Four Google Indexing Issues and Their Easy Fixes
Google indexes websites to create its search engine results pages (SERPs). If your website is not indexed by Google, it will not appear in search results. This can be a big problem, especially if you are trying to attract new customers or grow your business. But don’t worry. These issues are easy to fix. Keep reading, and you’ll learn four common Google indexing issues and how to fix them. You can also go to the Contentrally to get professional SEO help if things are starting to get slippery. Now, let’s get the guide started.
Canonicalization
One common Google indexing issue is canonicalization. This occurs when multiple versions of the same page are on your website. For example, you might have a “home” page that can be accessed at both “example.com” and “example.com/index.html.” Google sees these as two different pages, which can cause problems with indexing. You need to use a rel=”canonical” tag to fix this issue. This HTML tag tells Google which version of the page is the “master” or “primary” version. Google will then index that version and ignore the other versions.
Duplicate Content
Do you have duplicate content on your website? This is another common Google indexing issue. Duplicate content can occur for various reasons, but the most common is that people copy and paste content from other websites. Google does not like this because it’s not original content. As a result, Google may penalize your website by de-indexing it or giving it a lower ranking in search results. The best way to fix duplicate content is to simply remove it from your website. If you can’t do that, you need to use the rel=”canonical” tag to tell Google which page version is the original. Plagiarism is also something to take a more serious look at. Not only will Google penalize you, but you could also get into legal trouble.
Pagination
Also known as “view all” links, pagination is when you divide content into multiple pages. Google loves pagination because it means people spend more time on your website. However, Google can sometimes have trouble indexing paginated content. This can happen if the paginated pages are not correctly linked together. To fix this issue, you need to use the rel=”next” and rel=”prev” tags. These HTML tags tell Google which page is the next or previous page in the series. Google will then be able to properly index all of your paginated content.
Redirects
Not only can Google have trouble indexing redirected pages, but it can also have trouble indexing the redirects themselves. This is because Google sees redirects as “soft 404” errors. A soft 404 error is when a page returns a 200 (success) status code even though the page is not found. Google doesn’t like this because it means that people might click on a search result and then be taken to a page that doesn’t exist. Fixing this issue requires two steps. First, you must ensure that your redirects return the correct status codes. Second, you need to use the Google Search Console to mark the redirected pages as “fixed.” Google will then re-index the pages, and they should start appearing in search results again.
We all know that Google is the biggest and most popular search engine. So if you want your website to be successful, you need to ensure that it is properly indexed by Google. Knowing these issues and fixes will help you do just that. Just keep in mind to avoid these issues and fix them as soon as they appear.
