Every owner of a website goes tremendous frustration as he/she witnesses their number of indexed pages in search engines drop continuously over time. Such diminutions directly account for traffic dropping from such engines, search engine rankings, and ultimately, the performance of that given website. This article seeks to expound on how it happens and perhaps offer preventive measures against it.
Common Reasons for Decreasing Indexed Pages
- Content Devaluation – According to the new algorithm updates from Google, low-quality, duplicate sites are always given an index in Google’s databases.
- Technical Issues – Server errors, broken links, or incorrect canonical tags can all cause pages to be stripped from the index.
- Noindex directives – Improper application of ‘noindex’ meta tags can result in pages being removed from the search manipulations.
- Changes in Google’s Algorithm – Changes made in algorithms can always influence how ratings are given by the algorithm to all indexed pages.
- Duplicate Content Issues – Having multiple copies of the same content triggers deindexation on websites.
- Crawl Budget Limitations: If a website contains too many low-value pages, then some pages will not be crawled by search engines.
- Manual Actions & Penalties – De-indexation can also be a result of penalties from Google due to spammy backlinks or violation of policy.
- Website Structure & Navigation – Poor internal links and issues with sitemap-oriented pages can be ignored.
- Content Pruning by Google – Dying or irrelevant stuff can be deleted from being shown among search results.
- Page Load Speed & Mobile Friendliness – Taking time to load pages and poorly optimized for the mobile platform can lead to worsening effects in indexing.
Preventing Deterioration of Indexed Pages
- Audit the website from time to time for broken links and indexing problems.
- Publish high-quality, original content at all times to ensure that there is fresh content on the website.
- Correctly use canonical tags to prevent duplicate content problems.
- Keep robots.txt and sitemap.xml files updated.
- Optimize the website speed and make it mobile-friendly.
- Keep monitoring Google Search Console for manual actions and fix errors promptly.
- Do not use black-hat SEO techniques which may lead to deindexing your website.
With this, the website owners will be able to prevent the loss of indexed web pages, and the improvement will be enjoyed in search results.
