Is SEO necessary to be found online? It's not – the moment you allow web crawlers to access your site, you're forced into the cogs of the vast machine known as Google. Merely being listed in the search engine doesn't generate traffic, however, and those interested in your content or services are unlikely to find their way to where you want them to be…
Hey Google, I'm here!
Getting our site noticed by Google requires taking steps to highlight elements that users might find useful. The steps to encourage web crawlers to navigate to our site can mostly be found in Google's guides and webmaster manuals.
The basic steps focus on making your website accessible and allowing traffic—both machine and human. Next, it's worth identifying the areas with which search engines should associate your website—for example, by including industry-related keywords. In the meantime, it's also important to ensure access to the place where Google stores all data about your domain—Google Search Console. And then... then comes the more advanced part, which is worth discussing with an SEO specialist!
But first, let's focus on the basics and start positioning our website in Google!
(The rest of the article can be found below the form)
Hey Googlebot, you have Allow here: /
Website positioning You should start by allowing web crawlers to access your site. This is obvious to seasoned SEO experts, but for those who haven't dealt with crawlers before, this issue may seem interesting.
Web crawler/indexer – a program whose purpose is to gather information about everything available on the internet. There are different types of robots that specialize in collecting various types of data.
Googlebot is crawling – it follows links across pages and indexes their content. The frequency of Googlebot visits to pages varies – visits can occur every few hours or every few days. Without crawling, it's impossible for a page to be displayed in search results.
Web crawlers, for the most part, obey the rules imposed on them by a website. This information is contained in the robots.txt file and the "robots" tag placed in the header section of the page's code.
Why is this information so important? When a website is being developed, in most cases, crawling is disabled, preventing robots from accessing it. This makes sense – an unfinished page, full of "lorem ipsum" or pictures of cute kittens acting as placeholders, won't accidentally end up in search results and won't mislead potential customers. Once a website is live, the crawler guidelines should be updated, but this isn't always the case.
These types of errors are not uncommon and don't just happen to small players. In 2009, a Skoda promotional campaign, in which the search engine played a key role, received widespread attention. A television ad encouraged users to search for "Yeti kidnaps." The problem? Access to the website's content was blocked by robots in the robots.txt file, which resulted in the following error message:
The result description is an automatic message that appears when crawlers are blocked from accessing the content. This situation is detrimental to website SEO , and the brand's competitors capitalized on the popularity of the phrase, quickly surpassing the TV-advertised website in Google.
Kitty, kitty – what do you have inside?
Page Unlocked? Time for a Title and Description! Section Elements – title and description, this is the first part of your website that users encounter.
Both elements are also important, although the description (meta description) is generally considered to be less important from an SEO point of view.
The title is displayed not only in search results, it is also visible at the top of the browser tab, which in Chrome looks like this:
Element It should contain information relevant to web crawlers and users. Keyword search terms assigned to a given subpage have the highest priority, and other information may follow. For example, for industries like roadside assistance, this would include a contact phone number.
Title content should be between 65 and 100 characters. Both values are approximate – in the case of titles, the pixel count of the created title is important. Google displays titles around 460-600 pixels long (depending on the device size), and for longer titles, it truncates some of them and leaves an ellipsis, as seen in the screenshot above. To ensure that the most important part of the title – the keyword – fits into the results, it should be placed at the very beginning.
When it comes to <meta name=”description” content=”…”, things are a bit different – its main goal is to encourage search engine users to visit the website. When preparing the description, it's worth focusing on the aspects that make the website stand out from the competition. It's worth using appropriate taglines – for online stores, this could include information about free/instant shipping. The description should also include a call to action – a tagline that encourages action – "Check now!", "Learn more now!", and so on.
The description is limited to approximately 160 characters. If it's too long, Google limits it to an appropriate length, leaving three dots at the end. The description text is available in the page's code, but it doesn't display directly on the page—its primary purpose is to present the website in search engine results.
During the process of website positioning , analyzing titles and descriptions, and changing them if necessary, is one of the first steps an SEO specialist undertakes. Changing these doesn't require technical skills, and in the case of popular CMSs, it's as simple as placing appropriate content in designated areas, most often labeled "title and description for search engines."
Introduce yourself... or Google will do it
In the absence of a title and description, Google decides what will be displayed instead. Unfortunately, Google sometimes takes over even when both tags are properly completed. In such cases, snippets of text from the page appear in the SERPs, containing the words and phrases the user searched for.
Without a properly prepared title and description, search engines are unable to identify keywords and your website will not be able to be found in the appropriate search results. This complicates the process of positioning your website and associating it with a specific topic.
The presentation of topics and phrases important to our website and business is also achieved through appropriate content. Content is equally important to robots and to more human users of the site. Each of them has their own preferences regarding its presentation… Robots like a well-defined structure – text described using headings of varying degrees – h1 as the title and h2, h3, etc. as subheadings; subsequent paragraphs placed within a tag. , and the most important elements (keywords!) are highlighted with . Further describing this with structured data will allow the robot to filter the page's content faster (and likely more beneficially for us!). Web users, on the other hand, will appreciate the structure of the text – its length, font size, paragraphing, clarity of graphics, and all other elements that help speed up the consumption and assimilation of the content.
These two aspects can be neatly combined, which usually positively impacts a website's visibility in search results. Well-written text, described in HTML, is popular with website visitors, and sometimes even spreads the word. This approach also boosts its popularity with web crawlers, which translates directly into more frequent visits and higher rankings.
What is website positioning?
Positioning primarily involves highlighting a website's strengths while simultaneously eliminating any flaws, in order to achieve the highest possible rankings in search engines. Website optimization is simply adapting to the rules of the Google search engine. These rules are crucial for the order of results displayed in search queries.
Sounds simple and logical? Unfortunately, it's not. The basic steps described above to getting listed in Google's index are comparable to making your first stroke when learning to write—from there, you're still a long way from becoming a master calligrapher. Among the actions that should be taken as part of SEO services , you can mention:
- optimizing its operation in terms of speed and efficiency,
- improving functionality, eliminating technical errors,
- appropriate description of the content of the positioned website – including using structured data.
- analysis, creation and modification of content,
- activities aimed at expanding the database of links pointing to our website,
- analysis of the effectiveness of these activities and, in the case of low effectiveness, changing the approach and building an improved strategy.
And so it goes, Maciej… Website positioning is a process dependent on many factors, including not only changes in the search engine algorithm but also the specifics of the industry in which the promoted business operates, as well as the budget. Reaching the top of the SERPs requires consistency and constant monitoring – the search engine is an incredibly dynamic organism that is constantly changing. Unfortunately, this leads to uncertainty about the stability of the position, which, without appropriate and prudent action, can result in spectacular failures.
When it comes to SEO, it's important to rely on current knowledge and experience, which allows you to develop an effective and secure strategy. Want to learn more? Continue reading our blog or visit our SEO services section!
Summary
The above article covers the following topics:
- basic activities supporting indexing and starting positioning,
- why without crawling there is no visibility in search results,
- analysis and modification of section elements ,
- the risk of Google replacing the title and meta description,
- positioning as a long-term process dependent on Google algorithms.
