Why isn't my website indexing? Troubleshooting common issues
When a search engine such as Google indexes your website, it makes your site visible to potential customers online. However, if your website is not being indexed, it will significantly impact your online visibility and make it difficult for users to find your website. It's similar to trying to find a contact that isn't in your address book.
The first step to addressing this issue is understanding the cause and taking action. You can do this by checking whether a search engine is indexing your site and if your site appears in search results. A quick way to check is by typing your website address into Google's search bar (e.g., your_domain_name). If Google returns no results, then your site is indeed missing from their index. There could be several reasons for this.
How to be found on Google
If your site is new, It may take Google from a few hours to a few weeks to discover your website. Be patient, the search engines will find you. In the meantime, ensure that your sitemap has been uploaded and is functioning correctly. If everything seems to be in order, request an index status report or URL inspection from Google.
This tool can help identify any issues. It's also a good idea to request re-indexing from Google Search Console if you've added new pages or made changes to your site's layout.
Crawler error
If your URLs are not being indexed, it may indicate underlying issues. For a comprehensive analysis, consider engaging a marketing agency for a full SEO audit to review your website. This audit will include a thorough examination of your site's coding, text, design, and other critical factors that may impact indexing.
Alternatively, you can utilise the Google Search Console dashboard, a FREE powerful tool that can identify URLs with errors in your site map. Common issues flagged by the dashboard include code issues such as 404 code (page not found), 500 code (internal server error), and 301 code(page redirect). Each of these error codes signifies that your website is not performing optimally.
If you see one of these codes it is likely that something is obstructing the website crawlers, from accessing and evaluating your web pages resulting in poor SEO. Identifying and resolving these obstacles is crucial to ensuring that your website is effectively indexed by search engines. Common issues can include:
Site blocked by robots.txt
One of the purposes of "robots" is to prevent web crawlers from finding a specific page. There are many legitimate reasons for not wanting a search engine to index a page, such as a webpage being for staff or a member-only page. However, if this is your concern, it is a simple fix: just remove the text.
Add your domain to Google Webmaster
Google Webmaster is a powerful free tool that offers valuable insights into a website's performance within search engine results.
This allows you to gain valuable information about how your website is viewed and indexed by Google, including any potential issues that may affect its ability to be found on Google.
Do not have a sitemap (sitemap.xml)
A website sitemap is a file that contains a list of all the pages on your website, along with information about how they are related to each other. Search engines like Google use sitemaps to crawl and index the content on your site. This helps them understand the structure of your website and find all the information more effectively.
In addition to listing the pages, a sitemap can also provide details such as when each page was last updated, how often it is changed, and its importance relative to other pages on the site. This information helps search engines prioritise their crawling efforts and ensures that the most relevant and up-to-date content is surfaced to users.
Sitemaps can include information about language variations, which is particularly useful for multilingual websites. By providing language metadata in the sitemap, you can help search engines understand the language targeting of your content, leading to better visibility in language-specific search results.
If you haven't already created and submitted a sitemap for your website, it's highly recommended to do so, especially if you want to improve the discoverability and indexing of your content by search engines like Google.
Privacy settings
Double-check that your site's privacy settings are configured correctly. For example, if your site uses WordPress, ensure that the 'discourage search engines from indexing' option is not selected in the privacy settings.
Site has noindex meta tag
When checking your website's meta tags, be on the lookout for the specific text: <meta name="robots" content="noindex,nofollow">. This line indicates the presence of a directive that instructs web crawlers not to index or follow any links on the webpage.
If you want search engines to index and follow the links on your site, you should remove the mentioned meta tag from your website's code. Removing this tag will allow search engine crawlers to access and index your site's content, which can improve its visibility in search engine results.
Server/content issues
One possible issue is if there are elements on your web pages that hinder or block web crawlers from accessing your site. Web crawlers, also known as search engine bots, rely on having unhindered access to the content of a URL in order to index and rank it.
Factors such as poor-quality content, slow loading times, or technical issues can have a significant and detrimental impact on how effectively a web crawler can assess and interpret your website's URLs.
The most common issues
Duplicated content
When multiple URLs lead to the same or very similar content, it is given the name duplicated content and it confuses web crawlers. It gives the crawlers the impression that they are going around in a circle. In such cases, search engines may stop indexing the site. Each page's content should be original and contain relevant keywords. Good content is crucial for successful SEO.
Javascript issues
Google's web crawlers are capable of indexing most JavaScript and AJAX content. However, if there are errors in the configuration of your JavaScript execution, it may not be indexed properly, as both code languages can be challenging to interpret.
If you suspect that your JavaScript configuration is causing indexing issues, it's advisable to seek the expertise of a website agency that can carefully review and audit your script to identify and rectify any issues.
Site taking too long to load
Although the loading speeds of your website do not directly impact Google's ability to index it, a page with a consistently slow loading time can limit the accessibility of your site to web crawlers.
Additionally, a sluggish loading time can contribute to a high bounce rate, which will lower the appeal of your page to Google. An SEO audit can pinpoint the specific issues causing the delay in loading times.
Host server down
If your domain is hosted by a third party, it's important to make sure that it is functioning properly on their end. If they experience frequent outages or have an ongoing issue, it could be affecting the crawling of your site. This could also be a reason for low traffic or a high bounce rate.
Deindexing
If your site has been deindexed, you have a challenging journey ahead. The first step is to submit a reconsideration request to Google.
There are various reasons why your site may have been deindexed. One common reason is that your domain may have had a questionable past. If you've ever received a manual penalty or removal notice, be sure to check Google Search Console for any alerts related to your domain.
Getting your site indexed by Google can be a technical process, as you may have already learned. It can be difficult to identify and implement the necessary corrections to your site. If you need assistance with a technical SEO audit, feel free to reach out to us. We offer a variety of solutions and services to help get your site back on Google. If you need advice or an audit, please don't hesitate to contact us at 01794 725 483 or submit an enquiry today.
