In the ever-evolving world of digital marketing, indexing remains a crucial aspect to ensure that content gets the visibility it deserves on major search engines like Google and Bing. Without proper indexing, your carefully crafted content doesn’t stand a chance of reaching its intended audience or impacting search engine result pages (SERPs), AI-generated results, discover channels, and other emerging platforms. With an increasing number of valuable deep content pages failing to get indexed, the necessity for systematic steps to optimize indexing is more vital than ever before.
Step 1: Examine your content for indexing problems
Efficient indexing begins with a thorough audit of your content to identify any issues that may hinder indexing. Utilize tools like Google Search Console and Bing Webmaster Tools to submit separate sitemaps for different page types, such as products, articles, and videos. By splitting sitemaps based on page type, it’s easier to analyze and manage how much of each content type gets indexed and to diagnose specific indexing issues more effectively. This method also enhances the clarity and efficiency of the audit process.
Indexing issues typically fall into three primary categories: poor SEO directives, low content quality, and processing issues. Poor SEO directives arise from technical missteps, like blocking pages in robots.txt files, using incorrect canonical tags, noindex directives, 404 errors, or implementing 301 redirects. Addressing these issues involves removing problematic pages from the sitemap and ensuring SEO directives are correctly implemented.
Low content quality is often marked by soft 404s or content quality issues. When identified, it is crucial to ensure all SEO-relevant content is rendered server-side and to improve the content’s value by enhancing its depth, relevance, and uniqueness. Processing issues, often signaled by “Discovered – currently not indexed” or “Crawled – currently not indexed,” are more complex and require consistent monitoring and adjustments to resolve.
Step 2: Submit a news sitemap for quicker article indexing
For faster indexing of articles, one of the most effective strategies is to submit a News sitemap in Google. This specialized sitemap is designed to prioritize the indexing of articles published within the last 48 hours. The News sitemap includes specific tags that expedite the crawling and indexing of fresh content, ensuring that newly published articles gain visibility more rapidly. Even articles that are not traditionally “newsy” can benefit from this approach, as the aim is to highlight recent content in the most efficient manner possible.
Submitting a News sitemap is a straightforward process, but it requires regular maintenance to ensure its effectiveness. It’s important to refresh the sitemap frequently, keeping it updated with new articles while removing older content that no longer needs the enhanced indexing speed. Regular updates ensure that the search engines continuously recognize the sitemap’s relevance and give priority to the newly added content. By doing this, publishers can maximize the visibility and reach of their latest articles, keeping their audience engaged with the freshest content.
Step 3: Utilize Google Merchant Center feeds to boost product indexing
For businesses that rely heavily on product indexing, leveraging Google Merchant Center feeds can significantly enhance visibility. Adding and maintaining the entire active product catalog in the Google Merchant Center helps ensure that all products are indexed and displayed in relevant search results. Google Merchant Center feeds provide detailed information about products, including descriptions, images, prices, and availability, which enhances their chances of being indexed and ranked appropriately.
Maintaining the product feed involves regular updates to reflect changes in the product catalog, such as new products, discontinued items, price adjustments, and stock availability. This continuous update process ensures that the product information remains accurate and relevant, making it easier for search engines to index and present these products to potential customers. Accurate and up-to-date product feeds not only boost indexing but also improve the overall shopping experience, leading to higher customer satisfaction and improved sales performance.
Step 4: Provide an RSS feed to hasten fresh content indexing
Another method to accelerate the indexing process of newly published content is to create an RSS feed that includes content published within the last 48 hours. Submitting this RSS feed in the Sitemaps section of both Google Search Console and Bing Webmaster Tools can significantly enhance the frequency with which new content is crawled and indexed. RSS feeds are inherently designed for frequent updates, making them a valuable tool for quickly notifying search engines of new content.
RSS feeds, combined with WebSub pings, provide a proactive way to ensure that indexers are immediately alerted to changes in content. This immediate notification system helps prioritize the crawling and indexing of fresh content, ensuring that it gains visibility soon after publication. Integrating WebSub within the RSS feed can further enhance its effectiveness, making sure that new content is always at the top of the indexing queue. By leveraging these proactive measures, content creators can ensure that their latest updates reach the audience without any delay, maintaining engagement and relevance.
Step 5: Use indexing APIs for swifter recognition
To further expedite the indexing process, integrating indexing APIs such as IndexNow and the Google Indexing API can be highly effective. IndexNow allows unlimited API calls and can help speed up the discovery and indexing of new content across participating search engines. On the other hand, the Google Indexing API, which is officially limited to job postings or broadcast event markup, can be leveraged for quicker indexing, although the number of calls is capped at 200 per day unless a quota increase is secured.
Deploying these APIs involves technical integration within the website’s infrastructure, ensuring that each new piece of content is promptly submitted for indexing. The usage of these APIs facilitates quicker detection and crawling by search engines, reducing the time lag between content publication and its appearance in search results. By optimizing the use of IndexNow and Google Indexing API, website owners can significantly enhance the efficiency of their indexing process, ensuring timely visibility for all new content.
Step 6: Improve internal linking to enhance indexing signals
Internal linking plays a pivotal role in the indexing process, as most indexers discover content through links. Strengthening internal linking structures can significantly boost indexing signals, helping search engines prioritize URLs higher in the crawl queue. Internal links, such as related content blocks, pagination, breadcrumbs, and links on the homepage, should be optimized for better indexing results.
URLs with stronger internal link signals often carry more indexing power, making it essential to strategically place internal links, especially for deep content pages that require more attention. Focus on non-indexed URLs by checking new URLs against log files and monitoring Googlebot activity. If a URL is detected as “Crawled, not indexed,” or “Discovered, not indexed,” add it to a dedicated feed linked from the homepage. This real-time RSS feed of non-indexed content linked from a high-authority page like the homepage can accelerate the indexing process, resulting in higher visibility for important pages.
Step 7: Restrict non-SEO relevant URLs from crawlers
To ensure that the crawlers’ resources are allocated efficiently, it’s crucial to block non-SEO relevant URLs from being crawled. Pages such as faceted navigation, search results, tracking parameters, and other irrelevant content can distract crawlers, create duplicate content, and split ranking signals. Using a robots.txt disallow directive helps prevent these pages from being crawled, ensuring that crawlers focus on the most valuable content.
However, a robots.txt disallow directive alone may not be sufficient. Pages with internal links, traffic, or other ranking signals might still get indexed despite being disallowed by robots.txt. To prevent this, apply “rel=nofollow” to all links pointing to these pages, ensuring that they do not pass link equity. Additionally, any external references to these pages should also be managed to prevent discovery. By fully restricting non-SEO relevant URLs, the crawl budget can be optimized, ensuring that the most crucial content receives the attention it deserves.
Step 8: Deploy 304 responses to aid crawlers in prioritizing new content
For most websites, a significant portion of crawling is invested in refreshing already indexed content. Returning a 304 HTTP response code (“Not Modified”) for content that has not changed can optimize the crawl budget. This response code informs crawlers that the page’s content remains unchanged, allowing them to allocate resources to new content instead.
This method is particularly useful for large websites with frequently updated content. By systematically implementing 304 responses, you can help search engines prioritize new content over unchanged pages, ensuring that newly published content gets indexed faster. It involves technical adjustments to server configurations to accurately respond with 200 or 304 status codes based on content updates. Correctly deploying 304 responses enables more efficient use of crawling resources, facilitating better exposure for fresh content.
Step 9: Manually request indexing for challenging-to-index pages
For stubborn URLs that refuse to get indexed despite multiple efforts, manually requesting indexing in Google Search Console can be an effective last resort. Even though there is a limit of 10 manual submissions per day, this strategy allows for focused attention on the most crucial pages. When dealing with hard-to-index pages, manual submission ensures these URLs are directly reviewed and potentially indexed.
Manual submissions in Bing Webmaster Tools, however, do not offer significant advantages over the IndexNow API. Therefore, using the IndexNow API remains the most efficient approach for Bing. Consistent tracking and re-evaluation of non-indexed pages are crucial, applying manual submissions judiciously to maximize their effectiveness.
Maximizing Google’s and Bing’s visibility
In the constantly changing landscape of digital marketing, indexing is a key component to guarantee that content garners the visibility it deserves on major search engines such as Google and Bing. Proper indexing is essential; without it, your meticulously prepared content has no chance of reaching its target audience or making an impact on search engine result pages (SERPs), AI-generated results, discovery channels, and other emerging platforms. As more valuable deep content pages fail to get indexed, the need for systematic steps to enhance indexing has become more critical than ever. The rapid growth of digital platforms and the increasing complexity of search algorithms underscore the importance of ensuring that each piece of content is properly indexed. This ensures that the content stands the best chance of being discovered, consumed, and valued by users across the digital sphere. Investing time and effort into refining indexing practices is indispensable for creating effective and accessible digital content.
