What is indexing and why you should care?

Indexing is the method used by Google and other search engines to add your website or blog to Google search. Indexing is something only some online users, web managers, or online marketers give a second thought to; to most, it seems like a straightforward, automated search engine task. But this isn’t necessarily the case. While search engine indexing is highly effective, it isn’t flawless.

To fully understand the process of search engine indexing and to help your SEO drive, it’s a great idea to complete a digital marketing course to get you up to speed on why you should care about indexing.

How does indexing work?

The search engines receive content from your URL via their crawlers, and indexing is how the search engines make sense of your content, primarily by looking at links and keywords. Based on their relativeness not all site pages are indexed. The pages that are allowed to be indexed are called indexable pages.

Once the crawling stage is complete and a page has been deemed ‘indexable’ - it is indexed, that page is in the running to be displayed on the search engine results page, which is precisely where you want your online content to be. This vast database is constantly growing, and indexing is a necessary part of the search engine being able to list online content on the results page once an online search has been entered.

Does getting indexed quickly matter?

So, if all website pages are crawled and then indexed, does it matter whether your site’s pages get indexed quickly or simply wait in the indexing queue. If your site is new or isn’t updated often, getting swiftly indexed by Google is extremely important for your SEO efforts. Being visible online through digital channels and being seen quickly is one of the most essential parts of digital marketing.

Can you control indexing?

Is it possible to influence your site’s indexing, especially with Google? Are you able to help speed up the indexing process? There are many methods, tips, and techniques; however, understanding the process and method to use is critical. Above all else, remember it's impossible to reach your digital marketing goals if your pages aren’t indexed, and influencing your indexing should not be overlooked if you want to attract as much organic traffic as possible.

It’s not an exaggeration to say that a site must have high-quality content to get Google’s attention. Like most search engines, Google has guidelines that sites must meet that relate to content quality, authority, and trust.

Indexing tips and techniques to speed things along

Now that you’re familiar with the basic understanding of indexing and why it is essential to your SEO and digital marketing strategy, let’s take a closer look at some tips and techniques that can help speed up indexing your pages.

The first point of the call is to use Fetch as Google before other techniques are used, and it is a great tool to get your site indexed as quickly as possible. This great webmaster tool allows you to input a URL, evaluate it, and submit it to Google for a fresh crawl – brilliant!

Here are a few more indexing tips you can try:

• Use internal links – An important point when getting your site indexed is to enable indexing and search engines to crawl from page to page through HTML links. Remember, your linking pages need to be relevant to one another.
• Include sitemap pages – Ensure your page is included in your sitemap; while it’s not a guarantee for indexation, it does indeed help.
• Share on Twitter – Twitter is not just a social media platform but a beneficial resource to get Google to crawl your pages regularly.
• Use external links – A massive boost in your site’s ranking factor is to secure other websites to link to yours, which helps a lot with the indexing of your site.

Indexing conclusion

As we’ve discussed, crawling and indexing your site is a non-negotiable when trying to show up on the search engine results page, so it’s a good idea to look further into indexing to fully understand its benefits.