How to improve your website’s search discoverability: clarify the problem, then address links and content

To improve a website’s discoverability in Google Search, start by identifying the search scenarios, making important pages crawlable, and clearly addressing users’ needs. If the goal is to help drakesterling.com, first clarify whether “not finding it” means the site does not appear when searching for its name, a product name, or a particular topic. The available material provides basic guidance, but includes no crawl, indexing, or traffic data for the site. It therefore cannot establish what is currently wrong or guarantee that following these steps will improve rankings.

Turn “I can’t find the website” into a specific problem

Before making changes, outline a few actual search scenarios to avoid conflating different problems:

• What terms are users entering? The website’s name, or descriptions of products, services, and problems?
• What should they find: the homepage, a particular service page, or an article that answers a question?
• Is the issue that the page does not appear in search results, ranks lower than desired, or receives visitors who cannot find the information they need?

These questions help define improvement goals; they do not constitute a completed diagnosis. A 2015 NN/g article on content curation notes that low traffic may be related to content being difficult to discover, while high traffic does not necessarily mean a page answers readers’ questions (S9). This is a reminder to review content and navigation, not a Google ranking rule. Low traffic alone is not grounds for concluding that content has no value.

First, make sure important pages are reachable and their content can be understood

Google Search Essentials states that links should be crawlable so Google can use them to find other pages on a website (S1). The review should therefore cover more than the homepage: check whether important content can be reached through appropriate links. Navigation labels and link text should also describe the destination so readers know what to expect when they click.

If pages contain images, videos, structured data, or JavaScript, follow the best practices for each type of content to help Google understand it. This does not mean every website must add these features. Google also explains that its technical requirements are only a minimum threshold and that most websites already meet them. Poor search performance should not automatically be assumed to result from a technical fault (S1).

Use the terms readers search for and create genuinely useful content

Google recommends creating helpful, reliable, people-first content and placing words users might search for in appropriate locations, such as page titles, main headings, image alt text, and link text (S1). For example, if a page describes repair services, its title could state what is repaired and what services are offered rather than simply saying “Professional Quality.” This is an example of wording, not a description of the site’s content.

First, check whether the page answers readers’ questions, then whether its title and description are accurate. Finally, keep expectations realistic: appearing in Google Search results is free, but meeting its requirements and following best practices still does not guarantee that a page will be crawled, indexed, or displayed. Violating spam policies may result in lower rankings or exclusion from search results (S1).