Weekly SEO news: 16 March 2021
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Here are the latest website promotion and Internet marketing tips for you.

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Andre Voget, Johannes Selbach, Axandra CEO

1. How to get listed on Google: discover, evaluate, index

Google must be able to discover, evaluate, and index your content if you want to be listed on Google. What's the difference between these steps and how can you facilitate the process?

How Google finds web pages: discovery, evaluation, indexing

1. Web page discovery

Google must be able to find your web pages somehow. In general, new pages need at least one link from another web page before Google can find that page.

When you publish a new page on your existing website, it's usually enough to link to the new page from one of your existing pages. If you have a brand new website, you need links from external websites.

Without links from other pages, it's unlikely that Google will discover your web pages. The better the linking web pages are, the faster Google will discover your pages.

2. Web page evaluation (this is where things can go wrong)

After discovering your web pages, Google will evaluate them. Google will parse the HTML code of your pages. There are many things that can go wrong at this point:

  • Your web page might deliver the wrong HTTP status code. If your web page looks fine but sends a 4xx or 5xx HTTP status code to search engines, then Google won't consider your page.
  • Your web page might contain unwanted indexing instructions. For example, the page might contain a canonical URL that points to a different page, or it contains a robots meta tag that tells search engines to ignore the pages. In both cases, Google won't consider your page.
  • Google might not be able to see the content of your pages. If your web pages need JavaScript to display the content, chances are that Google won't see everything of the page. Google might also think that the page is a low quality page because it doesn't contain much content.
  • Your web pages might contain low quality content. If the page does not contain many words, or if the page contains content that Google finds dubious, Google might not consider your page.
  • If your web page is password protected, Google won't be able to evaluate the content.
  • If your robots.txt file does not allow search engines to access the pages, Google won't evaluate your pages.

There are many things that can go wrong when Google evaluates your web pages. Use the website audit tool in SEOprofiler to remove all errors that can have a negative impact on your rankings.

3. Indexing

When Google has evaluated your content, it will add your pages to the index (if there haven't been any problems). To check if Google has indexed a particular page of your website, enter site:https://www.yourwebsite.com/page-url/ in Google's search form (replace everything after site: with the actual URL of your page).

The actual positions of your web pages depend on many different signals

Being in Google's index doesn't mean that your website will get a particular position in the search results. The position of your web pages depends on many different factors. The most important factors are the relevance of your content to the search term and the quality of the links that point to the page.

You can optimize the relevance of your web pages with the Top 10 Optimizer tool in SEOprofiler. You can optimize the links that point to your website with the Link Profiler tool in SEOprofiler.

Google ranking overview

SEOprofiler offers many more SEO tools that help you to improve the position of your web pages in Google's search results. You can try SEOprofiler here:

2. Internet marketing news of the week

GoogleGoogle: web website with Core Web Vitals field data may have a tiny advantage over one without

"Why tiny? Because the page experience is a mix of multiple signals, including CWV [Core Web Vitals]. If (and that's a big if) the CWV label launches, it may have a non-ranking advantage if users prefer those pages over others."


Google tests displaying cost estimates in local search results

"A Google spokesperson confirmed with Search Engine Land the company is testing displaying cost estimated directly in the local panel in the search results. This information comes through a partnership with Homewyse, a fact-based, independent reference for home product, installation and service estimates."

John MuellerGoogle: words in a URL a very light weight factor but less after indexing

"We use the words in a URL as a very very lightweight factor. And from what I recall this is primarily something that we would take into account when we haven't had access to the content yet. So if this is the absolute first time we see this URL we don't know how to classify its content, then we might use the words in the in the URL as something to help rank us better."

Google: a deskop-only website is fine

"A desktop-only site is fine (it's essentially the same content on mobile as on desktop, it might just be hard to read). If there's less content for mobile users, that would be problematic though (we would lose the content in our index)."


+++ SEARCH +++ ENGINE +++ NEWS +++ TICKER +++

  • The order of the canonical tag and URL in HTML does not matter.
  • Microsoft Ads: Get full control over your Dynamic Search Ads with static headlines.
  • Features snippets are back to normal.
  • BING appears to be pulling in Q&A into the knowledge panel.

3. Previous articles

Do you need better rankings for your website?

SEOprofiler is a web-based search marketing tool that helps you to get better Google rankings. You can create a free SEOprofiler account here. The step-by-step manual will help you to get started as quickly as possible.