Notes • DIGITAL MARKETING SEO
Indexing crawling
Last updated: Sat Oct 20 2018
Indexing and Crawling: How Google Discovers and Stores Your Pages
description: "Learn how Google crawls and indexes websites, common indexing problems, and how to ensure your pages appear in search results.
Lesson 07: Indexing & Crawling
Overview
If a page is not indexed, it cannot rank.
Understanding crawling and indexing is essential for:
- Large websites
- New sites
- SEO troubleshooting
What Is Crawling?
Crawling is when Google bots:
- Discover pages
- Follow links
- Read content
Google uses crawlers called Googlebot.
What Is Indexing?
Indexing is when Google:
- Stores your page
- Understands its content
- Makes it eligible to rank
Crawled ≠ Indexed.
How Google Finds Pages
- Internal links
- XML sitemaps
- Backlinks
- Manual URL submission
How to Help Google Crawl Your Site
Best Practices
- Clear internal linking
- XML sitemap
- Fast page speed
- No broken links
How to Ensure Pages Are Indexed
Step-by-Step
- Open Google Search Console
- Use URL Inspection
- Request indexing if needed
- Fix coverage errors
Common Indexing Issues
- Noindex tags
- Duplicate content
- Thin pages
- Crawl budget waste
Real Example
Problem:
Blog post not appearing on Google
Fix:
- Add internal links
- Improve content depth
- Request indexing in Search Console
Key Takeaways
- Crawling discovers pages
- Indexing stores pages
- No index = no rankings
- Technical SEO supports content SEO
What’s Next?
👉 Lesson 08 – International SEO