When Google fails to index your web pages, it becomes one of those maddening problems that has plenty of SEO marketers sitting with their heads in their hands. The result is that a page you painstakingly spent months optimizing instantly turns into a worthless scrap of paper.
There are many ways to fix the problem of pages that aren't being indexed, but in this article we'll walk every beginner marketer through using Google Search Console, which lets you inspect data about various aspects of your website's performance, including gathering information on indexing problems that users can view right away so they can fix things in time. We guarantee that once you finish reading, you'll be able to put it into practice immediately.
What is the Index Coverage Report?
Anyone with experience in doing SEO has probably used it before. This Coverage Report page displays various details related to the indexing status of your web pages, showing what state they're in, with the following details:
How are Exclude and Error different?
Don't both Error and Excluded refer to web pages that Google hasn't indexed yet? So why doesn't Google merge these pages together to make things easier to understand? There are two reasons behind this:
- For web pages in the Error category, these are pages that Google sees as potentially having some issue that needs to be fixed before they can be indexed. In other words, there's a technical error that must be resolved first.
- For web pages in the Excluded category, these are pages that Google views as a deliberate choice by the website developer who, for whatever reason, doesn't want Google to index that page.
But the problem is that Google's algorithm for categorizing this isn't always done correctly. Sometimes a page that should be indexed ends up landing in the Excluded category. Below, we'll take a look at the most common reasons why a web page gets placed in the Excluded category.
Reasons a web page ends up in the Excluded category
Let's look at some of the reasons a web page might appear in the Excluded category, starting with:
Using the "noindex tag"
For web pages that use the noindex tag, Google interprets this as the website developer wanting to keep this page out of indexing, such as login pages, user account pages, and so on.
Quality issues
For web pages that Google has sent its algorithm to crawl but still cannot index, SEO experts have observed that the problem may lie in the quality of that web page. The recommended fix is to check whether the website meets the criteria Google recommends, such as whether the content on the page already aligns with the E-A-T guidelines, and so on.
The web page has been redirected
Naturally, a web page that has been redirected will automatically appear in the Excluded category. So don't forget to check the plugins on WordPress, because sometimes a plugin you accidentally installed may be responsible for automatically redirecting your web pages.
Whether you're an experienced SEO expert or a beginner just getting started, the important habit to build is regularly checking for various errors on Google Search Console so you can fix those problems before it's too late.
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