Google may not be indexing a page, article or product on your website. If you are having indexing problems with certain pages, then you will need to determine what problems Google is having when it scans your content. We will review here the most common errors that Google may encounter on your site…
DETERMINE THE INDEXING PROBLEMS
In order to determine the main errors of your natural referencing, it is necessary to review all the pages of your website. Of course, an e-commerce website of 500 pages would be very long to study. In order to avoid wasting time in some cases, we suggest you to use some easy to use tools. There are also tips that allow you to know if Google consults on your site.
CHECK YOUR SITEMAP ON GOOGLE SEARCH CONSOLE
On Google Search Console, you must first submit your sitemap. We call this file the sitemap.xml.
Thanks to this file, Google can detect all the pages of your site easily. However, in some cases, the pages are not indexed. To know the reason, you just need to enter the URL of your page, and the Google indexing report will be provided. Here you can see the errors that Google has encountered during its exploration. It is quite possible that a page with no errors is not indexed. We will come back to this later in the article.
YOUR PAGE MAY ALREADY BE ON THE SEARCH ENGINE
After talking about Google Search Console, it is necessary to explain that the data provided by the indexing report may not be up to date. In some cases, the report may provide you with the answer from the last crawl, but does not necessarily indicate the time T. Many have complained about this error, it should be corrected in the future, we hope! So if the data and errors provided are not current, it is possible that your page is already on Google. You can simply test the site:www.exemple.fr feature to check if your site’s pages are indexed. In the case of an article, write the URL of your page after the site tag:
CHECK IF GOOGLE BOT HAS READ YOUR CONTENT
If you have tried the two previous methods, and it doesn’t work: you can see if Google has read your site. Your web server belongs to you and you have access to the so-called logs. These are provided to you by your online host. In these log files, we can see several elements such as the IP address of the client or the page he downloaded. The most interesting thing is that you can see the return code of the page. In some cases, web hosts offer to separate the logs and the error logs. The error logs are of interest to us in our situation, because it can give us an idea of whether or not Google has received an error.
ESTABLISH AN AUDIT WITH A CRAWLER
There are easy to use tools that allow you to establish an audit. Some tools will be necessary if your site has many pages. They allow you to establish a crawl on your site, and to send you all the data. Of course, you will have access to all the errors and recommendations, according to the features and filters of your tool. We can mention some of them which are very qualitative:
SemRush
AhRef
Semji
Majestic
HOW TO AVOID INDEXING ERRORS?
To remedy indexing problems, you need to check several points about the overall health of your website. It is very important to review what can block the robot on a page. There are many reasons why the search engine may not want to display your link. In some cases, it thinks that you have blocked the page on purpose. This can come from a manual error, but it can also come from an extension or a theme on CMS.
REMEDY ALL 404 PAGES
Thanks to the above mentioned crawlers, you will have access to all 404 errors on your site. Good, because with this very valuable information, we will be able to fix all your 404 pages. You have 2 solutions to fix these 404 errors:
301 redirection: You have a 404 page, and a new page with similar content. You can then establish a redirection to your new page. In addition, you will recover all the SEO JUS of your valuable backlinks;
The 410 error: You validate to Google that the 404 pages have been removed voluntarily. Thus, it will understand that it is not an error, but a voluntary act, it will then remove the page from the index more quickly.
CHECK YOUR ROBOTS.TXT FILE
All websites have a robots.txt file. Thanks to this file, it is possible to indicate very precise instructions to the search engine. For example, it is possible to ask the search engine BING not to index the author pages of your site, but only the article pages. It is therefore possible to restrict the robots that explore your site. Make sure that your robots.txt file does not stand between Google and your content to be indexed.
CHECK YOUR .HTACCESS FILE
In the same case, the .htaccess file has features that allow you to block and secure certain elements of your website, such as pages or categories. You should first analyze your .htaccess file and try to improve it.
IMPROVE ITS REFERENCING IN A GENERAL WAY
Quality, experience and notoriety will bring honor to you, your site, and Google. The three most crucial points of SEO that are at the heart of the subject for some years. To gain efficiency, we suggest you to read an article on the pages that do not appear on Google.
APPLY A QUALITY CONTENT
Your website must offer your readers interesting solutions and topics that meet their demands. There is no secret to creating quality content: it’s hard work and dedication. Content isn’t just words or phrases, it’s the architecture, the media, the personal touch you bring to your content. If you can make Google understand: “Who goes with what & why?”, then you’ve won everything!
WORK ON THE USER EXPERIENCE
The fact that a topic is the most interesting of the year is not the only criterion. The content of your page must be clear, easily accessible and quick to read. It is also very important for SEO that your page is mobile friendly. This is a very important criterion for SEO, just like the Core Web Vitals.
GAIN NOTORIETY ON THE INTERNET
After creating quality content and improving the user experience of your site, it is now time to focus on the reputation of it. The goal is simple, get quality links from other sites, thematically similar to yours. Easy, isn’t it? In reality, it is sometimes very complicated, and it requires time and energy. You are lucky, Webmarketing & co’m offers its services to improve your visibility, and that of your website.
