Whenever we create a new website, our prime target is to get indexed by Google as soon as possible. Though there is no time guarantee as when your site will be indexed by the search engine, but there are certain steps that can help you to avoid the worst case scenario and get the search engines working for you. According to Google, crawling and indexing are processes that may take time and often rely on various factors. Predictions and guarantees cannot be made as when the URL will be indexed.
So, in this article, we will take up some factors that should be considered for quick indexing of your site in Google.
Understand what is indexing
Most of you may not be aware of the term indexing. In SEO, it refers to the search engines that keep a record of the web pages of your site. When the search engine bots starts to crawl your site based on index and no index meta tags, it continues to add pages with index tags. In simple words, it is the spider’s way of processing and gathering the data from the pages during its crawl, which helps to improve your search results. The spider notes the new changes and documents and adds them to the searchable index that Google maintains. Google’s algorithm goes to work and decides where to rank the page among all others based on the keywords.
Enter your URL on the Google’s URL submission page:
Once your new website or pages are created, you can visit Google’s Submit URL page and then type the URL in the box, check the captcha and hit the Submit Request button. But for this, you need to create an account on webmaster tools by using your Google account. Once it is done, you can wait for your website pages to get indexed on Google.
Create a sitemap of your site:
The next thing that you should consider is to create an XML file that stores all the links and the pages of your site so that it helps the crawlers of Google to quickly find your whole website. Whenever there are any updates or you create a blog on your site, include the link of the HTML site map on every page so that the search engine bot can index your site even if it starts from any corner of your site.
Use Google Search Console to track your site:
Google often recommends logging its Search Console once a month to check if there are any errors or dips in traffic. The site offers a variety of indexing-related tools and you will be able to confirm if Google is able to access your pages or not. You can even notify the search engine for a domain change or any changes in the address and even issue urgent blocks on your content that you want to take out off your site.
Use Robots.txt
In case you are not a developer or a coder, you might have seen a file, robots.txt in your domain files. This is a plain text file that resides in the root directory of your domain. It gives strict instruction to the spiders of the search engine about which pages they can crawl and index. When the spiders find a new domain or a file, they read the instructions before taking any action. So, your first step for your new site is to confirm that the site has a robots.txt file. This can be done by checking the FTP or by clicking on the File Manager via the CPanel.
Submit your site to blog directories:
This is another means of getting your site indexed very quickly on Google. Most blog directories allow submission of your site’s content for free. They also give links and traffic. Also ensure to create social media profiles and use sites like Facebook, Google+, LinkedIn, Twitter and etc. to create pages for your site and submit any new posts regularly on them.
Prince N