What is content indexation, and why is it important?

What is Indexing?

Indexing refers to a process search engines use to collect and store your website data. This data is used to rank pages in SERPs based on relevance.

Why is Indexing Important?

Indexing is essential to your SEO success, determining whether your website page appear in SERPs or not. If your pages are not indexed, they do not appear in search results, which means you lose out on valuable website traffic. It is important to ensure your website is indexed to maximise reach and visibility.

Understanding the Indexing Process

The indexing process comprises of three steps:

Step 1: Crawling

Search engines use crawlers, also known as bots or spiders. These crawlers find new content online by clicking on links. They then collect the data of your web page, including text, images, and videos. When you understand how crawlers work, you can index your website to improve your ranking. You will be able to amend your website to ensure your important web pages are found and listed.

Step 2: Indexing

Once the crawler has visited your website, gathering all the data, it indexes the pages. It examines the data, understanding the context of each of your web pages, storing the information in a data base. Indexing includes reviewing site structure, content quality, and key words. This helps determine your websites usefulness and relevance. Sites that are well-indexed are seen as relevant and valuable by search engines, and are more likely to appear in SERPs.

Step 3: Ranking

The final step of the indexing process is ranking your pages. In this stage, search engines use an algorithm to match indexed web pages against users queries, determining the most relevant and useful results. Ranking factors include site speed, keywords, mobile-friendliness, user engagement, dwell time, bounce rates, and much more. The aim is to provide the best possible answer to the users question quickly. When you understand and optimise for these factors you can improve your visibility, along with your position in SERPs, driving quality and organic traffic to your website.

What Factors Influence Indexing?

There are a number of factors that influence indexing:

• Website navigation and structure – website structure plays a vital role in indexation. Clear navigation increases your chances of your pages being seen in search results
• Quality and uniqueness of your content – content must be relevant, high quality, and unique. Search engines prioritise content that provides their users with value. High quality content will be indexed as it is seen as valuable to users. Duplicate content can cause indexation issues
• Mobile friendliness – Google has already announced that they are using mobile first indexing, meaning crawlers will crawl and index the mobile version of your website, even if you have a desktop version. 
• Page speeds – pages that load quickly improve user experience (UX). Search engines recognise and prioritise UX, meaning your pages are more likely to be seen by your target audience 
• Link building – Internal links help search engines discover new website pages, while back links show your credibility and relevance in your industry. Both significantly impact indexation.

Conclusion

Indexation is essential to SEO. It determines if your content is seen by your audience on SERPs. Using online tools, such as Google Search Console or Bing Webmaster Tools can be valuable in monitoring and improving your websites indexation. Do you need help with your content indexation? Give the team at Genie Crawl a call today and let us help you ensure your website appears in search engine results, helping to improve website traffic, boosting brand visibility, credibility, and trustworthiness.