You probably have a website by now and have wondered why it is not appearing on search engines like Google. It’s frustrating when you spend time creating content that doesn’t appear in search results! This happens for one of two reasons: your website has not yet been indexed by search engines.
What is Indexing?
Before we explain why your website may not be visible on search engines, you need to understand what “indexing” means. Indexing is how search engines (e.g. Google, Bing, or Yahoo) save and organize the information from websites. Search engines “crawl” your website by scanning your pages and content. If everything goes well, they will include your site in their index. The index is similar to a large library where search engines store details about every site they can discover.
After your website is indexed, it can appear in search results when people search for something on your site. But if your website is not indexed, it will not show in these search results. This can be a problem if you want to expand your site’s reach to more visitors.
Common Reasons For Why Your Site Isn’t Indexed
For one reason or another, search engines aren’t always indexing websites. Some problems are easy to solve, while others require more time and training. Here are some of the most common reasons a site goes unindexed.
Problems with Your Website, Technical Issues
Technical issues are the most frequent cause for your site not being indexed. If search engines can’t crawl your website, they can’t index your pages. Such problems could be with your website’s coding or server, broken links, slow loading, etc.
An important aspect that impacts whether a website gets indexed is the site’s “robots. txt” file. This file tells search engines which pages they can crawl and index. If your robots. If your robot. This may happen if the file is incautiously configured or if you have installed a “noindex” directive on your pages.
Problem #2: A problem with your website’s “meta tags.” Meta tags are snippets of HTML code that summarize your website’s information for search engines. Indexed if meta tags are on correctly ( Like, do you have a noindex tag)
Your Website is New
Search engines may need some time for a new website to discover and index it. Search engines do not instantly become aware of a website when it is launched. First, they need to find it — usually by finding links to your site from other pages or websites. On the contrary, if your website has fewer backlinks or links from other sites pointing toward it, search engines may not crawl your website instantly.
Patience is key for new websites. It usually takes a few days to a couple of weeks for your pages to be indexed by search engines. The process can be sped up by submitting your website’s URL directly to search engines through their webmaster tools, like Google Search Console. This allows them to find your website more quickly.
Lack of Quality Content
Websites with valuable, unique, high-quality content are suggested in search engines. Search engines may not bother to index it at all if your website has thin or low-quality content. This content does not provide much information or help site visitors. Examples include thin pages with very few words of content or pages with scraped content from other websites.
The other extreme would be that your website has no content at all. Search engines can ignore your website for a few pages and little information, as they may not find enough to rank or index.
You can resolve this issue only by producing premier content. This means creating helpful articles, inserting relevant imagery, and providing useful information that will capture the interest of your visitors. A higher volume of helpful content makes search engines more likely to crawl and index your site.
Duplicate Content
Duplicate content occurs when you have more than one page on your site with the same or very similar content. Search engines don’t like duplicate content because they want to display a diverse range of useful pages in their search results. If you have a very big site with lots of duplicate content, the search engines may decide not to index it.
This can happen if you have many pages with similar text or if your design makes content available under different URLs on your website. Where duplicate content arises, for example, an online shop can have duplicate product descriptions across several pages.
To avoid this issue, they need to ensure the uniqueness of their content without duplication. There are also tools, such as Google Search Console , that will help you diagnose and resolve duplicate content problems. Sometimes, you can get away with the “canonical tag, ” which tells search engines which version of a page to index.
Poor Website Structure
Inefficient navigation can hinder your pages from being easily crawled and indexed by search engines. Search engines and bots might have a tough time crawling your site if it has a complex or ambiguous structure, and as a result, some of your pages may go unindexed.
Thus, A good and logical website structure is equally important for visitors and search engine crawlers. This includes having a logical navigation menu, utilizing interlinking of your pages, and using headings and subheadings.
If your website’s structure is challenging for search engines to crawl, think about redesigning it to make it more user-friendly and more manageable for search engines to navigate.
No Internal Links or Backlinks
Backlinks (links that lead to your site from other websites) and internal links (links that lead to other pages on the same site) are significant to search engines by assisting them in discovering and indexing your webpage content. Having no backlinks or internal links at all on your website, search engines may not visit your pages.
Backlinks are especially valuable because they demonstrate to search engines that other websites find your content trustworthy. When other sites link to your site, it’s like a vote of confidence, so search engines are more likely to crawl and index it. Internal links also allow search engines to find your site pages that otherwise may not be linked to directly from the homepage.
Aim for other quality domains to link to your pages to remedy this. This can include guest articles on other blogs, outreach to influencers, or your content going viral on social media. Ensure that the pages of your website are well-linked internally so that search engines can find and index them.
Blocked by Search Engines
Other reasons can lead to a website being blocked from indexing by search engines. For example, if your website has been penalized for violating search engine guidelines, it might not be indexed. Search engines like Google have strict rules about what websites can do. So if your website is involved in spammy practices, uses black-hat SEO techniques or has malware, you may find your site penalized and wholly removed from search results.
Another problem may be that search engines manually deindexed your site except for abuse of their guidelines, or if they feel you may harm the stability of their platform. In this case, you might need to file for reconsideration, so you can ask the search engine to review your site and include it back into the index.
Technical SEO Issues
Technical SEO is effectively anything on your website to improve or hinder your site for search engine optimization. It is not only your content but hundreds of factors that impact whether or not your website can even get indexed in the first place, like sitemap, canonical tags, URL structure, etc.
For example, a sitemap is a file that informs search engines about the structure of your site and discovers new pages. A broken or missing sitemap would make it difficult for search engines to discover all of your pages. Canonical tags tell search engines which is the “official” version of a page of content, and if canonical tags are set incorrectly, then it can return the wrong page to search engines, preventing indexing of the right one.
You can use in-depth tools, such as Google Search Console, to help you resolve errors and improve the technical layer of your site. This is where a professional SEO audit comes into play; it can identify any issues that need to be addressed.
Mobile-Friendliness Problems
Most users today browse the internet on mobile devices such as smartphones and tablets. This is why search engines like Google consider mobile-friendly websites in their ranking and indexing algorithms. If your site isn’t mobile optimized, search engines can’t index it properly or they rank it lower on a search result.
To solve this problem, ensure that your website is mobile-responsive. Use Responsive Design This means using responsive design that adjusts according to the screen sizes, ensuring that your pages load quickly on mobile devices and that all buttons and links are easy to tap.
Conclusion
Having your website not indexed by search engines is frustrating, but a common problem that can generally be solved with a few tweaks. You are shown tons of data, the knowledge that comes from the most credible authors and publishers through indexing your website, and you know the most common reasons behind the un-indexing of the websites.
Be sure to avoid technical problems, produce high-quality and unique content, and structure your website properly so that search engines can crawl it without difficulty. With patience and persistence, you may enhance your website’s indexing and improve its visibility in search engines.