Why Is It Important for Pages to Be Indexed by Google?
Crawling, Indexing, and Ranking are the most important parts of SEO. "To exist is to be perceived" - if your content doesn't appear in search results, it can be considered as not existing on the internet, and SEO becomes meaningless. How search engines work:
Crawling
Search engines use robots (also called crawlers or spiders) to find content on the internet. These robots start from one webpage and jump to other webpages through links on the page, discovering new and updated content. Content can be web pages, images, videos, PDFs, etc., but regardless of format, content is discovered through links. For example, Googlebot starts crawling from a small number of web pages, then finds new URLs through links on these pages and adds them to its index.
Indexing
Search engines store and organize crawled content in a huge database called an index. When a page is indexed, it has a chance to appear in search results. The index is the data that search engines use to store all discovered content that they consider worth showing to users. Good website structure and internal links help improve indexing efficiency.
Ranking
When users search, search engines look for highly relevant pages in their index and sort them by relevance to solve the user queries. The higher the ranking, the more relevant the search engine considers the page to the query.
Of course, all three processes rely on complex Google algorithms and have separate names: Trawler, Alexandria, Mustang.
How to Submit Your Website to Google
Or in other words, make your website appear in the "internet" / various search engines (Google, Bing, Yandex, Baidu, Naver), etc.
Submit to Webmaster Tools
There are several webmaster tools corresponding to different search engines:
- Google Search Console: Google
- Bing Webmaster Tools: Bing, Yahoo, and DuckDuckGo
- Yandex Webmaster: Yandex
- Naver Webmaster Tools: Naver
- Baidu Webmaster Tools: Baidu
- Search engines without webmaster tools: Ask.com, Ecosia, AOL, Yep, Brave Search
I haven't operated frontend code embedding, so I'll first explain how to connect CMS to webmaster tools.
CMS Connection to Webmaster Tools
1. WordPress
Visit Site → Tools → Marketing → Traffic, then scroll down to Site Verification Services. For those who don't know how, see the English tutorial
You can also use third-party SEO plugins. I use Rankmath; Yoast and AIOSEO also support this.
2. Wix
I have a website built with Wix, and this is what it looks like after connection.
English tutorial for Wix connecting to GSC, Pinterest, Bing, Naver, etc.
3. Other CMS
- Webflow connecting to GSC English tutorial
- Weebly connecting to GSC English tutorial
- Framer connecting to GSC English tutorial
- Squarespace connecting to GSC and Bing Webmaster Tools English tutorial
- E-commerce sites like Shopify and Shopline are used more frequently, but I'm too lazy to research them for now.
How to Improve Website Crawling and Indexing Speed
Indexing a website and indexing web pages are two different things. Websites usually appear in search engines shortly after submission, but this doesn't mean all pages of the website will be indexed/ranked. In addition to verifying website ownership/submitting the site to webmaster tools, there are several ways to speed up crawling and indexing of all your pages:
1. Single URL Index Submission
Unindexed pages are grayed out for many reasons (this page is because it was just published and hasn't been crawled yet).
After successful submission, it looks like this. You can check after a few days to see if it's indexed normally.
3. Website Structure Optimization
When the website structure is friendly enough, Google can crawl and index all pages without submitting anything. For how to optimize website structure, please see the tutorial. At the same time, you need to configure the robots.txt file to control crawler behavior and ensure there are no redirect chain issues.
How to Build an SEO-Friendly Website Structure?
Website structure is crucial, affecting user experience, brand image, and SEO performance. A reasonable website structure should include visual planning, flat structure, optimized URLs, navigation menus, breadcrumb navigation, sitemaps, category pages, and internal links to improve crawlability and exposure. Good structure supports website growth and conversion.
4. External Link Building
Adding external links to different pages helps index corresponding pages. For building external links, you can read the article. Combined with internal linking strategies, the effect is even better:
Link Building
This external link building guide discusses the importance of external links in SEO and various acquisition methods, including manual submission, paid purchase, and natural external links. The author combines personal experience to provide practical advice for global AI/SaaS teams to improve brand authority and website rankings.
5. Maintain Update Frequency
Maintaining regular content updates sends signals that make crawlers frequently crawl website content. It's best to maintain regular frequency for publishing or updating content: homepage, feature pages, solution pages, blog posts, and various other pages. Don't go a week without publishing, then publish thousands of pages in one week. Besides not being indexed, if page quality is not high, the entire site may be penalized.
GSC can show Google crawl details.
6. Technical Issue Resolution
The robots.txt file, X-Robots-Tag, and Noindex tags will all prevent Google from crawling pages. There are many reasons for pages not being indexed, and some non-traffic-oriented pages don't need to be indexed. At the same time, you need to check if redirect chains affect page indexing.