Devs, make sure your page is searchable!
Tags: google, search, seo, webdev
Published: 2020-02-04 13:34:04

---
title: Devs, make sure your page is searchable!
published: true
description: Use google search console to index your page
tags: google, search, seo, webdev
canonical_url: https://irian.to/blogs/make-sure-your-page-is-searchable
---

# The Issue

Ever since launching my site, <a href="https://irian.to" target="_blank">https://irian.to/</a>, I found that I couldn't google *any* page on my site. For example, when I google "irian.to redux" ([my redux article](https://irian.to/blog/redux-101/)), only site home page showed on google result. (This was done 2/1/2020.)

![irian.to redux search no-show](https://dev-to-uploads.s3.amazonaws.com/i/paew7hrn59uwacmqgijw.png)

# The Solution
I went to [Google Search Console](https://search.google.com/search-console), then I checked URL inspection and entered `"https://irian.to/blog/redux-101"`. Google notified me that it didn't exist.

![irian.to redux is not valid url](https://dev-to-uploads.s3.amazonaws.com/i/dgr3467zhhanmwss3scw.png)

To make that page searchable, I needed to tell google to index that page. Here's how you can do it:

- Visit [search.google.com](https://search.google.com/search-console/inspect)
- Click your domain (you need to add it if you haven't. Check [here](https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/34592?hl=en) to learn how)
- URL Inspection
- Enter the site URL

You can request for indexing ("Request Indexing"). I usually "Test Live URL" before doing that to make sure that it returns green.

![irian.to redux testing live url and requesting to crawl](https://dev-to-uploads.s3.amazonaws.com/i/r8dah5oggklep1u8z0qi.png)

In this case, it does.

When requesting google for reindexing, it may take a few days. Google also tells you that:

> URL was added to a priority crawl queue. Submitting a page multiple times will not change its queue position or priority. [Learn more](https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/6065812).

I checked my google search again on 2/3/2020 and it showed up on search.

![irian.to redux is now found on google](https://dev-to-uploads.s3.amazonaws.com/i/j4f2cetdvz5r3tt8jgy2.png)

# The Conclusion

**Moral of the story?** *If you own personal site, make sure people can google your page!* 👀


_Added 2/4/2020_
Thanks to helpful inputs in comments (check below 👇), here are more things you can do to help with your site's discoverability!

# Adding sitemap.xml
Per suggestions below, it is best to add sitemap if you have many pages. For more information on sitemap, check [this sitemap 101 article](https://dev.to/turnersoftware/sitemaps-101-4ch8) or [moz article on search engines](https://moz.com/beginners-guide-to-seo/how-search-engines-operate) (go to sitemap section).

Thankfully, there are many sitemap generators. I created [mine](https://irian.to/sitemap.xml) with [Nuxt sitemap-module](https://github.com/nuxt-community/sitemap-module). 

# Testing your site index

How to quickly test indexed pages?

If you do site:yoursite.com (in my case, I did `site:irian.to`), google will show all results google have.

If you see screenshot below, you'll see I have 68 results (at the moment of writing), which is about right.

![Search indexed pages](https://dev-to-uploads.s3.amazonaws.com/i/mwg0l9v8iu8fd2627uk2.png)