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Okay, so 2015 might not have been your best year with when it came to getting advanced with Google. Maybe you were just starting out, building up your network, or you launched a campaign that preoccupied a lot of your time. The good news is that it is never too late to start working towards getting indexed faster by Google, and we think this is especially important for small and local businesses to pay attention to if they want to succeed.
First things first, let’s go over a bit about Google Bot and about what indexing is, after all this may be the first time some of you are even thinking putting this on your priority list. Then we will launch into some strategies that will be particularly important this year.
What You Need to Know About Google Bot & Indexing
Google Bot is what scours the web collecting information for the Google search engine. Its main job is “crawling,” a term you likely have heard before. Basically Google Bot’s job is to go from website to website and is looking for new or updated information to report back to Google’s search engine. One of the reasons that Google has become the top search engine is because it prioritizes the newest and most relevant content so that when people search they get exactly what they are looking for when they typed in that search.
This process of sorting through all of the information that Google Bot finds, and prioritizing it by quality into Google’s searchable index is called “indexing.” During the process of indexing Google Bot processes the words on a page or document, and the exact location of the words on a page. Information like title tags and ALT attributes are also analyzed during indexing. Google Bot always starts at the pages it previously crawled and adds in site map data from Google webmasters. Pages that are linked on those pages are generally crawled next (which is also why linking is also a key feature to getting indexed…but more on that in a bit).
Step One: The first thing you need to do in order to determine whether or not your site is indexed in Google or any other search engines is: (1) go to Google.com and (2) type site: domain.com (Of course, replace “domain.com” with your actual domain name, (example: noriskseo.com), and check to see whether the site is indexed or not.
Step Two: This might go without saying, make sure that you have content to be crawled by Google Bot when it arrives. In other words, if your site is new, make sure to have content ready before going through with efforts to get indexed.
Getting Indexed Faster in 2016
If you do have a lot of content on your site that you have been developing over time, then you are certainly ready to get as much of your site indexed as possible. Here are some suggestions of how to do it fast in 2016.
#1 Ask Google to re-crawl your URLs.
If you’ve recently made changes to a URL on your site (for example: updates, a new blog sub-section, new location), you can update your web page in Google Search with the Submit to Index function of the Fetch as Google tool. This function allows you to ask Google to crawl and index your URL. You can find detailed information on how to get this process stared with Google directly here.
#2 Get inbound links.
As I mentioned above, linking on your website (and blog especially) enables Google Bot even more likely find and index your site—this is because when other websites are crawled, potentially more often than yours, you have created an indexed link to it. One of the fastest ways to get indexed is to build quality links to your site from other more popular sites.
#3 Optimize your site speed.
One of the indexing features that Google Bot has involves determining the loading time of a page. If your site is on the slower side, I would definitely suggest doing everything you can to improve your page load time, as this is going to be a critical aspect to how you are indexed. In consideration of indexing of the “new year” remember that the internet and web page building are constantly improving—this is the best time of year to do a check in to see how you are doing an make improvements where you need to.
#4 Update your content.
Unfortunately, building a quality site with the necessary information for your customers isn’t really the only important thing you need to do any more. One thing that Google really prioritizes when it comes to ranking and indexing is new information and content added frequently. The addition of more valuable content and new information urges the Google bot to index your site repeatedly. Keep in mind that updated content is not limited to the visible content or written blog content on your pages, but also the Meta data and other important SEO aspects that are on the website.
#5 Create or Update your Google+ profile.
Another way to get Google’s attention is to create a Google+ profile for your business, if you haven’t already. Once you have created your profile the best thing to do is to add a link to your site in the “About section.”
You will also want to treat Google+ like another social media outlet (Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, etc.) and play close attention to adding posts that contain links to your site. This probably goes without much explanation, but because Google+ is a Google platform, Google Bot will pay attention to these links.
#6 Clean-Up or Buff-Up You Internal Link Structure
In the spirit of updating and improving your website in 2016, you want to make sure that all of the pages on your website are interlinked with each other. You especially want to make sure that your site’s home page has been properly indexed—this will make sure than any page that is connected to your site will be indexed as well.
#7 Submit Your Sitemap to Google Webmaster
To be fair, this last suggestion should probably have come higher in the list. The reason I put it here is because you really want to make sure that all your ducks are in a row with linking building, link structure, content, and site speed before you submit or resubmit a site map to Google Webmaster. Of course, if you are a new site, this is absolutely the first place you should take your sitemap.
Simply create a free Google Account (if your business site does not already have one), then sign up for Webmaster Tools. Add your new site to Webmaster Tools, then go to Optimization > Sitemaps and add the link to your website’s sitemap to Webmaster Tools to notify Google.
The Takeaway
Launching in to 2016, you want to make sure that getting your site indexed is on your priority list. Why? Because you want your business or brand’s site to be one of the top results for relevant searches. The 7 suggestions above are some of the best ways to get your site indexed fast, so the sooner you start the better.
Do you have any additional tips for getting a website indexed faster by Google? Did you try any of ours and find them successful? Let us know in the comments section below.