How to check if your pages are indexed by Google
The first step is understanding what your website’s indexation rate is.
Indexation rate = # of pages in Google’s index / # of pages on your site
You can review how many pages your website has indexed in Google Search Console’s “Index Coverage Status Report”.
If you see errors or a large number of pages outside of the index:
Your sitemap might have URLs that are non-indexable (i.e. pages set to NOINEX, blocked via robots.txt or require user login)
Your site might have a large number ‘low quality’ or duplicate pages that Google deems unworthy
Your site might not have enough ‘authority’ to justify all the pages
You can dig into the specifics in the table underneath (this is an awesome new feature in Google’s updated Search Console).
How to get pages on your site indexed
If you want to get Google’s attention, you need really need to deliver the right thing.
However, these tips are not likely to help you in regard to trust, authority, and quality, if your site’t meet the standards of Google’s guidelines.
However, you can use these tips to improve the google indexes.
1. Use Fetch As Google
Google Search Console has a feature that allows you to input a URL for Google to “Fetch”. After submission, Googlebot will visit your page and index.
Simple steps to do it:
Log into Google Search Console
Navigate to Crawl Fetch as Google
Take the URL you’d like indexed and paste it into the search bar
Click the Fetch button
After Google had found the URL, click Submit to Index
Assuming the page is indexable, it will be picked up within a few hours.
2. Use internal links
Search engines crawl from page to page through HTML links.
You can use authority pages on your site to push equity to others. You can use “Ahref” “best pages by links” report.
This report would tell you about the most authoritative pages on your site – an internal link from here to a page that needs equity, can be added.
It’s important to note that the 2 interlinking pages should be relevant – it’s not a good idea to link unrelated pages together.
3. Block low quality pages from Google’s index
Content is the cornerstone of any successful website and bad or poor qaulity content can lead to poor rating of your website. Too many low quality pages can decrease the number of times Google crawls, indexes and ranks your site.
For that reason, it is suggested that you periodically “prune” your website by removing the garbage pages. You must keep updating the content pages on your website.
Pages that serve no value should be:
Set to NOINDEX. When the page still has value to your audience, but not search engines (think thank you pages, paid landing pages, etc).
Blocked via crawl through Robots.txt.file. When an entire set of pages has value to your audience, but not search engines (think archives, press releases).
301 redirected. When the page has no value to your audience or search engines, but has existing traffic or links (think old blog posts with links).
Deleted (404). When the page has no value to your audience or search engines, and has no existing traffic or links.
Content audit tool can be used to help you in through this process.
4. Include the page in your sitemap
Your sitemap is a guide to help search engines understand which pages on your site are important.
Having a page in your sitemap does NOT guarantee indexation, but having failed to include important pages will decrease indexation.
If your site is running on WordPress, it’s incredibly easy to setup and submit a sitemap using a plugin.
Once your sitemap is built and submit is GSC, you can review in the Sitemaps Report.
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6. Share the page on high traffic sites
Sites like Reddit and Quora are popular sites that allow you to drop links. Make it a regular practice to promote recently published pages on Quora – it helps with indexation, but also can drive a ton of traffic.
7. Secure external links to the page
As previously mentioned, Google crawls from page to page through HTML links.
Getting other websites to link to yours is not only a huge ranking factor, but a great way to pick up the indexation of your website.
The easiest ways to get links:
Guest post on a relevant, authoritative website
Find relevant bloggers or media sites and reach out with an advertising report.
This is simplified enough– you can check out top link building tactics for more ideas.
