There are many actions you can take when working on your site’s SEO. However, the very first step should always be to simply make sure that your site has been properly indexed.
Although it is true that eventually Google will come across most pages on your site, it’s a lot better solution to just serve those pages up on a plate, so to speak.
So today, we’re going to look into some popular methods to get your site indexed properly.
1. Create a Sitemap
Granted, a good sitemap on its own won’t help you that much in terms of indexing the site itself. However, it’s a crucial tool that Google will use later on to find out about the structure of your site and where the most important pages are situated.
Luckily, creating a sitemap is rather simple these days, at least if you’re running your site on WordPress. You can just install a plugin like WordPress SEO and activate the sitemap feature. The plugin requires almost no setup and will be able to generate a correct sitemap automatically.
2. Submit the Sitemap to Google Webmaster Tools (GWT)
(This step is optional.)
Many webmasters like to speed up the indexation process by submitting their sitemap to GWT. Once the sitemap is there, Google is likely to follow the submission and check out the site itself.
However, some site owners prefer not to let GWT know about the site because they are not sure what the intentions of various products of Google are in relation to the main search engine. For instance, there were cases where some bad practices discovered by the GWT script had their impact on the site in the search engine index. So proceed on your own risk.
3. Jumpstart the Indexation With Bookmarks
The main way in which Google goes about indexing sites is by visiting them when following a link from another site. Therefore, the best method there is to get your site indexed is to obtain a link from a popular domain.
The only difficulty is that this is much easier said than done.
Luckily though, the link doesn’t have to be of the highest quality just to get the job done. So for a quick jumpstart, you might as well go with simple bookmark links from sites like Delicious. Just make sure to keep the link public.
4. Set Up Social Profiles
Google is very serious about social media these days. They do whatever they can to keep their fingers on the pulse and to keep checking what’s new and noteworthy on the most popular social platforms.
To help out your efforts, make sure to set up some social profiles for your new site and also link to it from your previous social profiles.
Now, what you really want to set up is some Google+ presence. Google+ has been proven to work extremely well in terms of helping out sites to get indexed. For instance, according to an article by Pole Position Marketing, it’s said that sometimes Google manages to index new sites within six seconds of being posted on Google+.
That last part is really impressive and probably something we should all keep in mind when working on our new sites to get them indexed!