So you finally launched or updated business website. You drafted, revised, optimized and did it all again. Yay you! But the work's not over...
Now it is time to get Google to index your pages so they show up in searches and you get eyes from real life customers on your site. Google can crawl (or "look at" and assess what they're about) a huge number of sites and pages each day, but how do you ensure yours gets noticed? This is a great question for new or refreshed websites.
These crawlers are less spooky and more helpful, but recent rumors have been heard that Google will be planning to reduce their crawl rate - the frequency at which it reviews and indexes web pages - in order to become more sustainable in the long term and reduce its carbon footprint from computing. While that is an admirable goal, what does that mean for your website?
Well, to make a long story short, you may need to work harder (or maybe just smarter) to make sure you get noticed. The usual on-page SEO features are still your best best.
The best ways to get get your site noticed by Google:
Valuable content
Updated information that is relevant to your audience
Helpful, good quality images that include alt text (descriptions of the image that tell a computer or reader what is in the image)
But one of Google’s goals is to learn which pages are consistently getting refreshed content, and which ones are NOT. The idea being that there is no need for Google to frequently recrawl a webpage that does not frequently get new or refreshed content. For example, your Home page may get new content monthly, but your About page may still be the original blurb about how you started your business 5 years ago. That page is not going to get Google's attention, and even less Google figures out that you don’t update this often and the crawl rate is reduced accordingly.
So while we will always recommend keeping a close eye on the pages of your site that get the most traffic (typically Home and Services), don’t forget about the other content pages!
Quick and easy ways to update your site:
Adding a blog post relevant to your community
Adding a testimonial from a new project or client
Reviewing and updating descriptions on your offerings
Updating that 5 year old About me blurb
Adding new images with those alt text included.
So while the major work on your website may be done, make sure that you're loving on it regularly so that clients can find and love on your small business, because thats what it's all about!
Whether you need help optimizing a brand new site, some updates on an existing site or a chat about some recommendations, we'd love to help! Reach out below so we can get some eyes on your site.
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