Getting found and indexed

Being indexed means a search engine has found your pages and added them to its results. It is the entry ticket for everything else in this category, and your store does most of the work of getting it.

What happens without you

Your store generates an XML sitemap, keeps a properly configured robots.txt, builds clean URLs that are easy to crawl, and uses IndexNow to tell search engines the moment you publish or change something.

IndexNow matters more than it sounds. Most sites wait to be discovered. Yours announces itself.

Add your store to Google Search Console

This is the one step worth doing today, and it takes a few minutes. Search Console is how you tell Google your store exists, submit your sitemap, and afterwards see what Google actually thinks of your pages.

🔗 How to add your store to Google

🔗 How to submit your XML sitemap to Google

Request indexing for the pages that matter

Search Console includes a URL Inspection tool. Paste in a URL, click Request Indexing, and Google will prioritise crawling that page.

You don't need to do this for every page in your store. Use it for your homepage, your main categories and your best few articles, and let the sitemap and IndexNow handle everything else.

Give search engines other routes in

Google finds pages by following links, so every link pointing at your store is another way in.

• Share new content socially. Crawlers follow links from social platforms, and a share costs you nothing.
• Build a few early backlinks. Even two or three from relevant websites speed up discovery noticeably.
• Link internally. A new article linked from a page that is already indexed gets crawled far sooner than an orphan.

Don't forget Bing

Bing has its own audience and it feeds several AI search tools, so it is worth a few minutes in Bing Webmaster Tools. One thing to know before you try: Bing will not verify a store on a free vanity address, because it classes those as shared hosting. If you want Bing, you need a custom domain.

🔗 How to add your store to Bing

What to expect

With the steps above, your homepage and main pages are usually indexed within a few days. Deeper pages follow as your store builds up a history with Google.

Having only some pages indexed at first is completely normal for a new store, and it sorts itself out as you add content and links. Nothing is wrong.

If a page has not indexed yet

If Search Console tells you a page was "Crawled, currently not indexed", Google has seen it and not added it yet. That usually means one of three things: the content is thin, it is too similar to another page on your store, or the store is simply new.

For the first two the fix is the same, and it is not technical. Make the page more thorough, more specific and more different from its neighbours. The Article Writer can expand a thin page for you in a couple of minutes.

The same reasoning explains most sudden drops. Before you assume a penalty, check whether your niche is seasonal, whether a site that used to link to you has stopped, and whether Google has just run one of its regular algorithm updates.

🔗 On page SEO