If you are not indexed by Google, then you probably don’t exist. For getting more traffic on your website, indexing is really important. In this article, we will discuss everything related to indexing. So without wasting any more time let’s get into it.
What is Crawling and Indexing?
- Crawling: Process of Discovering new content on the web by following hyperlinks.
- Indexing: The process of storing every web page in a vast database.
- Web spider: It is a computer program that’s used to search and automatically index website content and other information over the internet.
- Google bot: Googlebot is the generic name for Google’s web crawler or web spider.
Why is website indexing important?
The ranking of your website on search engines like Google depends on how your website is performing. And if your website is one of the main sources of conversion of your business then getting a high ranking becomes a crucial part. That’s where Indexing helps you, proper Indexing allows the search engines to view all your important pages and gives a good boost to your website.
How to check if you are indexed in google?
That’s simple, go to Google and search “ site:yourwebsite.com”
This shows approx how many pages google has indexed on your website.
If you are willing to check this information for a specific URL, then go to Google and search “ site:yourwebsite.com/web-page-slug”
You will get 0 results if the website is not indexed
Here’s an easy way for Google Search Console users:
Just follow these steps:
Google search console > Index > Coverage
After this, take a look at the number of valid pages with and without warning.
If these two numbers total anything other than zero, then Google has indexed some of what’s on your website, but if they don’t, then you have a major problem because none of your pages are indexed by Google.
The coverage report can give you a better and more accurate evaluation of the working of the Index on your website.
In case you want to check whether a specific page is indexed then you can use the search console for that purpose too.
For this, paste the URL to the “URL inspection tool”
If that particular page is indexed then it will say “URL is on Google”
If that particular page is not indexed then it will say “URL is not on Google”
How to get indexed by Google?
If your website or webpage is not indexed on Google, then follow these steps:
- Go to Google Search Console
- Navigate to the URL inspection tool
- Paste the URL you’d like Google to index into the search bar.
- Wait for Google to check the URL
- Click the “Request indexing” button
You can follow these steps to tell Google that you have got something informative to take a look upon. This is mainly useful when you are trying to index a new page or post.
However, if you want to index old pages or posts then these steps won’t solve the problems preventing Google from Indexing your page.
Do not worry, we have solutions for this problem too, you can follow the checklist given below to analyze the problem and solve it.
10 Ways to Get Indexed by Google:
- Your robots.txt file should be free of crawl blocks
- Tags with noindex should be removed
- Include the page in your sitemap
- Eliminate rogue canonical tags
- Check that the page isn’t orphaned
- Resolve internal nofollow issues
- Build a powerful interlinking system
- Make sure the page is valuable and unique
- Delete low-quality pages to optimize crawl spending
- Generate high-quality backlinks
#1. Your robots.txt file should be free of crawl blocks
A crawl block in something called a robots.txt file can restrict Google from Indexing your website.
You can check this issue on “ yourdomain.com/robots.txt.”
Check for these two sorts of snippet codes:
These types of codes indicate to Googlebot that they are not allowed to crawl these pages and these pages are to be skipped.
To fix this issue just remove these codes.
Crawl blocks in robot.txt can also occur if Google is not indexing a single webpage. For checking this do these steps:
1. Go to Google Search Console
2. Paste the URL, into the URL inspection tool
3. Click on the coverage block
4. Look for any “Crawl allowed? No: blocked by robots.txt” error
5. recheck your robots.txt file for any “disallow” rule
6. Remove wherever required
#2. Tags with noindex should be removed
If you have asked Google to not index your pages then it won’t. This can be done like this:
Meta Tag:
Pages that have meta tags in their <head> section would not be indexed by Google.
This tag is called the Meta Robots tag, and it instructs the search engine which page to index and which not.
If you see the “Noindex” value then the page is set to noindex.
For finding all the pages with the “Noindex Meta Tag” run a crawl.
Go to the Indexability report and find “Noindex page” warnings.
See all the affected pages and remove them from the pages if it is not required.
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#3. Include the page in your sitemap
A sitemap is a map that informs Google which page is important and which is not, it also tells which pages that are needed to be re-crawled.
So it is good to include pages on your Sitemap, however, Google should be able to find your page even without it.
For checking whether your page is on sitemap or not, check the URL inspection tool in the search console.
If you find the “URL is not on Google” error and the “Sitemap: N/A,” then the page is not in your sitemap or indexed.
Add the pages to your sitemap, and let Google know that you have made changes to your sitemap by pinging this URL:
“http://www.google.com/ping?sitemap=http://yourwebsite.com/sitemap_url.xml”
Mention your website, and replace the last part with your Sitemap URL. Then you will be able to see this:
This will help in speeding the Google indexing process.
#4. Eliminate rogue canonical tags
A canonical tag is a way of telling Google that a specific URL represents the master copy of a page, or what is the preferred version of the page.
The canonical tag looks something like this:
“<link rel=”canonical” href=”/page.html/”>”
Pages are more likely to have no canonical tag, or what’s called self-referencing canonical tags, which let Google know the page itself is preferred and, in other words, the only version that should be indexed.
It is possible for your page to be indexed if it has a rogue canonical tag, which would imply that Google is searching for a preferred version of your page that doesn’t exist.
You will see the “Alternate page with the canonical tag” on the URL Inspection Tool if the canonical points to another page.
If you want to Index that page then remove the canonical tag.
#5. Check that the page isn’t orphaned
Orphaned pages are pages that have no internal link connected to them. Because these pages are not interlinked with any other page so website visitors and Google crawlers won’t be able to find these pages.
By crawling to find the orphaned pages
You can fix the orphaned pages in two ways:
a) You can remove irrelevant and useless pages from your sitemap.
b) You can interlink the important and relevant pages into the structure of your website.
#6. Resolve internal nofollow issues
Links with a rel=“nofollow” tag are the nofollow links. Google never crawls these links and prevents the transfer of PageRank to the destination URL.
Google’s saying about it:
“By using nofollow, we drop target links from our overall graph of the web. However, if other sites link to them without using nofollow, or if URLs are submitted to Google as part of a sitemap, the target pages may still appear in our index.”
It is important to follow all internal links that lead to indexable pages. Remove the nofollow tag from these internal links, if you want Google to index the page. Otherwise, delete or noindex it.
#7. Build a powerful interlinking system
Your site is invisible to Google if it is not interlinked with other websites. For getting into the focus of Google it is really important to link the website. Now, this thing doesn’t end here, you need to also choose websites wisely.
Make sure you are interlinking your website with “powerful” pages. Pages with good content, high ranking, and good user response can be termed powerful pages.
Google is more likely to find your page through these pages because Google recrawls these pages frequently.
#8. Make sure the page is valuable and unique
Even after checking all the 7 mentioned steps, you are facing the same issue. Then the reason can be your “irrelevant content”
Since low-quality pages do not hold any value for Google, they are unlikely to be indexed.
Your page should have genuinely needed and knowledgeable content that users would want to read and it adds value to his/her life.
Don’t copy content. Google values unique content and it will definitely index it if it finds it useful for the users.
#9. Delete low-quality pages to optimize crawl spending
The crawl budget is the number of URLs Googlebot can and wants to crawl at a time. If you have too many low-quality pages it will only waste your crawl budget.
What Google says about it:
“Server resources wasted on low-value pages will drain crawl activity from content that is actually valuable, which may cause a delay in discovering the best content.”
So it is important to remove the low-quality pages so that the crawl budget works effectively on your website.
#10. Generate high-quality backlinks
Backlinks are the indicator that these pages hold value and need to be indexed. Ensure you are generating high-quality backlinks, this way Google will be more likely to index your webpage.
If someone is linking your webpage, then it is considered that it must holding on some value this is why it is linked. You should find ways and work on how to build good quality backlinks as it is totally worth the effort.
Indexing is not the same as Ranking!
Ranking starts when Indexing ends.
Indexing means Google knows you exist. Ranking means Google considers you as the best.
If your website is indexed doesn’t mean it will surely rank. The ranking Algorithm displays the search results that are most likely to satisfy each searcher’s query.
Let us summarize:
We have discussed the two reasons why Google isn’t indexing your website
1. Technical issues that are restricting Google from indexing your website
2. Low-quality content on your website.
We have provided you with easy-to-do solutions to these issues. I hope till now your problem must be figured out and you are working on the solution.
Don’t forget indexing is not the same as Ranking, You need to perform SEO for getting ranked on search engines like Google.
FAQs (Frequently Asked Questions)
Q.How can I improve Google Indexing?
For improving Google Indexing you should focus on staying organized with collections saving and categorizing content based on your preferences. Don’t forget to make sure that your site is full of unique, high-quality content.
Q.Why is Google not indexing my site?
Google won’t index your site if you don’t have a domain name, which could be because you’re using the wrong URL or not setting up your WordPress website correctly. If this is happening to you, there are some simple solutions.
Q.How long does it take Google to reindex my site?
The amount of time it takes Google to crawl a new website and attribute authority to it varies, but it seems to take anywhere from 4 days to 6 months, depending on the size of the site. The speed with which Google indexes your new blog post, website, or site page depends on many factors.
Q.How can I make Indexing faster?
You can monitor the indexing in the Control Panel, Indexing Options. DisableBackOff = 1 allows the indexing to proceed more quickly than the default value. While other programs are running, indexing will continue in the background, making it less likely to pause.
