Thread by @michaelketzer

🔍 Every Front-End Developer should know the basics of how Google search works

Suppose you develop a Website you most likely want users to find your page. Optimize your page for Google ensures the correct audience will find your page.

↓ Learn how Google search works

The goal of a website is to be found in Google.

To show your website at Google, it goes through these 3 steps:
🔹 Crawling
🔹 Indexing
🔹 Serving

In this thread, we will take a closer look at all the steps.

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🔹 Crawling

Crawling is the first step. This is about finding your website in the first place.

Some pages are already known to Google through simple links. You can speed up this step with sitemaps.

Once Google has found your page, Google will crawl it.

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Google uses two different crawlers! One mobile and one desktop crawler. Both simulate the corresponding device for the user.

Google defines a "primary crawler" for your website. This is basically used to crawl your site. The other type is the "secondary crawler".

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During the crawl process, google will render your page and executes every script on your website. This also ensures dynamic content is rendered.

Google will then analyze text and non-text and the overall visual layout.

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To help google finding your page, there are several points you can ensure:

🔸 Submit a sitemap, on Google Search Console
🔸 Submit a crawl request, on Google Search Console
🔸 Have your page linked on external or internal pages that are already on Google.

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🔹 Indexing

If Google finds your page, it will be indexed next.

The page is generally analyzed during the indexing process, the text content, the content tags/attributes are read (such as the title tag), and media files are cataloged.

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This process also analyzes whether your page has duplicate content.

Pages with duplicate content are significantly less likely to be crawled by Google.

Pages can be prevented from indexing using a robots.txt or a noindex meta tag.

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To help google indexing your page, there are several points you can ensure:

🔸 Using structured data for rich cards as an example
🔸 Using keywords in your text content
🔸 Use descriptive title/description tags
🔸 Use descriptive and correct alt image tags

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🔹 Serving

After your page has been indexed, google can serve your website when a user uses google search.

When a user searches on google, google will return the results that appear most relevant for the user.

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Recently, google included the user experience into the ranking result, whether your page is loading fast or mobile-friendly.

So make sure you are ready for that! If you want to improve your loading time, check out my profile, I made many threads about it! ⚡

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To help google serving your website better, ensure you meet the following points:

🔸 Be sure your page loads fast and is mobile-friendly
🔸 Use rich card results, such as recipes
🔸 If you serve localized content, tell Google your preferences

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✅ That's it. Did you know how google indexes your website?

This is the first thread regarding SEO topics on my profile! I will create the upcoming weeks more detailed posts for on-site/on-page SEO optimizations!

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TL-DR:

Google has three basic steps:

🔹 Crawling/Finding your page
🔹 Indexing/Analyzing your page and content
🔹 Serving your page on google search results

If you found this thread useful, consider following me @michaelketzer and retweet the first tweet! 🙏

Did I miss something? Please let me know 🙏