explore the web constantly, looking for pages to add to our index. You usually don't need to do anything except publish your site on the web. In fact, the vast majority of sites listed in our results are found and added automatically as we crawl the web.
If you're hungry for more, we have documentation about how Google discovers, crawls, and serves web pages.
You might not need to do anything except publish your site on the web. In fact, the vast majority of sites listed in our results are found and added automatically as we crawl the web. If you're hungry for more, we have documentation about how Google discovers, crawls, and serves web pages.
If you're short on time or not feeling adventurous, you might consider hiring a professional. Here's what to consider.
Crawling is the process by which Google's crawlers explore the web, looking for pages to add to our index. Indexing is the process of storing those pages in a massive database, which we use to generate search results.
To help Google find your content, you can:
Robots.txt is a text file that you can upload to your website's root directory. It contains instructions for web crawlers, like Googlebot, on how to treat your website's content. Here's an example of what you can include in your robots.txt file:
Canonicalization is the process of indicating the preferred URL for a piece of content. This is important because duplicate URLs can cause confusion for users and search engines alike.
To specify a canonical URL, you can add a link element to your page's head section:
< link rel="canonical" href="https://www.example.com/the-original-page" />
Redirects are important for maintaining user experience and preventing duplicate content issues. Here are a few ways to implement redirects:
JavaScript is a powerful tool for enhancing user experience, but it can also cause issues for search engines if not used correctly. Here are some best practices for using JavaScript in your website:
Structured data is a way to add extra information to your website's content that can help search engines understand what it's about. Here are a few examples of structured data you can add to your website:
Favicons are small icons that appear next to your website's title in search engine results. You can add a favicon to your website by uploading an icon file to your website's root directory.
We have site-specific guides for creating high-quality content, optimizing images and videos, and more. Check out our resources for ecommerce sites, international and multilingual sites, and data analysis.
SEO is about helping search engines understand your content and helping users find your site through a search engine. By following the best practices outlined
