SEO Chatter - Some SEO wizardry for stubborn pages

Google can be very frustrating at times.

One way, in particular, that seems to be affecting a lot of site owners lately is by not indexing their new perfectly crafted new web pages.

And with no indexing, there are no rankings.

And with no rankings, there's no traffic.

And with no traffic, there's diddly squat in terms of new leads, customers, and earnings.

If you ever find yourself in this predicament, there are a few basic things you can do to get out of this rut.

Below are 3 ways you can bend Google's indexing algorithm to your will.

The quickest fix that usually works (but not always) is to open up Google Search Console and follow these steps:

1. Paste the URL in the top search bar to inspect it.
2. Hit the enter key.
3. Click on the "Request Indexing" button.
4. Wait for the Indexing Requested pop up to finish loading.
5. Click the "Got It" button.

That trick often gets your URLs indexed within a few hours and you can see traffic starting to trickle in by the next day.

But, some pages still won't get indexed using that method.

There's a multitude of reasons why that may be the case, but I won't bore you with the details.

So let's keep moving.

The next method you can try is this:

• Create 3-5 internal links to the deindexed page from other web pages on the site.
• Then submit those 3-5 URLs individually to Google Search Console using the steps listed previously.
• During the process, you'll see a green checkmark with a message saying "URL Is On Google", but click the "Request Indexing" button anyway.

That trick forces Google to recrawl those web pages, and ultimately, spiders the internal links to the page that's not being indexed.

As a result, Google cannot ignore the linked URL and this may solve your indexing problems.

Unfortunately, some pages can still prove to be difficult.

If you're still having trouble getting a URL indexed, then below is a final trick you can try that's almost guaranteed to work.

In fact, I've used it successfully for years to force Google to index pages I know are worthy to be ranked in the SERPs. However, I only use it as a last resort because it takes a few extra (annoying) steps as you'll see below.

• Change the URL of the deindexed web page. (Just add an extra word to the end of the string of text.)
• Submit that new URL to Google Search Console as explained previously.
• Wait for Google to index the page.

Once indexed, you can keep the new URL as is or change the URL back to the original string of text. If you do the latter, then make sure to set up an internal 301 redirect from the replacement URL you created with an extra word in it to the original URL you switched it back to.

Here's an example:

URL that wouldn't index: /my-awesome-page/

New URL to get indexed: /my-awesome-page-here/

After the new URL gets indexed, you would change the page URL back to the original version: /my-awesome-page/, while setting up a 301 redirect from /my-awesome-page-here/ that forwards users to /my-awesome-page/.

Yes, this is a bit of SEO magic.

But sometimes you gotta trick Google to get things to work out in your favor.

More SEO wizardry like this can be found here:

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Stephen Hockman
SEO Chatter Founder