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Self check your website

Things that you need to test on your website to see how searchable it is.

HTTP or HTTPS?

1. While Google will still index and rank HTTP sites, it gives preference to HTTPS sites in its search rankings. Transitioning to HTTPS is recommended to improve security, user trust, and potentially your site's search ranking. If you haven't already, consider obtaining an SSL certificate and migrating your site to HTTPS.

2. Many browsers will not even open a 'HTTP' site and you do not want your customers seeing this. So make sure you get a SSL Certificate.

blocked screenshot

Core Web Vitals (CWV)

are a set of metrics developed by Google to quantify essential aspects of user experience, particularly focusing on load time, interactivity, and visual stability of a webpage. These metrics are part of Google’s page experience signals and are critical for assessing a website’s performance from a user-centric perspective.

Largest Contentful Paint (LCP): This metric measures the loading performance and focuses on the time it takes for the main content to appear on the screen. Ideally, LCP should occur within 2.5 seconds of when the page first starts loading. It reflects how quickly users can see and engage with the main content, influencing perceived loading time.

First Input Delay (FID): FID measures interactivity by tracking the time it takes for a page to respond to a user’s first interaction, such as a button click or link tap. A good FID score is less than 100 milliseconds, as longer delays can cause frustration, especially on interactive pages like login or checkout forms.

Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS): CLS gauges visual stability by measuring how often elements shift unexpectedly while the page is loading. This metric is crucial for maintaining a smooth browsing experience, with a target CLS score of less than 0.1 to prevent disruptive content shifts.

Collectively, CWV metrics help website owners ensure that users experience minimal delays, fewer layout shifts, and faster page load times, ultimately improving user satisfaction and search engine ranking​

How to self-test Core Web Vitals

  1. Open your website in Chrome browser
  2. Clicking 'F12' will open a side panel
  3. Look for 'Lighthouse'
  4. Click 'Analyze page load'.
NOTE: Best results are obtained with Browser in Dark Mode. CTRL+SHIFT+N opens dark mode.

The result you want is all green as shown below.

lighthouse screenshot

World Wide Web Consortium (W3C)

develops standards and guidelines to help everyone build a web based on the principles of accessibility, internationalization, privacy and security. You will need to use the 'Markup Validation Service'
  1. Go to https://validator.w3.org/nu/
  2. Select 'Check by Address'
  3. Enter you full website url (including 'https...)
  4. Click 'Check'

The result you want is 'No errors or warnings to show'

w3 validator screenshot

Structered Data is a very important element for improving search results

Structured data is a standardized format for providing information about a page and classifying the page content. It helps search engines understand the content of the page more effectively. By using structured data, you can enhance your website's visibility in search engine results through rich search results, also known as rich snippets.

By implementing structured data, you can improve how your website appears in search results, making it more likely to attract users' attention and clicks. to test if your wesbite has structured data and the quality of the code do this.

  1. Go to https://search.google.com/test/rich-results
  2. Enter you full website url (including 'https...)
  3. Click 'TEST URL'

The result you want is '.. valid items detected' blocked screenshot

DID NOT PASS THE SELF TEST?

Feel free to reach out and chat with us!

We love helping people, and our advice is completely free. If you like what you hear, we can explore working together, and if not, that's perfectly fine too.

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