Does having a Google Site help with the SEO of your website?

Google has been providing Google Sites for a long time now, some people have thought in the past that having a Google Site can help to get your business better results from search engines, and that Google may give a boost to Google Sites in terms of rankings. But is this true? Google’s John Mueller has given an answer to this question.

What are Google Sites?

A free website platform offered by Google, Google Sites is designed to help you create a website for your business which is published under the sites.google.com domain, or you may also use your own domain name for your site.

Do Google Site pages get indexed?

In a Google Office Hours session, a member of the public asked Mueller if Google Sites webpages were being indexed in Google.

Mueller confirmed that Google Sites can and do get indexed in Google Search.

Are Google Sites ideal for SEO?

Google’s Mueller downplayed the SEO benefits of using a Google Site to get good results from Google, as the sites are technically indexable, but it’s not ideal for SEO.

If you are using a Google Site using the free domain included with your Google Site, this can make tracking in Google Search Console harder, as your site is in a subdirectory of the main site.google.com domain.

Therefore, if you were to use Google Sites to build your site, it’s best to use a custom domain like yourbusiness.com instead of the free domain included.

Spammers enjoy Google Sites

The Google Sites platform has, unfortunately, grown in popularity with link spammers, who create links on the free domains to get links from a Google subdomain. This is called “Google Stacking” and may affect your site if both you and spammers are using Google Sites.

The best thing to do is to have a professional website built using a popular platform like WordPress that will be easier to manage and optimise for Google. Why not have a chat with our friendly team about having a website built, or about having a search engine optimisation campaign for your website to increase sales and leads?

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Jonathon Roberts

Jonathon lives and breathes marketing, boasting a degree in Business Management and Marketing Management and a diverse list of experiences both professional and voluntary. Having grown up in the thick of the digital and social media age, he has been quick to dive into online marketing and search engine optimisation in his career and spare time, spanning such fields as academics, local business and sport.

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