If you’ve ever had a website that suddenly disappears from search engine results, you know how frustrating it can be. In many cases, you might not know what went wrong. However, among the most viable reasons is that search engine crawlers stopped visiting your site.
As you might imagine, search engine website crawlers have a lot of work. They must keep up with billions of websites and new pages daily. As a result, they can sometimes “forget” about individual sites. And if your website isn’t getting the crawlers’ attention, achieving and maintaining a high ranking in search results can be more challenging.
Fortunately, there are positive moves you can make to ensure that search engine crawlers don’t forget about your site. Here are helpful tips:
Check Your Robots.txt File
While it’s sometimes fun to imagine robots as little mechanical creatures scurrying around the internet, a robot is simply a program that runs automated tasks, in this case. The Robots Exclusion Protocol (REP), more commonly known as robots.txt, is a text file that tells web robots which areas of your website they are allowed to access.
If you accidentally disallow (or block) the wrong area of your website in your robots.txt file, it can prevent search engine crawlers from accessing your site. As a result, your site won’t be indexed and will essentially disappear from search results.
To check your robots.txt file, enter “yourdomain.com/robots.txt” into your browser’s address bar. If you see a list of instructions, your file has the correct configuration. If you don’t see a robots.txt file, you must create one. From there, you can set indexing rules. For instance, many website owners disallow pages such as privacy policies or terms and conditions that don’t need to be indexed.
Integrate Website Analytics
Integrating website analytics is another excellent way to keep track of your website’s health and ensure that search engine crawlers don’t forget it. Instead of staying in the dark about your website’s performance, website analytics allow you to track key metrics in real time.
Many website analytics tools are available, but Google Analytics is among the most widely used. In addition, this program is accessible and relatively user-friendly, making it a good option for website owners of all experience levels.
With Google Analytics installed on your website, you can track pageviews, unique visitors, average time on site, and bounce rate. In addition, you can see what pages get visited most often and which aren’t. Using these insights, you can make changes to improve your website’s overall performance.
Generate Fresh Content Regularly
If you want search engine crawlers to return to your website, you need to give them something new to crawl. In other words, you need to generate fresh content regularly. Adding fresh content could mean publishing new blog posts, adding new pages to your website, or updating existing content.
Following best practices for on-page SEO, website owners can improve their chances of ranking high in search results. These best practices include using relevant keywords, focusing on localized search, optimizing your title tags and meta descriptions, and using imagery and other media.
To stay focused and on track, consider implementing a content calendar to ensure your website always has fresh content. A content calendar helps website owners stay organized and publish new content regularly. So whether you announce new product launches, share company news, or provide helpful tips and advice, fresh content will keep your website relevant and top-of-mind.
Submit A Sitemap To Search Engines
To ensure that search engine crawlers don’t forget about your site, it’s also essential to submit a sitemap. This XML file lists all the published pages on your website. Providing this file makes it easier for search engine crawlers to find and index your content.
When you submit a sitemap, you’re giving search engines a road map of your website, streamlining content discovery and providing a direct path to your most important pages.
Seek The Help Of Website Professionals
If you are not feeling self-sufficient in your ability to keep track of your website’s health, consider seeking the help of website professionals. We specialize in website design, development, and marketing at Interactive Palette.
We can help you ensure that your website performs optimally and that search engine crawlers don’t forget it exists, resulting in improved traffic and conversions.
To get started, please contact us. We’ll discuss your needs and develop a customized plan to help you achieve your goals.
