Google combs billions of websites every day, but you have the impression that your website has not yet been noticed? We show how Google indexes, analyzes and creates the ranking – and how you can draw the search engine’s attention to you!
1. How Google indexes your website
Just like phone books in the past, search engines have an index. At Google, the index consists of all websites (and their sub-pages) that are known to the search engine. Your website can only be shown in the SERPs (Search Engine Result Pages) if it has been included in the Google index.
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What does “indexing” mean? Before your website can appear in the search results, the search engine must know that it exists at all. To do this, the search engine must “visit” your website and include it in its index. This step is the basis. So SEO “only pays off” if your website is already in Google’s index.
How long does it take for my page to appear on Google?
To find new websites, search engines use so-called crawlers – these are computer programs that automatically search the Internet for websites, 24 hours a day, 365 days a year. Crawlers look at every website from top to bottom: texts, image descriptions and all links. In this first step, they just want to know what’s on the website. In the second step, the content is analyzed. If you have created your new website, these crawlers will find your page after a few days or maybe even weeks. If you want your website to be indexed quickly, use the following tips:
- 1. Register for free with the Google Search Console.
- Then use the URL checking tool to check the index status of your website.
- If you use our website optimization service, we can help you with all the SEO tools index for your business.
Is your website indexed on Google?
Using the Google search bar, you can easily check whether your website has already been indexed or not. Simply type “site:” into Google and add your URL:
By entering “site:” and your URL on Google and searching for it, you can easily see whether your page is already in the index or not. If Google has already recognized your website, you can now see your page with all sub-pages. If not, you will get an error message like in the picture above.
2. How does Google search work?
As soon as the crawler visits your website, it is time for Google to analyze and catalog “what has been found”. After the analysis, Google creates an order of websites for certain search terms – the ranking.
What questions does your website answer?
Of course, there are many things that Google takes into account when analyzing your website. The most important thing for Google is to find out which search terms your website is suitable for. Imagine that your website is all about coffee – in this case, Google will decide whether your website should be displayed when someone is looking for a nice café in your city or a coffee supplier for a café – a fine but important difference. In order to be able to differentiate between such “subtleties”, crawlers or algorithms from search engines research your content, “read” your texts, classify and evaluate them.
3. How does the Google ranking work?
As soon as Google takes a close look at your page, the search engine evaluates your content. If a user now enters “coffee”, for example, Google knows immediately wherein the ranking of your website is displayed. Google uses a very large list of criteria. We have put together the most important criteria for Google ranking in this article for an introduction to SEO. Perhaps you are asking yourself: All right, but how do I get higher in the ranking? One could say the question of all SEO questions! The answer to this cannot be summarized in one sentence, because SEO is not a one-off task, but a long-distance run. However, even beginners can achieve very good results through systematic search engine optimization! If you want to delve deeper into SEO, you can find a lot of input in our SEO area here in the blog.
4. Google index when changes are made to the website
So, your website is known to Google and has been indexed. But now you may have made a few optimizations on your website in order to be found better for certain search terms. What’s happening now? Patience, give Google some time! Now it’s time to wait! Before your optimizations are visible in the search results on the website, the crawler must first notice them. If he then visits your website, he will check whether anything has changed since his last visit. At the same time, he checks whether the change is a reason to display your page differently in the search result lists – in the best case, to place it higher up. The number of times a website is crawled by crawlers varies from website to website. Well-known news sites, for example, are “crawled” almost permanently because news must be found in the search results very promptly. However, if something changes on your website only once a year, it will take longer. As soon as your website has been crawled and analyzed again, it may move up a few ranking places for certain search terms. But it may also slip for other search terms in the ranking. In the vastness of the Internet, there are many SEO tools that can help you keep track of your website’s ranking. The Google Search Console is easy on the budget. Here you can get information about your Google positions for free:
- Log in to Google Search Console or create an account
- Go to Search > Search Analysis
- Selects position in the top bar
Now you can see the ranking position of your website for individual search terms. If your website has been around for a while, visitors come across your website using many different search terms. Without wanting to disappoint you: In most cases, you will not be number one on Google. The “pole position” is highly competitive! But don’t be discouraged anyway. It takes time and many small optimization steps to play at the very front.
Conclusion
By increasing your traffic and publishing new content and texts on your website, again and again, your ranking should improve over time – you will see that search engine optimization can be really fun!
