Lanlan.docs

SEO and getting found

What Lanlan does so search engines can find your site, the few things worth doing yourself, and how to stay hidden while you're not ready.

SEO (search engine optimisation) means helping Google, Bing and AI search tools find your site and describe it well. Lanlan handles the technical part; the words are worth your attention.

What Lanlan does for you

Every time your site is built, Lanlan:

  • Makes a sitemap — a list of your public pages for search engines — at your-site/sitemap.xml.
  • Writes a robots.txt file telling search engines what they may read.
  • Marks each page's main address, so your custom domain is the one search engines use once you have one.
  • Gives every page a title. If one is missing, it uses the page's main heading.
  • Adds basic sharing details to pages that have none, so links shared on social media show at least a title (and the description, once the page has one).
  • Adds a short description of your site that search engines read, on the home page.
  • Makes your pictures quick to load on phones.

Pages you've hidden as drafts are left out of the sitemap.

Titles and descriptions: worth doing yourself

The title and description of each page are what people see in search results. Ask Lanlan to write them:

  • "Write a Google title and description for every page."
  • "Rewrite the home page description so it mentions we're a florist in San Francisco."

Or edit them yourself: on Pages & SEO, press Edit SEO on a page. You can also set how the page looks when shared on social media — its sharing title, description and picture.

A sharing picture. Lanlan doesn't add one automatically. Ask for one: "Make a sharing picture for the home page with our logo and a photo of the shop."

To check for gaps, ask: "Check the site for missing titles and descriptions."

Check what Google is showing

Your site can look right while your search result doesn't. The description Lanlan adds for you is written once, from your site as it was at the time. A site that has changed since, or that was described loosely to begin with, can carry a line that no longer fits. Nothing on the page itself gives this away, so it's worth looking on purpose.

Do this before you launch, and any time your site changes direction:

  • Search for your own name or business, or type site:yourdomain.com into Google to see every page it has indexed.
  • Read the title and the grey line underneath it. That line is your description.
  • If either is wrong, change it on Pages & SEO with Edit SEO, or ask Lanlan to rewrite it.

Write the description for a person deciding whether to click, in about 150 characters: who you are and what you do, in the words your own visitors would use.

Tell Google and Bing you exist

New sites can take days or weeks to appear in search. To speed it up, the Get found checklist on the Pages & SEO page has:

  • Submit your sitemap to Google — copies your sitemap address and opens Google Search Console, where you paste it.
  • Submit your sitemap to Bing — the same for Bing Webmaster Tools. Bing also powers DuckDuckGo and Yahoo.
  • Allow search engines to index this site — shown only if your site is currently hidden from search.
  • Connect a custom domain — an address of your own is easier for people to remember and share. Connect a custom domain.

You tick each step off yourself; Lanlan doesn't connect to Google or Bing for you. Search Console will ask you to prove you own the site; it walks you through that.

When your changes show up

Changing a title or description on your site takes effect straight away. Changing what Google shows does not. Google re-reads pages on its own schedule, which takes anywhere from a few days to a few weeks, so the old wording can sit in search results for a while after you've fixed it. That's normal and it isn't a sign anything went wrong.

To ask for one page to be re-read sooner, open Google Search Console, use URL Inspection on that page's address, and press Request indexing. You need to have proved you own the site first. Google doesn't promise a time, and asking twice doesn't make it faster.

Sitemaps and Request indexing do different jobs: a sitemap helps Google find pages it doesn't know about, while Request indexing is for a single page that has changed.

If your social preview is right but Google isn't

Paste your address into a message and the preview looks correct, but the Google result still shows old wording. Nothing is broken, and the two are meant to disagree after a change.

A social preview is fetched fresh every time someone shares the link, so it always shows your site as it is right now. Google shows you its last crawl, which could be from any time. If they disagree, the social one is the accurate one and Google is simply behind.

This is most likely in the week after you've rebuilt a site or connected a domain, because that's when your site has changed most and Google's copy is most out of date.

AI search and assistants

The AI engines tab on the Analytics page shows how often AI services read your site. To give them a tidy summary of your pages, the owner can turn on LLM indexing (llms.txt) in Site settings under Visibility, or ask Lanlan to turn it on. It's off until you turn it on.

Keep your site out of search

New sites can be found by search engines once they're published. To keep a site out of search, the site's owner can:

To start every new site hidden, change Search engine indexing under New sites in Account settings.

To hide a single page, unpublish it on Pages & SEO. Add and organise pages.

What to try next

If you get stuck

Ask Lanlan. In Tell Lanlan, "I can't figure out how to…" almost always gets you unstuck. For anything Lanlan can't help with, email support.