Hi, I'm trying to improve our sites visibility and at the same time learn how to do it! Our site https://e-voice.org.uk/llebka/ is rarely found and when it is it is only with search words or "Eifionydd" or "LLEBKA".
On researching I see that Google requires verification of ownership of the site. I assume Voice have done this for the whole platform?
Do we need to do this for our home page, and if so what is the best method, or should we buy a webname and use that on our voice site?
I would like to get information from google about what is indexed and how to get more of the site indexed so that we are found with more search words. We can then see what is working and what is not.
Any help appreciated
The site is fully indexed by Google (and Bing) and new pages are automatically submitted for indexing. Verification won't directly affect search results.
You would only need to verify the site if you want to access the Google Search Console (to get information and insights about the indexing status of your site).
You are right in saying that I have done this for the e-voice.org.uk domain. And so I can see that google has picked up the sitemap for your site, and has indexed the 10 content pages on your site.
So, if you aren't seeing your site in the results for search terms you're interested in, then this is down to Google's algorithms rather than any technical reason on Voice.
The 'classic' way to improve ranking is to ensure you have lots of good interesting content that is kept up to date, and to get other sites to link to your site.
For more in-depth insights then yes I would recommend getting your own domain name (llebka.org or whatever your preference is, they are all available!), then associating this with your Voice site and verifying it with Google so you can access the Search Console.
You might find that having your own domain gives your site more authority and thus improves its search ranking - but I honestly don't know for sure. I find that when I google for site names they come up pretty high in the search results whether they're using the e-voice domain or their own!
There are instructions for setting up your own domain name on a Voice site here.
Once you associate your domain with the Voice site, then Voice will automatically create an SSL certificate for that domain for secure https access to the site.
Thanks
Joe
One thing I don't know is how Google will cope with the mixture of Welsh and English on the same pages. It's possible that this 'confuses' it in some way, leading to worse search performance.
Voice adds lang="en" into the HTML header of the page, so search engines may well assume it's all in English.
You could experiment with creating separate pages for each language to see if this improves ranking of each in their respective language.
Or you could try wrapping the Welsh content in a div that indicates the correct language to see if this improves how search engines cope with it. You could use the HTML source button of the editor to do this.
You'd want to end up with something like this:
<div lang="cy">
<p>Dyma'r cynnwys Cymraeg.</p>
<p>...</p>
</div>
<p>This is the English content.</p>
<p>...</p>
Pob lwc!
Joe