Do you believe Google is finding it difficult to index your website? Check out these 14 issues with search indexing and how to fix them.
Why won't Google index your website? It's not just you.
This article discusses 14 potential problems that could prohibit Google from
indexing web pages and has been divided into two parts and each one contains 7 of 14 problems.
Also Read: Top 14 Causes for Google Not Indexing Your Website | Part 2
We have the knowledge you require, whether you want to know
what to do if your site is not mobile-friendly or you are having trouble with
intricate indexing issues.
Learn how to resolve these frequent issues so that Google may resume indexing your pages.
1. You Lack a Domain Name
You don't have a domain name, which is the first reason
Google won't index your site. This can be the case if you're using the
incorrect URL for the content or if WordPress isn't configured properly.
There are various simple remedies if this is occurring to
you.
Verify that your website's URL does not begin with
"https://XXX.XXX," which could lead to a user accessing it by mistake
by typing an IP address rather than a domain name.
Your IP address redirection may also not be set up properly.
Adding 301 redirects from WWW versions of pages back onto
their respective domains is one technique to resolve this problem. We want
visitors to land on your actual domain name if they end up here when trying to
find anything like [yoursitehere].
You should make sure you have a domain name. If you want to rank and be competitive on Google, this is a necessity.
2. Your website is not optimized for mobile / mobile-friendly
Since Google adopted Mobile-First indexing, having a
mobile-friendly website is essential to getting your site crawled.
Even if your website has excellent content, you will lose
traffic and rankings if it is not optimized for browsing on a smartphone or
tablet.
Simply including flexible design ideas, like fluid grids
and CSS Media Queries, can go a long way toward ensuring that users will find
what they need without encountering any navigational issues.
Running your website via Google's Mobile-Friendly Testing
Tool is the first step I advise taking with this problem.
If you don't receive a "passed reading," you still need to work on optimizing your website for mobile devices.
3. Google Can't Understand How You're Using That Coding Language Because It's Too Complex
If you're utilizing a coding language in a complicated
method, Google won't index your website. It doesn't matter what language is
used—it might be an outdated language like JavaScript or an old one—as long as
the settings are off and interfere with crawling and indexing.
If this is a concern for you, I suggest using Google's
Mobile-Friendly Testing Tool to determine how responsive your website actually
is (and make any fixes that might need to be made).
If your website doesn't meet its criteria yet, they provide a tonne of resources with advice on how to handle any design issues that can arise when creating a responsive webpage.
4. Slow loading on your website
Google is less likely to want to highlight slow-loading
websites in the top results of their index. There are various reasons why your
website can take a long time to load.
It may also be the case that your page contains more content
than a user's browser can handle or that you're utilizing an outdated server
with insufficient resources.
Solutions:
- Use Google Page Speed Insights to discover which areas of the website require immediate attention when speeding it up. This is one of my favorite tools I've come across in recent years. The program evaluates your website against five performance best practices, such as limiting connections, lowering payload size, utilizing browser caching, etc. (essential for having quicker running webpages), and provides recommendations for how you can enhance each element of your site.
- Utilize a program like webpagetest.org You can use this tool to check whether your website loads quickly enough. Additionally, it will enable you to clearly identify the precise components of your website that are troubling you. Their waterfall can assist you in spotting substantial page speed issues before they become problematic.
- Rely once more on Google's Page Speed insights. - Look for areas where you can speed up the website's load times. Consider employing a CDN service that will serve static material from its cache in various places across the world, or looking into a new hosting plan with additional resources (pure dedicated servers are much better than shared ones).
Ideally, you want your page speed to be at least 70. The ideal is as near to 100 as possible.
You might want to read SEJ's ebook on Core Web Vitals if you have any queries about page performance.
5. The Content on Your Website Is Rarely Well-Written
Effective content is essential for ranking well on Google.
If your material is lacking and doesn't at least match that of your
competitors, it may be difficult for you to even crack the top 50.
According to our observations, content with fewer than 1,000
words does not perform as well as content with more words.
Do we offer article writing services? We are not, no. Does
word count affect rankings? And no.
The secret to success, though, is to ensure that your
material is well-written while you're deciding what to do in the context of the
competition.
Your website's material must be credible and educational. It
must include answers, facts, or a viewpoint that is sufficiently distinct from
those of other websites in your niche.
If it doesn't, Google will probably discover another site
with information of higher caliber that does.
If you're wondering why, despite using recommended practices
for SEO, such as including important keywords throughout the text (Hint: Your
Content), your website isn't showing up well in Google search results for some
keywords, thin pages could be to blame. Each page should have at least 100
words.
Because they don't have as much unique material and fall short of basic standards compared to your rivals, thin pages can interfere with indexing.
6. Visitors Find Your Website Unfriendly And Distracting
A user-friendly and interesting website is essential for
effective SEO. If it's simple for visitors to locate what they're looking for
and navigate the website without feeling frustrated or aggravated, Google will
rank your site higher in search results.
Google doesn't want users spending too much time on a page
that either takes a very long time to load, has a difficult-to-understand
navigation system, or is just difficult to use due to the abundance of
distractions (like ads above the fold).
Your content may not be doing well on Google if each
category just has one product listed rather than multiple. In addition to
choosing relevant keywords for each post, it's crucial to make sure that all
linked posts point to more pertinent pages and publications on the subject.
Does your blog get shared frequently? Are you producing
material that impresses readers? If not, Google may have ceased indexing your
website for this reason.
There may be a problem with the way other pages link back to
a specific product if someone links to it directly rather than using related
keywords like "buy," "purchase," etc.
For visitors to quickly make purchases without having to negotiate complicated linking hierarchies, ensure sure all products featured on category pages also exist inside each corresponding sub-category.
7. You Have A Loop Redirect
Another typical issue that prevents indexing is redirected loops. These can be resolved by doing the following actions, which are often
the result of a regular typo:
To stop the redirect loop, identify the offending page. If
you're using WordPress, check for "Redirect 301" in the HTML source
of one of your articles on this page or in a .htaccess file to figure out which
page you're trying to send visitors to. Repairing any 302 redirects and making
sure they are set to 301 is also worthwhile.
To determine the source of the issue, use Windows Explorer's
"find" feature (or Command + F on a Mac) to look through all files
that contain the word "redirect".
Correct any errors before using the following redirection
code to prevent a duplicate URL address from pointing back at itself:
Google Search Console doesn't always provide status codes
like 404s. You can discover the status codes for 404s and other issues by using
an external crawler like Screaming Frog.
Use Google Search Console on-site to crawl the site once
more and re-submit it for indexing if everything appears to be in order. If any
new alerts emerge that require action, give it a week or two before monitoring
Google Search Console again.
Even though you know that Google updates its indexes every few hours because they don't have the time to do so daily, your material might not always appear immediately away. Be tolerant! It should soon enough be indexed.
Check out our next post Top 14 Causes for Google Not Indexing Your Website | Part 2 for further 7 reasons why Google isn't indexing your site.
Also read: How to Fix Breadcrumbs Error in Blogger Template
