Indexing / SEO Terms Indexing Indexing is the process by which search engines such as Google and Bing store and organize information from webpages after crawling them. Once a page is indexed, it becomes eligible to appear in search engine results pages (SERPs). During indexing, the search engine analyses the page’s content, structure, metadata and links to determine its relevance to specific search queries. If a page is not indexed, it will not show up in organic search results, even if it is well-optimized. After a crawler visits a page, it decides whether the content should be added to the search index. This decision is based on several factors, including page accessibility, content quality, canonical settings and the presence of indexing instructions like “noindex” tags or restrictions in the robots.txt file. Indexed content is stored in the search engine’s database and ranked according to relevance, authority, and technical performance. You can monitor your site’s indexing status using tools such as Google Search Console, which identifies which pages are indexed and highlights any issues. Ensuring that key content is properly indexed is critical for achieving visibility in search results. Pages may be excluded from the index due to duplicate content, lack of mobile-friendliness, crawl errors or insufficient internal linking. Indexing is a dynamic process; pages can be added or removed based on changes to content or site structure. For nonprofits, educators and B2B marketers, maintaining a well-indexed site ensures that important information such as landing pages, blog posts and forms is accessible to users and discoverable through search engines.