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website-indexing
Categories search engine optimization

What is Website Indexing in SEO?

Author admin Posted on

What do search engines like Google, Yahoo, and Bing have in common? They work to provide relevant answers to user queries. So, when you type a string of words on your browser, they search through millions of websites to provide what you need within seconds.

Thus, only the most relevant web pages appear on SERPs. Many people assume the chunk of your visibility rests with creating a website. But it’s only just the beginning. Website SEO indexing is also essential in improving your website traffic and visibility.

We will explore what website indexing means and its importance to your SEO performance.

What Is Website Indexing?

Website indexing is how search engines understand a website’s content or pages. It is the process of downloading important data from your web pages and storing it in a database. This database is typically fetched when people search for specific content online.

Consider website indexing as the glossary of a book. When you need to find a specific topic or keywords, locate them on the glossary and see the corresponding pages. Website indexing works the same way but with SERPs.

Google indexes websites because it would take longer for bots to sieve through every website to learn what they’re about before displaying them in SERPs. It’s faster if it can fetch such information from a database.

Why Is Indexing Important in SEO?

Your website is the connection between your customers and your business. One of the best ways they can learn about your business is through organic searches. So, how does website indexing play into this?

If your website hasn’t been indexed by Google, it won’t be displayed on result pages. Google SEO index is a vital ranking factor for websites. So, the more web pages indexed by Google, the more likely they’d get ranked above others for targeted keywords.

If you want to outrank other websites during organic searches, you must ensure that all your relevant web pages have been crawled and indexed by Google.

What is the Difference Between Crawling and Indexing?

When revealing your pages on SERPs, Google conducts two different actions: crawling and indexing. These actions may look similar on the surface but are distinct in functionalities.

Crawling the process of Google’s bots discovering your web pages. This includes identifying the web page from the metadata and other information. It also involves searching the links of a web page that leads to more web pages.

Indexing, on the other hand, analyzes these web pages and links and stores the information in a database to reveal them on SERPs when users search for them. You can say that indexing can only happen when crawling is completed, and you’d be absolutely correct.

How Does Google Indexing Work?

Website SEO indexing happens right after crawling is done. At this point, the search engine tries to understand the web page. So, it processes and analyzes the text, elements, attributes, videos, images, and links on the web page.

During indexing in SEO, Google tries to find out if the web page has been duplicated elsewhere on the internet or if it’s authentic. Only authentic pages get displayed in Google result pages.

Google collects web pages of different websites with similar content and clusters them in a group. When people search for content, Google uploads the results that best represent that group on SERPs. Some factors that determine this include the language of the page, the country the page is specific to, mobile usability, page loading speed, and others.

How Often Does Google Index Websites?

According to reports, Google processes over 8.5 billion searches daily. This means Google’s bot works tirelessly to provide relevant results to users. So, how often do they index websites?

It depends on the activity of your website in creating new content. Your pages will be crawled and indexed frequently if you run an eCommerce website regularly updated with product or service pages. This is partly because Google’s bots hunt for new content first.

Say, for instance, you conduct on-page optimization for your website. Your web pages will be indexed quickly and uploaded in an organic search to users. Typically, Google crawls and indexes page SEO every four to thirty days.  

Where Is My Website’s Index.HTML File?

An index.html is a directory that contains website pages, categories, sections, and other details of a website. It is the default file name for the home page of a website. From a home page, anyone can navigate to different website sections.

The index.html file contains HTML, CSS, and JavaScript codes. It typically shows:

● The menu which features a shortcut to other web pages of a website.

● Main Content reveals the generic or canonical information about a website.

● Footer, which reveals social media links, contact information, copyright information, etc.

Locating your website index.html file is pretty simple. All you need to do is locate the website root directory of your web server.

submit-sitemap

How to Check if Your Website Is Indexed by Google

As previously discussed in this article, if your website is not indexed by Google or other search engines, it will not appear on SERPs. Thus, you must confirm if your website and all its pages have been indexed.

The simplest way to do that is to enter the word ‘site:’ followed by the complete URL of your website. So, if your website is example.com, what you’d type is “site:example.com”.

The search engines will showcase all the web pages indexed on SERPs. If your web pages do not appear, your website hasn’t been indexed by the search engine yet.

How to Increase the Speed Index of Websites

The website speed index is a crucial aspect of your SEO campaign. When people click on your website, and it doesn’t completely load on time, your audience might be tempted to leave. Poor loading speed of websites is one of the major reasons for high bounce rates.

So, how do you increase your website’s Google SEO index speed? Follow these tips below:

● Minify the CSS and JavaScript files of your website.

● Optimize images

● Reduce the number of HTTP requests.

● Use browser HTTP caching.

● Speed up your server response time.

● Avoid post-click landing page redirects.  

How to Optimize Your Website for Indexing

There are several ways to optimize your website for crawling and SEO indexing. These tips include:

● Submit your sitemap to Google Search Console. A search console is a free tool from Google that you can use to monitor your website performance. All Log in to your Google Search Console, and select the account associated with your website. After you log in, locate Sitemaps and paste your sitemap URL in the space provided. Click submit.

● Track crawl status with Google Search Console. You can use Google Search Console, a website analytics tool, to see if your website has been crawled and indexed.

● Fix common errors. Your website may be dealing with technical errors which might impact your index optimization SEO. These errors include DNS, Server, Robots.txt, and 404 errors.

● Create mobile-friendly web pages. Most of your website visits may come from people using smartphones. You should try to optimize your web pages for mobile users to access.

● Update content constantly. Your website content should be updated regularly for it to be crawled and indexed.  

Index Your Site With Abstrax Web

Abstrax Web is an industry-leading consulting agency aimed at helping businesses improve their visibility in a sea of competition. Our services include web design, content creation, digital marketing, website analytics tracking, website architecture and development, and many more.

what-are-meta-tags
Categories search engine optimization

What Are Meta Tags and Why Are They Important for SEO?

Author admin Posted on

The word SEO will not be a strange concept if you own a website. When people search for information on search engines like Google and Bing, the machines pull up web pages that provide relevant answers to their queries.

Thus, optimizing your website pages to show up for those targeted searches is essential. One of the best places to start is your website’s meta tags. Many website owners ignore this, which might be the reason for poor SEO performance.

The importance of meta tags cannot be downplayed regarding website SEO performance. This article will explore meta tag definition and all the details you need to know about it.

What Are Meta Tags?

Meta tags are included in the HTML code that gives search engines and website visitors an idea of the website content. They also describe the different sections of your web page to search engines so that they understand what the content is about.

Think of meta tags as the summary of a novel at the back of the book or a trailer of an action flick. When people see the custom meta tags of your website, they will be able to know what to expect when they click on it.

Consider the example above. If you don’t know what cryptocurrencies are, you can get a little bit of understanding about the subject from any of the results displayed. If the answers look convincing enough, you can click on the links.

These responsive meta tags appear on SERPs, making them an essential aspect of your SEO strategy. Meta tags have been around since the history of search engines. You should start now if you haven’t thought about optimizing your web pages with these tags.

What Meta Tags Are Important for SEO?

Now that you know what meta tags are and how important they are to SEO, what are the most important meta tags for SEO?

Let’s explore them below:

Meta Title

The meta title is the first HTML element describing your web page to visitors and search engines. It is regarded as the most critical anchor text to your website content. Why? It’s usually the first thing people see in SERPs, and they can click on it to visit your website and read the content.

The meta title is written inside your website’s <head> element. For this particular article, this is how the meta title will look like:

<head>

<title>What Are Meta Tags and Why Are They Important for SEO?</title>

</head>

A properly written meta title will increase your website traffic which is another essential aspect of SEO. Practice the following tips to publish a compelling meta title:

● Your website pages should have unique titles.

● Keep the responsive meta titles between 50-60 characters long. This will prevent it from being truncated in SERPs.

● Include the most critical keywords naturally.

● Include your website name in the meta title.

Meta Description

Meta description displays under the meta title in SERPs. It is a text that provides a clear summary of what people will expect when they click on the URL of your website.

Meta descriptions go a long way in improving your SEO performance. When implemented correctly, they can improve your click-through rate and lower the bounce rate of your website. Thus, the web content must truly explore whatever is hinted on the meta description.

The answer to a query is usually in bold letters in meta descriptions. This gives people an idea of what they’d find when they click on your website.

The following are the best practices you should use when including meta descriptions in your website HTML code.

● Do not duplicate meta descriptions on your web pages. All your web pages must have unique descriptions.

● Limit your meta descriptions to 150-160 characters, as anything above is truncated.

● Include your most relevant keywords in the description. Avoid stuffing that section with multiple keywords.

Meta Robots

Meta robots are also another vital meta tag in your website’s arsenal. Meta robot tags tell search engines what to showcase and keep hidden. It is written into the <head> element of your website’s HTML code.

You can utilize meta robots to tell search engines what pages they crawl and index and the ones they shouldn’t. For instance, a website’s About Us and Contact Us pages do not need to show up on SERPs.

A typical example of a meta robot tag looks like this:

<meta name=”robots” content=”noindex’>

This command informs Google and other search engines to not index that page.

Other commands include:

● Follow. This is a command for search crawlers to follow all the links on the web page.

● Index. This is a command for crawlers to index the page.

● Nofollow. This is a command for search crawlers to not follow the links on that web page.

● Noindex. This is a command for search engine crawlers to not index a page.

Meta Refresh Redirect

Have you clicked on a web page to see the “If you’re not redirected in five seconds, click here” message? That’s a meta refresh redirect at work.

Meta refresh redirect tells a web browser to visit another web page after a specific time. Thus, users can either wait for some time or click the provided link to see the web page.

Meta Charset

Meta charset is a tag that specifies the character encoding for the HTML code of your website. Most website developers will use the UTF-8 character set, which encompasses all the symbols and characters in the world.

It is also encoded in the <head> element of your HTML code.

<head>

 <meta charset=”UTF-8″>

</head>

Meta Viewport

The meta viewport is your users’ visible area of your web pages. As you already know, people visiting your web pages are using different devices and PCs to have access. Thus the meta viewport gives the browser instructions on how to display content to users when they land on your page.

This includes the dimensions and scaling of the device they may use.

How to Check Meta Tags in a Website

Do you want to find out how to check meta tags on any website? It’s pretty easy. All you need to do is:

● Visit any web page.

● Right-click anywhere on the page and select ‘View Page Source’.

● A new tab will open on your browser, showing you the responsive meta tags that have been set.

How to Create Meta Tags for SEO

Using WordPress, you can install an SEO plugin like Yoast. It will open a title tag on your page editor, where you can input your meta title and description.

Yoast meta keywords also showcase what they’d look like in typical SERPs if people search for the target keywords.

How to Add a Meta Tag to a Website

You can also add additional meta tags to your website, which gives search engines more information about your web page. With the information, Google, Bing, and other search engines can create custom rich results for your web pages.

To get started:

● Visit your website SEO settings.

● Click on the Advanced SEO tab.

● Click on Additional Tags.

● Add the new tag from the dropdown menu.

● Input your HTML code

● Save the code.

Conclusion

Meta tags are an essential aspect of your website’s SEO performance. If you have not been paying attention to it before, you should.

content-marketing-strategy
Categories search engine optimization

What is Content Marketing Strategy?

Author admin 0 Comments Posted on

You’ve heard about content marketing before. It’s a buzzword that keeps flying around with digital marketing. However, if you’re not careful, you won’t be able to distinguish them.

Traditional marketing involves using the usual channels such as TVs, radios, magazines, newspapers, and billboards to promote a brand and its services. In this digital age, it is becoming less responsive to emerging needs.

At the core of it all, the focus is content. Brands use content to identify their unique voice, increase leads, build a community of followers, and improve their bottom line. The various means this is deployed is called a content marketing strategy.

This article explores all you need to know about it and how to make it work.

What is Content Marketing?

Content marketing is developing and distributing relevant content to promote brand awareness and attract a specific audience. Content marketing doesn’t only involve distributing content to boost sales. A massive chunk focuses on informing, educating, and inspiring people about something. And this often pans out in improving sales or subscriptions.

The goal of custom content marketing is to generate and improve leads by earning the trust of your target audience. Thus, it is vital to be consistent in providing relevant information to your audience.

Some of the most common forms of content marketing include videos, podcasts, blog posts, web pages, infographics, and many more.

Firstly, you need to understand your target audience and their expectations and provide what they need.

Why Content Marketing is So Important?

Technical content marketing comes with a truckload of benefits. Let’s look at them below:

 ● It boosts your SEO and website traffic. Content marketing can improve your SEO performance and website traffic in unimaginable ways. Content marketing allows you to identify keywords to optimize for your website pages. When people search using those keywords, Google will reveal your web pages on their SERPs. You can track and monitor your website traffic using web analytics tools like Google Analytics to see which pages are getting more traffic and customize other pages to follow suit.

● It promotes social media engagement. Content marketing also goes a long way in fostering engagement in your social media posts. When people encounter your compelling content on social media, they will react to it, follow your pages and invite their friends to do the same.

● It increases brand loyalty. Clear content marketing is another excellent way to improve your brand loyalty. There are hundreds of brands out there offering similar services. With content marketing in place, people will rely on your brand for specific information. It will further create a sense of belonging and trust.

● It makes marketing easier. With content marketing, you begin to worry less about your marketing team. You can draft helpful content which will go a long way in addressing some of your audience’s concerns.

● It is flexible. Another benefit to mobile content marketing is its flexibility across several forms and platforms. You can use videos, newsletters, podcasts, webinars, FAQs, blog posts, and social media content to promote your business.

● It is better than traditional marketing. Content marketing aims to build a meaningful relationship with your target audience. This makes it better than conventional marketing, which might not yield any result.

What is a Content Marketing Strategist?

A content marketing strategist is responsible for drafting, creating, and collaborating on strategies that will improve brand awareness. Thus, it is the job of a content marketing strategist to launch marketing campaigns, identify trends, and measure results.

Their responsibilities are enormous. They are tasked with identifying business goals and the marketing process to make those goals a reality. They also develop content creation ideas and work with content or copywriters to create content.

They also analyze a business’s target audience, perform keyword research, and synergize all operations to achieve objectives.

Other forms of content marketing roles include:

● Web content specialist

● Content marketing manager

● Social media content manager

● Brand strategist.

Elements of Content Marketing

Content marketing is an essential aspect of digital marketing. You need to understand its element to get people interested in your services and engage with your posts.

What are the elements of content marketing?

● A target audience. One best content marketing practice is to identify your target audience. A record 90% of the best performing B2B marketers know their target audience and draft successful marketing campaigns to satisfy them. So, who are those people interested in your business? That’s your target audience.

● Clear and measurable goals. After identifying your target audience, the next step is setting clear and quantifiable goals. It will help improve your content marketing process. So, what are your goals? Brand awareness? Lead generation? Engagement?

● Buyer personas. You also need to identify the buyer personas of each of your customers. The reason is that you’re dealing with people from different backgrounds and values. You cannot create a one-size-fits-all strategy for a vast target audience. Your content should be diverse and suit each audience.

● Wide range of content. Content is a significant aspect of clear content marketing. However, your content should be diversified into different forms. Beyond having a blog for your website, you should focus on infographics, videos, audio content, ebooks, and others.

● Content promotion strategy. Beyond publishing content on your website and social media pages, you need to promote them. You can hire influencers or pay for sponsored ads.

Relationship Between SEO and Content Marketing

SEO and content marketing are interwoven uniquely. SEO is the technical process of improving your website content to be visible on SERPs. Content marketing takes advantage of valuable content to promote brand awareness and fulfill objectives.

Content marketing experts know that successful SEO needs content. Every website media page needs SEO and content marketing to enjoy the best results.

Social Media Marketing vs Content Marketing

People often think social media marketing and content marketing are the same. They’re not exactly wrong.

Social media marketing involves promoting a brand on social media platforms to attract and build a following. It also involves creating content to engage the existing customers who use these platforms.

Content marketing is a wholesome strategy that includes social media platforms, websites, and other digital platforms.

Product Marketing vs Content Marketing

There’s also a slight difference between product marketing and content marketing. The former helps your marketing and campaign team to understand your customers and identify how to introduce your product and improve sales.

You can see product marketing in full swing on product pages of e-commerce websites. Product descriptions, product reviews, and case studies are product marketing examples. Content marketing encompasses product marketing and other forms of digital marketing.  

How Content Marketing Helps Business

Content marketing management can improve your business in several ways. Some of these benefits include:

● Audience retention.

● Better website traffic and social media traction.

● Inspire trust.

● Generate better leads.

● Improve conversions.

● Increase brand awareness.

Content Marketing for Brand Awareness

If your content marketing strategy focuses on brand awareness, you should do things differently. So what are the steps to deploy content marketing for brand awareness?

 ● Identify your target audience.

● Define your business’s unique selling point.

● Create searchable web content.

● Share your content on social media

● Post on third-party websites

● Invest in influencer marketing

● Diversify your content

● Track your progress with web analytics tools.

These tips will improve your brand awareness in no time.

Content Marketing Best Practices

Content marketing must be done the right way to achieve the best results. What are some of the content marketing best practices?

● Put your audience first.

● Use data to understand your audience.

● Focus on providing value

● Create the right conversations.

● Optimize your content for mobile devices.

These clear content marketing best practices will set your brand apart from the competition.

Conclusion

Content marketing is an essential aspect of digital marketing. With these tips, you can create successful content marketing campaigns to drive leads, boost sales, and improve your bottom line.

domain-age
Categories search engine optimization

Does Domain Age Matter in SEO

Author admin 0 Comments Posted on

When people search for content on Google, its search bots crawl through millions of web pages and present the most relevant results to their query. More often than not, when you conduct an organic search, you receive the results that you need.

There are some concerns surrounding how web pages rank on SERPs. Does their domain age matter? Does Google consider the website’s age when revealing its content on its result pages? The answer is yes. However, it is also dependent on several factors.

Domain age is one of such factors as to whether a website will receive a better ranking during an organic search.

This article discusses everything you need to know about domain age and how it relates to SEO.

What Is Domain Age?

Website domain age is the years a particular domain has been registered under a registrar. People often mistake domain age for the number of years a website has existed. However, it is not accurate.

Domain age is the number of years or months a website has under its current name and website extension (that is, .com, .info, .org, .io).

Websites can take different names due to marketing strategies and business adjustments. Thus, a business that started with a .info extension may change it to .com as time goes on. Hence, domain age will be calculated when the website’s current name and extension are implemented.

How Important Is Domain Age for SEO?

Domain age is an essential aspect of SEO. The reason is that Google banks on website trustworthiness as a ranking factor for SERPs. The logic behind this is that if a domain has existed for several years, it must be more valuable compared to the newer ones.

That’s not to mean that domain age ranking factors for Google or other search engines are based solely on the website’s age. Your newer website still has a fighting opportunity of ranking better than an older website for targeted keywords.

When you incorporate metrics such as domain authority, page rank, backlinks, website structure, interlinking, and others, you’ll see why older domains rank better than new ones.

Does Domain Age Affect SEO?

Consider this example:

Someone fresh out of college with no experience cannot compete with another who has up to 6 years of working experience for the same role.

A recruiter will always consider someone with background experience because they believe the professional prospect understands the job better. They also know that the experience prospect will deliver targets while taking less time to adjust to the new environment.

See where we are going with this? The same scenario plays out for the domain age ranking factor on SERP. Google, Bing, Yahoo, and other search engines consider this when showcasing websites for targeted searches.

However, your newer domain still stands a chance of ranking with older domains if you fulfill some SEO strategies for your website. Older websites also have those obligations to incorporate into their web pages. The quality of your website is what matters here.

Anyone can register a domain for several years without filling it with relevant content. Google will not rank such websites over newer ones that are relevant.

SEO Tips for Older Domains

If you have a relatively older website, you can take advantage of it to get more visibility and traffic. Try out the following tips:

● Track and optimize backlinks. Backlinks are a testament to website trustworthiness. If more websites are referencing and linking to your website, it’s a great SEO signal. You must earn backlinks from other websites as you link to them. You can use tools such as SEMRush, Moz, and Ahrefs to monitor the websites linking to your own. If you notice that the backlinks are ending up in error pages, you can write to the authors or referrers with a new link they can post.

● Structure your website’s essential pages. Another way your older website can perform better is when you structure and add more pages to your website. You can add more service pages to your website if you don’t have them. If your website doesn’t have a blog, you should include one as people might learn about your offerings from such pages. You can also use web data analytics like Google Analytics to see your top-performing page and optimize other website pages.

● Stay updated with SEO trends. Beyond the fact that your domain age is older, you need to keep up with SEO trends to rank better than others. These trends include proper web design, mobile optimization, page loading speed, schema, local SEO, and website silo.

SEO Tips for New Domains

If you want your new website to get more visibility for SERPs, you should incorporate the following SEO tips:

● Use older websites as an inspiration for yours. One of the best tips to implement is to look out for some of the best domains for SEO and see what they’re up to. You can use keyword research tools like SEMRush to find the top-performing pages and let their structure inspire you to create your own website. You should not copy and paste their content on your website, as search engines frown at that.

● Focus on local SEO. You should focus on local SEO if your website services a particular town or city. When you begin to rank better for local SEO, you can expand your reach to national SEO. You should practice tips such as creating and updating your Google My Business page, voice search, schema structured data, registering your website in local directories, and many more.

● Invest in paid ads. Another way you can improve your SEO performance is to invest in paid ads. These ads appear at the top of organic searches, and people will see them first. You can improve your website traffic with paid ads and stick to organic SEO when you’ve built a following.

Domain Age Ranking Factors

Ever wondered about the factors that Google uses to rank older websites? Here they are:

● Backlinks. Older websites tend to have more backlinks compared to newer websites. Google sees this as a great sign and ranks it better than others.

● Traffic history. Older websites are prone to have more traffic compared to new sites. This is essential because Google knows people regularly visit their site. If their content is relevant, Google will rank it above others.

● Content. This isn’t rocket science. Some of the best domains for SEO are filled with engaging content that attracts people to them. Google takes note of that.

● User experience. Domain age competes better when it comes to website user experience. People who visit their website know where to locate different pages and fulfill digital marketing objectives faster than new ones.

Is Older Domain Better?

When it comes to SEO ranking factors, domain age matters. They fulfill most of the factors Google and other search engines consider for their SERPs. But an older site doesn’t automatically mean it will rank better than others.

The site has to be filled with quality content and optimized for targeted keywords before it will be ranked above others by Google.

How to Check Domain Age?

Do you know you can check domain age for any website, not just your own?

You can use a domain age checker tool to determine how old a domain is.

Visit Dupli Checker, place the website on the provided space, and click Check Domain Age. You will be able to see information such as domain name, date of creation, current age, and expiration date.

Domain Age Checker Tools

Beyond Dupli Checker, there are other bulk domain age checker tools you can use to check multiple domain ages simultaneously.

These tools include:

● SmallSEOTools IP Location

● SiteCheckerPro

● WebsiteSEOChecker

● WhatsMyDNS

● WebFx

● BulkSEOTools

How to Buy Aged Domains

You can also purchase pre-existing domains that aren’t owned by anyone from domain providers. All you need to do is visit the following websites:

 ● GoDaddy Auctions

● DomCop

● NameJet

● SwapNames

● Domain Hunter Gatherer

Look at the available domains and bid for them. The DNS information and other details will be handed to you if you win the bid.

Conclusion

Does domain age matter in SEO? Yes. But your newer website with more optimization and tweaks will rank better than others during an organic search.

Visit our blog for more articles to improve the visibility of your website.

google-bot
Categories search engine optimization

What is a Googlebot?

Author admin 0 Comments Posted on

Every business that has a website is concerned about SEO and visibility. That’s the only way visitors can locate their websites from search engine result pages (SERPs). It doesn’t matter if your web design is one of the most beautiful. If people can see your website on result pages, it’s a waste of digital marketing efforts.

One of the crucial elements that play a huge role in making your business show up on organic searches is Googlebot. You may have heard it before but not given enough attention to it. We’ve created this article to explore what it all means.

Googlebot is often called a web crawler, which comes in two forms: a desktop crawler and a mobile crawler. Googlebot cookies are used by the search engine to curate information necessary to create a searchable index for that website.

Googlebots perform different tasks, and each identifies themselves with a string of text called Google web user agent. These bots run and crawl on millions of websites and index what they find so that they can present relevant results to user queries.

We are going to explore more about that in the article. Stay with us.  

What Is Crawlability?

Have you heard about the word crawlability and wondered what it meant? We are going to explore crawlability meaning below:

Crawlability is the potential of a search engine (in this case, Google) to crawl the content of your website. It’s the degree to which your website can be crawled by the Googlebot headers. If your website has no crawlability issues, it will be easy for Google to access your content and all your web pages without issues.

However, if your website is filled with broken or spam links, your website might suffer crawlability issues. This means that Google spiders will not be able to understand your website. Thus, they won’t present your web links to users during an organic search.

Remember that this doesn’t affect your website’s performance if they type into their PC or smartphone browsers.

How Does Googlebot Work?

Googlebot cookies implement an algorithm in determining which sites, which pages to fetch from the site, and how often the site can be crawled. Let’s break it down:

There are billions of websites on the internet today. Each website has several web pages (called nodes) and connections (hyperlinks). Each website or web page has a Unique Resource Locator (URL link) that can lead people to open their websites.

Googlebot analyzes and reviews each hyperlink (HREF and SRC links) and determines the most effective way to crawl the website. Googlebot IP uses the sitemaps or databases of the website to discover where to crawl and which pages are relevant.

When they discover a website has new links, they will automatically include it in their database, which will crawl next.

However, google spiders do not crawl all the web pages it discovers. That’s because the web pages may have been disabled from crawling by the web admin. Thus, users cannot see such pages on search results but can view them when they visit the website.

For instance, a website’s Contact Us and About Us pages are rarely found on search results. That’s because those pages have been disabled from crawling.

Different Kinds of Googlebots

Google has several kinds of Google spiders – each one created for a specific task. That’s why they are called Googlebot web user agents. Your website should be set up and optimized to have these bots crawl your website with ease.

These bots include:

1. AdSense

2. APIs-Google

3. AdsBot Mobile Web

4. AdsBot Mobile Web Android

5. Googlebot News

6. Googlebot Video

7. Googlebot Desktop

8. Googlebot Image

9. Googlebot Smartphone

10. Mobile AdSense

11. Mobile Apps Android

12. Feedfetcher

13. Google StoreBot

14. Web Light

15. Duplex on the web

16. Google Read Aloud

17. Google Favicon

What is Googlebot in SEO?

The main reason Googlebot IP crawls web pages is for SEO. These Google spiders collect the sitemaps web admins provide to crawl websites and gather information about your website. This information is supplied to Google, which it displays on SERPs.

Googlebot headers collect the information about a website and update it on their search index. While crawling websites, it automatically updates them on the index if it discovers new links and pages.

Google has to first crawl your website when you submit a sitemap to Google Search Console. However, if you set some limitations on the sitemap, Googlebots will not upload those limitations on their search index.

What Can I Do to Optimize My Site for Googlebot?

You can deploy several strategies to ensure that Googlebots crawl your website. These strategies include:

● Create a sitemap for your website. One of the best ways to optimize your site for crawling is to create a sitemap for your website. This is the file containing all the relevant information about your website pages. If your website uses a Yoast plugin or similar plugins, you can automatically create one.

● Keep the ‘nofollow’ links less on your sitemap. Nofollow links tell Googlebots not to crawl and index the links on your website. You should review your sitemap and keep the ‘nofollow’ links to the minimum.

● Monitor your site’s crawlability using Google Search Console. You can use the web analytics tool Google Search Console to see if your site can be crawled.

How to Get Googlebot to Crawl to Your Site

Getting Googlebot to crawl and index is very simple. All you need to do is:

 ● Generate the sitemap of your website using the CMS or plugins.

● Sign in to Google Search Console. You must have a Google account.

● Verify your domain by copying the TXT tracking code into the DNS configuration of your website. If you’ve previously done this, skip this process.

● Click Sitemaps from the Dashboard and input your sitemap URL. It will begin to crawl the sitemap shortly.

How to Check if Your Website Is Crawlable

One of the best ways to check if your website has been crawled and indexed is to run a quick Google search.

Simply type ‘site:yourwebsite.com’ on your Google search tab, and you will see all the results showing your web pages. It means it hasn’t been crawled if they don’t show up. Another way you can check is with your Google Search Console to confirm your crawl status.

How Often Does Google Crawl Websites?

Googlebot IP address crawls the website between every 4 and 30 days. This depends on how active your website is. If your website gets an update with new content, Googlebots will quickly crawl it – as it searches for new content first.

From your Google Search Console, you can check the last time your website got crawled. If your updated website hasn’t been crawled for over 30 days, there might be a crawl error.

What Is Googlebot User Agent?

Googlebot web user agent is the name of the Googlebot that crawls websites and indexes their information. Because your website is set up with different information such as text, links, photos, ads, videos, etc.

Before Googlebots crawl your site, it needs to understand the elements of your website. Thus, user agents go into work to understand it better.

How to Change User Agent to Googlebot

Do you know you can change your browser’s Googlebot web user agent? We’ll show you how below.

● For Chrome and Edge. Right-click a page and select Inspect. Scroll to More Tools > Network Conditions and uncheck the Select Automatically checkbox. You can choose a user agent from the in-built list.

● For Safari. Go to Preferences and enable Develop Menu bar. Click Advanced and check the Show Develop menu in the menu bar. You can then move to Develop > User Agent and select from the predefined list.

● For Firefox. You have to install an add-on called User-Agent Switcher. You can select one of the predefined user agents or enter a custom user agent.

Conclusion

Googlebot is essential to your digital marketing. If they do not crawl and index your website pages accordingly, it will not show up on SERPs.

With this informational guide, you can structure your website and create a sitemap for these Google spiders to crawl and index your website.

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