If you have a website, it is very important that you have your pages indexed in Google. Simply because if your website is not indexed in Google, you are invisible to everyone. You will not appear in the search engines, and therefore you will not acquire organic traffic to your website.
what is indexing a website in Google?
Indexing is registering pages or URLs in Google's search engines, so that the pages will appear among the first results of Google's search engines.
If we stop to think about which pages or URLs we should index in Google, the answer is very simple, and we don't have to think about it. It is Google itself, when we index our website, which is in charge of crawling which pages or URLs of our website are going to be indexed.
To understand this, we are going to answer a series of questions about the Google indexing process.
which URLs should I index in Google?
We have to be quite selective about which pages we want to be indexed by Google. We are the ones who tell Google which pages to index and which not to index. This is important because the search engine will not like it if we offer pages that give a bad response in terms of user traffic. This can play a bad game with regard to the positioning of our site.
Mainly, the pages that should be indexed must respond to needs or questions that may arise in the user. Google works in a clear way; users use search engines to find information, curiosities, solve doubts, buy products or hire a service. With this we must understand that the pages that we index to Google must contain timely and relevant information, as well as our different products and services.
If the content of the page does not respond to a user's demand, the page should not be indexed.
For example, if you have an online makeup shop, the home page of our website, our different sections, our blog or a specific blog post should be indexed in Google.
It is important that we also mention the web pages that we do not want to be indexed in Google. It is true that each website has a different structure and offers products and services in a different way, so the task of deciding what should be indexed and what should not is not so simple. We must take into account specific cases to define what should be indexed and what should not.
Pages that in principle should not be indexed in Google:
- Contact pages (unless you are an important brand or a famous person)
- Privacy and cookie policies
- Author pages that make no sense to the user
- Legal notices
- Duplicate content
- Tags
- Navigation pages
does Google always follow our lead?
As mentioned above, it is Google that is in charge of crawling what will be indexed in its search engines, so we can tell Google which pages we want to be indexed, but it may end up ignoring us and publishing what it decides.
There is no 100% guarantee that what we want to be indexed in Google's search engines will be indexed. However, it is worth mentioning that Google normally does pay attention and indexes what we ask it to.
how to index a page in Google?
We have previously mentioned that Google is in charge of crawling or indexing the pages that we want to enter in the search engines. Therefore, we do not have to do anything more than perform the indexing process correctly.
However, to make it clear which pages we do not want to be indexed, we do have to resort to a few tricks.
If your website is integrated into a CMS (Content Management System) such as WordPress, you should make sure that in the 'Settings' > 'Reading' section, the 'Discourage search engines from indexing this site' box is ticked. If you want the content to be indexed, you should untick this box.
To complete the process of not indexing a URL, you must include a robots meta tag:
<meta name = "robots" content = "noindex">
By inserting this tag, we prevent content from being indexed that we do not want to appear in Google search engines.
Sitemaps to index your pages
Pages that we want to be indexed, but that Google doesn't like, can be indexed using Sitemaps. It is not necessary for small sites, and it is not mandatory, but it can help to index those pages that Google doesn't want to appear in search engines.
A sitemap is the perfect element when you want to integrate your entire website into Google, assuming that its internal linking is poor or that its structure prevents Google from being able to crawl it and find the pages that should be indexed.
In addition, the sitemap allows you to perform other more advanced functions, such as telling Google how often you change or add new content, so that the index can be updated correctly.
The clearest and easiest way to create a Sitemap is to use a plugin designed specifically for this purpose.
It is up to the search engine itself to decide which pages of your website will be indexed in Google. Although it is up to you to decide which pages you want to be indexed and which you don't, Google has the power of decision. Crawling or indexing your website in Google is an essential method to appear in the search engines and thus increase the traffic to your website. In other articles we have made clear some tips for an effective indexing in Google. We hope you have enjoyed this article!
