Not indexing your website in Google is equivalent to wasting your content creation efforts—your URLs (pages) would be left undiscovered by users. In this post, you’ll learn about website indexing, why it matters, and how to get your website indexed by Google.
What is website indexing?
Website indexing is basically how search engines like Google understand and categorize the information found on your website. Here’s a breakdown of the process for Google:
- Crawling: Google uses a crawler called Googlebot to discover new websites, either from submitted sitemaps or updated links on indexed websites.
- Indexing: After retrieving a page, Googlebot will analyze its elements to understand what it’s all about. Google then stores this analyzed information in its massive index.
- Ranking: When a user types in a search query, Google will dig through its index and look for pages that best match the user’s intent. The most relevant and high-quality pages are ranked at the top.
Google also tracks changes occurring to the websites it has already indexed. If you update your content, Googlebot will re-crawl and re-index the page to ensure that its index reflects the latest information.
Why is it important to get your website indexed by Google?
When people search for things on Google, the search engine goes to its index to find suitable results. By ensuring that Google’s index has records of your website’s pages, you secure a chance to get your content to show up on search results pages (SERPs). But please keep in mind that indexing is only part of what a website needs to rank and get traffic. SEO is much more than indexing.
Here are a few less obvious benefits to getting your website indexed by Google:
- Increased visibility: With a chance to appear on Google search results, you open your website up to a massive audience who might be interested in what you have to offer.
- Organic traffic: People searching for information or products related to your website will now see it in search results. This is free, targeted traffic, unlike paid advertising, attracting potential customers who are already interested in what you offer.
- Potential for higher rankings: Getting your website indexed is the prerequisite for ranking at all. If your indexed web pages meet Google’s ranking factors, they may be able to rank higher and be visible to more people.
How to get your website indexed by Google
If your website provides good content, Google may index its pages without much hassle. The key is ensuring that Google can discover your pages and analyze what they offer.
Step 1: Create an XML Sitemap
An XML Sitemap is a file listing all the relevant URLs of your website. It provides Google with information about your website’s structure and content. Here’s how it helps your website’s indexing:
- Complete discovery: Sitemaps help search engines find your pages, ensuring that no pages are left unindexed.
- Priority signal: You can structure your sitemap in a way that highlights the most important pages, telling Google what content you consider the most valuable.
- Better efficiency: Crawling can be time-consuming. With sitemaps acting as a roadmap, Google can navigate through your website more quickly.
Read this posts from our friends at Ahrefs if you want to learn how to create an XML sitemap.
If you use a website builder like Webflow, Squarespace or Wix, you can typically find an automatically created XML sitemap in the following locations:
- yourdomain.com/sitemap.xml
- yourdomain.com/sitemap_index.xml
Meanwhile, you can use plugins like Yoast or Rank Math to create your sitemap if you’re using WordPress (maybe this WP indexing guide is interesting for you...).
Step 2: Add your website + XML Sitemap to Google Search Console
Google Search Console (AKA Webmaster Tools) is a free tool that you can access as long as you have a website (obviously...) and a Google account (obvious as well). If you don’t have an account yet, sign up for one (HURRY UP!).
Here’s how you add your domain / website to Google Search Console:
- Go to Google Search Console and click “Start now”.
- On the upper left, click the “Main menu” (a three-lined icon).
- Expand the “Add property” drop-down and click “Add property”.
- Click “URL prefix,” enter your website URL, and click “Continue”.
- Choose a verification method of your choice and click “Verify”.
- Click “Done”.
Note: When entering the website, make sure to use its full URL prefix, such as “https://www.example.com”.
Alternatively, it is possible to add a complete domain (with all its subdomains) in Google Search Console.
After adding your domain / website to GSC, you should add the sitemap:
Quick guide: How to submit a website to Google
Step 3: Use the URL Inspection Tool in Google Search Console
To ensure that the most important pages on your website are indexed by Google, use the URL Inspection tool in Google Search Console. This tool lets you know about the following information:
- Indexing status: Whether the page is indexed or not.
- Crawl status: The last time Googlebot tried to access the page.
- Indexing errors: Any issues that might prevent Google from indexing the page.
- Enhancements: Information about structured data, mobile usability, and more.
Here’s how you use it:
- In GSC, click the “URL Inspection” search bar.
- Type the URL that you want to check.
- You’ll see either of the following statuses once the search is over: “URL is on Google” or “URL is not on Google”.
- If you see that the URL has not been indexed, you’ll see the reason why in the URL Inspection tool.
- Resolve the issue hindering the indexing process.
- Once resolved, go back to the URL Inspection tool and hit “Request Indexing”.
Step 4: Optimize your website for crawling (and indexing)
To enhance your website’s chances of getting indexed by Google, you must optimize it in terms of structure, content, meta information, performance, and other elements. Here are a few tips that you can follow:
Improve website hierarchy
Organize your website with a clear and logical hierarchy. This makes it easy for Googlebot to navigate through your website and understand how the web pages relate to each other.
An optimized architecture facilitates the crawling of URLs on a website and makes life easier for visitors.
Ensure quality content
Create valuable and relevant content that caters to your target audience’s needs and search intent. Search engines like Google tend to prioritize those that deliver fresh and useful content. You may be able to achieve this with:
- Incorporating a few relevant keywords to titles, headings, and texts.
- Consistent posting.
- Improving meta tags.
Improve website performance (WPO)
A website that loads fast is a website that is more easily (and economically) crawlable.
Step 5: Build high-quality backlinks
Google uses backlinks to discover new pages for indexing. When a good website links to your content, it signals Googlebot that your page exists and might be worth checking out. Backlinks also serve as votes of confidence for your site, which may help in ranking.
Here are a few ways to obtain good backlinks:
- Digital PR well done (for instance, with LinkAffinity)
- Create good content (reports, infographics, tools, guides, etc.).
- Contribute guest posts to relevant websites in your niche.
- Use your interpersonal connections in the industry.
- Create content that can replace broken links on websites that point to outdated information.
- BE CREATIVE.
Step 6: Monitor your website’s indexing status
To monitor the indexing status of your website and see why some web pages are not indexed:
Step 1: In GSC, open “Main menu”.
Step 2: Under “Indexing,” click the “Pages” report.
Step 3: Find the “Why pages aren’t indexed” section:
In this section, you will see reasons for unindexed pages, including:
- Duplicate URLs
- Faulty canonical tags
- Missing pages (Error 404)
- Blocked by robots.txt file
- Issues with noindex tags
From here, you can determine what steps you need to take next to get Google to index your pages.
Step 7: Use our website URL indexing tool
Our tool (that works with GSC API + Google Indexing API) monitors indexing status, and automates and accelerates the indexing of website URLs to save headaches. It's already used by 500+ customers and works AWESOME (they say so themselves).
It is as easy as connecting to GSC, choosing the website + XML Sitemap, inviting the Service Accounts to GSC and activating auto indexing.
Conclusions
Your website will remain undiscovered until its pages get included in the index of Google (or any other search engine). The indexing process may be slow, but you can help speed up the progress following the steps mentioned in this post:
- Generate an XML Sitemap.
- Submit your website (and sitemap) to Google.
- Use the URL inspection tool.
- Optimize your website architecture / structure for crawling + indexing.
- Build high-quality backlinks (no spam, please).
- Monitor indexing status.
And if you want to manage your website URL indexing work on autopilot, INDEXED.pro, your favorite URL indexer, is here to help. Our tool automates and speeds up everything related to website indexing.