There is a strong need in today’s world to be found by search engines and indexed in their search results. Organic traffic can come from a variety of sources, but the most prominent source for most websites is through search engines like Google. This is why search engine optimization and the considerations that come with it are immensely important to most webmasters and bloggers. However, not all pages will provide measurable benefit to a website; in some cases, they can actually harm it. Below, we’ll discuss how you can examine individual pages in order to determine which ones are providing benefit, which ones are not being indexed at all, and which ones could be hurting you.

Determining Overall Success

The first and most important step in assessing how and if your pages are affecting rankings in search is to use a tool like Google Search Console. It is through this utility that webmasters and bloggers can start pinging search engines for information that relates to their site maps and indexation. This tool will show how many pages or URLs have been submitted through the site map infrastructure. It then also will show how many pages or URLs have been indexed. For sites with a large number of pages, this can be a great way to determine whether or not SEO efforts are having the intended effect. If there is a dramatic difference between the number of pages submitted and the number of pages indexed, then more comprehensive inspection as to why this is happening will be necessary.

Analysing Non-Performers

With the use of information provided in Search Console that is combined with analytics and physical, first-hand inspection, there is then a need to inspect why some pages are not being indexed by Google. In many cases, it is a sheer case of quality. In other cases, improper search engine optimization is to blame. Google has become increasingly picky about which pages are indexed and how they are ranked, but there can sometimes be false positives with respect to pages not being indexed. Through analytics, it is then necessary to determine whether there has been any organic traffic to the site through search engines recently. This can help you quickly determine which pages truly are providing no value currently.

Indicators of Negative Content

When you continue inspecting individual pages for indexation issues, you’ll likely run across some problematic pages. Entities that provide out of date content, that are improperly paginated, that are considered to be stub pages, that have poor HTML structure or that were automatically generated can all actually be causing damage to your broader ranking efforts. Some pages simply fail to rank because they offer little or are not pinging search engines with proper structure. In the case of these examples, however, you may actually be doing damage to how every other indexed page is currently ranking on Google. These pages should be removed or reformed substantially in order to improve overall rankings in search. Otherwise, the damage will only continue to exist.