Greetings, everyone!
Allow me to introduce myself—I’m Rameez Ul Haq, a dedicated practitioner and learner in the realms of SEO, PPC, and Digital Marketing since 2008. My journey has spanned from collaborating with billion-dollar enterprises to small-scale businesses, managing budgets exceeding $2 million, and achieving impressive 6x returns for e-commerce establishments and service-based ventures
So like you thousands of SEOs face page indexing issues and see high number of Crawled – Currently Not Indexed and Discovered – Currently not indexed issues in Search Console, especially after May 2020.
As I mentioned in May 2020 most of the SEOs reading this can easily figure it out what’s the main factor that is causing this page indexing issue, yes it is mainly due to Page Experience.
Guys you have to understand that Google not making its system against you or making your life difficult by making its search algorithm more efficient, Google is only taking steps to its primary goal which is the most accurate results in the fastest way possible.
Put yourself in Google’s shoes and think what steps you will take to making it sure to provide users the most accurate results in the fastest way possible when you already have an algorithm like Hummingbird that understands the intent hidden in a search query and Rankbrain to make it possible for you to provide answers and results even on the unique query that system never seen it before. If you are not figuring it out let me explain in simple words.
You would make arrangements to pick a webpage that not only answer the query but also provide up-to-date information on the topic, that user can find by search query that is made by typing on the Google search bar or by a voice search by mobile devices. You would also take the speed and user experience of the webpage in account to make a choice to pick a page to index and to be ranked.
To make it more clear and easy to understand let me give you an example.
Covid 19 virus surfaced in November 2019 and doctors, and authorities including United Nations had to define some SOPs to prevent the spread but just after 3 months those SOPs got obsoleted and they all had to propose new SOPs.
Now in this scenario, Google will pick a webpage that offers the most recent information on covid 19 SOPs, not the older ones, and choose from thousands of pages having the same information Google has criteria that filter out the best of the pages that Passed Google Panda screening, Google Penguin, convince Hummingbird and Rankbrain and in the last USER-EXPERIENCE.
So, to make it sure no page of your index struggles to be indexed you have to follow this checklist:
Useful Content: Not only unique but useful content that actually answers a question and is written with EAAT guidelines.
Connect: making it sure every single page is connected through your navigation even if have to link at tier 4 structure.
Cross Reference: To make each piece of content more useful consider interlinking very efficiently like I interlink a blog page in the first point of this checklist.
HTTPS/ SSL: making it sure you have reliable SSL implemented most of the hosting provider gives you SSL for free but those does not comply with Google criteria. In 2022 Google integrated SSL screening report in its Search Console tool Named HTTPS report that tests each of your webpages before it can go into Google’s database. Learn more about this here.
Page Speed: Make sure every part of your site loads fast and hits green on the Google Page Speed Insight tool. Don’t work only on your homepage, speed matters for every page that needs to be ranked.
Mobile Experience: Like I alway emphasize on mobile first design approach to encourage my readers and students who learn SEO Mastery course at Digital Minds. This is one of the key factors that contribute in high number of issues you see under crawled but index and discovered but index pages in the Search console tool. Making it sure content is really readable on mobile devices, it does not wider than the screen size, elements are not too close together that overlap on each other or disturb tap optimization. Accessibility of information is optimized by providing good styling of CSS on links, important notes, CTAs, and forms.
Keyword Cannabalization: Another factor that contributes in issues like crawled but not index and discovered but not index. Make it sure a webpage does not target the same keyword you have targeted already for a product, collection/category, or service page. Tip: When policing on this also take synonym terms in account and take appropriate actions like redirections, marking no-index, and marking canonical to the master page what suits at the situation.
I hope this blog helps you to make your website more amazing and powerful with SEO practices.
Your insights, questions, and comments are invaluable. Feel free to engage, query, or connect regarding any SEO or PPC-related matters.
Warm regards,
Rameez Ul Haq
