Your site’s organic traffic is null and you don’t know why. This may be because your website is not yet indexed in the search engines.
That’s a bummer, but you have no choice. You must get your site indexed ASAP, or Google (and people who search on Google) will remain oblivious of its existence.
In this post, we’ll share 8 SEO easy-to-follow proven strategies for quick website indexing. Go, go, go!
What is website Indexing?
Indexing is the process by which Google and other search engines discover and add a website (and its pages) to their database. When a page is indexed, it will start appearing in search results.
If we focus solely on Google, the process starts with crawling, where Google discovers content by following links on the web. Googlebot (Google’s search engine crawler bot) hops on links from page to page until it finds those freshly published ones.
Afterward, the crawler will analyze the site’s content and structure. Once Google understands what your website is about, it will index its pages in its database.
Once Google crawling and indexing is done, your page will start appearing in search engine results pages (SERPs). This means that, if you have done your SEO homework, people will likely find your pages on Google if they search for a topic related to your content.
According to John Mueller (a Google Search Advocate), the typical indexing speed is around a week for new pages to get indexed. However, it can take several weeks for some. Pages’ indexing speed varies but it’s possible to fast-track it using some quick website indexing techniques.
8 quick website indexing strategies
Here are 8 tactics to get Google to index your site fast. Although they also work with the rest of the search engines.
1. Submit an XML sitemap to Google Search Console
A sitemap is an XML document that provides Google with an overview of your site’s structure as well as its important contents and their relationships.
When Googlebot reads your sitemap, it can easily navigate across your website and discover new pages, thereby boosting its indexing speed.
Keep these in mind to create a sitemap that can quickly index your website:
- Include only pages you want Google to crawl. Pages such as landing pages with limited lifespans, redirect pages, or admin pages should be excluded.
- Ensure every included page is up-to-date.
- Define clear and organized content hierarchies. Indicate which page is the homepage, then specify the categories and subcategories.
- Prioritize pages with the most relevant content. Pages such as the “About Us” or “Mission Statement” should be less prioritized for crawling.
Sites built with WordPress can use the Yoast SEO or RankMath plugins to automatically create an XML sitemap. For other content management systems (CMS), you can access your sitemap by entering https://www.[yourwebsite].com/sitemap.xml in your browser.
Related | How to index a WP site in Google
You can submit a sitemap via Google Search Console (GSC). To do so:
- Log in to your GSC account.
- In the menu on the left, click “Sitemaps”.
- Put your sitemap’s URL in the “Add a new sitemap” field and click “Submit”.
IMPORTANT: Before adding a Sitemap in GSC, you must have added a website... So, submitting your website to Google is the very first step.
2. Create high-quality content (DO IT!)
Google won’t index a site with low-quality, zero-value content. It sounds cliché, but quality over quantity should be your priority. Don’t churn out content just for the sake of it, but strive to make pages that bring substance, value, and insights to your readers.
To Google’s eyes, content is “high-quality” if it’s:
- Original: Content is not taken from someone else's work.
- Accurate and Fresh: All information is up-to-date and verified.
- People-centered: The page strives to give users a good reading experience (e.g. few distracting ads, easy navigation, no clickbait, quick loading times).
- Authoritative: Made by trustworthy and reliable people in the content’s niche. Yet, creators don’t need to have formal education or training to become credible in Google’s eyes.
- Well-polished: No spelling and grammatical errors.
- Comprehensive: Detailed and insightful, but avoids fluff.
- Engaging: Use media such as photos and videos to engage visitors.
3. Enhance website structure and internal linking
Recall that Google discovers new pages by following links. Creating a more logical and coherent internal linking structure can help in quick website indexing.
The top of your site’s hierarchical structure should be your homepage. Then, it branches out to your site categories such as the “About Us”, “Blog”, “Services”, and “Contact Us” pages. Afterward, each category branches out to subcategories. For instance, your “Blog” page should lead site visitors to links for your published articles.
Once you make a neat site hierarchy, improve your internal links next. Strategically link relevant content and use descriptive anchor texts to give users a clear idea of where an internal link would take them.
4. Secure HIGH-QUALITY backlinks
By having high-quality backlinks, your website signals to Google that its content is valuable, credible, and authoritative.
Here are some ways to get high-quality backlinks:
- Find broken links on high domain authority websites in your niche and suggest replacements from your own website.
- Make top-notch, “link-worthy” content that bloggers and news sites can use as a reference.
- Apply the “Skyscraper technique” where you outperform high-quality content and promote it to the original publisher.
There are much more link building techniques and strategies, we will publish a post about this soon. We are super creative with this!
More on link building | Link Building for SEO: A Guide to the Basics (Semrush)
5. Optimize your website for mobile devices
After Google’s mobile-friendly update, the search engine started to prioritize mobile-friendly pages for indexing and ranking. Hence, ensure that your site’s layout, design, and features are compatible with various mobile screen sizes.
Moreover, its texts must be readable and media such as images or videos should render and load quickly in a mobile browser.
You can use Google Search Console or Fetch & Render (awesome) tool to check how Googlebot smartphone renders and sees any page of your website.
6. Remove “NoIndex” tags
Another possible reason why Google can’t index your site is a “noindex” tag in your page’s HTML.
The “noindex” tag is a piece of code under the <head> section that goes like this:
<head>
<title>My Webpage</title>
<meta name="robots" content="noindex">
</head>
Basically, this tag signals Google to not index the page. Unless you remove it, Google will keep your page away from the SERPs.
To remove this tag, simply delete the line in your page’s HTML code.
7. Deactivate web crawler blocking in your robots.txt file
In short and simple terms, the robots.txt file is a text file that tells bots (including Googlebot) which web pages they can and cannot access. Robots.txt files are relevant to search engine web crawlers such as Google.
To access this file, enter [yourdomain].com/robots.txt in your browser. Afterward, look for pages or folders with the “Disallow” rule, as it blocks Googlebot from crawling them. Googlebot should always be able to access the pages of your website that have SEO goals.
You can find much more info about the robots.txt file in this fantastic article from our friends from Semrush.
More on this: Block Search indexing with noindex (Google)
8. Ask for assistance from an SEO Indexing Tool
SEO indexing tools like ours use Google’s official indexing APIs for quick website indexing. These tools will usually ask you to connect your GSC account to their platforms and add your XML sitemaps, and they will automatically index your website in less than 48 hours.
More impressively, SEO indexing tools can monitor your URLs’ indexing status. In the event of any indexing issues, they can immediately inform you and provide suggestions to fix them. You may also opt to let it address pages that Google accidentally deindexed.
The only downside to this option is that it's not free. But this is just a small cost in exchange for your website’s guaranteed indexing status in absolute speed.
What is the price of saving yourself a lot of headaches?
Achieve quick website indexing with an SEO URL Indexing Tool
Save time (and headaches!) dealing with URL indexing with INDEXED.pro. Using our own web crawlers, official Google APIs, and some AI-powered features, this rapid SEO indexing tool can automate the process of indexing (and deindexing) your URLs. See results in less than 48 hours and enjoy your site’s increased discoverability and organic traffic.
What do you think of these 8 proven SEO strategies for quick website indexing?