What’s the point of having a website if Google doesn’t love it? After all, Google is consistently the number one search engine across the globe, and research shows that roughly 70 percent of all job hunts start with a Google search. Why shouldn’t your firm show up in the top results? Creating a website that Google loves takes a little bit of work, but the results are worth the effort.

Mobile Friendliness

The primary way people are now accessing websites is through a smartphone—accounting for almost 55 percent of internet usage, in fact. Because of this, Google prefers pages that are “mobile friendly,” which means they look good and are easy to navigate on mobile devices. 

Google even created a tool to help you find out if your pages are mobile friendly. If your site isn’t mobile friendly, getting there should be your top priority as your pages will rank higher if they are optimized for mobile.

Sitemaps

Sitemaps are a way of telling Google what to expect when it tries to index your site. Think of it like an old phone directory that makes it easier for Google to map out all of your pages. If they can’t find a directory or index, Google’s bot will crawl your site using available links, which means that if there’s an area of your website that isn’t accessible through links from other pages, those pages won’t get mapped.

Load Speed

The faster your website leads, the better experience your visitors will have. People claim the human attention span is only eight seconds thanks to the internet, but really, we just got more impatient. If something isn’t loading, we bounce off the page and onto something different. This is the main reason Google started to bump down pages that load slowly so they can rank faster pages higher. 

Luckily, Google also has a tool for this. PageSpeed Insights will help you measure page speed for your site so you can tell if you’re too slow for their taste. It will rank your site for both mobile and desktop and give your tips on how to improve the speed.

SSL Certificates

We’ve talked about this in a previous article, but this little guy means the world to user experience. SSL stands for secure sockets layer, and without the certificate on your website, your credibility will falter. SSL certificates create a truncated digital environment and promote the authenticity and security of your website for Google and your users. 

As a sign of trustworthiness to both potential clients or candidates, as well as Google, an SSL is something your site should have. If you don’t, you may notice a “Not Secure” or “HTTP” protocol is indicated to the left of your web address in your browser. The good news is, this is a quick and painless fix. Speak with your hosting provider to address this issue.

Check Your Links

Links help Google crawlers find your site and can give your site greater visibility in their search results. When returning results for a search, Google uses sophisticated text-matching techniques to display pages that are both important and relevant to each search. Google interprets a link from Page A to Page B as a vote by Page A for Page B. Votes cast by pages that are themselves “important” weigh more heavily and help to make other pages “important.”

We aren’t talking about doing a whole citation like you did back in college, but Google appreciates it when you credit your sources. Because of this, if you use source material for any articles or other content on your site, make sure to link back to the original story in order to get more SEO points.

Titles and Meta Descriptions

Google says they don’t use titles and meta descriptions for ranking, but they’re quite important for readers who want to know what your page is about. If you don’t use a meta description, Google will try to pull one from the text on your site. Sometimes this is good enough for a page that’s trying to target a long-tail keyword, but it’s good practice to write your own titles and meta descriptions for all your pages in order to improve click-through rates in organic search results.

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Designing a recruiting website can be time-consuming and complicated when you’re trying to make Google happy. Plus, understanding search trends and design elements can be a struggle. We help take the guesswork out of website design, integration and optimization so you can focus on running your business. For more information about how we can help you optimize your website for the best performance, contact us today.