🔍 What is Indexing?

Indexing is the process Google uses to analyse and store pages in its database. If a page isn’t indexed, it can’t appear in Google’s search results—simple as that.

📥 How Indexing Works

• 🕷️ Google’s bots (also called crawlers) visit your site and follow links
• 📄 They read the content of each page
• 📚 Google stores this information in its index

📈 How to Check if a Page is Indexed

Go to Google and type: site:yourdomain.com/page-url. If it shows up in results, it’s indexed. If not, Google hasn’t added it yet.

⚠️ Common Reasons Pages Aren’t Indexed

• 🚫 noindex tags in the page’s HTML
• 🔒 Pages blocked by your robots.txt file
• 🔗 No internal links pointing to the page
• 🐌 Very slow-loading or broken pages

🗺️ What is a Sitemap?

A sitemap is a file that lists all the important pages on your website. It helps search engines discover and understand your site more efficiently.

Think of it as a cheat sheet you give to Google to show what pages matter most.

📁 Types of Sitemaps

• 🧩 XML Sitemaps – Made for search engines; lists URLs, update frequency, and importance
• 📄 HTML Sitemaps – Made for users; helpful on very large sites (optional)

✅ Best Practices for Sitemaps

• 🛠️ Use an SEO plugin like Yoast or Rank Math to generate your XML sitemap automatically
• 🧭 Submit your sitemap to Google Search Console
• 🔗 Include only indexable, high-quality URLs
• 🔄 Keep it updated—especially when adding or removing pages

🧠 Why Indexing and Sitemaps Matter for SEO

If search engines can’t see your content, they can’t rank it. A clean sitemap and healthy indexing status ensure your content stands a chance of being found and shown to the right audience.

🛠️ Tools to Help With Indexing & Sitemaps

• 🔧 Google Search Console – Submit sitemaps and monitor index status
• 📦 XML Sitemaps Generator – For non-WordPress sites
• 🔍 Screaming Frog – Crawl and audit pages like Google does

✅ Quick Recap

• 📄 Indexing is how your pages get into Google’s search results
• 🗺️ Sitemaps help Google discover your most important pages faster
• 🚫 Avoid blocking pages or using noindex accidentally
• 🧭 Submit your sitemap to Google Search Console and keep it up to date

🔁 Up Next!

WordPress SEO – WordPress powers over 40% of all websites on the internet—and it’s no accident. It’s easy to use, flexible, and SEO-friendly right out of the box. But just installing WordPress won’t guarantee rankings. You still need to put the right pieces in place.