Search Engine Optimization (SEO) Starter Guide

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.

How does Google Search work?

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

Short on time or not feeling adventurous? You might consider hiring a professional. Here's what to consider.

How long until I see impact in search results?

Every change you make will take some time to be reflected on Google's end. Some changes might take effect in a few hours, others could take several months. In general, you likely want to wait a few weeks to assess whether your work had beneficial effects in Google Search results. Keep in mind that not all changes you make to your website will result in noticeable impact in search results; if you're not satisfied with your results and your business strategies allow it, try iterating with the changes and see if they make a difference.

Help Google find your content

Before you actually do anything mentioned in this section, check if Google has already found your content (maybe you don't need to do anything!). Try searching on Google for your site with the

site: search operator⁠

. If you see results pointing to your site, you're in the index. For example, a search for site:wikipedia.org returns

these results⁠

. If you don't see your site, check out the

technical requirements⁠

to make sure there's nothing technically preventing your site from showing in Google Search, and then come back here.

Google primarily finds pages through links from other pages it already crawled. In many cases, these are other websites that are linking to your pages. Other sites linking to you is something that happens naturally over time, and you can also encourage people to discover your content by

promoting your site⁠

If you're open to a little technical challenge, you could also

submit a sitemap⁠

—which is a file that contains all the URLs on your site that you care about. Some content management systems (CMS) may even do this automatically for you. However this isn't required, and you should first focus on making sure

people know about your site⁠

Check if Google can see your page the same way a user does

When Google crawls a page, it should ideally

see the page the same way an average user does⁠

. For this, Google needs to be able to access the same resources as the user's browser. If your site is hiding important components that make up your website (like

CSS⁠

and

JavaScript⁠

), Google might not be able to understand your pages, which means they might not show up in search results or rank well for the terms you're targeting.

If your pages have different information depending on the user's physical location, make sure you're satisfied with the information that Google sees from its crawler's location, which is generally the US.

To check how Google sees your page, use the

URL Inspection Tool in Search Console⁠

Don't want a page in Google's search results?

It might be important for you to opt out your site as a whole or sections of it from appearing in search results. For example, you might not want your posts about your new embarrassing haircut to show up in search results. Google supports various ways that lets you opt out of crawling and indexing of your URLs. If you need to block some files, directories, or even your whole site from Google Search, check out our guide about

ways to prevent content from appearing in search results⁠

Organize your site

When you're setting up or redoing your site, it can be good to organize it in a logical way because it can help search engines and users understand how your pages relate to the rest of your site. Don't drop everything and start reorganizing your site right now though: while these suggestions can be helpful long term (especially if you're working on a larger website), search engines will likely understand your pages as they are right now, regardless of how your site is organized.

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