Understanding Google indexing in SEO

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Google index

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Natural search engine optimisation (SEO)and in particular on Googleis an essential element in any strategy. webmarketing to improve the visibility and increase the traffic of a website.

To optimise your digital presence, you need to understand how the following work indexing on Googlewhich plays a key role in the positioning of pages in search results.

What is Google indexing?

Indexing is the process by which Google lists the pages of a website in its database.

This is an essential step before pages can appear in the search engine results.

The aim here is to take into account new pages published, changes made to existing content and the removal of obsolete or irrelevant pages.

To carry out this operation, the search engine uses robots called crawlers or spiderswho browse the web by following hypertext links, and analyse the content of the various pages encountered.

These robots collect information about the structure of the site, the quality of the content and the popularity of the page, in order to index them in Google's database.

How the indexing system works

There are several key stages in the indexing process, described below:

1. Discover the pages Thanks to the hypertext links on the various web pages, Google's robots discover new sites and scan those already indexed to identify any changes that have been made.
2. Analysis and data collection crawlers examine page content, structure and tags HTML to extract the relevant information. They can also detect any technical problems that might slow down indexing.
3. Updating the index Once all the data has been collected, it is processed by an algorithm to ensure that it is correctly listed in Google's index.
4. Ranking in search results search engine ranking: based on precise criteria such as the relevance of content or the popularity of pages, these pages will be ranked in the results proposed by the search engine when a query is made by a user.

Constraints and limits of indexing

However, this process is not infallible and can encounter a number of difficulties. It is therefore important to be aware of certain constraints inherent in the operation of indexing robots :

• Volume of pages to be indexed With the exponential growth of the web, the number of pages to be analysed and listed in the index is colossal. Google must therefore constantly manage a phenomenal amount of information.
  
  
• Frequency of robot visits This varies according to a number of factors, such as the popularity of the site and the frequency with which content is updated. It can range from a few hours to several weeks or even months.
  
  
• Budget crawl This is a limit imposed by Google on the number of pages it will crawl and index for each site. If this budget is exceeded, indexing may slow down or even stop.

Optimising Google indexing for better SEO

To improve your natural referencing (SEO), you need to make the work of Google's indexing robots as easy as possible. Here are a few tips for optimising your site's indexing:

Creating an XML sitemap

This is a file that lists all the pages on a website, together with their relative importance, indicating their hierarchy and the relationships between them. It allows robots to understand the structure of a site and discover its pages more easily.

Setting up a robots.txt file

The purpose of this file is to inform the indexing robots which pages or parts of the site they can crawl and which they should avoid. It is used to control the crawl budget by directing their work to the most interesting content.

Optimising loading times

Pages that load quickly make the work of the indexing robots easier and at the same time improve the user experience.user experience. You can reduce the size of images, use a browser cache or optimise codes. CSS and JavaScript to speed up page loading.

Improving content quality

Finally, it is essential to offer relevant and useful content to visitors, in order to meet their expectations and to gain popularity on Google.

By working on these elements, you will help your website to be better indexed and thus increase its visibility on search engines, which will have the direct effect of improving your natural referencing (SEO).