For your online content to appear in search results, you must ensure that your website or blog is indexable. An index is what search engines use to provide relevant content to people searching for information on the internet.

If your website has not been indexed, you will not appear on search results, and as such, internet users will be unable to discover your website online. Additionally, you will also be unable to drive organic traffic to your website when you have not been properly indexed.

In this guide, we take an in-depth look at indexing, its importance, and how you can check to see whether or not your website has been indexed. You will also learn how to fix most of the common technical SEO problems causing issues with indexing for your website.

 

What is an Index?

Simply put, an index is a list of all the websites that a search engine is aware of. If your website is not indexed, you will not appear in search results. It is like having a book and not being stocked in any book store.

No readers will be able to find the book, and even if they were looking for your book, it would be challenging for them to find it.

Importance of Site Indexing

For a search engine to index your website, it has to crawl that website. The search engine will first crawl the website to determine whether or not it qualifies to be indexed. Search bots always follow the links on existing web pages to discover new content.

The new website pages that are discovered are added to the search engine index and then ranked in terms of various metrics. Your website will be in the search engine index and already ranked based on the relevance of the content you have and how friendly the website is for internet users.

An index is significant since it ensures that you are already in the databases used by the search engines. Different algorithms are used to influence indexing and discover your content by search engine crawlers.

It is also essential that your website gets indexed to rank higher in search results. The websites that have already been indexed will be more likely to appear on the first pages of the search results. This is because retrieval for the search engines will also be made much easier, and as such, your content will appear first to the internet users compared to a website that has not been indexed.

To be relevant on the internet, you must ensure that various search engines have properly indexed your website. Whenever multiple search engines have indexed you, you will also improve your overall online visibility and discovery through various channels that internet users use when searching for information.

 

How to Determine If My Website has been Indexed

How will you know whether your site has been indexed or not? There is a simple way that the search engines have provided to enable you to find this out.

On the search engine, type in site:example.com, and the results will come back with an estimate of how many of your pages have been indexed by the search engine.

If there are no results that turn up when you enter this query, then it is very likely that your page has not been indexed. As such, your website will not appear in search results, making discovery harder for your website.

Another helpful tool that you can use to find out if your page has been indexed is the Google Search Console. It has more detailed information, and you can also use this tool to find out if certain pages have been indexed.

If they have been indexed, you will get the result that your URL is on Google. The tool is also quite efficient for getting your website indexed. Whenever you add new content, such as new pages to your website or new blog posts on your blog, you can use the Search Console to check whether the website has been crawled again and the new pages added to the index.

New content gets added to the search engine indexes is essential since this is how you will be able to rank better in search results.

Additionally, it increases your online visibility and ensures that you always stay relevant to your readers. Ensure that you are always indexed, and you can also make pages that will make indexing easier for the search engines.

For instance, index pages on your website will crawl through the entire website and prepare an index that can be used to update search engines whenever you have new content and web pages on your website.

This is an effective method that does not take long to affect, and you will also find it quite effective for keeping the search engines informed about any new content you add to your website.

 

How Long Does it Take to be Indexed?

Usually, it takes between a few days and a few weeks for a search engine to index your website. However, you can make this process a lot easier and shorter by using the Google Search Console tools. Using the tool, you can quickly request indexing.

You should also set up your website in a manner that can accept the crawling behavior of Googlebot. For instance, your Robots.txt file should prioritize the web pages for the internet crawler. As such, your website will not be overloaded with requests, and the pages that you do not want to be included in the index will be eliminated from the list of pages that the search engines will index.

Ensuring that your pages are crawlable also increases the search engine’s chances of your website being crawled and indexed.

 

Clean Up Your SEO Tags

SEO tags are an effective way to get discovered by search engines. Using rogue noindex tags will ensure that search engines do not index certain pages on your website. This makes your website more organized, and the pages you do not want to be publicly discoverable will be removed from the list of pages that the search engine will index.

Canonical tags are another form of SEO that will inform the crawlers about more ideal pages. A preferred version of the page will be indexed when you have set up canonical tags on your website.

 

Check your Site Architecture

Internal linking is how crawlers can find your web pages. Whenever you have pages that are not linked to the rest of your website, they are orphan pages, and as such, they will rarely be indexed by search engines.

However, a proper site structure will ensure that you have the proper linking to your website. The sitemap is also helpful for indexing your website and makes it easier for search engines to identify the newest and freshest content on your website.

Your internal links should not be no-follow, and as such, you should remove all nofollow tags from your internal links. Your internal links should also be used to add new pages to ensure that your website is more organized and easier to crawl for the search engine bots.

In addition to using the high-ranking internal links, you should have a link structure that does not leave any dead-ends on your website and makes it easier for the search engine bots that are going through your content.

Backlinks are another strategy that you can use to improve your site structure. Whenever you can link your website to high authority and relevant pages, you will get proper indexing by the search engines and a better ranking in the search results.

 

Make High-quality Content a Priority

High-quality content is essential for both ranking and indexing, and to improve the performance of your website, you have to remove the low-quality pages. As such, Googlebot will focus on the more valuable pages on your website, thus correctly utilizing the available crawl budget.

Your website should also provide value for your users on every page and have unique content that has not been duplicated on any other website on the internet.

Unique content makes your page get special indexing, and it will also be able to rank higher whenever an internet user is searching for information on your website.

 

SEO Is also a Priority

No matter what kind of website or blog you have, SEO is essential for keeping your website relevant to internet users. It improves discovery for your website and ensures that you can always maintain a good position on the search engine results pages.

Whenever you have good SEO in place, you will get indexed more frequently, and all your fresh content will get ranked highly in current searches. For this reason, take the time to refine your SEO strategy and also ensure that your content is valuable for your readers.

 

Conclusion

Getting indexed by a search engine is one of the most significant accomplishments you can make with your website. Once you are indexed, you are in the search engine’s database, and as such, you will be ranked in more searches made by billions of internet users.

Indexing also means that your content will rank higher given the much classification and sorting that the search engines will have already done. Improve your website and get it indexed today to rank higher and be found faster on Google.