Indexing and index strategies are essential parts of technical SEO, and understanding how SEO tactics influence Google indexing is pivotal for digital marketing success. Deep dive into the website indexing lifecycle to learn how SEO index strategies can enhance visibility and traffic growth.
In this article, I focus on demystifying SEO indexing strategies that align with Google’s algorithms and provide a pathway to elevate your website’s ranking. This article will guide you through this integral aspect of SEO, integrating it into a comprehensive tech SEO framework.
Search Engine Index Lifecycle
The lifecycle of a web page, in the context of SEO, involves several stages:
- Total URLs: The complete set of URLs available on a website.
- Crawling Strategy: Determining which URLs are accessible to search engine crawlers.
- Crawlable URLs: URLs that can be accessed and scanned by search engine bots.
- Indexing Strategy: Decide which URLs that Google should include in its index.
- Indexable URLs: URLs that are deemed suitable for indexing.
- Non-Indexable URLs: URLs that are not supposed to be indexed, often by design.
Once Google identifies a URL as indexable, that doesn’t mean that Google will automatically index it. There are several reasons that an indexable URL may still not be indexed. Here is a more detailed description of websites and URLs’ index states after Google identifies them as indexable:
- Discovered but not indexed: These are URLs found by Google but which Google has not indexed. Google may not have indexed the URL due to quality issues or server overload. Recommended SEO tactics include to address this include:
- Fix any content quality issues
- Improve internal linking and overall link strategy
- Check for a server overload scenario
- Crawled but not indexed: Google has crawled the page but hasn’t indexed it, which might happen if the content quality is poor or the website architecture is not optimal. Recommended SEO tactics to address crawled URLs that Google did not index include:
- Improving content quality
- Improving website architecture
- Improving link strategies
- Duplicate without user-selected canonical: Sometimes, Google identifies a URL as a duplicate and chooses another page as canonical. SEO tactics for this scenario involve:
- Checking for duplication issues
- Ensuring the self-canonical tag renders correctly
- Excluded by noindex tag: A page might be excluded from indexing if a noindex tag is present. To make the page indexable, you need to:
- Remove this tag
- Make the page crawlable
- Proper canonical tag: If you’ve declared a canonical URL, but Google has selected another page as canonical, it’s essential to differentiate the page enough or improve the canonical hints/signals. In case Google chooses a different canonical than what the user has indicated, it’s essential to:
- Include the canonical URL in the website sitemap
- Declare the canonical URL on any duplicate pages
- Increase internal links
- Ensure the page serves a 200 status code
- Ensure the canonical page is self-referencing with a human-readable unique URL
- Indexed but blocked by robots.txt: Sometimes, Google may index a page blocked by the website’s robots.txt file. Google and other search engines respect robots.txt, but the file won’t necessarily prevent indexing in every instance (for example, if someone else links to your page). To remove the URL from the index, you should declare a noindex tag.
Master Tech SEO with Index Strategies
The path from a URL being part of the total URLs of a website to becoming an indexed page is intricate and requires careful planning and optimization. The tech SEO framework outlined here provides a strategic approach to ensure that search engines like Google can effectively discover, crawl, and index web pages.
By following the SEO tactics associated with each stage of the indexing lifecycle and implementing recommended indexing strategies, web admins and SEO professionals can improve their site’s visibility and ranking in search engine results.