How to Preview My Website on Google

As a small business owner investing in your first website, you might ask yourself “how do I preview what my website will look like on Google?” Thankfully, there’s an easy solution to help you get an idea of how your business will appear in Google search results.

SEO Snippet Preview Tool

Using our SEO snippet preview tool below you can get a rough idea of what your website/web page will look like in Google search results.

It’s important to remember that Google might not use your title tag and meta description all the time when displaying your page in SERPs (search results pages). This snippet preview tool also doesn’t account for things like rich snippets or ads.

Controlling How Your Site Looks on Google

Webmasters don’t have explicit control over how their web pages will appear on Google, but there’s levers you can to pull to influence Google’s presentation of your content. One thing I’ve found that works well is changing your title tag and meta description, then requesting indexing in Google Search Console. It doesn’t always get Google to change how they are displaying the page, but I believe it’s helped expedite the process for me in the past.

Viewing Your Site Like Google Does

OK so now you’ve previewed what your web pages will look like on Google and hit publish – now what? Well, you might be curious to see how Google is viewing your and to confirm that it’s eligible for indexing. You can do this by setting up Google Search Console (GSC) for your website and inspecting your page. The URL inspection tool is a great way to view your web page from Google’s perspective, check indexing status and more!

Image & Video Results

When thinking about how your website will appear in Google search results it’s important not to forget image and video results. Few small business websites have numerous videos, but almost all professional websites have lots of images. Make sure to consider how these images will be show on Google. You can get an idea of the images currently indexed on Google by searching “site:[yourdomain.com]” and clicking on “images” at the top of Google just below the search field (example below). Most of the videos that appear on Google are hosted on YouTube, but the tip above will work for videos as well. Keep in mind the “site:” searches won’t show all indexed results.

Optimizing Your Search Presence

Now that you know how to preview what your web page(s) will look like on Google before publishing and how to view your content like Google after it’s published – it’s time to optimize. Using SEO guides from trusted sources like Semrush & Ahrefs is a great starting point for anyone beginning their optimization journey. Make sure to check out the previous article I did on how to get your small business noticed on Google. And feel free to reach you’re interested in professional help enhancing your business’ search presence!