What is Google Deindex?
Google deindex is a situation where your article, page or website is not indexed by Google which results in the article or website not appearing in Google search results.
Even if you try to search with various keywords, the article will not appear in the search engine. You can check by adding site: in front of the URL. site:namadomain.com/url-artikel.
This has the potential to make your website lose considerable traffic which can result in losses to your business.
Google does this actually to provide the best experience to users when browsing the internet using Google, so users who access an article or website can be sure that the website is not problematic.
This can be caused by several things. Generally because the website or article violates Google's rules, such as duplicate content to indications of malware on the website. To know more about the causes of Google deindex, please read the next section.
Causes of Articles Not Displaying on Google and How to Fix It
Here are the causes of articles not appearing on Google or Google deindex that you should avoid. If you have already done one of these things, there is no need to worry because we will also explain how to overcome it or how to prevent it.
Misconfigured Visibility
In WordPress, there is a configuration to manage your website's visibility in search engines. Your website can be set up to avoid search engine crawling that causes the website not to appear in Google search results.
This configuration function is actually commonly used by developers so as not to be disturbed by traffic from search results when the website is being built, repaired or creating a test website.
Now maybe the developer forgot to uncheck this configuration after finishing building the website or fixing it so that Google cannot crawl the website.
How to cope:
If you are a WordPress user, please log in to the admin page first. Then open the Settings - Reading menu bar. Make sure the "Search Engine Visibility" section is not checked.
Duplicate Content
If you don't know, there are actually 2 types of duplicate content, the first is duplicate content from your own website and duplicate content from other people's websites.
For this first type, you are indicated to create articles or pages on the website with the exact same content. This usually happens when you want to update the content using a new URL. You are not allowed to use two different URLs for the exact same content.
The second type is copying almost all the content from someone else's website and publishing it on your own website. This is called copy-paste and it is not allowed by Google. Google itself can detect and distinguish which content is homemade and which content is duplicated or copied from other people's websites.
How to cope:
There are 2 solutions or ways in this case.
- Redirect
Redirect is a redirection of access from a domain to a new domain. There are 2 types of redirects, namely Redirect 301 and Redirect 302.
Redirect 301 is redirecting the old URL to the new URL permanently, and for Redirect 302 is redirecting the old URL to a new URL that is temporary.
In this case you can use a 301 redirect. This 301 redirect will signal to the Google search engine so that Google crawls the new URL.
You can easily redirect using plugins like RankMath or Redirection.
- Create your own content
If you want to avoid this duplicate content problem that causes articles or websites not to appear on Google, create your own content. Create original content that is interesting and has good quality.
Duplicate content or copying content from other people's websites is something you should avoid and don't do from the first time you create a website or blog. If you do, it signals to Google that your website is not original and it may be difficult to get the best position on Google.
Keyword Stuffing
Keyword stuffing is one of the old SEO techniques that is no longer worth using. The way it works is to write an article of around 300 - 500 words and in the article insert unnatural or excessive keywords such as 60 keywords and hope to get a position on the first page of the search for that keyword.
Currently, Google already has a system and algorithm that can assess a content, whether the content is entered by keywords unnaturally or still in a reasonable stage. Please note that content or articles with too many keywords will cause the article to score poorly on Google and the worst possibility is that the article does not appear on Google or is deindexed.
How to cope:
To overcome this, you can use keyword variations that match the main keyword. For example, if your main keyword is "How to Create a Website" then you can enter keyword variations that are still related to that keyword such as "How to Create a Website", "Easy Steps to Create a Website" and others. You need to include keyword variations so that your article looks more natural and avoids Google deindex.
Too Little Content
Why if you create too little content can result in your article not appearing on Google or deindexing the website? This happens because currently Google is always making updates that aim to make its users comfortable.
One of the things that makes users comfortable is being able to find complete and useful information. So Google created a system where too little content is considered low quality. Ideally, create original content of at least 1800 words.
How to cope:
If you have too little content or articles, we recommend that you add more content as complete as possible. You can also use supporting media such as images, infographics, videos and others.
Cloaking
If you don't know, cloaking is directing Google users to a URL or website that is different from the URL that is clicked in the search results. For example, if you have a travel website, but when someone clicks on your website in the Google search engine, the person is directed to a gambling website or others.
This is usually due to hacker attacks. Hackers usually do cloaking or target websites that have high traffic to direct visitors to the website the hacker wants.
How to overcome:
To solve this problem, scan all pages of your website using Google Search Console. You can find errors or problem pages on your website using Google Search Console and can then fix them.
However, if you are using WordPress, you can use security plugins from WordPress such as WordFence and SecuPress.
Unnatural Link
Link Building is one of the SEO strategies used by someone to increase the reputation of the website. The more your website gets quality backlinks, the higher the possibility of the website being on the first page of search results.
However, it is important to choose backlinks from quality websites and don't use just any link. You need to think about the quality of the website, reputation and others. If you backlink with a website that does not have a clear reputation, it can have fatal consequences. One of them is that the website or article does not appear on Google.
How to cope:
To fix this, you can check in Google Search Console which websites provide backlinks to your website. You can find websites that are indicated to show poor quality. If you find this, disavow it immediately before it causes your website not to appear on Google.
You need to avoid websites such as Private Blog Network (PBN), Link Directory and Link Farming websites to be used as backlink sources.
Domain Expiration
If your website domain has expired and you do not renew the domain, the domain is automatically deleted and your website will no longer appear on Google or Google deindexes it.
Cara Mengatasinya:
Buatlah catatan kapan tanggal domain Anda harus diperpanjang seperti di kalendar atau handphone. Namun biasanya penyedia domain dan hosting akan memberikan peringatan melalui email kapan waktu memperpanjang domain Anda.
Server Down
If the server you use for your website is down for a long time, it can cause your website to disappear from Google search results.
How to cope:
Use a hosting provider that has experience in the field and has the best uptime. You can install uptime monitoring tools so that every time the server you use goes down, you get a notification.
Inilah tools uptime monitoring yang bisa Anda gunakan Uptime Robot, Pingdom, dan Uptime.
But if you want to have a reliable and stable hosting, you should use Masterweb's WordPress hosting service, if you want to use WordPress. Masterweb has 99.98% server uptime and 99.99% server network per year, allowing your website to be online at all times.
Google Algorithm Changes
If you don't keep up with the development of Google's algorithm, it can make your website deindexed by Google. For example, 10 years ago keyword stuffing techniques could still be used, but nowadays if you do this, it can result in websites or articles not appearing in Google search results.
Cara Mengatasi:
If any of your articles are not in line with the latest Google algorithm updates, change and update them immediately. You always need to be aware of Google algorithm updates.
Therefore, you can read articles that discuss this for example Search Engine Journal, Alexa Blog or on the Masterweb Blog itself.
Websites with Malware Indications
The last cause of articles not appearing on Google is the presence of malware on the website. If there is malware on your website or there are hackers who spread malicious software, then it can harm your website visitors.
Therefore, Google certainly does not remain silent and let users experience bad things when accessing search engines. So Google's move could make your website not appear in search results. Generally, visitors will get a warning page if they visit a website that is indicated to contain malware.
How to cope:
You can see which pages on your website have malware by using Google Search Console. After that you can find out the cause and try to fix it. To avoid this, make sure you use SSL for your website.
But if you use hosting from Masterweb, your website security will be at the highest level because of Imunify360, which prevents DDOS attacks, malware, viruses and more.