What is indexing?

Indexing is the process by which search engines include a web page in their database after it has been crawled.
Or more simply, if crawling is “discovering” your website, indexing is “remembering” it.

Only once a page has been indexed can it appear in Google search results.
So you can write great content, but without indexation, that page doesn't exist for Google.

How does indexing work exactly?

Once Googlebot crawls a page, the search engine assesses whether that page is relevant enough to add to the index.
You can see that index as Google's huge digital library.

The process takes place in three steps:

1. Crawling: Googlebot visits the page and reads the code.
2. analyzing: the content, structured data and links are interpreted.
3. Save to the index: If the quality is sufficient, the page will be included in Google's database.

From that moment on, the page can be found via searches.

When is a page not indexed?

While working at Rank Rocket, I regularly see that pages are not indexed, even if they are technically perfectly accessible.
This can have various causes:

• The page has a noindex tag in the HTML or header.
• It has been blocked by the robots.txt.
• The content is too thin or looks too much like another page (duplicate content).
• The page has too little internal links or authority.
• Google simply has no reason to keep the page yet (low relevance or traffic).

Sometimes Google deliberately chooses not to index a page because the value is underestimated. That's why I always say: “Not everything that's online needs to be indexed.”

Why is indexing important for SEO?

Indexing is the gateway to findability.
Without indexation, a page cannot rank, generate traffic, and transmit value via links.

That's why I always look in Google Search Console → Indexing Status in my technical audits.
That's exactly where I see:

• how many pages are indexed,
• which pages are excluded,
• and why that happened (e.g. via canonical, redirect or noindex).

With those insights, you can optimize your website in a much more targeted way.

How to improve indexing

In practice, these are the steps I take to accelerate or improve indexation:

1. One XML sitemap submitting
   I log in to all the important pages via Google Search Console so they can be discovered quickly.
2. Quality over quantity
   I remove thin or outdated content so that only the strong pages remain.
3. Add internal links
   I link new or important pages to existing, high-performing content.
4. Structured data utilizing
   This helps Google better understand what a page is about, which makes indexing easier.
5. Resolve technical errors
   404's, we resolve redirects and canonical conflicts so that Google keeps the correct version.
6. Ping new content
   After publishing, I manually submit the URL via URL inspection in Search Console — this is how he often enters the index within a day.

Indexing in practice at Rank Rocket

I see the same pattern with many customers: they consistently publish new content, but Google only indexes part of it.
For example, a local service provider with dozens of city landing pages had only 40% visible in Google.

The cause turned out to be a combination of thin content and internal links that were only loaded via JavaScript.
After restructuring, sitemap optimization, and improved text quality, all pages were indexed within six weeks.

Since then, I've often used this case to explain that indexing isn't easy, it's the result of technical clarity, quality content, and trust from Google.

What does Google do with non-indexed pages?

A frequently asked question: “Will non-indexed pages be ignored?”
No, not necessarily. Google can still crawl them, but will not include them in the index as long as the value is too low or the instructions prohibit it.

I see that as an opportunity: if Google views the page but does not index it, it is an invitation to improve the content.