Google Sites SEO Guide 🚀
This SEO Guide covers all aspects of SEO for Google Sites: basic set up, on-page SEO, off-site SEO, and technical SEO. Everything you need for SEO success.
Google Sites SEO Guide is based on 20+ years web development and covers everything I know on Google Sites SEO. See the Google Sites SEO Checklist for a quick reference version, or check the sitemap if you want to dive right into the detail.
How to use the Google Sites SEO Guide
This guide will help you optimise Google Sites for search engines. You don’t need to implement everything, just work through the ones that are most relevant or important for your site.
Here's what's covered in this Google Sites SEO guide:
I've tried to keep this page limited to the key, actionable points. Where I think more information is useful (for later reading maybe), I will write it up and link to it (coming soon). Google Sites does limit some of the more advanced techniques, but there's still plenty you can do to improve your ranking in search engines. If you think I've missed something please tell me 🙏
Useful examples are included, and a ⭐ means I use this particular resource or technique a lot.
Golden Rules for SEO
I have learnt the following things about SEO:
SEO takes time. it won't happen overnight
SEO is a big topic. Read around and check other SEO resources
There is no 'one thing'. SEO is a combination of techniques that combine to improve your ranking
There is no fast track. No matter what anyone tells you, there is not shortcut to page one of Google
You're only as good as your content. If your content is poor, you're going to struggle
Be realistic. If you're in a crowded space it's gonna be hard to stand apart from everyone else
Despite that, if you follow the basics and be consistent in applying the steps in this guide you will see improvements.
Don't Know Where to Start?
Start by focusing on the basics—make sure your website is correctly indexed and you understand how your audience finds your content. These initial steps will give you the direction and confidence to move forward with more advanced SEO techniques.
If you don’t know where to start with optimising your site, start with SEO Basics
If you have a lot of content and want to increase traffic, see On-Page SEO
If you want to improve your site loading speed visit the Technical SEO section
If you have SEO experience and want more organic traffic, check my Magic Sauce SEO section for more advanced tips
SEO Basics for Google Sites
SEO basics are the foundational things you can put in place to help understand how your website is ranking in Google. Even if you don't intend to spend hours and hours on SEO, these are good to get in place in case you want to come back to it later.
First Important Step: Make Your Google Sites Website Public
Once you've created your Google Sites website you need to publish it and make it public so people can find it on the web. Without this, your website is invisible to anyone other than yourself (or anyone you've specifically given access to). This setting ensures that anyone on the internet can find and access your site.
This is a crucial step before submitting your site to the Search Console or getting indexed by search engines. If you don't do this your site will not be visible to Google.
Useful tip: Use the 'Share with others' icon in the Google Sites editor to open the Sharing and Permissions settings. Make sure your 'Published site' is set to 'Public'
Choose a Meaningful Site Name
The site title in Google Sites is important for SEO. Choosing a short, meaningful name for your site will help Google and users quickly identify the purpose of your website.
Useful tips for naming Google Sites:
Be unique: Choose a name that accurately reflects your site's identity and isn't misleading.
Be consistent: Use the same site name across your home page and in structured data.
Avoid generic names: Generic names like "Best Dentists In Iowa" are unlikely to be selected by Google.
Use Google Search Console to Validate Your Domain Name
Google Search Console helps you monitor your website’s performance on Google. Setting it up allows you to track your indexing status, see search queries, and receive alerts on issues affecting your site.
When publishing your Google Site you'll need to validate your domain in Google Search Console. This is simply Google asking you to prove you own (or have access to) the domain you want to publish to. You need to complete this step before you can publish your website using a custom domain. You'll need to have access to your domain control panel to edit the DNS settings.
Useful tip: Google have provided some excellent guidance on how to Verify ownership of your domain for Google Sites.
Set up Google Analytics
Google Analytics provides detailed data about your website traffic, user behaviour, and conversions. This tool is essential for measuring the impact of your SEO efforts and identifying opportunities for improvement. Even if you're not intending to turbo-boost your SEO, it's still kinda cool to see how many people visit your site, where they come from and what they're looking at.
I'm not going to reinvent the wheel, so follow these instructions on how to add Gooqle Analytics to Google Sites.
Run a Performance Test
Before you start optimising anything, run a baseline performance report for your website. Check your website's speed, SEO 'score', paint times so you can record what's going on before you start optimisation.
When it comes to SEO, data is important, so I use more than one tool and I run each test three times to get a reliable view of performance. I usually screenshot or download the output for future reference. Here's the tools I use:
Identify Your Target Audience
Understanding your target market is the backbone of successful SEO. Focus your efforts on the demographic that will most benefit from your content and services.
Why are you creating a website? Who do you want to visit your website and what key search terms they might use to find the content they need? Key search terms are important because they help you attract the audience you are trying to appeal to.
By way of example, this website is about Google Sites SEO, and it's a checklist, so the search terms my audience would use are likely to be:
"Google Sites SEO"
"SEO guide for Google Sites"
"Google Sites SEO guide"
"SEO guide"
"Google Sites SEO free"
I'll use these words and terms across my website, to help Google index me for these search terms and ultimately, place this website high up in search results for these search terms.
Useful tip: Try searching Google with your key search terms, then scroll to the bottom of the page. Google tells you other terms that people are using to find similar content.
This is an excellent hack. Google is telling you the similar search terms people are using to find content like yours. Cool huh? Write these down because you can use these for SEO too.
On-Page SEO for Google Sites
This next section is all about optimising your content and the on-page factors that can help rank your website higher. Rule number one is your site content has to be high quality, original, and well written. Simple as that.
Create High Quality, Well Written Content
High-quality, relevant content is the foundation of successful SEO. Now read that sentence again.
Search engines prioritise sites that consistently deliver useful, valuable information, so focus on creating authentic content that meets the needs of your audience and answers their questions comprehensively.
I use a number of tools and references to help improve the quality of my content:
Hemingway helps you write more concisely. And it's free ⭐
Grammarly helps you write betterly
Strunk and White's classic writing style guide is just a good thing check every now and then
Check spelling with https://datayze.com/website-spell-checker
Another spell checker https://www.spl.ing/spellcheck ⭐
As Google Search gets more sophisticated, results are tuned to show more content that people find genuinely useful and less content that feels like it was made just to perform well on Search.
Structure Your Content
Make sure your content is structured logically, has a beginning, a middle, and an end, and is 'chunked up' to make it easier to scan and read. Proper headings, subheadings, and organised content will help search engines index pages accurately, improving your search rankings and helping potential visitors find your site. Learn how to structure content in Google Sites to boost SEO.
Use a Table of Contents
A table of contents in Google Sites helps readers find content on a page, especially when there's a lot of content. The table of contents feature is built into Google Sites and will automatically update as the page content changes:
Useful tip:
The table of contents will update automatically as the page is edited
The table of contents can be customized by choosing whether the links appear indented
The table of contents can be aligned left, center, or right
The size of the table of contents can be adjusted by entering a size in pixels or leaving the value blank to span the full length
Titles, headings, and subheadings can be hidden by using the hide/show icon, which looks like an eye
Include Keywords in Your URLs
A well-structured URL which includes your target keyword improves your ranking potential and makes your link more clickable.
In Google Sites, you can edit the page URL by clicking the three dots next to the page name and selecting 'advanced' in the Properties box. Make sure it contains your keywords. Keep URLs simple and descriptive.
Useful tip: URLs help Google understand what your page is about, so it's important to include your keyword in your URL.
For example, the target keyword for this page is “SEO guide.” So the URL of this page is: googlesites-seo.com/google-sites-seo-guide.
Use Short URLs
Short URLs rank better and are more user-friendly. Aim for concise, readable URLs that still reflect the content of the page. Avoid using unnecessary words or special characters, and keep the URL relevant by including only essential keywords.
URL's on this website are:
Home page: googlesites-seo.com/google-sites-seo-guide
Checklist page: https://www.googlesites-seo.com/google-sites-seo-checklist
Use Keywords in Titles, Headings and Sub-headings
Unlike pure HTML and many other sitebuilders, in Google Sites you only get three header types to play with:
Title: Equivalent to the H1 html tag
Heading: Equivalent to the H2 html tag
Sub-heading: Equivalent to a H3 html tag
Titles and Headers provide structure to your content, and using keywords in them helps search engines understand your page's content hierarchy and focus. The basic rule of thumb is,
Have one title per page, usually at the top explaining what the page is about. Include an appropriate keyword.
Headings should be used to organise sections of content.
Sub-headings are used to indicate focused topics within the structure of a page.
If you look at this website, I have used the following structure (snipped example):
Title (H1): Google Sites SEO Guide
Heading (H2): SEO Basics for Google Sites
Sub-heading (H3): Set up Google Search Console
Sub-heading (H3): Set up Google Analytics
Sub-heading (H3): Run a Performance Test
Useful tip: Wherever possible use your standard theme styles across your site. Try to avoid individually styling each heading.
Use Keywords in the First 200 words
Including your target keyword(s) early in your content reinforces relevance for search engines and signals what your page is about right away. You also start to build trust in your user as they can quickly validate that they're in the right place.
Optimise Images
It’s no secret that high-quality images improve your content. Optimised images improve load times and absolutely contribute to SEO. Google Sites will compress images you upload by default, but it doesn't hurt to do the legwork yourself and minimise the amount of chopping Google Sites has to do for you. Remember these points for each image on your site:
Compress images: I use tools like Compressor.io or Picresize to shrink and resize images before upload
Meaningful name: Give the filename something sensible, e.g., "image of a lime being sliced with a knife"
Alt description: Mostly used by screen-readers but they do count as ranking signals. Read more about alt descriptions for images on Google Sites
Caption: Give the image a caption if you think it will aid understanding and/or readability.
Useful tip: Use the Google Sites image toolbar to add alt text to your images.
Alt text descriptions on images are valuable for SEO because they help search engines understand the content of your images, making your site more accessible and improving its relevance in search results.
Internal Linking
You can add links across your Google Site by using the 'insert link' feature. Links from page to page within your website are called 'internal links'. Internal links help distribute page authority across your website and improve user navigation. There are lots of benefits to internally linking across your site:
Improved crawlability and indexing: Internal links guide search engine crawlers through your website, so when Google crawls your site, internal links help it discover and index more pages efficiently
Better user experience (UX): A well-planned internal linking structure allows users to navigate a website easily, find relevant content, and stay engaged longer
Targeted keyword optimisation: Anchor text in internal links can help signal relevance for specific keywords to search engines
Supports content hierarchy and topical relevance: Internal links help create a logical structure, connecting related content and building topic 'clusters' across your website
Using internal links strategically can improve not only the rankings of individual pages but also the overall SEO performance of your entire site.
Useful tip: Use the Google Sites 'insert link' feature in the editor to add links to your website. If you change the name of your page, your link will be updated too.
External Linking
Linking to authoritative external sites enhances your content’s credibility and helps search engines better understand the context of your topic and content. They're also beneficial for SEO:
Enhanced credibility and trustworthiness: Linking to reputable, high-authority sites can improve your site’s perceived credibility.
Improved user experience and added value: External links can help users find additional information or verify the data you’ve shared, leading to a better user experience
Association with reputable sites: Linking to respected sites can help establish topical relevance and associate your content with high-quality information
Signal topical relevance to Search Engines: By linking to reputable sites within your content’s topic, you help clarify your page’s subject
Improving the scope and depth of your content: By linking to specialised resources, you create an information-rich experience that can keep users engaged and increase your content’s quality.
Useful tip: Using external links thoughtfully in your content can lead to an overall stronger, more authoritative site that both users and search engines appreciate.
Off-Site SEO for Google Sites
Off-site SEO is all about what you can out outside your website to improve your finadibility and to ensure search engines can crawl and rank your pages effectively. It's vital to remember that quality is key here - be selective about which sites and services you use and stick to reputable ones. This stuff applies to any website, not just Google Sites.
Create a Google Business Profile
Creating a Google Business Profile allows you to advertise your business directly on Google maps and it's a simple way to boost your website's visibility and reach. It's also really good for local SEO. The main benefits are:
Enhanced local search presence: With a Google Business Profile, your business is more likely to appear in local search results and on Google Maps, helping you connect with nearby customers
Trust: A verified profile gives potential clients confidence, and provides key information like business hours, location, contact details, and customer reviews—all directly on Google
Increased traffic: Linking your website to your profile means more people find you when searching for relevant services or products
Free marketing: A Google Business Profile costs nothing but will add marketing value
Google are tightening the rules on Business Profiles but if you're a legit business it's worth making use of. Learn how to build your Google Sites SEO with my article on Optimising Google Business Profile for Google Sites SEO.
Useful tip: Regularly updating your Google Business Profile with fresh posts, photos, and offers can improve your website’s SEO by signaling to Google that your business is active and engaged.
Each update you share can include a link to your website, driving traffic and improving its visibility in local search results.
Register on Business Indexes
Advertising your small business on reputable UK business indexes can significantly enhance your visibility and reach, especially if you link back to your website. Here are some of the best UK business directories to consider:
When developing a website for a commercial client I always ask them to register on business indexes, and include a link back to their website. I also take pains to insist they check their contact details are accurate. (Seriously, you wouldn't believe).
Note - not all indexes apply to all types of customer, but use your discretion to use the appropriate ones that appear reputable and up to date.
Technical SEO for Google Sites
These are the technical factors that may impact how search engines crawl, index and rank your site. Quite often these can be invisible to the naked eye (especially using the Google Sites editor), so use a range of tools to get a balanced view of any issues and how to fix them.
Naked Domain Redirect
Redirecting the naked version of your domain (the non-www version) to the www version is good for SEO when done correctly. Here’s why and when they’re effective:
Consolidating authority: Redirecting old domains or URLs to your main domain consolidates authority and avoids splitting search engine ranking signals, which can strengthen your primary site’s SEO
Preserving backlinks: If an old domain or URL has valuable backlinks, a proper redirect (such as a 301 redirect) transfers most of the link equity to the new page, helping maintain your ranking and authority
Improves user experience: Redirects ensure users land on the right page even if they’ve bookmarked an old link, improving user experience and decreasing bounce rates, both of which are favorable for SEO
For SEO, stick with 301 redirects for permanent changes and avoid redirect chains, which can slow down load times and hinder SEO. I've writtena number of posts on how to redirect your naked domain for Google Sites.
Identify any Crawling and Indexing Errors
Crawl errors appear when the Googlebot cannot access the page of the website. This happens because of the errors in the server settings, CMS failures, changes in the URL structure, and other reasons. Errors can affect the website ranking in search results, as well as the users' attitude to the resource.
Use tools like Google Search Console to find errors that may prevent search engines from crawling or indexing your site properly, ensuring all important pages are discoverable.
Find and Fix Broken Links
Broken links harm user experience and SEO rankings. Check your site regularly for broken links and fix them to maintain a healthy, user-friendly site, as links can break without you changing anything on your own website
There are a host of free tools you can use to find (then fix) broken links:
Useful tip: The Google Sites editor allows you to select internal pages to link to, but where you're linking to off-site resources, check your links are valid. Links can break when pages or URLs on other websites change. (They might be optimising for SEO too!)
Check How Google Views Your Pages
Run a Google crawl simulation to understand how your content appears to search engines. This insight helps you identify missing elements or areas that need optimisation.
Check Your Site's Performance
Core Web Vitals are a ranking factor. Ensure your site loads quickly, as slow pages lead to higher bounce rates and lower rankings. Run a performance test as per the instructions in the SEO Basics section.
Useful tip: Because of the Google Sites drag and drop editor, you're limited to what you can do when it comes to code and structure of your website. It's still useful to look at search results to see if there is anything you can fix.
Magic Sauce SEO for Google Sites
These are the lesser known, more advanced things I've worked out along the way. It's the same as leaning over a butchers counter and asking for 'the special stuff', if you know what I mean. 😉
Create a Frequently Asked Questions Page
An FAQ page not only answers customer questions but also optimises your website for better search visibility, making it a valuable addition to any SEO strategy.
In essence, an FAQ page is you answering questions that other people might ask you about you product or service. You can phrase the questions using your main keywords and using some of the 'auto suggestions' and 'other people searched for' terms that Google provides in it's search and results pages.
Find 'People Also Search For' Tips
Search Google for your keyword. Now scroll to the bottom of the page, and look for where it says "People also search for". These are phrases that contain your keywords, or something very similar, that people are actively searching Google for.
Useful tip: Check the bottom of the search results page to see how people are seaching Google for your keyword (or something very similar).
These are an excellent source of blog titles etc that can be used to broaden your appeal to a wider audience.
Use Google Auto-Suggest
You probably already know what your keywords are, but are you using them to their full effect? Type your keyword(s) into Google, and see the list of suggestions that are displayed before you click search.
Useful tip: As you type your keyword you'll see Google suggesting variations, or even phrases, that contain your keyword. You can use these words and phrases in your website content to act as a 'long tail keyword', or a phrase that doesn't really get used a lot (and is hence more unique).
Make a note of the suggestions and use them in your website content.
Update Your Google Business Profile
Your Google Business Profile is more than just a business card on Google. You should incorporate it into your content calendar and update it regularly. Keeping your profile current encourages more interactions with potential customers, which can positively impact your overall search rankings.
In addition to essential information like location, phone number and address, did you know you could also create other types of content such as:
Offers and events
Respond to reviews
Frequent asked questions
Pictures and descriptions of products and services
Request a quote
To me this is like having a mini version of your Google Site on Google maps. Make use of it! Read how to use your Google Business Profile to enhance your Google Sites SEO.
Get Customers to Provide Google Reviews
If you've created your Google Business Profile (see SEO Basics) then the next thing to do is get customer ratings and reviews onto your profile. You'll find a link on your Business Profile that you can share with customers. In my mind, more positive reviews implies more trust and will influence people's decision making.
Useful tip: You can share a link to your Google Business Profile to encourage customers to write reviews. Use it!
Useful tip #2: You can actually display Google Reviews on your website using a widget like this one
Get Links from Social Media
Sharing your content on social media can drive traffic and boost SEO. Social signals indirectly impact rankings and can increase visibility for your content. When you blog, update your website, edit content or even a link - share it on social media.
Remove Low Value Content
Use Google Search Console and Analytics to analyse underperforming content to either improve or remove it. Keeping your site lean and valuable helps with both SEO and user experience.