Getting Google or other search engines to index your site is absolutely critical for anyone working in the digital space. If your site isn’t indexed, you’re not showing up in the SERPs and, therefore, not getting the traffic you need to succeed.
Many take the approach of allowing search engines to organically index their site or content. This method wastes precious time that could be spent on a variety of business-building activities. There are tactics that allow you to take this process into your own hands and get search engines to index your site much more expediently.
Here are the five most powerful methods to help get your site indexed instantly.
1. Utilize Robots.txt
For those who are unfamiliar, robots.txt provides Google spiders with information on which pages they are actually allowed to crawl and index. If Google bots do not find this file, they will crawl and index everything on the site.
This can be highly problematic if a site houses multiple pages with the same content. Google penalizes sites with duplicate content so it is wise to use this if you are split testing pages, or simply do not want certain pages to be indexed.
Do be aware, however, that if this is not configured correctly, it may suppress your entire website from showing up in the SERPs. If you do not feel comfortable and confident in handling this task, it is best to employ a developer to handle it for you.
2. Establish a Blog
Content is the foundation of SEO because it helps to drive traffic, incorporate keywords for ranking, generate sales and provide a myriad of other benefits. Blogs can also help get your site indexed much faster because they typically receive an average indexed page increase of 434 percent when compared to static pages. No matter your niche, blogging is an important aspect of SEO and getting your site indexed.
If you are going to start a blog, make sure you formulate a solid content strategy. This will help you to keep your publications on track and remain consistent in frequency of posts. Simply ask yourself what the goals of the blog are, identify your target audience, establish the various kinds of content you would like to produce and where they will be published, and how often you plan on publishing.
This will help you remain on a set schedule and decrease the time it takes for Google or other search engines to index your materials.
3. Provide Your Blog to Directories
Submitting your blog to these digital catalogues is another way to speed up the time it takes search engines to index your page. Remember that all directories are not created equal; some can even harm your SERP standings in accordance with the penguin algorithm.
To ensure that you only submit to reputable sources, check out some of the top-ranked lists available on the Web by sifting through TopRank’s RSS and blog directories list and utilizing other similar resources to help identify the best places to post.
4. Set Up and Submit a Sitemap
In simplest terms, a sitemap is just a list of all of the webpages on your site. This list helps search engines become privy to changes, and informs them of how frequently to look for updates. This likely will not get your site indexed instantly, but it is a fabulous resource to assist in the procedure.
If you are running WordPress, one of the simplest ways to achieve this is by installing the Google XML Sitemaps plugin. The tool is easy to use and its settings provide you with all the resources necessary to automate the plugin to create sitemaps at certain intervals in time, update them and present them to search engines.
5. Update Your Social Media Accounts
Assuming you already have social profiles set up, revise these to reflect your website or blog’s link. If you have yet to establish these pages, now is the time. Creating a page or updating this information on Google+ is particularly important, for obvious reasons, but don’t neglect any of your profiles.
Alongside generating or updating your social pages, it is equally important to share the newly formed URLs through your post updates. This is a great way to acquire links to your page. If you are on sites like YouTube that don’t work in the same manner as Facebook or Twitter, create a video walkthrough of the new site and include links in the description. Since Google does track social signals, this will help to get your pages indexed quicker, with minimal effort.
Implementing these steps will help to get your site indexed near instantly so that you can focus on driving traffic, building higher levels of conversions and creating quality content that will help you top the SERPs.
Do bear in mind that in the digital world, everything is always in flux. Today’s best practices are tomorrow’s black hat tactics, so be sure that any information you integrate is current, up-to-date, and supported by multiple sources. Conducting in-depth research on these topics is part of your duty as a website owner. Fail to do so, and you are likely to damage your seat in the SERPs, and potentially much more.
