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Google optimalisatie

Leestijd: 4 minuten

Als laatste aangepast op 07/03/2024 door Steffen Boskma

There are many search engines, only one is dominant. The rest plays a supporting role. Google controls about 93% of the search market in the Netherlands.

The second place is taken by Bing and Vinden.nl. But these two search engines have a share of less than 3%.

And to think that 11 years ago Google had a market share in the Netherlands of 30% and Ilse a market share of 20%! Ilse? Where did that go?

Google optimization also helps with the rest

Anyway. This of course has consequences for Google optimization . Although I would like to be fair to mention that if you Optimize for Google, you immediately please other search engines. In any case, Google optimization has no negative effect on optimization for other search engines. You could also apply Bing optimization, but that produces surprisingly few differences, but the difference is in the nuance.

Factors for scoring in Google

There are a number of factors that are important to score in Google.

1. The title tag

2. The descriptive meta tag

3. URL structure

4. Navigation

5. Anchor texts

6. Pictures

7. Robots.txt

8. rel nofollow

title tag

The title tag. an important factor in the SEO field. With the title tag you make clear what your website is about. You place this title tag in the head of a web page (not in the body). The title tag is used as the title of a search result. So that part that is clicked on when a visitor searches for a word or phrase.

When a relevant keyword is in that title tag, this keyword is also shown in bold.

google optimization

Meta tag

In addition to the title tag, the descriptive meta tag is important. Not so much for indexation, but for describing the content of your web page. You put in a 160 characters what the reader can find. This description can be found in the text below the link.

A meta tag looks like this:

<meta name = ”description” content = ”The rules of table tennis are easy to learn. Everyone understands these rules of the game. Table tennis is not difficult ”>

URL

The URL of a page should look good to Google. A well-written URL contains the keywords you want to be found with in Google. Optimization starts with having keywords. Today many sites make use of dynamically created pages. You can convert these ‘strange’ names into understandable URLs with htaccess.

Content management systems like WordPress make all of this easy to do.

Navigation

Navigation was often arranged with a JavaScript. That looked nice, but for Google optimization it is a disaster. Google does not index that! Now it has all become a bit easier to make nice-looking navigation with the help of CSS that is also logical for a search engine.

Anchor texts

Anchor texts are the texts used for a link. You make that as follows:

The description of a link </a>

The text ‘The description of a link’ is the Anchor text. Make this text descriptive so that the visitor (and therefore Google) knows what can be found behind the link.

So don’t ‘click here’, but ‘buy product X’.

Pictures

Images are of great importance when it comes to searching. Not only if you specifically search in the image database of Google, but also to give descriptions of what can be seen on an image and what is relevant for a text. In the image code you can put an alt text, which stands for alternative text. If there is no image to view, this text will be there. A Google bot will not read an image, but read the alt text.

<img src = ”picture.jpg” alt = ”cycling lady”>

robots.txt

You can give directions to the Google bot. Sometimes you (and that is also Google optimization!) Because certain content not to be indexed. You can arrange this in a so-called robots.txt file. You can indicate that certain pages may not be visited, or that other pages should be visited more often.

Interesting to do, but Google ultimately decides for itself whether and what is done with it. It is, as it were, giving a suggestion.

An example:

User agent: *
Disallow: / map1 /

User-Agent: Googlebot
Disallow: / map2 /

User-Agent is the robot. With a * it affects all robots. They should not go through map1 to use for search results.

The second folder, map2, should just not be visited by the Google bot.

nofollow

With a regular link you indicate that you appreciate a certain page. By using rel = ”nofollow” you indicate with a link that you do not want the Google bot to follow this link from your page. This is often applied to ‘purchased links’. You say, as it were, that you do not attach any extra value to it, which you do assign to other links.

Handy for Google optimization to use rel = “nofollow” if you do not think it necessary for the link to be followed.

A beginner’s guide from Google itself

You can also find these and more useful tips about Google optimization in a document from Google itself. The beginner’s guide to search engine optimization from Google