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several sites not indexing – hosting environment an issue?
Posted by on October 7, 2025 at 8:36 pmOver the past year, four websites I built and currently host on a dedicated server at WPEngine did not get indexed for months post launch. and so we hired an SEO consultant to get them indexed. Communication hasn't been the best so I am not sure what, if anything, was the common thread. But since I appear to be an obvious common thread – I built them, I host them – I am concerned.
The sites don't seem to have any overarching configuration problems, but they are all new domains, thin content, and not a lot of backlinks. I thought these were reasons enough for Google to overlook a website. I checked with WPEngine who said there has been no throttling or rate limiting . One IP was on an abuse list but they got it removed last week.
I'm just really concerned that this has happened four times this year. I am trying to learn from the SEO consultant but it just seems weird that I'd need a consultant to force these sites to be indexed. Is it weird? What am I missing?
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1 Reply
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If the site loads “fast enough” and is indexable by search engines, you’re good. Generally speaking, the hosting environment plays a very very small role in the SEO scheme. If Google’s able to index something but they choose not to, it means 1 of 2 things 1. It will provide no value to users (low quality / thin content) or 2. You’re not trusted (via of page signals like links, brand, social presence etc) …. For 2. U generally don’t need links just to be indexed, but you need them to rank. My guess is the pages are thin or you have too many pages… many many factors to consider, but another q to ask – what good would being indexed do? It’s generally more important to look at rankings and search volume . For example you could be indexed / ranked #50 which is just about as good as not being indexed at all.. or you could be indexed / ranked #1 for something with 0 search volume (meaningless as well)..
Anyways after that word vomit.. no hosting doesn’t play a huge role.. content, links, strategy, etc are way more important. And most important – how does that impact your business?
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If you can inspect the URL and get no error, then its not technical. If there’;s an error – like it couldnt fetch it or its an exact duplicate, then you get an error code.
For some reason, the WebDev community whenever it does SEO, thinks SEO is about compliance+code quality….. it’s not – very little in SEO is about code/tech stack.
>and not a lot of backlinks.
# Bingo!!!!!
What you have is not enough authority. If you have pages with authority – which is any page with organic traffic – then you can use internal links to lift the pages that aren’t being indexed. Remember – the total links on a page dilute the link value and footer or nav links are highly diluted. Body Links are best.
XML sitemaps do not force pages to be linked, site speed doesnt make your site more SEO friendly, slow sites dont make it “un friendly”
SEO is about relevance (What you publish and write about) and Authority – who links to you and how.
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This is literally my case. When I host my websites with nextjs they are not getting properly indexed. It feels like it problem on Google side. I create new website. Then 1 month passes and it is getting deindexed. Happened to 10 new websites I have created. Backlinks don’t help anymore with indexing. One of my websites got DR 20 due to ahrefs. All backlins weren’t bought. Still 4 pages indexed out of 10k. Bing though is doing good now. I am thinking about getting out of this game. Google just doesn’t deserve good content anymore
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what are the domains? no one can really say without looking at them.
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hosting has no effect on indexing. Just ensure site is accessible and use free tools to check indexable
ensure robots.txt is not blocking the page. optimize everything in GSC then you are good to go
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