In general, web pages indexed by google are very prominent for our website ranking. First, we need to check whether our webpages have indexed by Google or not. We can check our website indexing status through site URL operator, and we can check through sitemap submissions in Google search console. The number may vary, but let us conclude about our webpages got indexed.
If the pages are not indexed, there could be various reasons like Google didn’t like our webpages, or it’s not that easy for Google to crawl through our webpages. In such cases, we have other alternative ways to get our pages indexed by search engines.
As of now, we wanted to know the reasons for our indexed paged going down. If we realize that the number is getting decreased while checking the indexation status. There could be various reasons like Google might have penalized us, Google though that our pages are irrelevant, or Google is unable to crawl through or pages.
We have listed out the top 5 reasons and tips to analyze and fix the issue of indexed pages going down.
Are the pages loading properly: Crosscheck and ensure that our domain has a 200 HTTP server status. Check for our website loading time and check if the server is experiencing any downtime. Check if our domain got recently expired or renewed late. Errors and page bouncing are not a good sign in website ranking.
Did you change your URL’s recently: If you have done any modifications in CMS, backend programming or changes in server settings, that may result in changes in domain and sub-domain. There are high chances that search engines remember the old URLs but, if they don’t redirect properly to the new URL, consequently, the pages can become de-indexed. Make sure that our URLs redirect to the right URL if in case of any changes.
Have you fixed plagiarism or duplicate content issues: Existing duplicate content in our webpage is always a negative sign. Always try to maintain unique content to boost our website. Fixing duplicate content includes 301 errors, canonical tags, unindexed meta tags, or disallows in robots.txt
Webpages time out or long loading time: Some servers have bandwidth restrictions, these servers need to get upgraded immediately. Sometimes there could be an issue related to hardware. Fix it by replacement or upgrading as per the requirement. Check for website blocks and securities and fix it.
How search engine bots are seeing our website: Some times, our thought process is not matching from search engine spiders algorithms. Check if the developers have followed all the On-Page SEO elements while developing the website. Check if the content is accepting SEO norms or not. Check for the internal links, bouncing URLs, Load-time, redirecting links, etc. Fix the issued diagnosed with the links. On-page SEO techniques are the key features while developing a webpage.
Analyzing these top 5 reasons and fixing the errors will reduce the risk of degrading our indexed pages.
