Nowadays, having a website is one of the most common and essential things for every business. If you have an optimized and user-friendly website, you can easily present your business online and stand out from the crowd. It's the place where your customers learn about you and can contact you for your products and services. 

But if you don't have a website for your business, that means you are losing half of the opportunities to get in touch with your potential customers. That's why every business is paying attention to their website. 

Having a website is not enough. You need to create a website that can show up on search result pages. And this is only possible if your website gets discovered by a search engine. 

Are you pondering over how it actually works? How can you get your website indexed? If yes, then this blog is for you. In this article, you will learn about web page indexing. 

Now, without any further ado, let's first know about search engines and how they actually work.
Below is an ‘at-a-glance‘ infogrophic showing how to make your website index ready and improve overall Site indexation.

 

What are Search Engines and How it works?

Search engines are one of the most common terms that we use while doing website SEO. Search engines are basically the  best SEO tools that help in finding and ranking the website content as per the queries of the users. 

Search engines and search algorithm(s) are two main parts of search engines. For improving the user experience, search engine algorithms keep on changing with time. This is all because they aim to offer the best service to the audience by keeping quality and relevancy at the priority. 

Till now, we know that search engines rank the websites. But now, the question that arises here is how it actually works and makes the decision that this is the page that needs to be ranked at the top. 

Search engine basically works in three steps, i.e., crawling, indexing, and ranking. Now, let's know each step in detail to better understand the working of search engines. 

Crawling- Basically, search engines use their own web crawlers, also referred to as search engine bots or crawlers, to crawl website pages. These bots are so advanced in technology that they can crawl thousands of billion pages in seconds. 

It will crawl each content of the page shared on the website. It helps in understanding what your website is about and rate them according to the ranking factors. 

When a user enters any search query in the search box, these bots provide the search engine a list of relevant pages that provides high quality and quantity information related to the search query.  

The crawling of web pages is done after every few days so that visitors get the latest information that can help them resolve their queries easily. 

Indexing- It's the stage where the webpage is discovered by the bots, and they try to understand what exactly the website is all about is called Indexing. This is basically done with the help of keywords. There are various SEO practices that can help search engines understand whether they should rank the content or not. 

The bots will crawl every content, Image, and embedded video present on the webpage, and all the gathered data is then stored in the Google Index, which is a Huge database storing computers. 

Ranking– Ranking depends on a number of factors. Like keyword density, keyword volume, quality of links, content information, speed, etc. By considering all these factors, Search engines rank the most relevant result at the top of the list. 

Now that you know the complete steps of how search engines work let's focus more on Indexing. 

How to check the Indexing? 

We all know that getting our website indexed by the search engines is the primary step to getting at the top of the searches. But do you know how to check whether it is indexed or not? Whether all your efforts are invested in the right direction or not? 

No worries! Here are some ways through which you can check whether your web page is indexed or not. 

Approach-1: Use Google Search Console

Google search console is one of the most valuable tools, especially when you are planning to optimize your website for Google. 

You can integrate this tool with the website in order to make the best use of it. The search console provides a performance and visibility report of the website. You can check your website's coverage report in detail. It shows which pages on your site have been indexed.

Also, it identifies URLs that have caused difficulties while Googlebot attempts to crawl and index them.

Approach-2: Use Search Operator

You can go with the approach if you don't have access to the search console. You can do a site search by using the search operator. Just type “site:domain.com” and hit enter. You will get the list of all the pages that are being indexed. 

Now, we know the entire process of how SEO works and how we can check web page indexing. 

Just images you evaluated your website and found that your website is not indexed. Now what? 

Confused, what to do next? 

Here is the solution to your problems. 

How to get your Website Indexed? 

Let's begin… 

Create or update a Sitemap

As the name suggests, a sitemap is the map of your entire website. This will showcase how your entire website looks like. If you wish your site to get indexed by search engines, you need to include all your pages (both new and old) in your website's search results. 

Basically, it's the place where the bots will discover all your pages. You should submit your updated sitemap on the search console. 

Say if your site does not have a sitemap, then crawling might take more time, due to which you might face difficulty in ranking it higher on Google.

That's correct! A proper and updated sitemap will help you get your website crawled in a few hours. Whenever you add new pages to your site, make sure it is updated in your site map.

URL Inspection

By inspecting the URLs in the search console, you can easily find the pages that are not being indexed. Say if any of the pages lies in this category, then you can click on the request indexing button, which will be available on the same page. 

Once you click on the request Indexing Button, you can inform the bots to crawl and index your page.

Obtain Quality Links

Obtaining quality links is another effective way to get your website indexed. When you link your web page with another, the path will be followed by the spiders, which further help search engines to know the authenticity of the blog. 

To get the backlink, you can always approach other websites in your niche to obtain a do-follow link. And for this, Guest blogging is one of the best ways to obtain links. 

If you are thinking of buying links, then I will recommend not to do the same because Google is totally against buying links and might penalize you for it.

Thus, make sure you link your web page with the most relevant content, as it will surely help you get your page indexed on the search engines easily. 

Obviously, the possibilities to get your site page are endless. But these tactics will surely help you in getting excellent results in less time. 

The Final Say 

Getting the pages indexed is one of the factors towards a successful website. If you don't have an indexed website, then you won't be able to drive traffic and rank higher on Google. 

Fortunately, we have various tools like Google search console that can help us in keeping an eye on the search results. Once you are sure that your site is not indexed, then you can probably end up implementing different practices that will help you in getting your site crawled and indexed. 

Hopefully, it is clearly mentioned above. So, what are you looking for? 

Start identifying the issues and fix them before it affects your site visibility.
Still, if you have any concerns, feel free to contact us.
We will help you in auditing your site and getting it ranked on Search engines.

                                                                                                                                Editor– Divya Verma

Frequently Asked Questions

To determine the indexing date of a website, initiate a Google search for the specific domain using the “site:yourdomain.com” command. Afterward, click on the three dots icon situated to the right of the site's URL in the search results. Scroll down to the “Source” section within the “About this result” box. Here, you'll discover valuable information about when the site was first indexed, including the precise month and year of indexing. This data can be useful for assessing the website's history and relevance in the online realm.

Navigate to Availability > Indexing > Is Indexing Allowed? and verify if the noindex directive is still active. If it's no longer present, you can select “Request Indexing” to prompt Google to reattempt indexing the page. If the noindex directive is still in place, you'll need to remove it for the page to be indexed.

Google employs automated programs known as crawlers to scour the internet for newly created or updated web pages. Google compiles a comprehensive list of these page addresses (or URLs) for future examination. While various techniques are used to discover pages, the primary approach involves tracing links from pages that are already in our database.

Google maintains a comprehensive database called the Google index, which stores all the webpages that the search engine has crawled and preserved for use in search result listings. Before a webpage can show up in Google's search results, it must go through the crucial indexing process. During this process, Google's web crawlers visit websites, analyze their content, and then add them to the index, allowing users to access relevant information through search queries.