Understanding the SEO Audit for Websites – Part 2
Ensure That All of your Website Pages are Indexed
Index Page Count
You can carry out a quick check on most search engines to discover how many pages from your website they hold within their index. By inserting the site: command before your website address, you will be given a summary of how many pages the search engine can read and has available for matching search queries.
If the index report is close to the number of pages you think should be indexed on your website things are going well. If your index count is larger or smaller than you would expect, you may need to investigate why.
Smaller page numbers may mean that you need to address your accessibility further or it can show that your website is getting penalised by the search engines for bad links, duplicate content or other issues.
If your index count shows more pages than should be there, you may have a duplicate content issue where pages appear very similar in the content included.
Priority Page Index Results
During the index count, ensure that the most important website pages are included in the index. You can test this by pasting the page URL into the search bar.
Indexation for SEO: Real Numbers in 5 Easy Steps.
Brand Name Index Results
Use the search engine to search for your company brand name. If your website is performing well, it should be the first entry on the results. If not, your site may be suffering a penalty.
Website Penalties
If your website suffers a significant drop in search rankings or traffic, it may be because of a shuffle in the rankings, a search engine algorithm update or as a result of a search engine penalty.
You will be able to identify a true penalty by noticing that pages of your website have been completely removed from the index. You may also get a message in your webmaster tools alerting you to the penalty.
Resolving a Search Engine Penalty
Once you have identified a penalty attached to your website, you will need to resolve the issue and send a request for resubmission to the search engines.