Search Engine Indexation
We’re going to talk a lot about what you can do in regards to Google search options, but the same principles can be applied to any search engine.
Assuming you understand that in order for Google to show your content, it needs to get indexed properly and efficiently within Google’s crawls of your website and linking structure.
1. Google Search Console’s Inspection Tool
In it’s simplest definition, you give Google a link to inspect, and they inspect it. It’s basically like you telling Google that there’s new content on your site, and that they should check it out. It sounds great, but it’s relatively tedious when you have a million other things to do; while be it easy as hell.
2. Sitemaps
Sitemaps have been said to be the quickest and easiest way to get indexed. While this is relatively true, they won’t get your content “pushed” to the top of the list for indexation. With that said, we’d highly recommend having sitemaps auto-populated via Yoast, or our preference Rank Math.
3. Combining These “Ping” Tools & Sitemaps
Now our all-time favorite way of getting indexed, because it’s absolutely the fastest and most convenient way, is by using SmartCrawl’s Sitemap widget in the WordPress dashboard. Once we create new content, make changes, or decide to finally publish something we’ve been sitting on, we can simply “update the sitemap” and “force search engine notification” (currently Google & Bing) – in two clicks we’ve updated our sitemap, and told both search engines to push us to the top of the list for another crawl.
Combined Indexation & Ranking Tactics
Alright, so you have some content that you recently published, updated, or whatever, and you’ve told the search engines; now, within your content, you can make adjustments that will dramatically increase the amount of authority your content has.
4. Interlinking Existing (Relevant) Content
If you’ve created enough past-content to build your authority, that’s a great step, and linking this content will give your newest content a slight advantage and boost. The search engine will see that the previous content did well, and therefore this content that’s relevant should also be beneficial to searchers. A prime example of this is your services page.
5. Generating Loads of Traffic
We realize that this may not always be possible, but something you can do is either 1. Run Ads (via Google Ads, or whatever Social platform your target audience might be using), or 2. Reach out to a fellow authoritative domain that might want to share your content in exchange for some benefit of their own. This is a bit more creative, and slightly more complex, but hey “if it works, it works!“.
6. The Easier Way – Social
Assuming you already have access to people’s attention via social networks, the almost impossible to avoid (according to Google rankings these days), share the content via socials – all of them. Minimally, share the content with folks that you think would benefit from the information. This is an extra step (or two, or three, etc. etc.), but well-worth the potential attention and attraction your new content could be getting.
7. Link To Important External Sites
If you’re content is relevant to an article, business, tool, or anything else that may help the reader gain free knowledge, link to it! You may not get a follow-back link to your content, but it will more than likely pay out in the long-run. We wouldn’t recommend linking to your top competitors, but we hope you’d already know not to do that. This will help strengthen the foundation or your digital presence, and help people that want to learn.
Factors For Ranking
Before you push your content to get indexed and forced to the search engines, you’ll want to get your ranking factors in-check. What we mean by this is getting your permalink right (preferably after some research), and being creative with how this link could get found.
8. Google Trends
So, before you publish, we’d recommend taking the keywords or phrases you’re targeting, and get as many of them into the permalink, title, and subheading as possible – within a healthy reason. Google trends will tell you how often that particular set of keywords is search, even down to the area in which you think your audience might be searching. Great tactic for targeting neighborhoods, or very specific geographical locations. The shorter and more direct the permalink, the higher you’ll rank.
9. Content Consistency
Interestingly enough, Google will give you kudos for consistently posting new (or improved) content. So, building a site or a piece of content, running ads, and then never updating it, or creating new content may be a bad idea. We recommend having a new piece of content at least once a month. The least you could do is create something via Socials, and then get it uploaded to your site, where you could then re-share it later (back onto your socials). The goal here is to create consistency, and continue with the process of building your “web“.
10. Links To Search-Clicks
Last but definitely not least, what a lot of larger companies are doing is instead of providing direct links to their posts, their linking to a specific Search Engine Results Page (SERP), where they’re either running an ad (and appear at the very top), or where they’re ranking extremely well, organically. This may seem silly in order to get ranked quickly, but it will tell google that when people search for “these” terms, you show up, and they click on your link – you’ll build credibility very quickly.
