Hello, I need assistance with an indexing issue for my academic blog. The blog has been around for 10 years and is multilingual (English, French, and Arabic). Initially, it was only in Arabic for several years and articles in Arabic would index quickly. However, after adding English and French in 2018, English has become the default language and now articles in English index quickly and rank well on Google. On the other hand, articles in French and Arabic are indexing slowly or not at all. Despite changing the default language in the Polylang/WordPress plugin, the issue persists. I conducted tests by changing the main language back to Arabic and French, and the articles in those languages indexed quickly and ranked well, but now the English articles are experiencing slower indexing. The blog has separate links for each language (English, French, and Arabic) so I am unsure why articles in French and Arabic are not benefiting from the domain authority.
The issue you’re facing could be related to a few factors:
- Language-specific settings in Google Search Console: Ensure that you have verified your website in Google Search Console for each language version. This will allow Google to crawl and index your site correctly.
- Hreflang tags implementation: Ensure that the
hreflangtags are correctly implemented in your HTML code, properly identifying the different language versions of your pages. This helps Google understand the relationships between different language versions and index them appropriately. - Content quality and relevance: While your Arabic content indexed quickly initially, it’s crucial to ensure that the content in all languages, including French and Arabic, is of high quality, relevant, and optimized for search engines.
- Crawlability and indexing issues: There might be technical issues affecting crawlability and indexing for specific language versions. This could include problems with your robots.txt file, broken links, or slow loading times. Analyze your website using Google Search Console to identify any such issues.
- Site structure and internal linking: Ensure that your site structure and internal linking are optimized for each language version. This includes using appropriate language-specific keywords in internal links and creating a clear hierarchy for each language section.
- Mobile responsiveness: Google prioritizes mobile-friendly websites. Ensure your site is responsive across all devices and languages to enhance indexing and ranking.
By addressing these points and analyzing your website’s performance using Google Search Console, you can potentially improve the indexing and ranking of your French and Arabic content.