Building a website means getting everything done and learning essential factors, like how to buy a domain name or how to design a website. But there’s one more important thing not to miss – how to talk to Googlebot.
Googlebot is the name for Google’s web crawlers. It consists of two different crawler types – desktop and mobile crawlers. These crawlers collect information from a website and build a searchable index, improving the chances for higher search engine rankings.
How to Talk to Googlebot?
In this article, you will learn eight technical search engine optimization (SEO) strategies to talk to Googlebot, optimize your website, and raise your search engine visibility. Let’s get started.
1. Optimize Website Speed
Website speed is the foundation of a good technical SEO strategy. Aside from creating a smoother user experience, search engines also prefer a fast-loading website.
To optimize your website, start by testing the current website speed. Use tools like Pingdom or Google PageSpeed Insights to help. Note that the average loading time ranges from two to three seconds.
After that, start the optimization process:
- Use a responsive website template
- Resize images and other visual elements
- Minify HTML and CSS files
It’s also important to choose a reliable web hosting provider to support fast loading speeds since your web host and its servers can help create a solid foundation for optimal performance.
2. Submit Your XML Sitemap
XML sitemaps are a standard web protocol that lists your website’s URL. The URL list works as navigation for search engines to find your website content.
An XML sitemap is particularly useful for websites that:
- Have plenty of pages and frequently update them
- Regularly add new pages
- Have poor internal linking or have orphan pages
To submit your XML sitemap, follow these steps:
- Sign in to Google Search Console.
- Build your sitemap and choose the XML format. Alternatively, you can consider other Google-friendly formats like RSS, mRSS, and Atom 1.0.
- Create the sitemap either manually or automatically using a sitemap generator.
- Submit to Google.
3. Index Your Website Pages
Indexing occurs when search engines crawl and read your website content to understand it and relate it to relevant search queries. This helps to boost your site’s chances of appearing on search engine results pages (SERPs).
Follow these steps to get Google to index your website:
- Go to Google Search Console
- Open the URL Inspection Tool
- Paste the URL for indexing to the search bar
- Wait for Google to check the URL
- Click the “Request indexing” button
You can also check how your website is indexed by going to Google search and typing “site:” before adding your website’s name. For example, typing “site:searchenginemagazine.com” allows you to see the indexed pages of the website searchenginemagazine.com.
4. Use Robots.txt
Websites use Robots.txt to communicate with web crawlers or other web robots, including Googlebot. Aside from indexing your website pages, using robots.txt also helps search engines crawl your website faster.
To start using robots.txt, follow the steps below:
- Create a robots.txt file
- Add rules to the robots.txt file
- Upload the file to your website
- Test the robots.txt file
Depending on the hosting service or a website builder, you might be unable to edit the robots.txt file directly. However, you can contact them to proceed with other website crawling strategies.
5. Optimize Website for Mobile
Mobile optimization is important for Google’s mobile crawlers. Having a mobile-optimized website also means better chances to appear higher in search results.
There are a few mobile SEO strategies you can do to optimize your website.
Firstly, test your website’s mobile-friendliness with Google Mobile-Friendly Tool. Similar to testing your website speed, checking mobile-friendliness can help determine how to optimize your website better. For example:
- Use a responsive web theme
- Compress and optimize images
- Redesign pop-ups for mobile users
- Simplify website pages, including the navigation menu
6. Reduce HTTP Requests
HTTP has a request-response cycle. More HTTP requests mean a slower website loading time, which can harm your technical SEO strategies. Try keeping your HTTP requests under 50 for better SEO results.
To limit HTTP requests, delete unnecessary media files like images and videos. You can also try content caching and reduce third-party requests.
Additionally, avoid linking to a page that has a redirect in it. The following section will show the best practice for page redirects.
7. Use 301 Redirects
A 301 redirect is an SEO-friendly method for page redirects, which is a function that sends your visitors from one page to another. Using 301 redirects works when you have a new URL for an existing web page or have updated the website.
Aside from maintaining traffic and supporting technical SEO, using 301 redirects is also good for reducing errors and lowering factors that slow down your website.
To use 301 redirects, there are a few methods you could try:
- For WordPress websites, use plugins like Redirect
- Add a .htaccess file to your website’s root directory
8. Optimize Headers and Title Tags
Optimizing headers and title tags is part of content optimization. This technical SEO strategy is important because it helps provide context to search engines and website visitors.
Optimize headers and title tags by including relevant keywords. Then, structure the keywords from primary to secondary. Maintain this keyword strategy consistently for better results.
Additionally, you can also optimize content for featured snippets. Writing featured snippets can help boost your search engine visibility by supporting your title tags and fulfilling the user’s search intent.
Conclusion
Googlebot helps locate your web pages and allows Google to understand your content better. This is also helpful to gain a competitive advantage among other websites.
Technical SEO is the fastest way to talk to Googlebot and boost your search engine rankings. Here are the eight technical SEO strategies we’ve covered in this article, which are:
- Optimize website speed
- Submit your XML sitemap
- Index your website pages
- Use robots.txt
- Optimize website for mobile
- Reduce HTTP requests
- Use 301 redirects
- Optimize headers and title tags
Practicing these technical SEO strategies might take time, but they can help website growth in the long run. Good luck!
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