If your website has not been indexed by Google, it can be very frustrating. After checking every box—your design, content, and pages—and ensuring that everything is functional, you may be wondering why your website still isn’t appearing on Google.
The first thing you need to take a look at is whether Google is indexing your page properly. If your website is not indexed, it needs to be fixed immediately. If not, your website will not be seen, there will be no traffic, and you will not be able to generate any revenue.
In this blog, we cover the most common issues surrounding why pages are not indexed by Google and provide simple solutions.
What does it mean when your website isn’t indexed?
When your website is not indexed, it means that your page has not been listed in the search engine’s lists of websites to crawl.
As a result, your website will not be recognized by a search engine, and it will not be displayed as a result of a search under the search results.
If your website does not appear in search results, no one can see your page, which can dampen your digital marketing efforts.
How to check which posts aren’t indexed?
You can try two different methods, Google Search Console and IndexChekr, to figure out which of your posts are not indexed. Below, we cover these methods in detail.
Search Console
You can use the URL Inspection Tool under Google Search Console to find information about the indexing of your page.
The tool provides information about Google’s indexed version of a particular page, including seeing the status of a URL in the Google index, inspecting a live URL, and requesting indexing for a URL.
There are two ways you can access the URL Inspection Tool:
- Type in the URL you want to inspect in the inspection search bar at the top of the Search Console screen.
- Click the “Inspect” link next to a page URL in reports. You may need to hover over the URL to see this option.
How to use the URL Inspection Tool to check the site index
- Open the URL Inspection Tool.
- Enter the full URL to inspect. Ensure that the URL is in the current property.
- Read “Understanding the Results.”
- Once you’ve resolved any issues that arose after receiving the data, test the live URL to see if Google believes the issues have been resolved.
- Alternatively, you can request indexing for the URL.
Key points to remember
- The test is not live. The results displayed are from the ‘most recently indexed’ version of a page. To test the current version of your page, you need to click on the ‘Live Test’ button on the page.
- Even though your URL is on Google, that does not guarantee that your page will appear in search results. For a definitive test, you need to search for the page URL on Google.
IndexChekr Tool
Google Index Checker is a powerful tool that allows you to monitor indexed pages in bulk, find out when new content on your page gets indexed, and check if your backlinks are indexed.
IndexChekr features a beginner-friendly interface and is simple to navigate.
The tool is subscription-free, offers affordable pricing plans, offers email notifications, includes a domain check, and schedules recurring checks to ensure that your page is ranking on Google at all times.
How to use IndexChekr to check the site index on Google
- Sign up at indexcheckr.com.
- You will see a panel dashboard on your left and project insights on your right.
- To add a project, click on the “Add Project” button at the top right of the dashboard and follow the prompts.
- After filling in the details, click on the “Create” button.
- Your project will now be visible on your dashboard.
- To check the status of each page, click on the project.
- A full list of URL items, including the status, will appear.
- Indexed: this page is indexed; Not Indexed: this page is not indexed, but other pages on the same domain are; Domain Not Indexed: no pages on the domain are indexed.
5 Common Reasons Why Your Pages Aren’t Indexed by Google
Your website is new, and Google needs time to discover it.
One of the most common reasons why websites are not indexed is that they are new. If you have recently built and launched your website, it needs time to appear in the search engine results.
Google can take up to several weeks to crawl your new website and include it in its index. Simply type in your domain URL into Google’s search bar to check if Google knows that your website exists.
If your website does not show up in the search results, then Google needs more time to crawl your site. To improve your rankings while you wait for Google to discover your website, you can create a sitemap and submit it on Google Search Console.
The sitemap is a list of your website pages, and it helps search engines easily discover and crawl your website. It’s essential for your SEO because it informs Google which pages are important on your website and where to find them.
You have low-quality content.
High-quality content is a must if you want your website to be successful on Google. If your website features low-quality content that does not even meet your competitors’ levels, then your page will not even rank in the top 50.
Well-written, informative content is highly valuable. It answers questions, provides information, and offers a perspective that is different from other websites in the same industry.
If your content fails to meet these standards, Google will find another website with high-quality content.
Although a word count is not a ranking factor, often content that is more than 1,000 words ranks higher than content that is less than 1,000 words.
Thin pages, where there should be more than 100 words per page, could be another reason why your website is not indexed. Thin pages cause indexing issues because they have insufficient unique content that does not meet the minimum quality levels compared to your competitors.
Your site is not well-linked internally.
Internal links serve two purposes. The first purpose is to connect your website users with other relevant content on your site. Internal links are used to move someone from one page to another, to find other resources on your website to provide in-depth information or facts about the topic at hand, or to direct them toward a conversion.
The second purpose is to help crawlers find relevant content and understand the structure and flow of your website. Internal links improve the crawling process and make it more efficient, which results in crawlers spending more time on your website and getting more context about your site.
So if your website is poorly linked internally, it would affect the efficiency of the crawling process. Google will not be able to find enough ways to access your content that still needs to be crawled.
You can fix this by improving your internal link structure.
You are chasing super-competitive keywords.
If you optimize your content for highly competitive keywords and phrases, it is going to take crawlers forever to discover your website because there is too much competition. The tougher the competition, the stronger your website needs to be to rank on the first page.
If you have launched a new website and targeted competitive keywords, you will struggle to match the content and links of your competitors. Google will pick up on more well-established websites with competitive keywords and index them.
Before you focus on SEO efforts, you first need to be aware of your competition, as you will be competing against them to be ranked. Every additional link that they have is one that you need to match or improve on.
To find out if competitive keywords are preventing your site from being indexed, check the results pages for your keyword. If authority websites such as Amazon dominate this keyword, then you need to adapt your keywords.
Try using the long-tail keyword strategy in your content before tackling competitive keywords. If the long-tail keywords draw Google’s attention, then you can use competitive keywords as well.
Your domain is penalized.
Penalties can also prevent your website from being indexed by Google.
There are two types of Google penalties:
- Manual: When Google removes or demotes your website from their search results. The penalty occurs when a Google employee manually reviews your website and finds that it does not adhere to its Webmaster Guidelines.
- Algorithmic: When Google’s algorithm sanctions a website or page because of quality issues.
Google penalties include being deindexed, where your domain is completely removed from their index, or penalization, where your domain still exists in their index but cannot be found if you search for it directly.
If you have a Google penalty, you will receive a message in the Search Console. To fix this issue, you need to follow Google’s guidelines and submit your site for reconsideration to be visible on Google again.
Takeaway:
Make sure that you fix all of the above issues for your website to be indexed by Google and gain organic traffic.
You can use the WPHUB code to get 10% off on IndexChekr, a tool that tells you exactly which pages are not indexed.
