Hello Riddlers!

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Zooming In!

One of the most common questions you’ll hear in SEO is:

“Why are my pages not getting indexed?”

“why am I getting crawled - not indexed in GSC?”

and you can feel the frustration through the screen…

here’s the thing

Diagnosing issues like this isn’t about running through your usual checklist and hoping something jumps out at you.

It requires going beyond the obvious. Zooming in. Zooming out. Connecting dots most people don’t even realize are connected.

Then ask yourself:

What am I missing?

…. Okay now, enough rambling… let’s talk about how to actually get your URLs indexed fasterrrrrrr. 😌

1# Do not use the “request indexing” feature as a strategy

This is not a sustainable way to get your URLs indexed. Use it for one-time off things, or when there’s an immediate need to get a new page indexed. Otherwise, it’s not feasible for large websites.

If you think of this feature as a quick patch, you’ll understand that you are better off figuring out what is preventing your URLs from getting indexed and resolving the issue, since this may also improve your website overall technical health for search bots, right?

2# Check your sitemap(s)

So your sitemap primary goal is to list URLs for Google to crawl, but it won’t force Google to index your URLs. I just listed this here because your problem maybe that your URLs are not listed in the sitemap and Google has no way to find out about them.

I’ve seen enough broken sitemaps, sitemaps with 404 URLs, sitemaps with redirected URLs, and sitemaps with URLs that are just wrong (subdomain URLs for example) to tell you that you should check your sitemap specially if your CMS is custom and not one of the commonly used CMS like shopify or wordpress.

Sitemaps are also important if you just performed a website migration or some major URL redirects project.

3# Audit your Merchant Center

Why do SEOs NOT audit Google Merchant Center? If you’re working on an ecommerce website, this is part of your SEO work.

Google merchant center “is a free tool that enables retailers to add product information and data so that their products can appear across Google surfaces.”

So while you’re struggling to get your products indexed by Google and trying to use the “request indexing” feature to force index 10 URLs/day at most, you are missing out on Google Merchant Center, and the impact is FAST.

4# Content quality issues

I think I now understand why Google keeps repeating the same redundant vague advice “just create helpful content”… well because:

most of the content online is not really helpful 🤷
a lot of the issues you’re experiencing on your website including slow indexability, are due to your content being seen as low quality 🤷🤷

So do yourself a favor and ask few questions:

do you have cannibalization or duplication issues?
do you have thin content?
do you have AI generated content in such a way that this content brings no unique value?
Do you already have pages that are indexed and getting some clicks and impressions but overall performing poorly in search?

If your answer to any of the above is yes, this means you have content quality issues, start with that FIRST.

5# Javascript

I had a lead reach out one time because their website was not getting indexed in search. This was at a time a lot of other SEOs were complaining of the same issue so I could’ve easily dismissed it as some Google bug or guideline change or smth… but I didn’t…

I dug here and there and just realized that the website is JavaScript heavy. And while Google can render JavaScript and read your content, the website ALSO was new so very low authority and the pages were thin/low quality content…. now why, why really would Google index those pages?

6# Social signals

I’ve been very active on LinkedIn for years now and I tell ya, this has helped my URLs get picked up by Google fast, despite having a small website, and I only publish once a week, AND I don’t really focus on optimizing my newsletter content for search AND I duplicate the content on LinkedIn as well.

But overall my URLs get picked up fast… but the challenge I’m facing right now is that sometimes, Google will end up deciding to show the LinkedIn newsletter version of a blog vs. my website blog URL… obvious duplication issue and the winner is LinkedIn because I get more engagement there and it’s a higher authority platform…

Let’s see how can I tackle this…

7# Your title tag

One of the reasons your URL is not getting indexed, is simply the title tag… if it’s just similar to all the results in search, tell me again… why would Google index it?

I used a python script to pull the title tags for “digital marketing tools”, here is the output:

26 best AI marketing tools I’m using to get ahead in 2026
After 15 years of experience, here are my favorite ...
21 Must-have digital marketing tools to help you grow
Digital Marketing Tools For Campaign Management
Top 21 Digital Marketing Tools Every Marketer Needs in ...
What tools are used in digital marketing?
8 free online marketing tools for every “hands-on” marketer
Hootsuite: Social Media Marketing and Management Tool

here’s the title tags in serps for “best running shoes for women”:

The 10 Best Running Shoes of 2025 | Tested & Reviewed
The best running shoes for women 2025
The 12 Best Running Shoes of 2025
Women’s Running Shoes
Need recommendations for the best running shoes ...
Best Running Shoes & Apparel for Women
The Best Running Shoes 2025
Women’s Shoes | Running Room
Women’s Bestsellers Running Shoes

here’s the title tags in serps for “how to learn SEO”:

What is the best way to learn SEO?
Search Engine Optimization (SEO) Starter Guide
How Do You Learn SEO? Step-by-Step Guide for 2026
SEO Certification Course
Learn SEO with a Free Roadmap of Reliable Guides & Tools
How to Learn SEO: A Complete Roadmap for Beginners
How To Learn SEO (2026 Guide)
How to Learn SEO in 2026 (In Record Time)

do you see what’s happening? the titles, despite being for the same keyword, are different one way or the other…. so differentiate yourself!

8# Run Ads

That is not my advice or something I invented, but a quote from John Muller. I remember this making rounds when he first said that, but it’s true. If you want your website URLs to get indexed faster in search, you can run ads.

Ads will bring traffic and users to those websites as well as engagement metrics, and all of this can help Google pick them up. I remember when I first started doing SEO, and I was playing around with Facebook ads for my website, every time I ran an ad for a page, I can see in real time, the page ranking increase in search… and once the ads stop… it take a short bit of time and then goes back to it’s normal place in search.

So ads can help your URLs get indexed, AND maybe temporary rank high.

And That’s a Wrap (Almost 😄)

I think the bigger goal of this blog is to tell you look deeper and don’t take the first answer as the final answer. In SEO, you need an eagle eye!

I hope this helps you improve your website indexability, I’ve also recorded a YouTube video on the topic, feel free to check it out, like subscribe or drop a comment:

That’s that for today folks and see you next newsletter!

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Disclaimer: LLMs were used to assist in wording and phrasing this blog.

SEO Riddler by Sara Taher

How to Get Your Website Indexed on Google…