One of the most common questions we get is “Why is my site not being indexed by Google?”
Perhaps Google is angry with you or some shady SEOs that promised you would come up on page one.
If you’re not being indexed as quickly or accurately as you think you should be OR your website is not being indexed at all, there is a reason.
Why is this happening?
There are many reasons this could be happening, but today we will be listing the most common reasons that prevent websites from being properly indexed.
Let’s take a look at why your site is not being indexed by Google and how to fix it.
TOP REASONS GOOGLE DOES NOT INDEX YOUR SITE
Your Website Is Slow
Google does not generally like slow-loading sites. Why? Google wants to give those searching the best answer on the best performing website. If your website is slow, Google knows people will most likely bounce before your site loads and they get to see your answer. There are many reasons why a site could be slow, but if you think your site is too slow to load, there are steps you can take to improve loading speed. We have an article outlining the most popular reasons websites are slow, but we have an outline for you below.
- Subpar Hosting
- Cache Issues
- You don’t have a CDN
- Your images are taking up all the loading power
- CSS or Java issues
- Or your plugins
To identify the exact issue that is making your website slow you can use the following services:
Your Website's Content Leaves A Lot To Be Desired
Remember how I mentioned that Google wants to deliver the best answers. You need to make sure you have the best answers to the questions your desired audience is asking. This means creating content with intent in mind. Here are a few questions you can ask yourself when auditing your content to decide whether or not your website’s content is answering those questions:
- Am I creating content that my targeted audience (say your customers) would search for on Google? If it is not, then you need to work on a content marketing plan to address this issue.
- Is my content copied from another website or very similar to another website? Then you definitely have an issue. Google may have indexed your content, but, if other websites have unique content OR even if there is another website with the exact content that is a better performing website, then you will have a hard time ranking.
- Are my pieces too verbose? Too hard to read? It’s always good to keep things easy and simple when it comes to reading level when working on content. As a rule, you should write so that an 8th grader can understand what you are saying. This will change if – for example – you are writing content for a medical journal, but as a rule, most sites should keep it simple.
PLUGINS ARE BLOCKING GOOGLE BOT FROM INDEXING YOUR SITE
Most of the time, it is a robots.txt plugin. Robots.txt is used to tell good crawlers how to crawl your site. In order to make sure this is not telling Google to not crawl your site, check your robots.txt file and make sure the following is not there:
User-agent: *
Disallow: /
Simply remove the / which tells crawlers that they are not allowed to access the root folder of your website. By removing it, website’s can crawl without restriction. This can lead to other issues like bad bots over crawling and slowing down your site, but you can use a firewall service to help you in that respect.
IT COULD BE YOUR META TAGS
In this case, things are simple. Simply find the meta tags that are marked no index or nofollow so they say index and follow. If it is only a few pages this will be easy. However, if you have a larger site and this is a larger error, we can help you with that.
YOU DID NOT CREATE A SITEMAP
There are certain things that are a must when it comes to your website. A site map is one of them. A sitemap is exactly what it sounds like, a map of your website. It helps engines to more easily crawl your site.
The fix here is easy. Create a sitemap and then submit it to Google Search Console. This way you can ensure that they crawl your site faster.
YOU'RE STILL FEELING OVERWHELMED
These are only the most common reasons why your site may not be indexed by Google and other search engines. If you are feeling overwhelmed, or don’t feel confident that you will be able to find the issue and fix it, contact us below. We’ll set up a free consultation and take it from there.