5 Great tips for improving what Google Indexes on your website. If you want to improve SEO, learn more about Meta Tags, find a way around Panda and Penguin then check this out for simple tips .
2. When was the last time you checked to see
what Google indexed on your site?
Has Google indexed all your posts?
Do you have unique titles and descriptions?
Is there content that should not be indexed?
3. To check what Google has indexed on your site you can
view details in Google Webmaster tools or go to Google
and type in site:<name of site>.
Use Google Site command to view all pages indexed on
your site
4. 1. Pages Indexed that shouldn’t be
If you find that there are some pages indexed that shouldn’t be,
there are a few ways of to resolve.
a). Exclude the files in robot.txt.
Google will read this file (normally stored in root directory of
your website) which can include files or directories you do not
want indexed.
The following command tells Google not to index files in the wp-
admin directory.
Disallow: /wp-admin/
5. b). In Google Webmaster tools, select the ‘remove URLs’ section
and create a removal request by specifying the page name you
want removed.
6. c). Within most content management systems you can set a ‘no
index’ flag.
This means it will add a line to the page telling Google not to
index the file.
<meta name=”robots” content=”noindex,follow”/>
7. 2. Page Titles not configured correctly
The ‘Title Tag’ is read by Google when indexing your content.
This is one of the most important elements of on page
optimization.
(on page is what you can do on your website
offsite is work you do off your website).
8. A couple of tips...
a). The words at the start are more important than the words at
the end so make sure your relevant keywords are at the start of
the title or at least close to the start.
b). Make sure you have no duplicate title tags on multiple
pages. Every page should have a unique title tag.
c). If pages are not of value to index (e.g. the Contact us page)
then remove them from the index by setting the no index flag.
d). Make sure your titles are configured for every valid page!
9. 3. Page Descriptions not created
The page description meta tag is not used by Google as part of
ranking your content but it is displayed in search results.
If you don’t have a description configured, Google will try to
construct a description from the content on the web page.
It is much better if you have control over this so make sure to
create relevant descriptions.
10. 4. Some Pages not indexed
that should be
This is a more difficult one.
a). Make sure you have a sitemap which lets Google know about
the pages on your website.
b). Check Google webmaster tools and resolve any errors found.
c). Identify the pages that are not indexed and link to them from
another page on your website that is indexed.
When Google is crawling through your website to index it, it will
have a much better chance of finding the page.
11. 5. Blog Posts don’t have your
Image
When you link your Google + profile to your e-mail address,
Google will display your picture as part of the search results for
your blog posts.
This is called Google Author.
Setting this up will improve the click through rate on blog posts
that have this image. It will also help with branding.