Low-Cost Websites – Can Google Find Them Easily?
Have a free or low-cost website? Did you know that many of them do not adhere to some crucial website best practices?
When trying to determine where to rank content in search results, Google (and other search engines) look to a number criteria. Page URL, Page Title, and Page Description are three ranking factors that provide important clues about what can be found on that page.
Page URL
Your domain, www.xyzsportsclub.org, is what appears in the address bar when someone goes to your site. When you go to a sub page, how is that page named?
For example, if I went to the “Recreation Soccer” page, the page URL should be something like: xyzsportsclub.org/Recreation-Soccer/.
For many free or low cost websites, it’s not. Instead, it’s something like xyzsportsclub.org/Default.aspx?tabid=576439. Do you think that gives Google a good indication of what’s on that page?
Page Title
The title of the page should also provide Google another clue as to what’s on this page. An ideal title for our Recreation Soccer page might be “Recreation Soccer | XYZ Sports Club. Too often, it’s simply “Recreation Soccer” or even “Welcome To Recreation Soccer”, which is OK, but not great – it could be any Recreation Soccer page.
Page Description
Not generally seen by the public (except in search results), the page description offers a quick summary of what’s on the page. For many free or low cost sites, this area is simply left blank – or even worse, simply “Description”.
A good description might be something like “XYZ Sports Club offers Recreation Soccer programs to children ages 4-10 who live in the greater XYZ area.”
These three factors mean that the time you spend on producing great content for your site isn’t serving you as well as it could. To succeed in search results, be sure to look at the details of exactly what’s included in your website package – it’s possible that free or low cost option is costing you new business.
