When a user uses a search engine to look something up, the engine returns all the relevant pages stored in its index. There are a lot of pages that fit the bill for any search, because of this, engines like google use algorithms to sort the pages in a way that is best suited for the user.
Indexing plays a vital role in helping Google and other engines sort out pages according to search words and place them based on their relevance. Indexing and ranking are two completely different concepts, however. Indexing allows google to sort pages out and ranking helps an engine to place the page on the search result pages based on multiple factors, placing the most popular sites on top. However, a site cannot be ranked if it is not indexed at all.
The process can be broken down into two steps, crawling, and indexing. Crawling refers to a search engine’s bot crawling through different pages and thoroughly checking all the content on them. This is done to store them in a search engine’s index according to its relevance.
If a page is not indexed, it will not only miss out on being ranked but will also miss out on any organic traffic. Your website needs to deliver the right experiences to be caught on by Google’s crawlers. If it doesn’t meet the right guidelines, the chances of it being crawled quicker fall.
Tips to get your new Website Indexed Faster.
- Check what pages of your website are indexed: Checking which pages of your website have been indexed and which are not yet indexed is the first step. Go to google and search “site:yourwebsite.com” to get a rough idea about how many pages of your Google has indexed. You can check the status of an individual page as well by searching “site:yourwebsite.com/web-page-slug”. If no results show up, it means the page isn’t indexed.
- Tell Google To index your page: If you have noticed that your pages haven’t been indexed by Google, the first step is to do a google url submit. Go to the search bar, navigate to the URL inspection tool, and paste the URL you’d like to be indexed. Click on the “Request indexing” button when you get the results. This is a great way, especially for new websites, to effectively tell Google that you have added something new to your site and that it needs to be looked at.
- Figure out what’s keeping your page from being indexed: Google might have already crawled a web page but it might not be indexed immediately. This could be a bug from the engine’s side or a flaw on your web page that is keeping it from being indexed. Figuring out what is causing your pages from being indexed can help you come up with a solution.
- Use Fetch: Google search console has a great feature that allows you to input a URL for Google to fetch. Googlebot will then visit your page and index it. This is a great option because it even lets you know if a page isn’t indexable, letting you know about any flaws in your page.
- Internal Links: Search engine crawlers crawl from one page to another using HTML Links. Adding internal links that lead to relevant pages is a great way to ensure that when one page gets indexed, the linked page gets crawled as well. You can use SEO tools like Ahrefs that give you the best. Most relevant internal links you can use. You can also find out what page on your website is most authoritative, thereby placing the internal link there to a page that needs to be indexed.
- Check Your Content: While content is a major aspect of a high-quality site, bad or irrelevant content can cause a page’s downfall. Too many low-quality pages can decrease the number of times your website is being crawled, its indexes, and ranking. Periodically checking your content and refining it by removing garbage content or pages that serve no value can help ensure that your website gets crawled often. You can either block the search engine from crawling such pages or deleting them entirely, based on their value.
- Use Sitemap: Adding your website and pages to sitemap allows search engines to understand which of your pages are important and need to be prioritized. This process will not guarantee that your pages will be indexed but will create a guide for the search engine to follow.
Having your new website crawled and indexed should be the top of your priority. Setting the right measures that make your website easy to crawl can help you immensely in the short and long run.
