Top 5 Reasons Why Website Pages are not Being Indexed by Google? How to Fix it?

By | Date posted: | Last updated: December 29, 2020
Website Index in Google

You have finally put your new website online and are excited about the visitors. But nobody comes – because after months your URLs still don’t appear in Google search results. In this article, you will learn more about possible reasons and learn how to fix errors. For a basic explanation of how Google Search works and how pages are crawled and indexed, read the following blog.

A crawler – what is it?

Even the most beautiful web presence has to be indexed so that online readers can discover it. The prerequisite for this is that the Googlebot crawls it: A program controlled by algorithms finds your website and lists all the links that should be crawled. The Googlebot takes the information and sorts it in an index with regard to its relevance and possible target groups.

Your page is never directly indexed

It repeats this process at regular intervals, so your website is not crawled just once. So, don’t panic if it doesn’t work right away – the Googlebot needs time with the mass of web information that has to be processed every day worldwide. Due to a limited crawl budget, it often does not search the entire website, but only selected pages. You can find a clear statement about this in the Google Search Console Forum. However, if too many of your pages are being ignored, you should find the sources of the error. Google does not crawl all pages on the web, and it does not index all of the pages it crawls.

No indexing: first quick measures

On the one hand, Google supports you in the search for clues in the Search Console in the “crawling” area. In the “Crawling Errors” report you can find out whether errors have occurred in the last 90 days. They could have prevented Googlebot from accessing certain areas of your website. The heading “URL errors” indicates missing 301 redirects and pages not found (404 errors). The “site query” on Google gives you an additional overview. To do this, first enter your domain in the following format in the Google search:
site: exampledomain.com

Check which pages are affected

If you are asked whether you own this domain, you should first register the page in the Google Search Console. Log in with your login and select “Add property” on the start page. Here you enter the domain. You will receive information on how to confirm your ownership. The best thing to do is to download the given code and upload it to your website. However, if your site is already “known” to Googlebot, you will see your indexed URLs at this point. Does the number of pages roughly correspond to the number posted online or are there major deviations? Check the following five points if there are any discrepancies.

1. Non-existent XML sitemap

Web crawlers like Googlebot scour the Internet for new content and wander from page to page. At least one link should lead to your page, otherwise it will remain invisible to the bot. This is not a problem with good on-page optimization – every new page will be found at some point. However, to speed up the search process, you should create an XML sitemap for Google as an indexing aid.

This is XML and this is how you work with it:

XML sitemaps are standardized text files that contain the structure of your website in machine-readable form and that search engines can easily interpret. Not only do they convey the URLs to Google, but also the date and frequency of changes, and the priority or hierarchy of the page content. Content management systems such as WordPress offer plugins and tools for creating a sitemap, but you can also create them manually. If your uncompressed sitemap is larger than 10 MB, you have to break it down into several smaller sitemaps and submit them in a sitemap index file.

Add a sitemap: Here’s how

The easiest way to submit them to Google is to use the Google Search Console’s Sitemaps tool. Log in to your account and select the relevant website. In the left tab you will find the item “Crawling” and under its “Sitemap”. If one has not yet been submitted, you will see an error message. If you click on “Add sitemap”, your URL and an empty field will appear in which you can insert the created sitemap. Google will suggest other ways for you to submit a sitemap as well. If you have a good knowledge of code changes, enter the path to your sitemap by adding the following line anywhere in your robots.txt file: sitemap: http://exampledomain.com/sitemap_location.xml

Possible sitemap errors

Even if you have already submitted the sitemap, errors can occur, which you can also identify in the “Sitemaps” area of the Search Console. Below are some of the problems that Google lists under “Sitemap errors and solutions”.

  • URLs not accessible / URL not allowed

    Check that your file is in the right location and on the right level. Make sure that all URLs start with the same domain name as the location of your sitemap, i.e. uniformly with www., Http or https.

  • Unseen URLs / 404 errors

    Google cannot process your sitemap completely. This happens, for example, when some URLs contain too many redirects that the Googlebot cannot retrieve. Get rid of your broken links and set up permanent redirects.

  • Invalid or incomplete URL

    URLs are invalid if they contain unsupported characters, i.e. are not coded in a legible manner, or if the formatting is specified with https: // instead of http: // (or vice versa).

2. Duplicate content

Also, check to see if Google has indexed your preferred page or a different version of the domain name. If http://exampledomain.com was not indexed, add http://www.exampledomain.com and the possibly existing https version to your account. Click on your website on the Search Console homepage and enter under the gear icon “Website settings” which page Google should index.

Set the canonical tag

Also use the canonical tag to avoid duplicate content: It is placed in the header of the source code and shows the crawler which of the URLs is the original source. This can then look like this for the preferred domain:

<link rel = “canonical” href = “http://www.example.com/example.html” />

But be careful: the canonical tag is not necessary everywhere and it can cause gross crawling errors if handled incorrectly. It may not appear in the body area of the page source text or be used twice in the metadata.

3. Technical requirements for indexing

Status Codes:

Also deal with the HTTP status codes of your site: Check regularly whether 301 redirects are not working or whether 404 status codes exist. Pages with this status cannot be found for potential readers and web crawlers. Links that refer to such sites are called “dead links”.

Robots.txt file:

The problem may also be in the robots.txt file. The robots.txt file is a text file that can be used to specify which areas of a domain may and may not be crawled by the search engine’s crawler. Webmasters can use it to influence the behaviour of search engine crawlers. Directories that should not be indexed can be marked with “Disallow”.

User agent: * Disallow

With this command, you tell web crawlers to ignore entire areas of the page. You can also find out whether the Googlebot is being blocked by the robots.txt with the “Access as by Google” report in the Search Console. By the way, after a relaunch at the latest, a thorough check of the robots.txt is generally recommended.

Metatag “noindex”:

With the entry “noindex” in the meta tags, a search engine robot is informed that the visited page should not be included in the index. With “noindex” webmasters have the possibility to influence the indexing of their pages. The use of the noindex tag can be useful for:

  • internal search results pages
  • double category pages
  • copyrighted content

“Nofollow” attribute:

The rel = “nofollow” attribute is a micro-distinction in the HTML code of a website. It is used to mark-up certain links so that they are not included in the formation of the Google index. The rel = “nofollow” attribute tells the search engine robots that crawl a website that they do not have to or may not follow this link.

4. WordPress settings

If you use WordPress as a content management system and your blog is not indexed, the solution can be very close. Check in the “Settings” area in the left column whether the “the Search Engine Visibility” function is not activated. Check the option. Save Changes, and it is! WordPress will update the robots.txt file to you automatically.

5. Bad Neighborhood

When you’ve bought a domain, you’re immediately wondering which backlinks are used to get new traffic to your site. Link farms or purchased links are of course, out of the question, rather high-quality links with a thematic reference. If your page is still not indexed, look into its history. Have previous owners possibly placed bad neighborhood links, spam or hidden elements on the site?

Explain the change of ownership to Google

If a bad link points to a website or an outbound link points to a website with many bad links, then that website is in a bad neighborhood and is losing its trust from Google. It can be a bad quality link if one of the websites violates the guidelines of search engines such as Google or Bing. If the site has received a previous penalty from Google and has been deindexed for this reason, submit a ” Request to review the site ” and explain to Google that you have unknowingly taken over a domain that unfortunately did not meet Google’s guidelines. Checking and re-indexing is possible, but may take some time.

Conclusion: indexing is mandatory

The indexing of the homepage and subpages are essential for your success on the Internet. So, take the time to check for any web crawling errors with the Google Search Console. Follow the webmaster guidelines, avoid bad links and hidden text. Technical pitfalls such as incorrectly programmed robots.txt files, “nofollows” in meta tags or multiple indexing are also common reasons for poor visibility. And of course, the content has to convince Google! This rarely works with a simple landing page without links.

Do you need any help regarding why your website is not being indexed by Google? Or want to fix them? We are happy to assist you.

If you are looking for SEO Services, Social Media Services, PPC Campaign, Digital marketing Services, Please Explore our SEO Packages! We also provide regular website maintenance services from a small content update, webmaster sitemap updates, bug fixing, troubleshooting, critical security updates, SSL certification, module configuration, installation to version upgrades and much more. For more information, explore our website maintenance services.

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Top 10 Tips for International SEO!

By | Date posted: | Last updated: April 23, 2021
International SEO

In international SEO, your global websites shouldn’t be the “copied and pasted” version of your home country website in different languages, although this is what happening to a lot of websites. Yes, translating and localizing website content is one of the first steps. But then you need to optimize the websites for the local audience of each country, from news and offers to the general user experience of the website. A website with popular and high performing content may not be as and may require additional editing and tweaking. While paying attention to each location, you need to keep an eye on the overall performance.

International SEO can be a crucial way for your business to improve reach. With a short research on the Internet you will find a competent contact person when it comes to the topic of SEO. There are many SEO agencies that specialize in international SEO in addition to normal SEO. This is where you can find the best advice and support for implementing SEO on your websites. In the following, several tips and tricks are described in more detail on how you can take advantage of international SEO. You can check out SEO Myths And Facts that you must know for SEO best Practice.

Tips for international SEO

1. Should you go global and what exactly is your market like?

If you are unsure of the opportunities in different countries, it is always a good idea to check out some market reports, statistics, and even your own website data.

Here is some information to help you decide or prioritize the countries/markets to search for.

Government and trade organizations websites provide the latest international business and trade news and statistics.

Many companies offer internet-related reports and statistics. There are also numerous websites with information on specific countries.

Your own analytics data. Do you see anyone from other countries visiting your site? Is there a country that sends more traffic to your website than others? It’s worth paying attention to, especially if some of them are already converting.

2. Do you need a site for each country?

If the market is big enough, it definitely is. Not only for SEO reasons, but also to provide a better user experience for local visitors, it is always better to have a separate website for each of your target countries. However, this may not be a viable option for you, at least not to begin with. In this case, you will have a website for each language spoken in your target country.

3. Which domain should you have – ccTLD or gTLD?

When you asked this question in 2008, answer has always been to go with a ccTLD. The reality is that not everyone can have this option for various reasons. In 2018, this has less of an impact on your SEO performance than the search engines. You also have other options for specifically geolocating the websites with Google.

4. What type of hosting should you get?

The website host’s location was one of the important signals for international SEO related to geo target. However, it is no longer so important that we have other ways to correctly display your website’s target market to search engines and regionally managed CDNs. The host location has a huge impact on page speed. Make sure that your site is quickly accessible in the target countries.

5. Have you observed the safety regulations in the respective country?

Every company is obliged to have electrical devices and machines, equipment and electrical systems checked at regular intervals. Occupational and operational safety are two essential principles for avoiding accidents and can be relevant for international SEO, depending on the selected target country and planned logistics. For example, if you operate a distribution warehouse abroad / in the respective country: If there is an accident at work, the certified results of the e-checks are decisive for the insurance to cover the costs.

Secure e-checks: employees work in accordance with ISO 9001: 2015

Both the testing of electrical systems and the testing of portable electrical equipment serve the early detection and elimination of wear and its consequences. Structurally regulated work processes, strict quality management and core competence ensure satisfied customers and legally secure results with a certificate.

The medium-sized company uses state-of-the-art technology and finds possible weak points, impending wear and tear and repair needs. Even if the test reveals a small deficiency, the client has the chance to receive the important certificate. Because the company’s employees can carry out the repairs directly on site and thus create the basis for passing the e-test. It is obvious that such a requirement entails monetary losses and operational downtimes and is an indicator for having the e-check carried out by a specialist in good time.

6. Google or not Google?

While Google is by far the most widely used search engine in the world, some countries have local search engines that are far more popular than Google. If your destination country is one of the countries which most widely used local search engine, you will need to be extra careful when monitoring these local locations and doing any additional optimization work.

7. Plan resources

One of the biggest challenges facing most global website companies, is finding local resources. Nobody has the luxury of having unlimited resources in every target country, and this can become a major bottleneck, especially since SEO is not a “one-time” project but requires continuous effort. The key is to plan ahead of time the distribution of tasks and responsibilities between headquarters and local offices:

Technical resources: IT and web operations

Language resources: Localization and optimization of content

Website data analysis: Reporting and discovering SEO opportunities

At this point, you may not have offices or representatives in other countries or resources available in local offices. In these cases, you have to consider whether you want to hire one or more external resources.

8. Research

An international SEO process should start with some initial research to validate the starting point and potential for each international market. This is a great way to prioritize and set your goal.

Your current international organic search status:

The first step is to find out the current visibility, traffic, conversions, and conversion rate of your international organic search by answering the following questions:

  • What other countries and languages already have organic search visibility and traffic?
  • How big is the volume and the trend of the visibility of the organic search and the hits from the individual countries and languages over time?
  • What keywords and pages generated search visibility and traffic for each of the best identified international markets?
  • What is the organic search click-through rate and the conversion rate of visitors from the most important international markets?
  • What sales volume and what trend are these international markets recording?

9. Targeting

In which countries is the organic search volume of relevant and relatively competitive keywords sufficient to offset your SEO efforts? Select these to set priorities in your international SEO process. If you have found that the organic search volume is insufficient for a particular country, you can first select the language. While this is not ideal as each version should be as targeted as possible for the audience, if you have found that traffic is too low when you rate each country individually, it is much higher when you target its language.

10. Optimization

After you’ve chosen the international web targeting you want and the type of structure to use, you need to tweak it to make sure it’s crawled, indexed, relevant, and provide the targeting signals you want to avoid misalignment in search results.

  • Crawlability and Indexability:

    Since each of your international web versions must be crawlable and indexable, they must be listed in their own URLs in the appropriate web structure and must not use scripts or cookies that do not allow search engines to index the content correctly.

  • Relevance:

    It is essential to translate or localize the various elements of the pages of each of your international versions using the keywords and phrases you identified during the initial research (if the country was selected). These elements include headings, URLs, meta tags, information, ratings, prices, contact details, etc.

If you are looking for the opportunity to boost your web presence to an international audience, international SEO would be a good choice. Do you need any help regarding your website’s SEO? We are happy to assist you. If you are looking for a website SEO, website analytics, digital marketing service and more, please explore our SEO Services! We are also providing regular website maintenance and support services. For more information, please explore our website maintenance services!

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How to Build stand out Content Marketing Strategies for B2B Organization?

By | Date posted: | Last updated: December 29, 2020
b2b Content Marketing

Content marketing has long been considered an important strategic measure in B2C. Now it is being discovered more and more by B2B – and rightly so, because business customers are already waiting for it.

Strictly speaking, there is no difference between a B2B and B2C content marketing concept. The only difference lies in the requirements of the industry target groups themselves. The fact that B2B providers are now discovering content marketing for themselves is primarily due to the fact that the needs of their target groups have changed.

The annual budget for digital content marketing is significantly higher in B2C than in B2B. The B2C sector has been expanding its image with content marketing for a long time, generating new customers and retaining existing customers, increasing leads and traffic and improving conversion rates on websites. For many B2B providers, however, the type of information management that content marketing entails is still new.

New B2B business model: Push becomes pull

In the past, it was a matter of “tracking down” business customers (or their representatives) in order to then address them directly (analogue). Sales made acquisitions over the phone, through advertising brochures and flyers, or with direct mail. The aim was to invite the potential customer to a meeting in which more in-depth information and options relating to the offer could be passed on.

And this is exactly where the decisive difference to the past lies – Most customers no longer want to be addressed directly. Those interested prefer to get their information themselves first – mostly on the Internet.

Educational content: From product to information marketing!

The need for information is very high, especially for complex products or larger purchasing volumes. After all, there is a great investment risk – which, by the way, is an important difference to B2C. For this reason, the research and decision-making process for buyers takes longer. The expectations of information and its depth are accordingly high.

The “new” demands of B2B target groups require new solutions and approaches in the provision of information. The content has to be easy to find, up-to-date, well researched and presented in a way that is easy to understand.

The current magic word for the industry: Educational Content. This is nothing more than content that is of high quality and aims to “educate” the reader, i.e. to provide the best possible information. This form of content enables companies to position themselves as experts and thus to create authority, credibility and trust. In addition, Google recognizes high-quality content and “rewards” it with a better ranking.

Speaking of Google: Before producing the content, an extensive SEO analysis include keyword research on the most important search terms of the target groups should be carried out. The search terms used by customers may in part differ from the company-specific (and internally requested) terms.

Website and formats intended for business customers

Another difference to B2C is that the website plays an even bigger role in B2B. In the past, the website of companies that maintained relationships with other companies functioned primarily as an archive for press releases, brief information in the catalogue as a prominent contact point for sales.

The B2B website should primarily address the new demands of the target group. It should therefore provide a direct overview of products, solutions as well as their functionalities and their usability. Content should move away from product marketing towards relevant information marketing. The customer’s need for information takes precedence over the company’s advertising messages. Values and visions can also be conveyed through practical experience of users or interviews with customers.

B2B touchpoints: Social media has come of age!

Creating high quality content in user-generated formats is important. It is at least as important that the content is visible to the target group.

In addition to SEO as the most important pull measure of the website, push measures should also be used. B2B buyers search for information on different channels depending on the industry, depending on their age, but also depending on the research phase. At the so-called touchpoints, providers can position their information and thus draw the attention of new customers to themselves.

Social media has grown up as a point of contact. Between September 2017 and October 2018 alone, the number of social media users grew by 320 million. According to study, around 70 percent more budget will be invested in social media marketing in the next five years.

Seed the trust for business customers: Native advertising

For the best possible performance of the content, targeted seeding, i.e. targeted distribution of the content with a marketing budget, is also recommended. Classic B2B measures such as email marketing and social media marketing are generally recommended. From a content marketing perspective, native advertising is particularly exciting. The content adapts to the media in which it is placed and is thus less clearly perceived as advertising. Especially the B2B content, which contains sophisticated information content, can be spread so delicately and in line with its intention.

A final recommendation: B2B providers who have not yet tailored their digital content to the new requirements of their target groups can drop out at an early stage in the purchase decision process. It is often younger, smaller companies that process their information better digitally and thus snatch customers away from the big and well-known brands. It is important that the provision of information starts as soon as possible.

If you are looking for content marketing strategies, content writing, SEO content marketing, SEO, online marketing, social media marketing, search engine optimization services, digital marketing services, PPC campaign management service and more, Please Explore our SEO Services!

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The Comprehensive Guide to robots.txt File for SEO!

By | Date posted: | Last updated: April 23, 2021
Robots txt and seo

How to correctly control the inclusion of your website in the search index using robots.txt and how to positively influence the ranking of the website?

At the beginning of July 2019, Google announced that the tag is no longer supported in the robots.txt and is now also requesting an email via the Google Search Console to remove this entry.

But even if you haven’t received an email, you will find tips here on how you can improve your google ranking by cleverly controlling the crawling. For those who have received the email from Google but do not even know how to proceed, there are also a few specific tips on how to proceed.

1. What is the robots.txt?

The robots.txt is a text file that is in the root directory of the website on the server. It contains instructions on which directories or files the search engine crawlers can and cannot access. It is used to control the crawling behaviour.

You do not necessarily need such a file if the crawlers are allowed to access all pages, images or PDFs or if you have already excluded individual pages with the noindex tag. You can find out how this works in WordPress below. The crawlers basically assume that they are allowed to see everything on a website. But why it often doesn’t make sense to offer everything to crawlers, see the next point.

2. What does the noindex tag do and why is it important?

Basically, this tag controls the blocking of the inclusion of a single website in the Google search index. If the tag is present in the HTML code of the page, the Googlebot recognizes during the next crawl that this page should be excluded from the search results. Other search engines also support this day.

It is generally important to carefully consider whether to restrict the visibility of certain pages that are less valuable. Because if there are too many pages that have small added value for users, this can have a negative effect on the ranking.

Examples of less valuable content are duplicated content through the search function, through categories and keywords or through filter options. All of these possibilities keep generating new URLs that Google would have to crawl. Such URLs, which can go into the thousands with filters, are ultimately always the same in terms of content. Every website has a certain “crawl budget” and if Google sees a lot of similar pages, Google may not be indexing the correct pages and ranking in Google Search will deteriorate.

3. Why does Google no longer support <noindex> tag in robots.txt?

Including noindex in the robots.txt has never been the right approach, especially when the page also contains the tag in the HTML code. Because the crawler does not see the instruction <noindex> there if it is stopped by the robots.txt not to bring the page into the index. So, it can still appear in the search results. This happens when, for example, there are links to the pages set to <noindex>.

In the Search Console you will find hints if there are unintentional errors here, e.g. indexed although blocked by robots.txt.

robot.txt index

4. Where can I see what is entered in the robots.txt?

In the Google Search Console, you will find the robots.txt test tool, which currently still leads to the old Search Console. Next, Choose a verified property. Now you are looking at your robots.txt file and you can make some changes inside the tester. Once your edits are being completed, and your robots.txt looks the way you want it, click Submit.

robots.txt testing tool

5. Where can I set a page or the entire website to noindex in WordPress?

If a WordPress website is still under construction and should not yet be visible in the search engines, this can be regulated in the WordPress settings. However, up until now the entry “follow” & “nofollow” appeared in the robots.txt. You can find this under “Settings”:

wordpress robot.txt

However, this is not a safe method, because pages blocked in this way can still appear in search results. With WordPress version 5.5. however, the meta robots tag “noindex, nofollow” will be set, which is more secure.

If you only want to exclude a single page from indexing in WordPress, the easiest way is to use an SEO plugin such as Yoast or All-in-One SEO. In Yoast you can exclude the page in the settings, which are located in the SEO block under the page or the post:

wordpress robot.txt file

You can also exclude entire directories with the plugin, especially if you have a blog with a lot of categories and keywords that keep generating new URLs. Feeds, search result pages and the attachment URLs etc. can also be excluded.

yoast seo robot.txt

It is also possible to edit the robots.txt with the plugin, which is pretty cool!

In the Google Search Console, you can see under cover which pages are valid and which are excluded. Google give a clear signal as to what is important and what is not.

seo robot txt file

Of course, it is worth checking every now and then whether everything is correct on the excluded pages.

6. How do I know which pages on my website are being indexed?

You can use the command site: https://example.com in the Google search to list all files that Google finds.

The classification of the pages is importance. Don’t confuse this with the ranking, because the position in the search results always depends on the search term that the user has chosen.

7. My page is still found, what should I do?

If the page continues to appear in search results, the crawler has simply not revisited the page since the noindex tag was added. Here you have to be patient in any case. According to Google, crawling and indexing are complicated that can sometimes take a long time with certain URLs. This is especially the case if your website is on the small side and little new content appears.

In the Search Console you can have the URL checked. By doing this, you are requesting that the page be crawled again. After all, the crawlers do not come by your website all the time, especially not when nothing is happening, i.e. there is no new content.

At the same time, of course, you check whether the noindex tag has really been removed from the robots.txt, as described above.

8. What should I not do if the page is still in the index?

If a page has already been deleted because it no longer fits at all, it is of course annoying if it still appears in the index. What you should never do, however, is to exclude a page that is already on noindex with the command “Disallow” in the robots.txt. The same applies here as with the noindex, the crawler sees that it is not allowed to crawl the page, but does not recognize the noindex on the page itself. So, the page can potentially still stay in the search index.

By the way, the Disallow command doesn’t guarantee that a page will appear in search results. If the page is found relevant because it has inbound links, it can still be indexed.

In addition – and this is very important – CSS and JavaScript files must not be excluded, since otherwise Google cannot render the pages correctly. But then you should also have received an email (if you have the Search Console) that the Googlebot cannot access these files.

Of course, you are not allowed to use the robots.txt for private content. You can protect this with a password via server-side authentication.

By the way, you can find a list of all the rules for the robots.txt here.

9. The robots.txt and the XML sitemap

It is recommended to link to the XML sitemap in the robotx.txt. You can submit your sitemap in the Search Console. Here, too, make sure that not all pages are submitted using a sitemap, especially of course not the noindex pages or pages without added value as described above.

10. Conclusion

The control of crawling by the Googlebot with the help of robots.txt is an important thing if pages or directories are to be excluded. You have to carefully consider or discuss with your web developer or programmer which approach is the right one. Ultimately, dealing with it correctly goes a long way towards making your website visible.

Use Google Search Console to track your website’s search results. Do you need any help regarding your website’s SEO? We are happy to assist you. If you are looking for a website SEO, website analytics, digital marketing service and more, please explore our SEO Services! We are also providing regular website maintenance and support services. For more information, please explore our website maintenance services!

If you have any questions or would like to know more about how Skynet Technologies can help your business to reach one step ahead, Reach out us through below form & We'll get back to you soon!