Best Practice: Be sure your homepage is searchable by external search engines

Misty Flowers

October 25, 2018 14:38

This article explains why a live homepage should be crawlable by external search engines like Google, including how to check the "Hide from external search engines" setting in Composer Page Settings.

💡Quick answers

Should a homepage be hidden from search engines while in development? Yes, it can make sense to keep a homepage from being crawled while a site is being built or edited, but once the site is live it should be searchable.
Why does a live homepage need to be crawlable by Google or Bing? If the homepage is not searchable, external search engines have a hard time identifying which page is the primary, most authoritative page of the site to show in results, which hurts marketing, accessibility, and SEO.
Where do you check the hide from search engines setting in Composer? Go to the Home page, click the pink gear icon in the lower right corner, and check the General Page Settings tab for the Hide from external search engines checkbox.
Why is my homepage not showing up in Google search results? The Hide from external search engines checkbox in the homepage's General Page Settings may be checked; make sure it is unchecked once the site is live.

There are times when a site is being built or edited when it makes sense for the homepage to not be crawlable, or searchable, by external search engines, such as Google, Yahoo, or Bing. However, when a site is live, it is important that your homepage is able to be searched by external search engines for marketing, accessibility, and SEO reasons.

If a homepage is not set to be searchable by external search engines, then when someone searches for your school, the search engine will have a hard time distinguishing what page is the primary or most authoritative page of your site to pull up in results.

For Composer schools, go to the Home page, click on the pink gear icon in the lower right-hand corner, and be sure that the "Hide from external search engines" checkbox is not checked off in the General Page Settings tab.

💡Quick answers

Comments