Spending time and money on your website just to discover that Google does not rank it can be incredibly irritating. You most likely believe that everything is in order because the pages, design, and content are all there and functional. Only to find out that your website does not appear on Google.
Well, even if you follow all the rules and frequently review your SEO checklist, a lot may still go wrong with search engine optimization. If you are concerned, the first thing you should do is make sure Google is properly indexing your sites. After all, your clients won’t be able to find your website if it isn’t indexed, which might ruin all of your internet marketing efforts.
In this post, we list the most frequent causes of pages not being indexed by Google along with effective fixes.
My Website: Is It Indexed?
A page is indexed by Google if the Google crawler (“Googlebot”) has visited it, examined it for content and significance, and added it to the Google index. If indexed pages adhere to Google’s webmaster rules, they may appear in Google Search results. Google may index pages without access to their content even if the majority of pages are crawled before indexing (for example, if a page is blocked by a robots.txt directive).
As you can see from the definition, in order to have your website “stored” in Google’s database or index, you must abide by a set of regulations known as the Google webmaster guidelines. Google may display your page to users who are conducting searches using pertinent keywords once your website has been indexed. Still; even if you abide by Google’s requirements, your site could occasionally not be properly indexed and fail to show up in Google searches. There could be a number of causes for this, and the good news is that they can all be rectified.
Why Doesn’t My Website Appear on Google?
Let’s be clear that your website may be indexed yet still not appear on Google, before we go into the specifics. This is due to the fact that Google’s index is just that, an index. The crawlers list the pages they visit along with relevant details about their purpose, nature, and value. The algorithm compares a user’s request with the pages in the index once they enter a search term in the search engine.
Your page can appear in the SERPs (Search Engine Results Page) if it is a good match. However; the algorithm might pick another website above yours if it has better content, higher technological standards, better user experience, and more authority.
This may lower your ranking and finally cause you to disappear from the SERPs. Here are some flaws that prohibit your website from appearing at all on Google:
You Have a New Website
It may take some time for your newly built and released website to appear in search engine results. Actually, new websites not being indexed is rather typical. In actuality, it can take Google a few weeks to index your content.
Don’t expect to see your website appearing on the first page of the SERPs right immediately; you done nothing wrong; Google simply requires time to crawl and index your new website.
It is simple to determine whether Google is aware of the existence of your website. Go to goole and look for search engine results for “site:yourdomain.com.” Always remember that if there is at least one result, Google has found your website. Google could need additional time to crawl your page if there are no results.
While you wait for Google to find your website, there is something you can do to improve your ranks. A sitemap can be made and submitted through Google Search Console.
The sitemap, which is a list of the pages on your website, makes it simpler for search engines to find and index your website. It’s essential for your SEO since it lets Google know which pages on your website are key and where to locate them. Consequently, it’s best to develop it right away.
Check Your robots.txt File
You may tell search engines where they can and cannot go on your website using a file called a robots.txt file. It is located in the website’s top-level directory. Google won’t visit these sites if you have restricted your website and instructed it not to crawl specific URLs, which typically prevents them from appearing in search results.
It should notify you of any problems if you’ve submitted your sitemap using Google Search Console. Remember that you will only receive alerts if Google bots have attempted to crawl your URLs; otherwise, Google won’t have found your website.
You can also enter the following in your browser to see if your robots.txt file is blocking any of your pages: “yourwebsite.com/robots.txt”.
Disallow displays the web pages that Google has been forbidden from crawling. Check your file to see if it contains the following commands; “Disallow: /” or “User-agent: *”.
Seeing command “Disallow”, Google cannot crawl your website. Additionally, none of your crucial pages, such your blog, product sites, or FAQ pages, should have “Disallow” set to them. They won’t be found by Google because of this. Without being found, they won’t appear in Google searches for terms connected to your website, which may prevent potential customers from finding your website.
You don’t have enough backlinks of high quality.
Your website may not be indexed on Google for a number of reasons, one of which is a lack of high-quality backlinks. It is true that there are hundreds of variables that go into Google’s algorithm, and no one is 100% certain of all the specifics. High-quality backlinks are recognized to be a rather powerful component, though, and they have a significant impact on your rankings. In actuality, they are regarded as one of the top 3 ranking determinants.
It is simple to determine how many different websites are linking to your pages. This information is available from a variety of free and commercial SEO tools. The Link Explorer by Moz or the Ahrefs Backlink Checker are the simplest methods.
We’re going to use Ahrefs in this example. You may find out how many different referring domains are linked to your website by typing your domain or URL into the search field. On the screenshot below, look in the “Referring Domains” column.
How many different referring domains link to your website is displayed in the column. If your website is brand-new, you most likely will have a very small number. You can evaluate your competition to get a better understanding of how many referring domains you ought to have. You’ll have a better sense of where to start with your link-building activities after analyzing their websites. However, always remember to prioritize quality over number while constructing linkages.
Even if you have a large number of irrelevant or low-quality links, they won’t help your authority. Meanwhile, a small number of relevant links can have a significant impact.
Your Website Lacks Credibility
Link-building efforts have an impact on your domain rating or authority. The general guideline is that the authority increases with the number of high-quality links. Remember that there are other techniques available for measuring domain rating, and your score may differ based on their data and algorithm.
You can assess your domain rating, for instance, by using Ahrefs’ Backlink Checker. On a scale of 100, the tool indicates the strength of the website’s backlink profile in comparison to others in their database. The domain rating for Content Marketing Institute is 88, which is a respectable score that speaks to the organization’s authority, as shown in the screenshot below.
To better comprehend how many high-quality backlinks your competitors have and how much more your domain authority needs to “grow,” you may compare your score to theirs.
What relationship exists between the authority of your website and the Google index?
You might not be able to rank better in Google if your page has a low domain authority. Again, if your website is new, you won’t be able to immediately acquire domain authority, but you can increase it a little using two easy strategies:
- Create backlinks
- Expand the number of internal links
However, bear in mind that improving these metrics is not the end goal while monitoring them and your SEO score because they are only a symptom of the problem. They should be used to identify any potential issues with your website and seek out fixes.
Your Google EAT Is Insufficient
Not just backlinks define your authority; there are other factors as well. In reality, Google recently concentrated on a set of elements known as Google EAT that they use to judge the caliber of your content:
- Expertise
- Authority
- Trustworthiness
These are particularly crucial for YMYL (Your Money or Your Life) pages that discuss subjects like banking, taxes, and money; shopping; news; politics; health and well-being; laws and legal; and so forth that may have an actual influence on the user.
Websites that post this kind of information ought to make it very clear that it was compiled by reliable professionals who can be held accountable, are authorities in their fields, and have demonstrated authority.
To accomplish that, you must:
- Do some online reputation management. Make sure that there aren’t too many nasty reviews or other negative associations with your website.
- Give your contact details. Your website should include accurate and clear contact information that clearly identifies who is responsible for it and how to get in touch with them.
- Verify your knowledge. Give proof of your expertise, as well as the expertise of the individual who presented the content, such as awards, credentials, work experience, etc.
- Publish informative information. Your website’s content must be insightful and beneficial to visitors.
Your rating may suffer if you fall short on EAT. Google is likely to display your website less frequently in the search results if it believes it to be of low quality.
Your Website’s Content Is Incongruent With “Search Intent”
Your digital strategy needs organic traffic because it can increase your online visibility, expand your audience, and draw in new customers. Your website must first be indexed by Google in order for all of this to take place. Because of this, it’s crucial to keep an eye on all the pertinent information that we’ve outlined here in this post.
Investigate the issues on the list we’ve supplied if you notice that your website isn’t showing up in searches. Hopefully, that will assist you in achieving a higher ranking for your website.
The goal of Google is to deliver the most relevant and helpful results to users. Because of this, it’s crucial to match the content and keywords you choose with the interests of your target market. You must offer excellent and worthwhile material that will pique the interest of and/or address the issues of your audience. Content that is not exceptional and does not aid people in finding the information they are looking for will not appear on Google’s first few pages.
You must so align your objectives with the user’s intent. There are typically 4 categories of search intent:
- Informational: The user wants to learn more about a subject.
- Navigational: The user is trying to find a particular website.
- Transactional. The customer needs to buy anything immediately away.
- Commercial. The user is doing research on goods and services before making a decision.
A person who is trying to learn more about a subject and encounters content on your website that tries to sell them a product will probably be turned off and leave permanently. Use keywords in your content that are relevant to the user’s intent and where they are in the buyer’s journey to avoid this. By doing this, you can guarantee a better UX, keep visitors on your site, and improve your SEO. You must develop a content marketing strategy and match it to the needs of your target audience if you want to address all of your content-related problems.
You can start a blog where you post articles on subjects your target audience would find fascinating and address their requirements. You might think about offering guides or responses to various questions.
Your website needs to keep your target audience interested. By doing this, you will raise your SERP rankings.
Your website contains duplicate content
When two URLs lead to the same or nearly identical web page, that is considered duplicate content. Like having two copies of the same book, for example You don’t require both of them, right? Due to the fact that duplicate content takes up needless space in their index, Google typically does not index it. In this instance, Google almost always indexes the canonical version of the page.
Search engines might stop mistaking specific pages for duplicate material if the canonical tag is used. You can specify the version of the URL you wish to show up in search results by using a canonical tag. Google will attempt to designate the canonical page for you if you haven’t done so. Which is bad since it could cause more confusion, which would make it impossible for the bots to index your page at all.
You can make use of some of the SEO tools on this list to determine whether your website contains duplicate pages.
You Have a Google Penalty
Additionally, penalties may lower your website’s position in Google’s search results.
Google penalties come in two varieties; Manually or Algorithmically. Google may degrade or remove your website from its search results manually. When a Google employee manually examines your website and discovers that it disobeys their Webmaster Guidelines, this occurs. This happens algorithmically when a website or web page receives a penalty from Google’s algorithm because of quality problems.
The resulting penalty is Google’s total elimination of your domain from its index by deindexing of it. In this case; even though your domain is still listed in the index, a direct search will not return your page.
You will see a notification in Google Search Console if you receive a such penalty. Then in order to restore your website’s ranking on Google once this has happened, you must adhere to Google’s standards and request reconsideration.
Conclusion
Your digital strategy needs organic traffic because it can increase your online visibility, expand your audience, and draw in new customers. Your website must first be indexed by Google in order for all of this to take place. Because of this, it’s crucial to keep an eye on all the pertinent information that we’ve outlined in this post. Investigate the issues on the list we’ve supplied if you notice that your website isn’t showing up in searches. Hopefully, that will assist you in achieving a higher ranking for your website.
