Amateur SEOs would think it’s a ranking issue.
But only pro SEOs know that this could be an indexing issue.
Before we dive into what it is, let's first understand what indexing is in SEO?
Now, search engines work in 3 stages - Crawling, Indexing, & Ranking (CIR).
After crawling, the discovery process of new and updated content, Google tries to understand what the page is about.
This process, where Google tries to understand your page and then stores/organises it, is called indexing.
Once a page has been indexed, it can be displayed as a result for relevant queries.
But why is indexing so important?
Your page was crawled, but that doesn’t necessarily mean it will be indexed.
Google (yes, Google) has limited resources.
And it may choose NOT to index your website for many reasons, like:
↳ It loads slowly
↳ It is not mobile-friendly
↳ It does not have unique content
↳ It is not user-friendly
↳ Your site uses Javascript to render content
↳ Your site is rendering on client side
↳ You have noindexed it (yikes!)
↳ You are not using sitemaps
↳ Your site is not perceived to be authoritative
↳ You have been penalised by Google before
and more.
But what's more important is that Google is no longer trying to index the entire web.
In fact, it's become extremely selective and refuses to index most content.
It's a fundamental change in how Google approaches its role as a search engine.
Google now seems to operate on a "default to not index" mode.
So it is YOUR responsibility to get any page indexed.
I see so many SEOs bending backwards, trying to make their pages rank.
However, they fail to check if some indexing issue is stopping the pages from getting ranked.
So, your first order of business should be to ensure your pages are indexed and there are no indexing issues.
You can do this in 2 ways:
↳ Use the “site:yourdomaindotcom/url” search operator in Google Search.
↳ You can also check if your site is indexed using Google Search Console.
If they are not indexed, look for issues in Google Search Console that may be hampering your indexing.
You must know that indexing issues are quite common as website size gets bigger.
To sum it up:
↳ Indexing is when Google understands and stores your page content
↳ Your pages may not be ranking due to an indexing issue
↳ Crawling doesn’t necessarily lead to indexing
↳ Google is not longer trying to index the entire web
↳ It is crucial to check for indexing issues and resolve them
Have you faced any indexing issues before? How did you resolve it?
Let me know in the comments below.
This post was originally shared by on Linkedin.