Searchable Pages

A client wrote to us recently asking about her product pages. We built her website and included the Yoast SEO plugin, and she was trying to make her product pages reach the “Good” ranking.

“Could you tell me if these pages are actually searchable?,” she asked. “I hope they are, then it would be worth my effort to work to improve every one. But I am not convinced any search engine is going to return a product page.”

Fortunately, we were able to reassure her. But what if you don’t have someone like us to ask? Are you wondering whether your pages are actually being noticed by Google, or just wandering around the internet being ignored?

Wonder no longer. You can find out. Here are some options:

• Make sure your pages are indexed. Go to Google and type “site:www.mysite.com” into the search box, using the actual URL of your website. You will see a list of the number of pages you have indexed. Google doesn’t index every site. If your site is not fully indexed, then you have a problem and you should contact us and let us help you. However, if the page you’re wondering about is on the list, you can feel sure that Google knows about it.

• Use Webmaster Tools. You have to prove that you are the owner of the website, but once you do, you can go to Crawl> Fetch as Google and ask Google to fetch the page or pages you’re wondering about. You will quickly see whether Google can find and search your page or not.
• You can also check the Search Engine Optimization report in your Google Analytics. Use the Landing Pages report to find out whether Google is showing the page you’re wondering about to searchers.
• You can also Google for your pages. Remember, different people on different computers see different things when they search, so don’t think that this gives you solid information about your rankings. However, it’s quick. Search for a specific phrase on your page and make sure that your page shows up. If it does, then Google knows it’s there. You can continue searching for more general phrases until you stop seeing your page, and that will let you know what you need to work on. For example, if you turn up for the phrase “athletic gear for active women,” which is on your page, but not for “athletic gear for women,” then you will see that your competitors are beating you on that search term, and you might want to focus on that term if you think it’s important to your business.

SEO takes time. Not only time to do the work, but also time for the effects of your hard work to show. If you’re trying to fit that work in around mission-critical tasks in your business and you don’t have much experience, it could take a long time. That doesn’t mean that it’s not worth doing or that it isn’t working. It might mean that you should consider hiring someone to help you.