SEO is the soul of every digital marketing campaign. However, the stage when you are visible in search engine results comes much later. To be visible, you must first get Google to crawl and index your website. You can improve your website’s crawlability and indexability in many ways, including the following 13 ways we’ve discussed in this blog.
- Request for Google Indexing
Use Google Search Console to request direct Google indexing with the below steps.
- Log-in into Google Search Console
- Go to URL Inspection tool
- Paste the URL Google should index for you
- Google will check the URL
- Click “Request Indexing”
However, you must note that the above method works for new pages. It might not help with old pages that already have an issue stopping them from getting indexed.
- Create an XML Sitemap
An XML sitemap helps Google find the most significant pages on your site easily. You can create an XML sitemap with a plugin or prefer doing it manually without one. Partnering with an SEO company in Bangalore can help you do it appropriately and effectively.
- Enhance Page Loading Speed
Google loves quickly loading web pages as much as users do. Hence, one of the first things to do is improve the page loading speed. You can do so in various ways like upgrading your hosting plan, compressing images to optimize them, minifying HTML, CSS, or JavaScript files to reduce their size, reducing redirects and eliminating those not required, and removing unnecessary third-party scripts or plugins.
- Optimize Your Crawl Budget
This refers to the number of pages Google will crawl on your site within a particular time frame. The crawl budget is usually determined based on different factors like the site’s health, popularity, and size. If you have an extensive site with many pages, you must optimize the crawl budget to ensure Google crawls and indexes the most vital pages.
- Measure and Optimize Core Web Vitals
Additionally, you must focus on optimizing your Core Web Vitals score. These are specific factors Google considers important in a web page’s user experience. They include,
- Largest Contentful Paint (LCP): Measures loading performance and should occur within 2.5 seconds of the beginning of the page loading process.
- Interaction To Next Paint (INP): Measures responsiveness and should have an INP of less than 200 milliseconds.
- Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS): Measures visual stability and should have a CLS score of less than 0.1.
Tools like Google PageSpeed Insights, Google Search Console’s Core Web Vitals report, or Lighthouse can help you identify concerns associated with Core Web Vitals.
- Build a Strong Internal Link Structure
Strengthening the internal link structure is fundamental to every SEO strategy. Crawlers find it challenging to crawl disorganized websites. Hence, building internal links matters while enhancing the site’s crawlability and indexability. Poor internal linking can risk orphaned pages that don’t have links to other parts of your website. Thus, the website’s sitemap is the only thing that makes it crawlable for the crawler.
Accordingly, you must create a logical internal structure for your website. Besides, you must link your homepage to page subpages. Further, these pages should have contextual links that feel organic and logical.
Additionally, you should focus on broken links, including those with typographical errors in URLs. It is because pages with broken links harm your crawlability. Fixing them with the help of an SEO agency in Bangalore can help address the issue and prevent damage.
- Submit Sitemap to Google
Businesses usually make changes to their websites. However, it is necessary to submit those changes to Google by submitting a sitemap to Google Search Console. It helps Google learn about multiple pages at the same time.
- Check for Canonicalization
When you have two more similar or duplicate pages, canonicalization helps Google know which page is the main page it should give authority to. However, you must note that this can pave the way for rogue canonical tags that refer to non-existent older page versions, resulting in the search engine indexing the wrong page and affecting the visibility of your preferred or useful pages.
- Update Robots.txt Files
These are plain text files in your website’s root directory that inform search engines of your preferred way of crawling the website. They primarily intend to manage bot traffic and prevent request overloading. This proves helpful in limiting the pages Google crawls and indexes. For instance, you might not want pages like directories in Google’s directory. Nevertheless, since these text files can affect your crawlability, you must seek professional help from an SEO agency to do what’s right.
- Conduct a Site Audit
Performing a periodic site audit with the help of experienced SEO professionals helps ensure your site is optimized for crawling and indexing. It involves various steps, including checking your indexability rate and auditing newly published pages. The indexability rate is the number of pages in Google’s index divided by the site’s total number of pages. Also, when you have published new pages to your site or updated important pages, you can go to Google Search Console and use the inspection tool to ensure they show up. If they don’t, you can request indexing on the page and see if it works.
- Look for Content Duplication
Duplicate content confuses the search engine bots, affecting crawlability. Here, your site’s coding structure is supposed to be blamed. It confuses and makes it difficult for the bot to determine which version to index. This can result from factors like redundant content, pagination issues, and session IDs.
In some cases, it will cause an alert in Google Search Console, informing you that Google is dealing with more URLs than it ideally should. However, if you don’t receive it, inspect your crawl results for duplicate or missing tags or URLs with additional characters that have been making the bots work harder than usual.
- Submit Your Site to Directories
This is traditional. However, it works significantly. It does so by helping you build fundamental backlinks and increase visibility. Googlebot and crawlers find it easier to discover your website if it is found on other established sites.
- Update Old Website Pages
Updating old website pages also is a basic thing to do. Google seldom indexes old website pages as it wants to give fresh, relevant, and updated information to its users. Accordingly, you must consider updating old web pages. To do so, consider removing low-quality pages to prioritize Google indexing for the most important ones. Additionally, refreshing content helps improve relevance and benefit rankings as Google finds doing so useful from the user intent and experience perspective.
Final Words!
So, that was about 13 proven and effective ways of indexing your website faster. Of course, there’s much more you can do to enhance Google indexing and support your SEO endeavors. However, it is best to seek expert help to learn more and implement all the above strategies as relevant and applicable to your website. BrainMine, one of the best SEO agencies in Bangalore, can help you do it. Our SEO expertise, experience, and comprehensive support can help you enhance your site’s crawlability, indexability, and rankings in the long run. Please email us at info@brainminetech.com to explore more about our SEO support and proposition.
