Web Optimization to Increase Indexing Speed

Indexing is the process by which Google interprets and organizes the content of your website, to then show or attach it (index it) in search results. Before this process, Google crawls (reads) the content through a bot that follows the internal links of a website. In other words, by following the links, the information to index the site is obtained. These processes go hand in hand and are very important for any business and its digital presence. They are especially important for SEOs and webmasters because when they create a website, they are eager to check when it is indexed. The time can range from 3 days to 3 months. The speed of indexing will depend on several factors and optimizations of your website that we will discuss in this article. Let's get into the details!

Table of contents

Factors that Influence Indexing Speed

Recently, a Google Q&A session clarified this topic of indexing speed and the necessary optimizations on your website. Alongside the Google Search Relations team at an event called "Google Office Hours," Gary Illyes stated that indexing speed depends on the quality of the site and its popularity on the Internet. This trends analyst for webmasters also says that popularity on social media can increase the visibility of the site and thus the indexing. Experts from Google like Gary Illyes and John Mueller participate in these sessions, sharing valuable information that helps SEO professionals optimize their sites and those of their clients. Here is an example of a question and answer. We also leave you the link to the session: To the question: Should it take more than six months to index my 16,000 pages? I see an increase of perhaps 5 to 15 per week and find it slow. Response: The speed at which a site is indexed depends on many things, but the most important is the quality of the site, followed by its popularity on the Internet. Once you have ensured that your content is of the highest quality possible, try running some social media promotions so that people start talking about your site. That will probably help. Let's look at it in detail.

Site Quality to Increase Indexing Speed.

And when we talk about a high-quality site, what do we mean? Google's algorithms prioritize high-quality content to determine indexing. But in addition to original and non-duplicated content, it refers to images, site structure, design, loading speed, and factors related to user experience. And factors related to EEAT (Experience, Expertise, Authority, Trust). All these elements contribute to a good user experience and are key factors that Google considers when evaluating the quality of the website for faster indexing. According to John Mueller: "When it comes to content quality, we are not just talking about the text of your articles. It is really the quality of your website as a whole. And that includes everything from design to layout. For example, how you present things on your pages, how you integrate images, how you work with speed, all these factors come into play there."

Website Popularity on the Internet

Web popularity refers to the quantity and quality of links pointing to a webpage. Links favor faster indexing and better ranking in search engines. When relevant and authoritative websites link to your content, they send a signal to Google indicating that your website is trustworthy and credible. They also generate referral traffic and increase brand awareness. This increases indexing speed and improves the overall ranking of the site in search results. To obtain quality backlinks, you can do guest posts, fix broken links, participate in themed and localized forums…. Another way to get high-quality links is to appear in themed and localized digital media. Thanks to this, you will enhance your site's authority and improve your brand's branding. You will gain visibility and become a trusted, credible reference in your sector. From Unancor, we accompany you in this process. We act as intermediaries offering you a personalized proposal to analyze your project and see which links are the most suitable to gain authority. We have links in national and international media to reach your ideal audience and take your link building to the next level.

Social Media Promotions

The visibility of a site on the Internet makes it more likely that Google will prioritize its indexing. Sharing links to our content on social media allows Google to have "more paths" to reach your website. One way is to create profiles on social media (Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, YouTube, etc.) where you place the link to your website. Another way is by sharing links to blog posts or service pages so that backlinks are generated, which is very beneficial for indexing and thus for SEO positioning.

Optimizing Technical Aspects

In addition to quality content and link building, there are several technical aspects that we can optimize to improve indexing speed. This part of technical SEO is the optimization of the website structure and loading speed, submitting a sitemap, among other aspects to consider:

Site Structure

A logical site structure is essential for users and search engines. It helps visitors navigate the website and improves user experience. And for Google, it helps find and index the content. An example of a logical structure would be: -The homepage links to category pages, and these link to subpages that can be blog articles or service landing pages, depending on the niche.

Optimize Internal Links

Following up on the previous section, the web architecture is how the pages are linked to each other. The previous example serves to illustrate the importance of optimizing internal linking for indexing speed. Working with this example structure reduces the number of orphan pages, which are those that have no internal links pointing to them, which should be avoided as it hinders indexing. By connecting different pages within the same site, internal linking allows search engines to crawl and index your content faster.

Loading Speed

The loading speed of a website is one of the most important factors that Google's algorithms take into account for indexing and scoring a website in search results. To optimize loading speed, you can start by hiring good hosting, configuring a caching plugin, optimizing images and resources, JavaScript files… All this will help search bots index your website faster.

Optimize URLs

Optimizing the URL structure to be clear and descriptive improves the understanding and indexing of the website by search engines and also enhances the user experience. Ideally, the URL should contain the keyword, should not contain uppercase letters or unusual characters, dashes, and numbers, and should not be too long… applying all this will improve indexing speed.

Sitemap

Creating a sitemap (sitemap.xml) with Search Console is something that helps with indexing. The sitemap is a file that contains a list of all the relevant URLs of your website. It allows search engines to know what pages you have and where to find them. If your website is built with WordPress (and most content management systems), it automatically creates a sitemap. Through SEO plugins like Yoast SEO or Rank Math SEO. To submit your sitemap from Search Console, go to the "indexing" section, and in the left menu, you will find "Sitemaps." Then, enter the URL in "Add a new sitemap". And click the "Submit" button. If a green message appears, great, but if there is any problem with the submitted sitemap, it will say "contains errors" and you will have an explanation of how to fix them. Finally, to check your website's sitemap in the search engine, you can use the following command: yourdomain.com/sitemap_index.xml

Robot.txt

The robots.txt files serve to indicate to search bots which files should be indexed in search engines and which should not. This allows you to better customize which URLs you want to show in search results and which URLs you don't want indexed, such as the legal notice page and privacy policies. To create the robots.txt file, use a text file and create a file named "robots.txt". Make sure to save it in the root of your domain, for example: https://domain.com/robots.txt

Structured Data

Structured data are a series of HTML tags that serve to specify the content of the webpage. In this way, Google's spider understands, organizes, and displays it in its specific results. This is very interesting for SEO because the more specific information you provide to the search engine, the better it will interpret the data and index it faster, which translates into better positioning for your website.

Conduct an SEO Audit

When you optimize your website, what you are doing is reviewing all the aspects that affect the organic SEO of a website, that is, an analysis of the situation it is in. Therefore, it is advisable to conduct an SEO audit not only to see what factors can improve indexing speed but also to review all the other factors that will benefit you in positioning your website.

Request Indexing from Google

When you add a new blog post or update your service page, it is advisable to ask Google to index that new content. You are telling it to take a look at new content. Use Google Search Console in the "URL Inspection" option and paste the URL you want it to index and click the "Request Indexing" tab.

How to Check if a URL is Indexed

To check if a URL is indexed by Google, you must enter Google Search Console and go to the URL inspection section. You can simply enter the URL, and if the page is indexed, it will appear. You can also use the command "site:domain.com" directly in the search engine as you can see in the following image.

Indexing Tip

There are ways to slightly force indexing without the risk of penalty from Google. One of them is through the Google API and the Rank Math indexing plugin to index URLs that are not indexed. We will need a WordPress SEO plugin called Instant Indexing for Google by Rank Math The same plugin has a usage tutorial if you need it, but we will quickly summarize the process for you. Once installed and activated, the next step is to configure it. – It asks for an API key (the file must be JSON). To do this, you need to register and create an API in the Google APIs service. – When you download the JSON file, you will see that it offers you a very long email account, which you must copy into Search Console in the user access part and password the JSON file you downloaded (with this, you are giving permission to this account to interact with your website) If we go back to the website, you will see that it is now well configured. Now add the URLs you want it to index. If we click on "Send to API," we check that it is functioning, meaning it has been sent for indexing, and you will see an informative message of "Success."

Conclusions:

To improve indexing speed, you must perform the optimizations on your website that we have mentioned in this article: such as quality content, links from authoritative sites in your sector, technical aspects like loading speed, a good web structure, and internal linking…. We hope you found this content valuable.