If you want to drive traffic to your website from search engines, you need to make sure that your website is indexable so that landing pages, blogs, homepages and other online content appear in Google’s search results.
When users search for information using Google, the search engine consults its index to get the most relevant results. Your site will not appear in Google’s search results if it is not crawled and then indexed.
The process may sound complex and technical, but it’s actually quite straightforward – let’s look at how to index your websites in Google’s search engine.
Why is it important to index your website?
When you Google something, you are asking Google to show you all the relevant results in its index. Since there are usually millions of websites that meet the criteria, Google’s ranking system tries to prioritize the best and most relevant results.
Unfortunately, Google’s database does not include websites that have not been indexed. As a result, the search engine cannot display these websites in its SERPs, which means you won’t get any organic traffic from Google.
Google can index a website within a few days or even weeks. This can be annoying if you have recently published a page and it is not yet indexed. Here are a few different techniques to get your website indexed.
1. Add a page to your WordPress sitemap
Google uses your sitemap to determine which pages on your site are relevant and which are not. It can also provide information on how often they should be crawled.
Although Google will often recognize the pages on your site regardless of whether they are included in your sitemap or not, it’s still best practice to include them if you want to make sure they get indexed.
A sitemap helps search engines crawl the content of your website, as it provides them with a machine-readable list of all your content. Sitemaps are especially beneficial when you first start a blog or create a new website with limited internet presence.
Use Google’s URL Inspection tool in Search Console to see if a page is included in your sitemap.
How to add pages to your WordPress sitemap
Most modern WordPress sites automatically generate sitemaps, especially if you’re using an SEO plugin like Yoast, RankMath, or All in One SEO. These plugins create and update your sitemap whenever you publish new content.
If you’re using Yoast SEO, you can find your sitemap by adding /sitemap_index.xml to the end of your domain name. For example, yoursite.com/sitemap_index.xml. From there, you can see all the individual sitemaps for your posts, pages, and other content types.
To check if a specific page is included, look for it in the relevant sitemap section. If it’s missing, there are a few things you can do.
Troubleshooting missing pages
First, check if the page is set to “noindex” in your SEO settings. If it is, search engines won’t include it in their results, and it probably won’t appear in your sitemap either.
Second, make sure the page is actually published and not stuck in draft mode. This sounds obvious, but it happens more often than you’d think.
If everything looks good but the page still isn’t showing up, try updating your sitemap. Most SEO plugins have a button or setting to regenerate the sitemap manually.
Submitting your sitemap to Google
Once your sitemap is ready, head over to Google Search Console and submit it under the “Sitemaps” section. Just paste in your sitemap URL and hit submit. Google will then know to check your sitemap regularly for updates.
The whole process usually takes a few minutes to set up, and once it’s done, you can pretty much forget about it. Your sitemap will update automatically as you add new content to your site.
2. Make sure the page is not orphaned and remove nofollow links
Orphaned pages have no internal links to them from other pages on your website. Since Google discovers new information by crawling the web, orphaned pages are sometimes not discovered without other pages linking to them. Therefore, visitors to the website cannot find them either.
Remove the page from your sitemap and delete it if it is irrelevant. Include it in the internal link structure of your website if the page is relevant. This will make it easier for Google crawlers to index your website. Simply search for the link tag rel=”nofollow” and remove it. This can be done directly via the HTML code or the WordPress block editor.
How to find orphaned pages on your site
The easiest way to spot orphaned pages is by using tools like Google Analytics or your SEO plugin’s site audit feature. Look for pages that get zero internal link clicks or have unusually low traffic despite being important content.
You can also do a manual check by going through your site’s navigation and seeing which pages aren’t linked from anywhere. This might include old blog posts, forgotten landing pages, or content you created but never properly connected to the rest of your site.
Another quick method is to check your XML sitemap against your actual site structure. If there are pages in your sitemap that you can’t reach by clicking through your website, those are likely orphaned.
Fixing orphaned pages
Once you’ve found orphaned pages, you have two choices. If the content is still valuable and relevant, add some internal links pointing to it from related pages, blog posts, or your navigation menu. This gives both Google and your visitors a way to find the content.
If the page isn’t worth keeping around, just delete it and remove it from your sitemap. There’s no point letting dead weight sit on your site.
Understanding nofollow links
Now, about those nofollow links. When you add rel=”nofollow” to a link, you’re basically telling Google “don’t follow this link or pass any ranking value through it.” This made sense for external links to sites you don’t trust, but using nofollow on internal links can actually hurt your indexing efforts.
Here’s the thing though – most people accidentally add nofollow to internal links without realizing it. This often happens when using link-building plugins or page builders that have nofollow as a default setting.
In WordPress, you can check for nofollow links by switching to the HTML view in your post editor and looking for rel=”nofollow” within your link tags. If you see something like <a href="/your-page" rel="nofollow">, that’s what you’re looking for.
To fix it, just delete the rel=”nofollow” part so it becomes a regular link like <a href="/your-page">. You can do this directly in the HTML editor or switch back to the visual editor and edit the link through the link toolbar.
Some SEO plugins also have features that can scan your site for internal nofollow links and flag them for you. This saves you from having to check every single link manually.
Why this matters for indexing
When Google crawls your site and hits a nofollow internal link, it basically stops there and doesn’t pass along any of the page authority or ranking signals. This means your important pages might not get the indexing boost they need from your other content.
By cleaning up these orphaned pages and removing unnecessary nofollow tags from internal links, you’re creating a cleaner path for Google to follow when crawling your site. It’s one of those small technical fixes that can make a real difference in how well your content gets indexed.
3. Create internal links
By crawling your website, Google can find new material. However, as we’ve just established, it may not find the page in question if you don’t include an internal link to it from other pages.
This problem can be solved by adding some internal links between the pages on your website. This can be done from any web page that Google can crawl and index, and generally, the more important the page is to your website, the more internal links it’ll have going to it.
Where to add internal links
The truth is that you don’t need to overthink this part. Start with your most popular pages and blog posts, then look for natural opportunities to link to your newer or less visible content.
Your homepage is usually your strongest page in terms of authority, so linking from there to important pages can give them a nice indexing push. Same goes for your main navigation menu – if a page is important enough to be in your nav, it’s definitely getting some link juice.
Blog posts are perfect for internal linking because you’re naturally writing about related topics. When you mention something you’ve covered in another post, just link to it. Your readers will appreciate the additional context, and Google will appreciate the clear site structure.
How to add internal links in WordPress
Adding internal links in WordPress is pretty simple. When you’re writing or editing a post, just highlight the text you want to turn into a link, click the link button in your editor, and start typing the name of the page or post you want to link to. WordPress will usually suggest matching pages as you type.
You can also paste in the full URL if you prefer, but using WordPress’s search feature is faster and reduces the chance of broken links if you ever change your permalink structure.
Making your internal links count
Here’s something many people get wrong – your anchor text (the actual words you turn into a link) should give readers and Google a clear idea of what they’ll find on the destination page. Instead of using generic phrases like “click here” or “read more,” use descriptive text that actually relates to the target page.
For example, if you’re linking to a guide about WordPress security, your anchor text might be “WordPress security best practices” rather than just “this guide” or “our post about security.”
Don’t go overboard
While internal links are helpful for indexing, you don’t want to stuff every paragraph with links. That just makes your content harder to read and can look spammy. A good rule of thumb is to include 2-3 internal links per 1000 words, and only when they genuinely add value for your readers.
Keep track of your linking
As your site grows, it becomes harder to remember which pages link to what. Some WordPress plugins can help you visualize your internal link structure and spot pages that aren’t getting enough link love.
You can also do periodic content audits where you go through your older posts and look for opportunities to link to newer content. This is particularly useful when you’ve written updated versions of older topics or created content that naturally connects to previous posts.
Why this works for indexing
When Google crawls a page and finds internal links, it follows those links and discovers more of your content. The more pathways you create between your pages, the easier it becomes for Google to find and index everything on your site.
Plus, internal links help Google understand the relationship between different pieces of content on your site. If you consistently link from your service pages to related case studies, for instance, Google starts to understand that those pieces of content are connected and relevant to each other.
The end result is that your important pages get found faster and your overall site structure becomes clearer to search engines. It’s one of those things that benefits both your SEO and your user experience at the same time.
Conclusion
There are two key reasons why Google might not index your WordPress site or website – either there’s a technical issue preventing it from being indexed (as we’ve discussed above), or Google considers your site or page to be of poor quality and is therefore worthless to its visitors. So if you ensure that your webpage is indexable by search engines, then you’ll know that you only need to work on your content to get the page indexed.
