How to Get Google to Index Your Site

How much do you know about search engines? If you are like most business owners, your SEO knowledge is limited. For example, you probably know little or nothing about indexing. That’s not a problem, as long as whoever handles your digital marketing knows what it is.

Needless to say, indexing is important. You need Google to index your site or the chances of new customers finding you online are slim to none.

What It Is and Why It Matters

A search engine’s index is essentially its database of websites. Indexing is the process by which website data is analyzed and added to the database. It is a process that is handled entirely by bots and preceded by crawling. Crawling takes place when bots visit websites and gather as much information as they can. That data is used for indexing which is an important first step in the SEO marketing process.

Why does this matter? If your website is not part of Google’s index, it will never appear in a Google search. Ever. Google cannot display websites that are not in its index.

How to Know Your Site’s Status

Every website owner should know whether their site has been indexed. There is a really simple way to check by using the ‘site’ command. Go to Google, place your cursor in the search box, and enter ‘site: the_name_of_your_site.com’. If your site has been indexed, you will see its pages show up in the search results. Note that this method only checks your primary URL. If you want to check individual pages, use the Google Search Console. It identifies:

As long as your site is indexed, you have the basis for taking action to improve search engine rankings. If it’s not indexed, that is the first problem you need to solve.

How to Make It Happen

If you discover your site isn’t indexed, the first thing you can do is log on to the Google Search Console and manually submit your URL. If you want to be sure multiple pages are indexed, submit the URLs of each. It will take time for Google to crawl and index your site. So while you’re waiting:

There are more than a dozen other strategies designed to encourage Google to crawl and index your site more quickly. Most of them are highly technical, so you might want to consider enlisting the services of an SEO specialist like Webtek.

Why Your Site Might Not Be Indexed

It is always a wise idea to learn why your site isn’t indexed so that you can prevent future problems. There are more than a dozen reasons, including:

Again, all these problems can be addressed if you know what you’re doing. But if not, an experienced SEO firm will know exactly what to do. Feel free to contact us here at Webtek. We can get your site indexed and performing well on Google and Bing.