ImagesMagUK_November_2021

www.images-magazine.com NOVEMBER 2021 images 33 BUSINESS DEVELOPMENT address the underlying issue before submitting your page to Google for indexing. ■ If your pages are indexed… So, Google has indexed all of your pages, but they’re still not showing up in the search results? Your website will only be shown if it fits the search; for example, a website that sells electrical components is unlikely to be a first-page result for ‘electricians near me’. Take a look at the websites that are ranking on page one for your keyword: are they similar to yours? It may be that Google has a slightly different understanding of what that keyword means, especially if it’s related to a recent news story. If your Google-indexed web pages are failing to show up for searches that are directly relevant to your business, then you may need to put some work in to compete with the sites currently occupying the top slots: Google’s ranking algorithm tends to favour informative, easy-to-digest content from websites, and user experience is also critical (see previous issues of Images for my advice on how to achieve this). I t can take a little while for new websites to start appearing in the Google search results, especially if you’re targeting highly competitive keywords. However, if you can’t find your website on Google at all – even when searching for the name of your business – it’s a sign that something is fundamentally wrong. ■ Are your pages indexed? Your page must be included in Google’s index to appear in its search results. If it isn’t indexed it won’t show up on Google no matter what you type in. If you use Google Search Console, have a look at the Coverage report – this will tell you how many of your website’s URLs are indexed. Alternatively, do a Google search for site:example.com (replacing ‘example.com’ with your own domain name) to see a list of your indexed pages. If no results appear, none of your pages are indexed. ■ If your pages are not indexed… It is easy to submit a page to Google for indexing: go to search.google.com/search-console and paste a web address into the URL inspection bar at the top of the screen. Search Console will tell you whether that URL is already in Google’s index and, if it isn’t, you can request indexing with the click of a button. There are several reasons why a page might not be indexed. It may be that Google’s spiders haven’t come across that page yet, in which case submitting the URL via Search Console should do the trick. However, if there’s another reason – for example, if there’s a ‘noindex’ tag on the page, or if there’s a very similar page already indexed – then you will need to Why can’t I findmywebsite on Google? L et’s think about you in a meeting with Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg. Mark wants Facebook and Instagram users to be on his platforms for the longest amount of time possible and interact with content in a rich way so he can collect data on those people to drive advertising revenue. He asks you to help with this. How are you going to help him? In this relationship you can upset him by producing spam content, ie worthless, poorly directed content. Mark gives you a chance and shows your photo to a percentage of your followers. Unfortunately, no one gives a damn and no one interacts with it. Next time you post, Mark isn’t going to put it at the top of the feed, and will actually show it to fewer people so he doesn’t risk people not liking it again. You read somewhere that if you post every day, that is the optimum frequency – so you post the same kind of content, day after day, with worse and worse results. Mark has effectively hidden you from the followers you have and now it’s the algorithm’s fault. Like ‘fixing’ a bad credit score, there is a way out. Stop posting boring content that no one engages with. Make small, positive deposits and soon you will dig your way out of obscurity. Try posting one well-thought-out post a week that creates a conversation. For example, the Friday round-up. Why you’re not getting traction with your social media Take a photo (or preferably a video with voiceover) of your favourite job in the week and in the description write a paragraph describing what you loved about it. Remember to tag the customer and round it up with something slightly personal, such as: “I am finishing the week with the local park run.” It might start conversations, and those tagged are likely to share the post. Scratch Mark’s back and he might let you out of the algorithm cupboard of shame. Chessie Rosier-Parker is director and studio manager of Squeegee & Ink, a screen printing and embroidery studio that also provides pre-exposed screens and film to garment printers along with social media workshops. www.squeegeeandink.co.uk/ learn-to-screen-print Joel Dear is from ETrader, one of the industry’s leading suppliers of websites to garment decorators across the UK. www.etraderwebsites.co.uk