There are many reasons why your business website might not be ranking in Google’s search results, from thin content to low-quality backlinks or other black hat SEO techniques, but one of the most common problems with websites not ranking in Google is that they’re not correctly indexed. What this means is that there’s something about your website’s architecture that’s keeping Google and other search engines from accessing your web pages in order to index them effectively.
Today our team at Big Red SEO in Omaha will go over potential indexing problems that keep your company’s website from showing up in Google’s search results, and explain what we can do to help!
Rely on Google Webmaster Tools for a Diagnosis
The first step to determine whether Google is having trouble indexing your website is to log into Google Webmaster Tools, where you can check the total number of pages that Google has indexed. You can do this by checking the “Google index” tab. If you notice that the number of pages Google has listed is lower than the number of pages your website actually has, this could signal a problem with how your site is structured.
Check for Crawler Errors
If you suspect that Google isn’t indexing your site fully, our SEO Omaha team suggests going to your Webmaster Tools dashboard and checking for Crawler Error messages. While there are many possible errors that can keep Googlebot and other search engine crawlers from seeing every page of your site, the most common is a 404 HTTP Status Code warning, which indicates that a given URL cannot be found.
Another area we at Big Red SEO commonly find problems is in a website’s Robots.txt file. This file acts as a set of instructions to search engine crawlers, telling them which parts of your site to index and which to leave alone. If this file is configured incorrectly, it can potentially tell Googlebot not to index any of your pages.
Make Sure Your Site is Logically Structured
You may be surprised at just how many websites have flawed architecture that blocks search engine crawlers’ access to important pages. Since these bots have to follow links in order to crawl and index the information on your pages, having a logical link structure (where every page is accessible by at least 1 test link) is essential to having your entire site indexed correctly.
If you find that your website needs some reorganization to make navigation easier for search engine crawlers and your website visitors, our team at Big Red SEO in Omaha can help. Our local SEO company can identify problem areas and fix your website’s architecture so search engine crawlers can find and index every page of your website.
Do You Have a Penalty?
If you don’t see any crawler errors and your site structure is sound, there are other possible reasons that your pages aren’t showing up in Google’s search results. For instance, you may find yourself dealing with a penalty from Google that deindexes your site. These penalties are usually due to black hat SEO practices that have been performed on your site in the past.
You may even be unaware that your previous webmasters have used shady tactics like hidden text, link schemes, and keyword stuffing to make your site appear higher in the search results than it should, but you can still find yourself responsible for cleaning up these messes, and that’s where our team at Big Red SEO in Omaha can help you.
Contact Our SEO Omaha Team Today at (402) 522-6468!
Whether your website’s indexing problem is caused by a bad website structure, crawler errors, or a Google penalty, we here at Big Red SEO in Omaha can help your business website get back on the right track. Give us a call today at (402) 522-6468 or fill out our online contact form to get started with a free basic website audit!