Starting a blog can be a bit daunting, especially when it comes to being found in search results. How can you ensure that Google and Bing will find your blog? And once you do that, how do you know if your posts are getting the desired results? The answer to these questions is simple; you’ll need to request indexing and interpret the data in both Google and Bing.
If you’re not sure how to do this, read on and I’ll explain it all.
Get Your Posts Indexed
As you begin posting to your blog, you’ll want to make sure that your posts are visible in search engines, primarily Google and Bing. For this you’ll need to set up accounts in both Google Search Console and Bing Webmaster Tools. Setting up the accounts is free and fairly simple. Google and Bing will walk you through the process for their respective services.
Although both websites are separate tools, they operate in similar ways. For this post, I’m going to concentrate on Google Search Console and will mention Bing Webmaster Tools if it has the information in a different place.
Before you can begin to collect search data, Google and Bing need to find your blog. You can wait for them to crawl your website, but that can take time. The best way to get the ball rolling is to request indexing for every post. This is done when your post is live on your blog. At the top of Google Search Console is a search bar, just paste the URL for your blog post and hit Enter. In Bing Webmaster Tools, this is in the menu on the left under URL Inspection.
Once your post is found, information on it will display. Bing Webmaster Tools will say that the page is not discovered. This means it’s not listed on Bing, requesting indexing will fix that. To request indexing, simply click on the Request Indexing button. A popup will show letting you know that your request has been sent.
Finding Your Search Data
Once everything is set up and you have some posts indexed, Google Search Console will display your data. When you first log in, a Performance graph is at the top of the page that displays the clicks for a period of time (about 84 days). A click is when a person does a Google search and clicks on the result that comes for your blog or website. While this number is helpful, you need to also look at how often your blog comes up in the results and where it lands on the page. Click on the Full report > link in the upper right to see a new Performance Graph with all the data you’ll need.
Impressions, Clicks, Position
This Performance Graph has four boxes at the top: Total clicks, Total impressions, Average CTR, and Average position. Bing Webmaster Tools has Clicks, Impressions, and Avg. CTR at the top of the performance graph, Average Position is in the data below the graph.
Total clicks and Total impressions will be checked. If you check Average position, a line to display this will appear on the graph. You can uncheck the other two boxes if you only want to view the Average position line. Hovering over the graph will display the actual numbers for each day. Below is what each number represents.
- Clicks: how many times a visitor clicked on the search result for your blog.
- Impressions: how many times your blog came up in search results.
- Average CTR: the Click-Through Rate, which is the percentage of clicks over impressions.
- The Average Position: the average position for where your blog came up in search. The lower the number, the higher it showed in the search results.
The information under the graph breaks up search results into categories. Of the categories, you’ll care the most about Queries (Keywords in Bing Webmaster Tools) and Pages. If your blog has advertising, you may also want to look at Countries (Country in Bing Webmaster Tools).
Queries will show what people searched for that had your blog in the result. You’ll have to click on Average Position above the Performance Graph to display the information (Bing Webmaster Tools shows Avg. Position by default). This will give you an idea of the keywords people use to find your blog.
Pages has the same information per page. This will show which posts perform the best in search. When looking at clicks, also look at average position. You’ll want to know where your posts fall in the search results.
When starting out, concentrate on the Clicks and Impressions. You can think about CTR and Average Position once your blog has been around for a while.
Improving Search Results
The best way to improve your search results is to have concise, well-written posts that are broken up into easy to digest sections. Each section should have a designated header so Google and Bing can see the separations. It also helps to have an SEO (Search Engine Optimization) tool that will point out ways to improve your post for search.
Improving search results takes time, thought, and patience. It doesn’t happen overnight, so take your time understanding the search data and the keywords it produces. Also take note of the types of posts that perform well. That should give you an idea of what your readers want.