Learn how often your site appears on Google and whether people click through to your site.
Step 1: Is your site on Google?
If you use a site hosting service such as Squarespace or Wix, you're probably set up for search engines to find you. However, to confirm whether your site is known by Google, search for site:<your_site_URL> on Google. For example, if your site were http://www.wikipedia.org, you'd search for this: site:wikipedia.org.
If no pages from your site appear in the search results, here are the most common reasons why:
- Your site isn't linked to by many other sites on the web. See if you can get your site linked to by other sites (but please don't pay them to link to you; that could be considered a violation of Google's guidelines).
- You've just launched a new site and Google hasn't found it yet. It can take a few weeks for Google to notice a new site, or any changes in your existing site.
- The design of the site makes it difficult for Google to crawl its content effectively. If your site is built on Flash, or some other specialized technology, rather than HTML, Google might have trouble crawling it correctly. Remember to use text, not just images or video, on your site.
- Google received an error when trying to crawl your site. Most common reasons for this are that you have a login page for your site, or that your site disallows Google for some reason. Make sure that you can access your site in an incognito window.
- Google missed it: Although Google crawls billions of pages, it's inevitable that we'll miss a few sites, especially small ones. Wait a while, and try to get linked from other sites. If that doesn't work, sign up for Search Console, then ask Google to crawl and index your homepage.
Step 2: Measure your search performance
If you use a site hosting service such as Squarespace or Wix, your hosting service might provide you with a dashboard or plugin that shows your site's search performance. Search the internet for "<your_host_name> analytics" or "<your_host_name> SEO" to find out what tools your site provider offers. For example: "Squarespace analytics" or "Wix SEO".
Some site hosts are integrated with Search Console. If your site is on one of these integrated hosts, when a Google search shows your site in the results, you'll see useful Google Search performance information about your site at the top of the search results page. This information includes impressions, clicks, and average position:
- Impressions: How many times your site has been seen by someone searching on Google.
- Clicks: How many times someone has clicked a link to your site in search results.
- Average position: The average position of your site in search results (where position 1 is the top position).
Click through the chart in search results to see more information, including what terms people were searching for when your site came up.
