If your website is not indexed by Google, then your chances of getting any visibility or organic traffic move down to zero. Your site won’t show up on any search result pages and the success rate of your online website will inevitably plummet down.
If you’re somewhat new to the world of SEO and this is news to you, understanding the indexing concept and knowing why your pages aren’t getting indexed will help you implement strategies that will allow your webpages to be indexed by google.
Site indexation might seem like a passive task that only involves writing content, optimizing your pages for search engines, and waiting for google to index the pages. This is not necessarily how it works. So how can you get your updated content and pages to be indexed by Google? Google’s process of indexing is highly effective but not perfect.
When your site is indexed by google, the updated pages might not be indexed. This might occur due to many reasons, which will then affect your visibility, even if your site’s overall ranking is high. Submitting a URL to Google with the updated page info might not get you very far if there are other reasons your web pages aren’t being indexed.
How to Check if a Page is Indexed?
To know how to get google to crawl your updated pages, you need to know if those pages are indexed on Google first. To do this, you need to go to google and search for your site using this format: “site: yourwebsite.com”. For looking at the index of a specific URL, search “site:yourwebsite.com/ web-page-slug”. This number will show you approximately how many of your pages have been indexed. If you look for a specific URL and nothing shows up, it means that the page is not indexed.
How to get Google to Index Updated web pages:
Following the same methods, you would like to get your website crawled and indexed by Google is the first step. Including all the aspects that allow google to seamlessly crawl through the updated web pages will allow them to be indexed without a hiccup. Here are some other means to get google to recrawl updated pages:
- Fetch as Google: Google’s fetch tool is a great and logical starting point to get your updated content indexed. You would be required to have a google account and a google webmaster account, from which you will be prompted to ‘add a property’ which is to be verified. This is a straightforward process and once you are done with this, you can perform a fetch on any URL relevant to that property. If your site is fetchable, you can submit a URL to google for the site to be added to its index. The tool also lets you submit a single page URL or a single URL along with any pages linked to it. They come with their limitations but are pretty useful for indexing updated pages.
- Add URL: Google’s Add URL tool is a simpler version of the fetch tool. It is slower, easier to use but also lacks the functionality and versatility of the Fetch tool. It still however is a worthy tool to help you index single URLs. You can use this tool with a google account and there is no need to add and verify your property to Webmaster tools. All you have to do is add the URL and verify that you aren’t a robot.
- Add a sitemap: If you have made changes to many pages on a domain or have changed the entire structure of a site, adding a sitemap to google is your best option. Like Fetch, you need to do this via the webmaster search tool. A sitemap lets Google know which pages on your site are important and give guidance on how often they need to be re-crawled. Google will then be able to find pages on your site post their update as well and will re-crawl them without any prodigy from your side. Once you have built a sitemap on the webmaster console select the domain on which your site is built, select ‘crawl’/’sitemaps’/’add/test sitemap’, type in its URL and click on ‘submit’.
Google is great at crawling the web and indexing web pages but you can also put the effort from your side to assure no page goes un-crawled. Ensuring your page is backed with the right tags and high-quality links, checking for orphaned web pages, and having a properly structured web design can improve your chances of getting indexed by google after every update.