Google Search Operators Tips & Tricks

In life, little things matter the most, especially in SEO.

Learning the basics is never enough and can’t stop there. You have to push yourself in order to learn more and more.

Maybe you will not revolutionize your SEO game and drastically improve your skills over night, but you will become better in SEO than you were yesterday, that we guarantee.

The best that can happen to you in this game is to have more time on your hands without having to sacrifice quality.

By doing SEO for some time, you learn that there are many long processes involved. SEO is essential for most marketers, although it’s not the only thing that matters.

And saving time during this process is crucial in order to grow and have more time for other parts of the puzzle.

We are huge fans of the so called “hacks” that improve your productivity and literally cut through time you spend daily on this tedious and exhausting processes.

Not talking about some magic gimmicky hacks. It’s the simple tricks that you use to boost your progress and save time.

The favorite ones are “Google search operator tricks for SEO”

You may ask yourself, what’s so important about them. And the answer is one word only: “GOOGLE”

To be successful on Google, you have to know it like the back of your hand.

It’s the ultimate market to focus on, where you can build the business you are passionate about and attract as much as customers as you can.

You will meet bunch of SEO experts who can recite every Google algorithm in their sleep, but are not as skilled in using Google.

Imagine that using this Google search operator tricks for SEO, you achieve better results and cut the time in half while doing that. And the magic about it is that it’s pretty simple to do.

Even if SEO is not your specialty, learn how to use these hacks and implement them in you daily routines. Trust us, you’ll notice the difference, and you owe it to yourself.

What are Google search operators?

GSO are special characters that provide better and more precise results within search engines. This is achieved by more advanced filtering of search queries. Using search operators productively is needed and valuable skill, allowing you to go through tasks with ease and efficiency.

Google has an interesting approach on defining search operators as “words or symbols that provide more precise search results.”

GSO practically come from coding. We can define them as shortcuts to get better results.

When you type in some search operator in Google, you are sending command of narrowing the results in a specific way.

Therefore, instead to get page after page of irrelevant results, you are getting results that are closely related to what you search for.

Using them properly is essential, bearing in mind that there are a ton of them.

But enough of explaining in theory, let’s see and learn how to actually use them in real life.

Tips on How to Use Google Search Operators for SEO

Now that we know that Google search operator tricks for SEO exist, the question is, how we can implement them in our search engine optimization goals.

These are a few tips and tricks that will guide you to successful use of GSOs for your SEO strategy, starting today.

Find Indexation Errors

Identify indexation problems of subdomains or search pages.

When you are trying to figure out if there are any indexing issues related with you blog, simply use this command:

site:domainname.com/blog

This query will provide exact search result about the total number of indexed URLs and pages for the entire blog.

If you happen to see too few (or maybe too many) pages that are indexed, then there must be a problem.

On the other hand, when you see pages appear but shouldn’t be there, you address the problem with noindexing those exact pages.

As we already said previously, searching subdomains for indexation errors is also available. To do that, use the following command.

site:*.domainname.com –www

Other ways to explore indexation errors (for WordPress “tag” pages or at level of a category) are:

site:domainname.com/category

Site:domainname.com inurl:tag

Look for Unwanted Files and Pages on Your Site

Use the “filetype:” Google search operator, to search for all old or unwanted files you want to remove from your website.

Delete or noindex those files you just found as they are not useful to your business anymore, or simply because you don’t want users to run into them.

For example: site:domainname.com filetype:ppt 

Search Social Profiles for Outreach Opportunities

To be able to build valuable quality backlinks with other people or websites from your niche (preferable to have high quality domain) is a vital aspect of SEO.

If you use Google search operator tricks you will find it much easier to search for and acquire those awesome opportunities. Little reminder though, you have to know the name of the person to whom you want to reach.

For example: mark zuckerberg facebook (site:facebook.com | linkedin.com)

Search for Guest Post Opportunities

If done right, guest posting is an excellent opportunity for you to build up your websites authority through link building. There are plenty ways of using search operators for finding guest posting opportunities.

For example:

Seo intitle:”write for us” inurl:”write-for-us”

This is the simplest and most obvious way to use GSOs for finding guest posting opportunities, but it’s definitely not the only way.

Here are some examples to try out using the above mentioned formula.

“contribute to”

“Inurl:guest-post

“become a contributor”

“guest post guidelines”

Check for Non-secure Pages (non-HTTPS)

Owning HTTPS counts as a ranking signal for Google. Therefore, make sure to secure all of the pages on your website. Check any possible non-secure pages using the site: operator.

For example:

site:domainname.com -inurl:https

Identify Duplicate Content Issues

Use google search operator tricks in order to find possible duplicate content on your blog.

Site:domainname.com “content you are searching for”

Also use this command for finding duplicate content on some other domain and exclude your own site with the command, such as this example below.

-Site:domainname.com “content you are searching for”

PR Opportunities by Finding Competitor Mentions

It’s very simple, just type site: and intext: for identifying any possible opportunity.

Example:

(intext:”mycompetitor”) -site:mycompetitor.com

Or you can use

allintitle:review (mycompetitor)

Both commands filter out results of other websites mentioning your competitors. Using this information, you can approach those same websites and ask to consider mentioning you also.

See Q+A Threads Related to Your Content

Use Google search operator tricks to identify Q+As threads on forums that provide PR opportunities.

You can find threads like this with using the below command. Here, we are searching forum on “Quora” for content and potential link building opportunity. It’s important to understand that these are no-follow links. Therefore, building links to your website is not a priority, but establishing domain authority is.

site:quora.com intitle:(SEO | ”target keywords”)

Conclusion

Our final thoughts are, there are more than plenty Google search operator tricks you can use to streamline more effective search results building your business.

Taking in mind SEO, you can use this commands in number of ways. In this way you will significantly speed up the process making things easier.

Once you get in the habit of using them, you’ll notice a huge difference in your SEO research strategy.

Hopefully, this guide gave you a clearer picture in which way you can use Google search operators.

Learning few tricks here and there will give you a competitive edge and advantage over your rivals.

About Author:  Brandon Leibowitz is the founder of SEO Optimizers, a Digital Marketing Agency in Los Angeles, California. He is also the founder of Bosmol.com, a social media news log. He has been involved with search engine optimization and internet marketing since 2007.