If you have a website and aren’t seeing the amount of traffic you’d like, chances are your website may not be indexed. Not having your website indexed on Google is like being invisible online and nobody wants that. If you’re running a business that sells products or services online, it can be crucial to make sure your website is coming up as one of the first sites suggested, let alone coming up at all!
It’s not common knowledge to know how to get Google to index your website and that’s why we’re here! If this sounds like something you may be struggling with, read on to get the help you need to learn how to get Google to index your site.
What Does Indexing Mean?
There are a few web terms that are good to be aware of to get the most clicks for your site. Google performs a task called “crawling”. Crawling is how Google finds new websites and by using hyperlinks, new content is discovered. Google uses something called a web spider called Googlebot to perform the crawling duties.
The next step in the process is indexing. Indexing is putting every website imaginable in a large database. If you want people to discover your website, it must be indexed. It’s just like the way people used to keep indexes for important information, except this is all online.
When you search something into Google, what you’re doing is asking it to look through the index and pull up any sites that are relevant to your search. Just because you have your website indexed doesn’t mean you’ll be the first site to come up; that’s called ranking. We’ll discuss that more in detail later!
Is My Site Indexed?
You may be asking yourself how on earth are you supposed to know if your website is indexed or not? Follow the instructions below to easily get the answer to that!
- Go to Google.
- Type in “site:” without the quotations, followed by your website name. For example: site:longtailpro.com.
- If your website hasn’t been index, you will see zero results.
- If it is indexed, you will see the number of results for your website.
If you find yourself with zero results, you can easily change that! Getting your website indexed isn’t too much work and won’t take up a lot of your time. Let’s talk more about how to get Google to index your site!
Getting Your Website Indexed
There are a number of ways you can get your website indexed but before trying any of those, use the easy steps below to get you on track!
- Click here to start on Google Search Console.
- Click on the “URL Inspection Tool”.
- Type in or paste the website you’re needing indexed into the search bar.
- Google will then check and find the correct website.
- Click on the “Request Indexing” option.
The above steps should be followed any time you create a new website or publish a new page to your already existing site. Doing so is you letting Google know that there is a new page they need to take a look at and add to their index.
If you’ve done this and it doesn’t seem to help, there are a handful of things you can do to fix the issues you’re having. Go through the tips and tricks below to see if they help get your site indexed and showing up how you’d like it to!
Tips And Tricks To Getting Your Site Indexed
Below you’ll read about some troubleshooting tips and tricks to make sure your website is indexed. Try a few of these out and check your results to see if traffic has increased or if more of your sites become visible on Google.
Make Sure Your Site Isn’t Orphaned
A website is considered orphaned if there aren’t any internal links directing people to said site. Since the process of crawling is down by finding new websites, orphaned websites are not included. Basically, Google isn’t finding orphaned sites and neither are potential customers.
To have your website crawled is easy, you can go to this website and simply check the incoming links. This will show you if you have one or multiple sites that are considered orphaned.
So, what do you do if you’ve found you have one or several orphaned sites? Well, you have two options. If a site is no longer relevant, you can simply delete the page. If you are still using the site, just incorporate the page into your website’s internal link structure.
Add Strong Internal Links
Speaking of internal links, making sure yours are strong is a great way to get seen on Google. If you don’t have strong internal links when Google is performing a crawl, it just might miss your website.
You can add internal links by using another website that Google can crawl and index but be sure to do so from an already powerful website to get the job done quicker. Make sure whatever links you’re using are not only strong, but relevant to your website. This is where knowing what your customers are googling can come in handy.
If you own a custom T-shirt business, ask your friends what they would search when looking to buy a custom T-shirt. Make sure you’re using those keywords on your web pages and linking to anything that may be important to the customer.
Use Social Media
Google doesn’t just crawl websites; they also crawl social media posts. If you use something like Facebook or Twitter for your business, make sure you’re sharing your website in some posts.
If Google is crawling a social media platform and is seeing your website come up multiple times, it may get indexed from that. This is also a great way to drive people who may not know who had a website to your homepage!
There are also places in social media bios that you can put a link so it’s one of the first things people see when they come to your page. You could write “SALE” in your bio and have your link below that, driving more traffic to your website, getting more customers, and allowing Google to see that your web page exists.
Get Your Website Pinged
One of the easiest ways to get Google to index your site is by allowing it to get pinged. There are websites out there that send out pings (or signals) to search engines like Google to let them know that there is an updated or new website available to crawl or index. This is one of the quickest, easiest and not to mention free options to do to get your page indexed by Google.
How To Get Your Website Indexed Faster
Indexing can get a bit complicated sometimes. You won’t always see the same results by using the same techniques on different web pages. It varies on how important Google sees your website and how often they are updated.
Even after you apply everything you’ve learned so far, there are still tactics you may need to put in place to make sure your website gets indexed. Below we’ve included a few ways to get your website indexed a bit faster so you can gain traffic and an audience. Feel free to use these tips below if you find that it’s taking longer than you’d like to get your website indexed by Google.
The Age Of The Site
A little thing to keep in mind is that even during a crawl, Google is looking for “new” websites; the older a site is, the more likely it is to get crawled. As long as your website is active and making up to date content, you’ll be set, no matter the age.
The Amount Of Traffic
Another factor that is important is the amount of traffic a website has if it gets crawled. If you think a website that has more traffic gets crawled more often, you’d be right. Websites that are active and have updated content are easier for sites like Google to crawl.
Site Authority
You may have read about certain factors that Google looks for when considering a website’s authority. Search engines carry a different standard than other sites that hold metrics. If you have web pages that have a lot of inbound links from high authority sites, they are much more likely to be crawled a lot more often than if you didn’t.
Thus, having a high site authority is an easy way to get your pages indexed quickly. If you don’t have any of inbound links, it can take anywhere from a couple of days to a few months for your website to be indexed. And you wouldn’t want to wait long as that will just delay customers and traffic to your site.
Linking Specific Pages
You’ve already read about how social media can help when it comes to indexing and this is another example. Making sure you use social media every time you have a new blog post will drive traffic to the new page.
Keep links on all appropriate pages and when Google performs a crawl, it will have a higher chance of seeing the pages you’ve linked. Keep the links in your bio updated every time you update your website.
The Quality Of Content
Last but not least, the content you’re producing will play a role in how fast your site gets indexed by Google. If you have poor content, you’re less likely to get indexed in the first place. Even if you have a sitemap, if your content isn’t up to Google’s standards, your site may not be indexed.
Have high-quality, engaging content not only makes it easier for Google to index your site but it also keeps people returning to your website, which also increase the chances of getting indexed faster.
What About Ranking?
It was mentioned earlier that indexing and ranking are not the same thing, though both are important to the traffic of your website. Having Google index your website means that the search engine is aware your site exists. After you have that setup, you need to focus on SEO, also known as Search Engine Optimization.
Having specific words, phrases, or tags on your website will help with your SEO. To increase your SEO, you need to know what your customers are searching for on Google pertaining to your product or service.
After you know that, make sure your content relates to what is being searched and optimize the pages of your site for those targeted keywords and search terms. Lastly, build backlinks and make sure you’re regularly adding new things to your website so it stays relevant.
Growing Traffic With Indexing
Now that you’re more aware of what indexing is and how to get your website indexed by Google, it’s time to learn a few ways you can take advantage of having an indexed website. Below are some of the tried and true ways people increase their traffic and clicks based off their indexed web pages. Let’s get into this list!
Google Search Console
Google Search Console is a great tool to use to get ahead of competitors. It’s one of the first steps to getting more traffic.
You must register your website or new page with Google Search Console. After you register, be sure to submit your sitemap. This will make sure your website gets indexed quickly. You read about this step already, but it’s incredibly important, so start here.
Have An RSS Feed
Having an RSS feed is an awesome way of telling the internet when you have an update to your website. If you’re using an RSS feed, your new website or new web pages will be more likely seen during the crawling process. Having one isn’t a necessity but it’s an easy way to get your website seen by Google and, in turn, more people.
Pay Attention To Analytics
Paying attention to your analytics, whether you’re using Google or another analytics firm, won’t exactly help your index rate or the speed your website is seen. Analytics will help you stay up to date on important information that’s happening on your website.
Having someone checking analytics every few days can show you how many people are seeing a post; how many are clicking on a link, and so on. Though this doesn’t help with indexing, it can help your business grow as you see what works well and can do more of that.
Start A Blog
If you don’t already incorporate a blog on your website, you may want to start. Google loves websites that have blogs because they often have new content that drives people to their web pages. If you do start a blog, make sure to keep it updated often so Google stays aware of your website.
It not only helps your web pages get indexed, but you can easily make money from blogs if you update them often and keep traffic flowing.
Connect With Influencers
If you’re looking to get more clicks, connect with an influencer. Since Google likes it when a page has traffic, having an influencer talk about your website to their audience is one of the easiest ways to draw traffic in.
This can be done on the influencer’s social media, Youtube, or a blog of their own. Though this is an easy way to gain traffic and stay on Google’s radar, it can be expensive, depending on the influencer and their rates.
Have Guest Posts
If you want to be considered a high authority site by Google and get indexed faster, have a few guest posts. This will not only bring in the guest’s fans to your website, but you could easily incorporate backlinks here as well. If your website isn’t set up to have guest posts, this is also an area where you could sponsor someone as well.
Use Forums
Does your service or product have a popular online community? If the answer is yes, you should consider using forums to your advantage. This is a form of self-promotion and if you own a business, there’s nothing wrong with using areas of the internet to get your name out there.
If your product or service is as good as you think it is, you shouldn’t have a problem using forums to bring in traffic. This is another area where you can see what people are saying about the particular niche as well.
Final Words
There is a lot to keep in mind when it comes to indexing your website. You’ve learned how to get Google to index your site, ways to make the process faster, how websites are ranked, and more.
After you put what you’ve learned into practice, you’ll be one step closer to having a website that not only appears on Google but may even rank near the top of the search results. Remember to keep your website up-to-date and the quality of the content high and you’ll be set up for success!
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Thanks for this helpful information. Actually, we made our client website before some month but still didn’t index all the pages properly. It would be great help if you guide me.
Thanks in advance.
Hey Juan,
I think you should check you Search Console 1st for any warning or error, Google often send the actual reason there. Hope, you will get the actual reason why your website is not crawling or indexing.