Are you one of those people who believe that merely a website for your company is enough? That you are then visible online? The users then enter some keyword in the Google search. And if you have something on the website, they’ll find you. NOT CORRECT! That is not enough because you have to be in the Google index!
What is the Google index, and why is it so important?
When you search on Google, you don’t search the Internet at all, just the Google Index. It is a database that contains all indexed pages worldwide that can be displayed on a Google search query. That means: Not all web addresses are in the Google index, which can be a big problem. Because Google is still the most popular search engine worldwide and search engine marketing is an essential factor in lead generation or new customer acquisition on the Internet. And therefore particularly important for your SEO.
Google works much like a traditional library. If you want to find a specific book in a library, you search for it in the database or the online catalogue. If the book is not in the database, you will not find it. The Google Index works on the same principle.
The Google database is not static, but dynamic
Google roots in the so-called crawling process(also called ‘spider’ or ‘crawler’) daily on the Internet and click on links to check where they lead. The crawl process begins on large websites like Wikipedia or Yahoo.
The robots then crawl the entire domain and click on all the links that take them to other websites. The whole process is then repeated there and continues until every website that contains a link to another website has probably been examined. As the crawlers slowly crawl across the web, they continuously send information back to Google. This information provides information, for example, about the content of a website and the keywords used. The Google Index stores this information. Now when people use Google Search
The Google Index is, therefore, always the first fundamental step for SEO marketing and search engine optimization. Because to ensure that your website is ranked within Google, it must first be in the Google index. Only then can the actual ranking of each page be improved and fed with the right keywords. You also know the goggle guidelines best.
Which pages are in the Google Index and when does No Index make sense?
How can you find out which of your pages are listed in the Google index? There are two answers and two simple options, the “site: query” and the Google Search Console.
Check index with “site: query.”
The “site: query” is child’s play. With a simple search query, you can quickly check the number of your pages indexed by Google. To do this, go to Google and enter the following search query: site: www. [Your website] .com . Then you will be shown the number of your indexed pages.
Check index with Google Search Console
The Google Search Console also offers you an easy way to determine the number of your Google index pages. The following steps are necessary:
- Log in to the Google Search Console and select the desired website.
- Click on “Google Index” in the navigation on the left and on “Indexing status” in the following submenu.
If you don’t want a particular page of your website to be indexed, you can use the meta tag “NoIndex”. This snippet of code tells Google that the corresponding page is not indexed and should also not be found via Google Search.
The full-day looks like this and is in the header of the website code:
<meta name = “robots” content = “noindex” />
For search engines, this code means: “Stay away from this page and forget that this encounter has ever taken place!”
Why should you use the no index?
Basically, only those pages should be found on Google that offers your visitors real added value and benefit. Indexing makes little sense for pages that are only intended for specific people. For example:
- Email Promotion: A special promotional page that only addresses specific customers via email promotions who have given their email address
- Subpages without real added value
- Privacy policy websites
- Thank you pages (e.g. after registering for a newsletter)
- Filter pages in shops with the same content, but different sorting
- Employee pages: Internal pages that are only intended for employees and that can be accessed via a link or an email
So think carefully about which pages you want to add the NoIndex code to. A small mistake can lead to a significant disaster. Imagine that your homepage is accidentally provided with a NoIndex tag. With the speed at which Google indexes the pages, your traffic and probably your sales would drop drastically within a few hours. Therefore our recommendation: Regular monitoring and tracking changes in the header area of the HTML files.
If you are still a bit baffled, you can contact me. The FREE visibility analysis, in particular, helps when it comes to ranking in the search engines. In this way, together with you, I uncover dormant potential for better visibility. With the helpful tips by me, you can start optimizing yourself.
Google is not indexing; how can I add my page to the index?
There are various ways to get your website (s) into the Google index. We introduce you below:
Create a sitemap:
- A sitemap is an XML document on the server of your website that lists every single site on your website. It shows Google when and how often new pages were added or changed. You can also use the sitemap to specify how often a search engine should search for new products, news or other content on your page. If you use WordPress, you can install the “Google XML Sitemaps” plugin. This automatically creates and updates your sitemap. Tools such as the XML Sitemaps Generator are also practical.
Submit your sitemap to Google Webmaster Tools
- Every sitemap should be added to the Google Webmaster Tool. If you don’t have a Google account yet, you can create a free Google account and sign up for Webmaster Tools. Then add your website to the webmaster tools as follows: Go to Index→ Sitemaps, click on add and select the link of your sitemap. Finished!
Install Google Analytics
- Either way, you need Google Analytics to track your data and statistics. Without it, SEO is complicated. In addition, the tool Google also draws attention to the fact that a new website must be taken into account.
Submit your website URL to search engines
- You can also enter your website manually at Google & Co. Simply log in with your Google account and go to the webmaster tools under the option “Enter URL”. You can also add your website to Bing.
Create or update your social media profiles
- As already mentioned, the crawlers get to your website via links. How do you get links quickly? For example, by creating profiles on social media platforms for your website – or adding your URL to existing profiles. This includes profiles on Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Pinterest, YouTube, etc. Our tip: Create a video for YouTube that introduces your new website and add a link to the description of the video. You then share this video across all social media platforms. This method is also ideal for ensuring that new content is quickly discovered on your website – by readers and crawlers.
Create offsite content
- Offsite content is also about link building or backlink building. For example, you could publish the latest posts as a guest on blogs in your industry or SEO-optimized press releases. However, please note: This is also always about content marketing, i.e. high-quality content. Avoid spam and try to offer your readers added value. Also, keep in mind that search engines are increasingly using semantic search. The search queries are considered in context. If you want to find out more, go to the link.
In addition, technical SEO and structured data (keywords: schema org SEO, schema.org, structured data Google, markup, Google schema ) are becoming increasingly important.
What does Google Analytics and Search Console have to do with the Google Index?
The Google Search Console provides you with a lot of valuable information about your website and the Google Index and is an excellent tool for monitoring the status of your website on Google. Whether you want to find out why your website is suddenly no longer indexed or if you’re going to optimize your keywords – the Google Search Console should be your first port of call. Here are some of the key Search Console features:
Index status report:
- This function shows you how many URLs of your website were found and included in the Google index. This gives you a good idea of how your website is indexed – and keeps track of any major or unexpected changes.
Blocked resources:
- Restricted resources are all website elements that block or prevent the crawling process. Since you want to make sure that the Google Crawlers can see all of your content that is important for your SEO campaign, you should have an overview here.
Remove URLs:
- The page removal tool is a temporary method to remove certain URLs from Google. Google will re-enter the page after 90 days if the necessary steps for permanent removal are not taken.
Keywords:
- The Search Console also gives you an overview of which keywords are recognized by Google and are important for your website. You can also recognize keyword cannibalization in this way. This allows some important conclusions to be drawn about your website and tells you, for example, which keywords Google considers particularly important. Here you can decide whether this corresponds to your ideas about what your website is about and make adjustments if necessary. For example, with a keyword tool.
Crawl Report:
- You will find errors in the crawl report if the crawlers cannot find a page via an internal or external link. The errors should be fixed at the source – or a 301 redirect can also be added.
Crawl stats:
- Here you can find out how Google searches your domain. For example, you can see how many pages are crawled per day, how many kilobytes are downloaded per day, and how long it takes to download a page (in milliseconds).
Sitemaps:
- As mentioned earlier, sitemaps are a great way to tell Google which pages to crawl. Depending on how often you update your domain, it makes sense to update the sitemap regularly. This ensures that Google finds every page and every new content. The sitemaps report shows you how many of your pages have been indexed. Don’t worry: it’s normal for fewer pages to be found in the Google Index than you submitted.
Google Analytics is one of the most important tools for monitoring and analyzing the traffic on your website – and provides you with an enormous amount of information about the Google Index, who visited your website, what people search for you and with which search terms they get to your website, This makes Analytics extremely valuable for scaling your business, increasing the conversion rate and increasing your sales. Here are the most important data that the tool provides:
- Where do your visitors come from? Very important to address your target group efficiently.
- How did your visitors find your website? Very important to determine which of your methods are efficient and which are not. For example, you can see how many of the visitors found you through the Google Index and how many came to you through recommendations and external links (e.g. on Twitter, Facebook).
- Which web browsers are used by your visitors? If you know which web browsers your visitors are using, you can optimize your website accordingly.
- Which keywords were used by your visitors to get to your website? If you know which keywords are primarily used, you can optimize your content accordingly and improve your ranking in the Google Index.
Good article