As we have written about before, getting your website found in the search engines is important if you want your customers to find you online. The question is, has the content you’ve written on your site been indexed by Google for that to happen? Let’s go over a few things to help us understand about indexing and how to make sure the information you put out on the web is seen.
First, let’s discuss what indexing means. In short, having a page, post, or even URL indexed, in layman’s terms means, Google has found it or that it has been discovered by Google. If you have an “About-Us” page on your Pilates site and it isn’t indexed by Google, that means that they don’t know it exists and ultimately, your potential customers won’t find anything about it either because Google won’t display it in the search engine results pages, (SERPs). And it’s important to note that while a site itself may be indexed, that doesn’t mean that all of the internal pages and posts of that site are indexed as well.
Now, it’s also important not to confuse ranking with indexing. While both are critical when it comes to being found on the big G, one makes more of a difference than the other regarding where the site shows up. Being indexed in Google means that they have found your site and aware that it exists. Having said that, being ranked means where they will place you in the engine when people are searching for the information that you are providing. In other words, if your site is not indexed, no one will see it at all; even if they were to look at the first 1,000,000, results provided for the keyword(s) they typed into the search bar. If your site is indexed and you are ranking, then the searcher will find your site dependent upon where it ranks in the search engine.
We can certainly understand that there may be reasons why a Pilates business owner may not be interested in having a particular page or post on their site indexed. It may be that the information on that page specifically targets those who you notify about the post in an e-mail blast or your newsletter. But there are also pages that you want to be sure get indexed if you are counting on people finding you when they look in Google for the services you provide. Pages that would be relevant for that might be a services page or class offerings page.
It’s easy to get focused on direct clients when we think about what pages we want to be indexed too. An example might be the instance where an instructor puts up a video blog on your page to help further the instruction related to a class that was taught earlier in the week and the intent of the video is to help guide the students from that class. But there may be an additional aspect about the distribution of your posts and content that you may not be considering and to a large degree, that element is dependent on what your goals are for yourself and the business. Think about the networking and the credibility that occurs when it comes to getting more exposure for your content. What if what you are offering in the content of your site is related to instructor training courses and you want to spread the word everywhere about the offering? If the post about the training isn’t indexed, then a vast spectrum of potential clients who would be interested in your offering may miss the notification due to the far reach the search engines have. Plus, having another Pilates provider in another area or location see your material helps build possible networking options and open doors for future opportunities that the other Pilates professional may make available to you. The possibilities of this happening diminish when this online information isn’t indexed and available on the web.
With these reasons in mind, hopefully, you can see the importance of ensuring your site and some if not all of the pages on your site are indexed. If this information has you concerned about the status of your site is regarding being indexed in Google, the good news is that there is an easy way to check that status. There are many sites you can use to check your site. You can do a search online for them, but one option for you to try is http://ismysiteindexed.com/. Simply open the site, enter your URL, and click submit. If your site is indexed, you can see the status by clicking the link provided.
If you are not indexed by Google, there are ways to help facilitate the indexing process. One of the best ways to get the Pilates site itself indexed is to go into the Google search console, formerly Webmaster Tools, and add the URL of the site. You will need to log into Google to perform this action. Another way to get indexed that applies more specifically to the inner pages and posts of the site involves the social aspect of your online work. Make sure your clients, customers, readers and others, like, share, and comment on your pages and posts. Social media is an integral part of Google’s algorithm, and it is written to pay attention to the social side of website content. Social activity says that people are talking about this subject, so we want to be sure others readers see it too. When it sees a lot of like of a post, shares, and comments, you know it will get indexed as well, plus from there it is likely rankings will follow as well.