Most common indexing issues for SMB websites

Here at Pumpkin Web Design we are Preston’s leading web design and web marketing professionals. We provide a wide range of website solutions and SEO services across Preston and the North West, from Southport to Wigan, and even Manchester, and we work with a wide range of companies and  businesses, in a variety of sectors. As a result, we have produced this guide to everything you should know about the indexing problems faced by SMBs.

What is indexing?

Indexing is the term used to describe how Google crawl bots search a website and then list this website as a relevant result for a particular search term on the search engine results page (SERP). Being indexed is one of the only ways for potential customers and clients to find your website, and as a result it is crucial that your website is well indexed to promote sales, bookings and sign ups. However it doesn’t always go to plan.

What are the most common indexing issues for SMB websites?

When it comes to getting indexed, many SMB websites experience the same common issues from a couple of different sources including:

  • Issues with quality
  • Duplicate content
  • Redirects

Issues with quality and indexing 

Major search engines such as Google are interested only in the quality of your content, and they have some pretty stringent rules. Content needs to be original, relevant, informative and useful, especially if it is going to be indexed. And this is even more important if you are aiming for the content to be indexed on the first page of the SERP. For some SMB websites generating quality content can be difficult and challenging especially for SMBs in limited or smaller niche markets. The most important thing is to ensure that the quality of the content you do produce is top-notch. Content should never be overly biased, too thin, or simply irrelevant.

Issues with duplicate content and indexing

Duplicate content can present a real problem for companies and businesses of all sizes. this can occur accidentally with products that are very similar to one another, or when creating blog content on similar topics over time. However, it is essential that all of the content on your website is completely and utterly unique. This includes the URLs, which when duplicated can cause issues not just for Google and it’s crawl bots, but for your website users too. It also means that your blog content needs to be 100 percent original too.

If you do have duplicate content, use the canonical tag attribute or a 301 redirect. This is important for ensuring that the same pages on your site aren’t competing against each other.

 Redirect issues and indexing

 Redirecting website traffic from one page to another can be a great way to update outdated content and to provide important information and details that your website users or potential customers or clients might be interested in. However using too many redirects can result in a soft 404 error. This is the type of error that will potentially bring up the 404 “page not found error” but will not relay this to the server.  This can also happen when redirecting removed pages to others that are irrelevant. A website or web page with these redirect issues is not likely to be indexed at all, which could mean you miss out on customers and clients.

For more information about SEO, traffic, content marketing and web design, get in touch with the experts today, here at Pumpkin Web Design.

Pumpkin Web Design Ltd is a small and highly results driven digital agency working for like minded clients in Preston, Chorley, Southport, Blackburn, Burnley, Morecambe,Wigan, Manchester, London, Warrington, Blackpool, Lancaster, Leyland, Lytham St Annes, Bolton, Chester and the UK. Our services include web design, SEO, content marketing, video production, brand design and much more.