You’ve created a compelling landing page to sell your product or services. But what if you come to know, nobody can find it out! Indexing is the way to make sure that all the main search engines recognize your brand.

93.71% of the global traffic comes from search engines like Google, Bing, Yahoo, DuckDuckGO.

With landing page indexing, you attract the target audience and capture their attention. It is the first step to improving your website’s search engine rankings. Let’s explore in detail.

Google Index: What All You Need To Know

Among all the search engines, Google indexing is the most important. The reason is, it holds the lion’s share of global search traffic. Further, the Google index is the list of web pages that it knows about. Without Google indexing, your site won’t appear in search engine results.

To better understand, if you own a business that manufactures toothpaste. But, no stores or retail owners contain that toothpaste. How will consumers know its presence in the market? They might not be even aware of it. 

So, your site must be there in the database of Google to reach the users.

Why Is Landing Page Indexing Important?

The sole purpose of designing, creating, and uploading the landing page is to tell customers about your product. Its indexing is the sure-shot way to improve conversions and build a robust customer base. If your landing page is not present in the Google list, it won’t show up anywhere. 

Now, why is indexing essential? To index a page, Google spiders crawl the website. For beginners, a brief into how search engines work:

Crawling

Search engine spiders or bots crawl the website to check the indexing status. It crawls the link on the web pages to find:

• new content
• most important pages

Indexing

Search engine indexing is storing the web page into the database (Google technical name: ‘index’). Once done, it is ready to display in relevant queries.

Ranking

Search engines determine the rank of the pages using different metrics like:

• page relevance
• user experience
• high-quality content
• core-web vitals  

The function of indexing is adding the web page to the list. A database that helps search engines discover information useful for users. It doesn’t govern rankings at all. 

Google employs predetermined algorithms to decide search engine rankings like expertise, web usability, user demand, etc.  If you want your content discovered by users, make sure that it is indexable. Otherwise, it goes unnoticeable. You can impact indexing by working on how crawlers detect your landing pages. 

Is your site already indexed?

Before proceeding further, it is necessary to check if your site is already present on the Google list. It is super easy.

Just type site: www.example.com in Google search, it will show related sites in the top results. In case the required web pages are not there, it is a high-possibility that Google has not indexed them.

Here is the screenshot for the same:

Other case that the page is not present in the Google index, then it will show results like:

If it already exists, then there is space for improvement. We’ll see how you can utilize indexing to its full potential.

How long does it take for google to index a new website?

It can take a few days to a few months for Google to index a new website. We know it is difficult or even frustrating to wait for Google to index your website or new landing page. This all depends on how easy are you making for Google to crawl your website. The fact is if Google doesn’t find your website ‘worth indexing’ it will never index it. 

All you need is the make crawlers’ journey effortless to find your website. But, how?

There are several steps you can follow for efficient indexing. It will streamline your search engine indexing and fasten up the process. Let’s find out the same.

How to get Google to index my site?

Google search console is the key to get to index your site. Indexing is the foremost requirement to start with other marketing techniques like search engine optimization, paid ads, etc You can paste the landing page URL in the search console URL inspection tool. If it is indexed, it will appear “URL is on Google.” 

Otherwise, the best way is to opt for the “request indexing” button.

But yes, as earlier said it is not a one-day process. If your site is new, it will take some time for crawlers to complete verification of your site.  Also, there could be issues with the site stopping Google bot crawling. These issues will act as a barrier between indexing your site forever.  Properly setting up your site will ensure successfully indexing. This is how you can achieve it:

1. Verify your Robots.txt file

Robots .txt file tells the web spiders how to crawl your site. A little error in the Robots .txt file can stop crawlers from accessing your web pages. 

Many search engines like Google, Bing, Ask, Yahoo follow the entries of the Robots .txt file. So, it is necessary to optimize your Robots .txt file. Furthermore, you can use Robots .txt file to help bots prioritize your most important pages like landing pages. It avoids overloading the site with all requests at once. 

No doubt, these technical words seem a lot more intimidating, technical website audit makes it easier. It includes checking the correct placement of the file and matching Google guidelines. 

2. Recheck your SEO tags

SEO tags are useful in case you want to hide user information from reaching search engines. But sometimes, these tags can block the new pages from reaching your customers. So it becomes important to check if there is incorrect usage of tags like

Canonical tags

Canonical tags are useful when there are multiple versions of a single page. It tells search engines to pick up preferable pages over others. If Google bots don’t find canonical tags, it will consider the page as the preferred page, and index it.

On the other hand, if there is a canonical tag present, crawlers will assume an alternate page is present. It will leave indexing the page, even if another page is there or not. So, removing canonical tags becomes more than necessary from your website. 

Noindex tags

These are the tags that convey crawlers not to index the web pages. If your landing page is facing an indexing problem, no index tags may be the reason behind it. 

Look at these types 

• noarchive tag: noarchive tag retrains web crawlers from saving the cached copy of the pages. Generally, search engines keep indexing all the versions of the page for users and display them as desired. Use them only when you have an e-commerce site with product pages having price variations.

• X-Robots-tag: Robots tags don’t allow indexing of the pages. So, it is necessary to remove meta directives or X-Robots-tag from your pages. 

Build high-quality backlinks

Google identifies the pages with high-authority backlinks as the essential ones. It informs crawlers that these pages are relevant and trustworthy. With this, you steadfast the process of indexing.

3. Ensure proper optimization of site architecture

Smooth web navigation clears the way for search engine indexing. With unsystematic site architecture, crawlers get trapped in the loop and can’t reach the required Pages. Effective internal linking ensures that your pages are easy to find. It helps crawlers to find cream web pages from the rest.

On the other hand, non-linked are ‘orphan pages’ and don’t get indexed. Make sure your landing pages don’t remain on this list. But, how?

Create robust site architecture by following these measures:

Create XML sitemap

The XML sitemap is the secret behind productive crawling. You tell search engines the URLs present on your website and the relationship between them. Update any new entries along with images or videos. Crawlers can locate your pages without any trouble from different directions.

Add high-quality internal links

As already mentioned, crawlers find new pages with internal linking. It quickens up the process. Strategic internal linking will help you streamline indexing to high-quality internal links.

Check for nofollow links

Ensure that you haven’t assigned nofollow links on your pages. When Google bots encounter nofollow tags, it moves away without indexing them. So, remove them to ascertain indexing.

4. Double-check if pages are eligible for the index

Do pages need to be appropriate to get indexed? Yes, these are the cases why a URL may get rejected:

• Google penalty: If the URL violates webmaster guidelines, Google removes it from the indexing. Unnatural links or keyword stuffing could be responsible for this.

• 404 error page not found: The URL may be returning 404 error page not found. It could be accidental or intentional issues that need backend correction. Otherwise, it could be a server not able to pick your landing page.

• Blocked from crawling: Have you set some passwords on your page? It blocks web spiders from accessing your page.

Refer to the Google search console to see how Google is interpreting your page. Or, on-page SEO specialists can find and rectify these issues on short notice. 

5. Boost the highest-priority content

Good quality content matters the most for both indexing and ranking. High conversion pages like landing pages, most significant blog posts, home pages lie higher in the hierarchy. However, low-performing content accounts for a higher crawl budget. Also, it decreases the relevance of high-priority content. 

Google spiders look for pages that add value to the users in a unique manner. Additionally, duplicate content can invite you Google penalty or raise a red flag. So, it becomes important to remove low-quality and underperforming pages from the picture. Confirm not indexing these pages:

Thank you page

These pages are there for specific users you might have subscribed to your pages or purchased certain products or services. You don’t people skip personalized messages on thank-you pages. So, make sure that they don’t get indexed.

Duplicate content

Duplicate content pages are there to solve certain purposes like A/B testing or your team experimenting on pages before launching them. 

These are pages with little variations from the original pages. Definitely, you don’t want search engines to get confused and display duplicate content. It may affect your rankings as well. So, it is better for search engines to ignore them.

This way, you allow web crawlers to move freely in your website to get valuable content for the users.

Final words

Landing pages indexing set the pace for achieving higher rankings and ROI. If you have recently submitted your page for indexing, it will take some time for indexing. 

Otherwise, on-site issues or technical errors might be blocking crawlers. SEO experts are happy to help you index and improve the rankings of your landing pages.