Getting Indexed
Category: Search Engine Optimisation
There are a number of methods that can be used to help get a website indexed by the major search engines.
Google, Yahoo! and MSN all have an Add URL page from which a website can be submitted to be spidered and indexed.
Google also have a Sitemap tool, which allows them a direct path to visiting a site on a regular basis. This method is typically used for websites that are updated frequently. You must have a Google webmaster account to enable sitemap submission.
Some of the fastest ways to get a website indexed without submitting a website to the search engines is to have quality and, relevant inbound links. Search engine spiders like and actively search for inbound links and seem to favour one way links rather than reciprocal links (sites linking to each other).
There are many a different effective search engine optimisation techniques which can be used to help getting a site indexed. For example;
Google owns blogger.com and checks the site regularly for new content and links. If a website also has a blog on blogger.com and the blog has links pointing back to the main site then this will increase the chances of Google’s spider (Googlebot) following the links back to the site and indexing its pages.
Keyworded links on the site will also be actively searched and crawled by search engine spiders. Therefore blogs should contain relevant keywords to the content. One thing to note is not to overuse keywords as the search engines may ban or more commonly penalise websites that come across as spam.
Social Bookmarking is also used to effectively help speed up a website being indexed. Technorati, Digg, Stumbleupon and Delicious are some of the more popular social bookmarking websites. These sites are constantly visited by search engines because of the high volume of new content that is submitted, following links and indexing pages along the way.
RSS Feeds is another means of increasing the visibility of a website to search engines as well as informing subscribers each time the site’s content is updated. With RSS Feeds it is possible to have all new content picked up by many a different online source. These sources will also provide a link back to your site enabling search engines to find links to your website on many different websites.
Relevant forum postings on forums which are content/theme related to your site should also be targeted as these are oftentimes highly search engine optimised and crawled be search engines. A post or thread you start should always end with a signature which includes a link to your website.
Whilst releasing a rich anchor text and relevant keyworded Press Release (PR) is a useful method to increase traffic from users and other sites, it also provides an excellent opportunity to create more links to your site that will be crawled by the search engines.
Google is the fastest search engine to act on indexing websites and is constantly crawling the web for the latest and freshest content. This enables Google to stay at the forefront of the online search industry thus providing its users with what they require when performing searches via its own website and search partners.
Orrymain
30 Sep 2009
Getting indexed is one of the most challenging things in my opinion. It’s important to end up in the search engine searches. I’m challenged right now with one of my blogs.
vttop
1 Oct 2009
Yes, social bookmarking does indeed speed up the indexing process. I have experienced this with one of the first sites I used to bookmark on digg. Heck, the digg submission got indexed in google about 20 minutes. I think I still have the screenshot of that listing. Not surprising considering that the google spiders almost never leave the sites like digg, stumbleupon etc. But as rightly pointed out, it’s better to get google to index the site naturally than force feeding it into google’s index by manual submission.
Mockingbird
6 Oct 2009
In my experience I have found it takes about 48 hours to get indexed, it is very true that social book marking speeds this up but you can drop rank very fast if you do not keep up on your back links. Branding should never be forgotten to make it in the long run, it is time consuming but it works.
Orrymain
6 Oct 2009
All of this just shows that it’s not an easy task to keep people coming to your website by using all of these tools. Nothing beats word of mouth and a good reputation.
andrew25
6 Oct 2009
Backlinks are the key to get good page rankings and the content is as important as anything. If you can get everything right then your site will improve its position day by day and the best thing is to be patient as everything takes its own time.
tongyun
6 Oct 2009
I think this is the one area where people forget they have some control. I’ve done this with my sites and in some case, the sites appear within the next day or two. It really doesn’t take that long and is extremely beneficial in getting your site ranked.