Final exercise: your findability check

Module 8: Measuring, pitfalls and maintenance · Reading time: 10 minutes

Learning objective: After this lesson you can review your own site with one automatic check and a checklist, put the findings in order of importance and make a plan for the next 90 days that you then repeat every quarter.

Key concepts: findability check, checklist, prioritising (first get found, then get understood, then get chosen), technical basics, content, local, measuring, 90-day plan, quarterly check, difference from the previous check

What you know now

In this course you've seen that findability works in layers. A search engine first has to be able to find your site (crawling), then it may include it (indexing), and only then can it choose it for a search query (ranking). Each layer builds on the one before. A beautiful text won't help if the page is set to noindex, and a perfect robots.txt won't help if the page doesn't answer anyone's question.

That order is also the order in which you make improvements:

1. Remove blockages. Anything that stops search engines: a robots.txt that blocks everything, noindex on pages that should be found, mistakes in the redirect to https, a canonical that points to the wrong page. These are often small changes with a big effect.
2. Registered and visible. Search Console and Bing Webmaster Tools with a valid verification and a submitted sitemap, so you can see what's happening.
3. Get understood. Clear titles, descriptions, one main heading, structured data with your business details, a good mobile display.
4. Get chosen. Pages that genuinely answer the question, a complete business profile, honest reviews and listings.
5. Keep it up. Measure, check again every quarter, and avoid the pitfalls.

The findability check

Exercise A8.4 runs the most important automatic checks from this course on your own site in one go:

Each part gets green, orange or red, with the most important finding. The program saves the result with the date. If you run the check again in three months, you'll see what has changed ("since the previous check: A3.4 from red to green").

What the check can't see, you go through yourself with the checklist below. That's half the work: no program can assess your content, your business profile and your reviews for you.

The checklist

A. Get found

• Search Console and Bing Webmaster Tools are set up and verified; the verification record is still in the DNS (lessons 2.1, 2.5).
• The sitemap has been submitted and its status is "Success" (lesson 2.2).
• In the Page indexing report, your important pages are listed under "Indexed"; you've looked at the reasons for "Not indexed" and you understand them (lesson 2.4).
• No manual actions or security issues (lesson 8.2).

B. Get understood

• Every important page has its own title and description (lesson 3.1) and one clear main heading (lesson 3.2).
• Structured data matches your business profile (lessons 5.2, 6.4).
• Multilingual: hreflang is reciprocal (lesson 3.6).
• Core Web Vitals checked in PageSpeed Insights; the biggest problem noted down (lesson 4.3).

C. Get chosen

• For your three most important services or products there's a page that matches the search intent (lessons 7.1, 7.3).
• You have a list of keywords from Search Console and free sources (lesson 7.2).
• Your business profile is complete, with the right category and special opening hours (lesson 6.2); you're also listed in Apple Maps and Bing Places (lesson 6.3).
• Your name, address and phone number are the same everywhere (lesson 6.4).
• You ask for reviews in an honest way and respond to them (lesson 6.5).

D. Keep it up

• You have measurement running that you understand and that follows the rules (lesson 8.1).
• You know what to do when you get a new design or a new domain (lesson 8.3).
• You have a fixed moment in your calendar for the next check.

From findings to a 90-day plan

A list of twenty things to improve is paralysing. So put them into three groups:

• Now (this week): anything that blocks search engines or goes wrong. Red in the findability check usually belongs here.
• This month: the technical points that are orange, and your business profile.
• This quarter: content. Making one or two pages really better every month pays off most in the long run.

For each point, write down: what you'll do, who will do it, when, and how you'll see that it worked. For Bloemenatelier Lotte, the start looks like this:

Now       A3.3 red: robots.txt contains "Disallow: /" (left over from the test site). Remove it. Lotte, Monday. Done when A3.3 is green.
Now       A4.1 orange: http://example.com goes to https in two steps. Adjust the redirect. Web developer, this week.
Month     Business profile: fill in special opening hours around Mother's Day. Lotte, 1 April.
Quarter   Rewrite the "Bruidsboeketten" (bridal bouquets) page using the queries from Search Console. Lotte, May. Measure: clicks on that page per month.
Quarter   Findability check again: first Monday of August.

Pay attention to what you measure. "Position 1 for bloemist Amersfoort" (florist Amersfoort) isn't a good goal: it's out of your control and it differs per person and location. "More clicks from Google on the bridal bouquet page" and "more quote requests through the site" are things you can track (lesson 8.1).

And after that?

Findability is never a finished job. Your competitors improve their sites, search engines adjust their systems, and your own site changes through updates, new pages and a new web developer. So: the findability check every quarter, a look at Search Console and your measurements every month, and lesson 8.3 at hand for every big change (new design, new addresses, new domain).

And remember the most important lesson of this course: search engines want the same thing you do. They want to show their users the best page for their question. If you build your site for that, you don't need tricks.

In practice: tools alongside this check

Besides this course's findability check, you can use free tools from others: Search Console and Bing Webmaster Tools (for what the search engines themselves see), PageSpeed Insights (speed), the Rich Results Test and the Schema Markup Validator (structured data). A site built with the AI Builder has its own SEO check per page; WordPress SEO plugins often give a similar list. Scores like these are useful as a reminder, but a score of 100 doesn't mean you'll be at the top. Other providers and website builders work in a similar way.

Summary

• Improve in the order of the layers: remove blockages, get registered, get understood, get chosen, keep it up.
• The findability check (A8.4) runs nine automatic checks in one go and remembers the result with the date.
• You go through content, business profile and reviews yourself with the checklist.
• Make a 90-day plan: now, this month, this quarter, with who, when and how you measure it for each point.
• Repeat the check every quarter and measure what's in your control, not a position in Google.

Quiz

Exercise

Exercise A8.4: The findability check. Enter your site's address. The program runs the nine checks from the table, gives each part a colour and saves the result with the date. Run it again in three months and compare.

Exercise D8.4: Your 90-day plan. Go through checklist A to D and make a plan in three groups (now, this month, this quarter), with what, who, when and how you'll see that it worked for each point. Put the next findability check in your calendar.

Further reading

The steps in these articles apply to the WebOké control panels; other providers work in a similar way.

• Submitting your website to search engines (Google and Bing)
• WebOké manual 14.1: Domain health (also without an account)
• Google, Search Essentials: https://developers.google.com/search/docs/essentials
• Google, Search Engine Optimization (SEO) Starter Guide: https://developers.google.com/search/docs/fundamentals/seo-starter-guide
• PageSpeed Insights: https://pagespeed.web.dev/