Google crawlers are bots that go through your website and assess your data for SEO. But you need to woo these bots, if you want to get noticed. But how? You have created your website, it is simple, it is user friendly, and it has all the requirements for a website, why are the Crawlers not noticing you?
Here are 10 tips for luring the Google Bots for improving your SEO rankings:
- Regularly Update your Website
- Work on Your Load Time
- Include Sitemaps
- Block all Unwanted Pages
- Avoid Duplicate Content
- Inter-link Your Blog Post
- Optimize the Videos and Images on the Site
- Do Not Use Black Hat SEO Tricks
- Less is more!
- Do Not Forget to Check the Crawl Errors
Regularly Update your Website
Creating the website is a one-time thing. But keeping it updated is a continuous process. Think about it. Keep updating the content. Technology is continuously evolving. Designs change regularly. Keep up to date. Sometimes, you might even have to update your logo as well. Facebook, and even Google has updated their logos with the current art and design movement.
Upload content regularly. Having blogs is one way of getting Google bots to notice you. You can also add images, videos, or even audio to your website. Regularly uploading new content, will get you frequent visits from the crawlers.
Work on Your Load Time
Loading time should be maximum of 3 seconds. People will not stay on your website if the loading time exceeds 3 seconds. The bots are not fan of downtimes either. If your site takes a long time to load, the crawlers will not spend much time. They have limited time. If they spend more time on one page, going through other pages would be difficult for the bots due to the limited time span. Hence, chances are your important content might get overlooked.
Include Sitemaps
Sitemaps is another trick you can include in your website. It is where you will provide information about your website and the content on it, such as pages, videos etc. You can create and submit sitemaps to save the bots time and hence, have your website covered quicker.
Block all Unwanted Pages
This is especially important for organizations with large websites. For such websites, chances are you might have data or content that you do not want the search engine to index. You can use Robots.txt to block pages such as admin, and back-end folders. By blocking unwanted content, you give the crawlers more time to go through important pages.
Avoid Duplicate Content
Duplicate content refers to both: repeating the same content you have already uploaded on the website, and copying content from other websites and using them as your own. It drastically lowers crawl rates. Search engines are smart. They can easily sense duplicate content, hence, decreasing the chances of your site to get crawled. In worst case scenarios, your site can get banned permanently.
Providing new content is like a breath of fresh air for the crawlers. It can improve your crawl rate. Content can be anything, from blog posts to videos. You can even use various online tools for authenticating the content on your website.
Inter-link Your Blog Post
Many organizations are unaware of the importance of interlinking. Interlinking the right way can generate more traffic to your website and help the search engine crawlers to crawl deeply in your website. It keeps reminding the bots of relevant content that you might have uploaded previously. Hence, increasing the value of your content.
Optimize the Videos and Images on the Site
The SEO bots cannot discern images or videos. It is up to you to optimize these two elements in a way to help those crawlers to read and understand them. You can use keywords, alternate tags, and provide sound descriptions for the crawlers to index. Images will only be included in the search result if they are optimized properly.
Do Not Use Black Hat SEO Tricks
I have mentioned in one of my previous blogs “Difference between Black Hat SEO and White Hat SEO” the aftermath of using Black Hat SEO tactics Using Black Hat SEO tactics can harm the integrity of your website. Do not stuff your website with keywords, other tactics you should avoid is using irrelevant keywords, adding spam links, or manipulative links. Sites that use Black Hat SEO are considered low-quality. Always opt for white hat SEO techniques to get the best of the crawlers, and improving your overall SEO rankings.
Less is more!
Crawlers also analyze the website’s design. We all remember the days where cluttering the website with flashy backgrounds, fancy fonts and bombardment of images was considered cool, and fancy. Well, not anymore. Google bots are not fans of clutter. Start by enabling compression to reduce the bandwidth the pages consume.
After that, reduce the image and video sizes. Also, do not add unnecessary images, ads, and requests on your page. It will not only send people running off in the other direction, but will also repulse the robots.
Do Not Forget to Check the Crawl Errors
This is a pro-Google tip. Google recommends paying attention to the Crawl Errors report in Search Console and keeping the number of server errors low.
These errors take place when the bot runs into a problem while crawling through the website. It is essential for you to monitor these errors. For starters, Google will inform you if the bots come across an error. You can activate the feature from the Google Search Console, and selecting the property you want to analyze.
Conclusion
Google crawlers decide your search engine rankings. Impressing them should be among your priorities. These bots follow certain set of rules and are diligent in detecting manipulation, and black hat SEO techniques. For staying on their “good list”, make sure you use organic means such as uploading new content, avoiding cluttered web pages, and including spam links in your site.
