GSC not indexing pages, despite very active website with weekly new content

[TPC_UK]

Afternoon all.

One for the SEO experts - Google Search Console has been refusing to index new pages and content on the website, I request indexing and it just sits there for weeks on end. Occasionally some does get indexed, but it's becoming a bit of a chore as you all know how slow GSC is to submit links to these days.

Any ideas as to why this might be happening? Anyone else experiencing a similar issue? Crawl budget is fine, no issues there.

It's a relatively new site with low authority score (10), so wondering if we need to work on the link profile a bit more to raise authority, we've done zero link building so far - all organic and natural, usual social media posts, email marketing, Google Ads - so should be sending all the right signals.

I'm using AIOSEO plugin in wordpress with Index Now configured, all connected to GSC. I wonder if it's an API issue, or some sort of server side security protocol or WAF is blocking index requests??

Any help appreciated.

Cheers
Nathan

 

[SocialChameleo]

I know it sounds like a really dumb suggestion, but make sure your search console is configured for the right variation of your site, i.e: www. or just 'https://' or set up the domain version of search console.

 

[TPC_UK]

I know it sounds like a really dumb suggestion, but make sure your search console is configured for the right variation of your site, i.e: www. or just 'https://' or set up the domain version of search console.

No not dumb at all, but this is sorted and managed under a domain property that contains all sub domain variations ?

 

[fisicx]

What new content are you publishing? Are there navigation links to this content?

Building Links won’t help. Nor will requesting indexing. You just need to give Google a good reason to revisit the site.

 

[Shopclicks]

I'm thinking this is blog posts that are causing the problem?

Add a Blog link to your main menu.

 

[TPC_UK]

What new content are you publishing? Are there navigation links to this content?

Building Links won’t help. Nor will requesting indexing. You just need to give Google a good reason to revisit the site.

Blog posts average 2 per week, then there's new landing pages, new products. The link siloing is good - WP default, with multiple categories all linked via the footer and I have a widget on the homepage for new content and a few other landing pages linked based on tag.

All blogs interlinked with relevancy by tags, tags have their own archive template and canonicalised to parent categories.

It should be good to go. Core web vitals show an error on one page which has been fixed and validated. Site maps all accounted for and correct.

Ran through SEMRush and fixed issues, it's sitting 99% now for optimisation.

 

[Shopclicks]

All blogs interlinked with relevancy by tags, tags have their own archive template and canonicalised to parent categories.

As well as adding a link to the blog page to the main menu, also display your blog categories on the main blog page.

 

[fisicx]

Maybe Google just doesn’t like the blog.

Try putting a link in the main menu.

Consider also that you are a shop. The blog has to have relevance. The history of bubble wrap isn’t relevant.

 

[fisicx]

Looking at the site again, why even have the blog?

 

[Shopclicks]

Looking at the site again, why even have the blog?

If done properly, a blog can bring extra traffic to the site and the possibility of picking up new customers.

But the title and meta of a blog post should answer a question that someone is trying to find a solution for. Keyword research helps you find the questions people are typing into Google.

Examples for the OP's blog:

How to pack fragile items
How to pack paintings and artwork
Where to get eco-friendly packing tape
Where to find bubble wrap alternatives

 

[fisicx]

Whilst I agree with you in principle the chances of getting new business from these types of blog post are minimal.

However, Google doesn’t seem keen to index the blog so the point is moot.

More effort on the shop would bring far more benefit.

 

[Shopclicks]

More effort on the shop would bring far more benefit.

Yep. Not the best navigation or product category display.

 

[Fagin2021]

Assuming you've done everything right - submitted new site maps, no duplicate content issues, no robots.txt blocking the pages, no no-index in the headers then I think you'll find it's just a matter of patience.

Google can take days, weeks or months, to index pages - especially for newer sites and ones that lack authority.

 

[Shopclicks]

All blogs interlinked with relevancy by tags, tags have their own archive template and canonicalised to parent categories.

You should be noindexing those tag pages. Then resubmit the sitemap. Not really sure why you're using tags for blog posts anyway. Maybe if you had a search function for posts, you might want them. You only need to categorise posts so people can sort the category they're interested in.

 

[TPC_UK]

Assuming you've done everything right - submitted new site maps, no duplicate content issues, no robots.txt blocking the pages, no no-index in the headers then I think you'll find it's just a matter of patience.

Google can take days, weeks or months, to index pages - especially for newer sites and ones that lack authority.

Yes I think you're right - the more I dig into it the more I think this is the issue (or should i say my issue - must learn to be more patient!) - this is why my thoughts were initially to look into PR to help boost authority (just checked this morning, our DA is only 8!)

Looking at the site again, why even have the blog?

Blog's generate huge revenue, we only just last month posted a few blogs on cardboard postal tubes, and we've had 6 sales - all attributed to organic search. They're very important for the research/consideration phase, especially for B2B industries such as ours, also great for link siloing to product and category pages. Also, we use lead gen software and some of our most promising leads have come from users landing on our blog posts.

The issue I am having is I have to manually prompt google every time I post new content, with that being said this weekend I've noticed content changes from last week have actually been indexed, so perhaps the issue has corrected itself.

Thanks for all the input everyone ? glad to have found this forum.

 

[TPC_UK]

Yep. Not the best navigation or product category display.

How would you improve this? I am reviewing product category layouts, we have quite complex product categories that require different presentation based on how they are sold, with variables, accumulative pricing, single unit and pack pricing.

Thanks in advance ?

 

[Shopclicks]

How would you improve this? I am reviewing product category layouts, we have quite complex product categories that require different presentation based on how they are sold, with variables, accumulative pricing, single unit and pack pricing.

This is the way I would have set up the navigation. Not concerned by how the product pages are set up. Your products present very well. It's the navigation to get to those products that I would change.

You are not using your /shop page as it was intended. You need it to exist but not in the menu. I would replace the menu item with a page called 'Ecommerce packing supplies' or similar. This would be a regular page (not a product category). You could still label the page as SHOP in the menu. This page would contain similar content to your current shop page but links to Product Categories & all Subcategories. Include images as practicable to present the page. And add some keyword rich text content because you want this page to index and rank.

The new SHOP menu item should ideally have a mega-menu dropdown on desktop which shows links to all of your product categories and subcategories. At the very least, the SHOP menu item should have a sub-menu dropdown displaying your 9 product categories. This makes navigation easier for the shopper and is an easier navigation path for Google. Make sure to include the dropdown in your mobile menu. The easier you make finding categories for the user, the better Google is going to 'like' the pages.

Looking at the Cardboard boxes product category, you should be displaying products, not links to the subcategories. And filter by any metrics you like (ie. material, size, single walled, etc.), but definitely filter by subcategories. The same goes for all of your product categories. Google looks for pages full of products that match search queries. That's why you now see a row of product images from some shops in organic search results. Search cardboard boxes and take a look at Sadlers, Kite's or Argos's organic search entries.

Your product images in category pages are tiny on desktop. I'd do something about that.

And noindex those tag pages. They don't do your SEO efforts any good at all. It's just duplicate content.