In 2023, research conducted by Onely found that an average of 16% of valuable pages on well-known websites aren't indexed. This means these pages are not appearing in search engine results pages (SERPs). Indexing in SEO refers to storing web pages in a search engine's database, a crucial step for visibility on platforms like Google. Google indexes just 56% of indexable URLs after one day of publication. After two weeks, just 87% of URLs are indexed. It's important to note that Google employs a sophisticated system to manage its website crawling operations. Some websites are crawled more frequently, and others are visited less often.
Search engines use complex algorithms to analyze the indexed data and determine the relevance and importance of each page. Numerous ranking factors, such as keyword relevance, content quality, and user experience, contribute to ranking pages in search engine results. When a user enters a search query, the search engine looks into its index to find pages that match the query. The algorithm considers various factors to rank these pages based on their perceived relevance to the user's search intent.
Why Is Indexing Important?
Indexing improves the ability to analyze changes in data over a specified period. It is a standard method economists and businesspeople use to enhance perspective and understanding of economic trends.
A database index is a data structure that improves the speed of data retrieval operations on a database table. When accessed, indexes quickly locate data without searching every row, significantly enhancing query performance and data access efficiency. As Douglas Dial, former CREF portfolio manager, aptly stated, "Indexing is an extraordinarily sophisticated thing to do."
Indexes power queries by providing a method for quickly looking up the requested data. Simply put, an index is a pointer to data in a table.
Indices become even more powerful when combined for analysis. For marketers and advertising professionals, a Brand Development Index (BDI) can compare a brand's sales among a particular group to its sales among the general public.
How Does Indexing Work?
To index numerical data, values must be adjusted to equal each other in a given starting time period. By convention, this value is usually 100. From there on, every value is normalized to the start value, maintaining the same percentage changes as in the nonindexed series. Subsequent values are calculated so that percent changes in the indexed series are the same as in the nonindexed.
Indexing is a way of sorting several records on multiple fields. Creating an index on a field in a table creates another data structure that holds the field value and a pointer to the record it relates to. This index structure is then sorted, allowing Binary Searches to be performed on it. The ideal indexer sees the work as a whole, understands the emphasis of the various parts and their relation to the whole, and knows—or guesses—what readers of the particular work are likely to look for and what headings they will think of.
Database indexes will also store pointers, simply reference information for the location of the additional information in memory.
There are different types of indexes, including clustered and covering indexes. A clustered index determines the physical order of data rows in a table, similar to how the pages in a book are arranged. A covering index includes all the columns needed to satisfy a query in the index itself, eliminating the need to access the actual table.
How Can You Optimise Your Website for Indexing?
A website's online visibility depends significantly on search engines. If your website is not getting indexed or it takes too long, your competitors can easily outperform you and expand their market share. A fast web page indexing process is, therefore, a no-brainer. The effects of slow web page indexing on SEO and business can be significant. If Google indexes your pages at a low speed, this will delay ranking, giving you a competitive disadvantage to stay relevant in search results.
Google supports various ways to let you opt out of crawling and indexing your URLs. If you need to block some files, directories, or even your whole site from Google Search, check out our guide about ways to prevent content from appearing in search results.
When you set up or redesign your site, organizing it logically can help search engines and users understand how your pages relate to the rest of the site.
1. Use Google Search Console to Check for Any Crawl and Indexing Issues
The Google Search Console crawl stats report is for domain-level properties only. This means you must have either a Domain property or a URL-prefix property at the domain level in Google Search Console.
If you are doing an SEO audit, you must crawl the whole website. The Google Search Console crawl stats may be a lovely addition to your audit. In one instance, an e-commerce marketplace found that selective crawling and indexing impacted tens of millions of its listing pages. After crawling millions of thin, near-duplicate product listing pages, Google eventually stopped crawling and indexing the site's new product pages.
2. Create and Submit a Sitemap
Google supports the sitemap formats defined by the sitemap protocol. Each format has benefits and shortcomings; choose the one that is most appropriate for your site and setup (Google doesn't have a preference).
| Sitemaps comparison | Pros | Cons |
|---|---|---|
| XML | Versatile, provides additional information about images, video, and news content | Can be complex to create manually |
| RSS, mRSS, Atom 1.0 | Suitable for blogs and news feeds | Limited to providing only URLs and update frequency |
| Text | Simple to create and submit | Limited to 50,000 URLs and basic information |
| Rich media sitemaps | Can improve the visibility of images and videos in search results | Requires specific tags and attributes for each media type |
While Google supports various sitemap formats, XML is the most popular and versatile. Webmasters can include additional information about each URL, such as when it was last updated, how often it changes, and its importance relative to other URLs. Most content management systems (CMS) automatically generate XML sitemaps, and CMS users can find plenty of sitemap plugins.
3. Block Pages You Don't Want the Crawlers to Index
You can control which parts of your website get indexed by using a robots.txt file. This is a text file that provides instructions to search engine crawlers. To block a specific page, you would add a line to your robots.txt file with the following syntax: Disallow: /url-slug. For example, to block the page www.example.com/welcome, you would add the following line to your robots.txt file: Disallow: /welcome.
4. Use Internal links
Internal links are hyperlinks that connect different pages within your website. They are crucial for SEO because they help search engines effectively discover and index your website's content. When you link to other pages within your site, search engine crawlers can easily follow these links to find and index new or updated content. This ensures that your website's pages are included in search engine results pages (SERPs), improving your site's visibility to potential visitors.
Internal links also contribute to distributing link equity and passing authority throughout your website. When you link from a high-authority page to other pages within your site, you effectively share that authority with the linked pages. This can boost the ranking potential of those linked pages in search engine results.
5. Be Proactive
Don't wait for search engines to find your content; submit your sitemap to Google Search Console. This will help Google discover and index your pages more quickly. Regularly update your sitemap, especially when you add new pages or make significant changes to your website.
How Can We Help?
Our team of SEO experts can help you optimize your website for indexing and improve your overall search engine visibility. We offer a range of services, including:
- Technical SEO audits: We'll identify technical issues hindering your website's indexing.
- Sitemap creation and submission: We'll create and submit a sitemap to Google Search Console to ensure your pages are indexed quickly.
- Internal linking analysis and optimization: We'll analyze your website's internal linking structure and identify improvement opportunities.
- Content optimization: We'll help you create high-quality, keyword-rich content optimized for indexing.
Contact us today to learn more about how we can help you achieve your SEO goals.
