I've been having a heck of a time getting Google to index pages on my site that went live about 2 months ago. So far, only 24 out of about 82 pages are indexed. I have all of the available Metatag / SEO / Sitemap modules installed and configured properly (from what I can tell) and have watched dozens of videos and am still not getting everything indexed. I don't know if the Yoast module would do any better for me, but it is not yet available for Backdrop. Was wondering if this might be in the works in the near future.
Most helpful answers
@amilenkov Thank you. I will give that a look. I have also been tooling around with Ahrefs free version.
Hello, a private opinion from an SEO enthusiast:
That only part of the pages are indexed in most cases is not a cause for concern - it is usually about content with the same or similar keywords and subject matter. Then Google chooses one of the pages and indexes it, leaving the rest unindexed because they are competing for the same keywords.
It is important to see in the Google Search Console what and why the pages are not indexed, and if it is due to a technical fault, it is good to fix it.
If it is a question of technically sound pages but pages with similar content, then a canonical meta tag must be used to indicate to Google which page is desired for indexing.
The fact that there are a large number of non-indexed pages is not an obstacle for the indexed ones to be displayed in front positions.
However, the SEO modules and tools in Backdrop alone are insufficient for a good search engine optimization job. It is good to use specialized platforms for analyzing the site and diagnosing problems - the modules help to solve these problems, but they do not detect them by themselves. I personally use SE Ranking and this platform offers for me an optimal combination of low cost and high performance.
Comments
Hi DanM
It doesn't have a release yet but you could try a manual installation of https://github.com/backdrop-contrib/realtime_seo
That uses Yoast. If you test it and it works, you can raise an issue to ask about a release.
Have you tried adding your sitemap directly in through Google Search Console? Are all the pages you expect appearing in your sitemap file?
Thanks for this - I absolutely will give it a try.
Yes, I have checked, re-checked and regenerated the site map and successfully submitted it in Search Console. They show as indexable, but it doesn't happen. Most of the pages that are indexed were entered manually.
All pages appear in DuckDuckGo and Bing.
I will give Yoast a try.
I also have the Drupal SEO book by Ben Finklea. It was helpful when I was going over my Drupal 8 site - I'll go through it again.
@yorkshirepudding I installed the module and so far it looks great. Much easier to comprehend than the plethora of Metatag module entries by themselves. I also did raise a question about a possible official release. Many thanks!
Hello, a private opinion from an SEO enthusiast:
That only part of the pages are indexed in most cases is not a cause for concern - it is usually about content with the same or similar keywords and subject matter. Then Google chooses one of the pages and indexes it, leaving the rest unindexed because they are competing for the same keywords.
It is important to see in the Google Search Console what and why the pages are not indexed, and if it is due to a technical fault, it is good to fix it.
If it is a question of technically sound pages but pages with similar content, then a canonical meta tag must be used to indicate to Google which page is desired for indexing.
The fact that there are a large number of non-indexed pages is not an obstacle for the indexed ones to be displayed in front positions.
However, the SEO modules and tools in Backdrop alone are insufficient for a good search engine optimization job. It is good to use specialized platforms for analyzing the site and diagnosing problems - the modules help to solve these problems, but they do not detect them by themselves. I personally use SE Ranking and this platform offers for me an optimal combination of low cost and high performance.
@amilenkov Thank you. I will give that a look. I have also been tooling around with Ahrefs free version.
The realtime_seo module looks very interesting and ambitious. We have encountered some issues and will put them in the issue queue for the module. Thanks.
The realtime_seo module looks very interesting and ambitious. We have encountered some issues and will put them in the issue queue for the module. Thanks.