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How To Index New Website Content In SERPs | 5 Key Steps

If you want to automatically index new website content (more so, weblogs) in SERPs, the URL Inspection Tool is the first thing to consider. Now that ranking on the first page of a SERP like Google is the goal for many businesses. But, in order to get there, you cannot take shortcuts or expect it to happen overnight.

Nowadays, Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is a very demanding course. Technically, an SEO Audit takes time, effort, and patience to yield results. But also, its success will look different for everyone, depending on variables like budget, skill, and competition. The good news is that web-based businesses can greatly improve their rankings using the right tools.

One way to get ranked higher is by improving your overall website performance through a clear on-page SEO strategy. This also makes sure that you automatically index new website content as soon as it’s made available online.

Related Topic: Website Ranking On Page One | How To Get Started Easily

As a matter of fact, Google prefers fast-loading pages, so use the speed test tool and follow [that] advice. Make sure that pictures are optimized before you upload them. And do keyword research for your products or services and tweak your pages to answer those queries.

Having said that, do you want more organic search traffic to your site? Well, I’m willing to bet the answer is yes – we all do! Particularly, Organic Search Traffic is critical for growing your website and business. In recent research, it claims around 53% of your site’s traffic can be attributed to organic search.

However, these stats don’t matter much if your site doesn’t show up in the search results at all. So, how do you index new website content in SERPs like Google, Bing, and other search engines? Well, you’ve got two choices. One; you can take the “tortoise” approach – just sit back and wait for it to happen naturally.

But, this can take weeks or months. Trust me, I’ve been there before – it’s not fun. Two; you can make it happen if you’ll start your content SEO audit journey now. Whilst, giving you more time and energy to put towards increasing your conversion rate, improving your social presence — and, of course, writing and promoting great and useful content.

I don’t know about you, but I’d rather get my sites indexed as quickly as possible. Why? Obviously, it gives me more time to build my audience. Some of these strategies are exactly how we grew this website blog to over 80K unique visitors and over 3M total requests monthly as fast as we did!

Why Index New Website Content In SERPs Automatically

First of all, the obvious answer is if you want your site to show up in the search results at all, then it needs to be indexed. However, you don’t want your site to be indexed just once. You want the search engines to keep re-indexing your website. But, search engines like Google don’t just update automatically.

As such, they rely on spiders — little bits of computer code that each search engine sends out to “crawl” the web (hence, “spider”). All you’ll want is an efficient, frequent crawl rate. The spider’s job is to look for new stuff on the web and update the already indexed version of your site.

That “new stuff” can be a new page on an existing site, a change to an existing page, or an entirely new site or blog. Once the spider finds a new site or page, it needs to figure out what that new site or page is about. Way back in the Wild Wild West of the early web, search engine spiders weren’t nearly as smart as they are today.

You could force a spider to index and rank your page based on nothing more than how many times a particular search phrase (“keyword”) appeared on the page. For today’s content success, you can’t rely on these old-school search engine optimization strategies. The keyword didn’t even have to be in the body of the page itself.

Related Topic: Short-Tail Keywords | 10 Benefits & Best SEO Audit Tools

Many people ranked for their biggest competitor’s brand name just by stuffing dozens of variations of that brand name in a page’s meta tags! Fortunately, for Google search users and ethical website owners, those days are long gone. Today, keyword and meta tag stuffing will get you penalized, not rewarded.

And meta keyword tags aren’t really part of the algorithm at all (though there are still good reasons to use them). If you’re not careful, you could get your site kicked out of the index altogether — which means your site won’t rank for any keywords at all.

These days, Google is more concerned with the overall user experience on your site and the user intention behind the search — i.e., does the user want to buy something (commercial intent) or learn something (informational intent)? They even made Page Experience a ranking factor too.

But, don’t get me wrong though — keywords still matter. Other factors are also important — up to 200 altogether, according to Brian Dean of Backlinko. These include things like quality inbound links, social signals (though not directly), and valid code on all your pages.

None of that will matter if the spiders can’t tell the search engines your pages are there in the first place, meaning they won’t show up in search results. That’s why website indexing is so important. To put it simply, indexing is the spider’s way of gathering and processing all the data from pages and sites during its crawl around the web.

Related Topic: Long-Tail Keywords | 10 SEO Benefits With Example Tools

Frequent indexing improves your search results. The spider notes new documents and changes, which are then added to the searchable index Google maintains. Those pages are only added if they contain quality content and don’t trigger any alarms by doing shady things like keyword stuffing or building a bunch of links from unreputable sources.

When the spider sees a change on your website, it processes both the content (text) on the page as well as the locations on the page where search terms are placed. It also analyzes the titles tag, meta tag, and alt attributes for images. That spider then adds, or “indexes”, that content into Google.

That’s indexing in a nutshell. It is an essential webmaster tool. When a search user comes along looking for information by typing in search keywords, Google’s algorithm goes to work. The algorithm then decides where to rank a page in comparison to all the other pages related to those keywords.

How often your site is indexed can affect your performance in search results. You want to make sure all your latest content is available for those searching and Google’s spiders at all times. That’s the short and somewhat simplified version of how Google finds, analyzes, and indexes new sites like yours.

You should also note that many other search engines, like Bing or Yahoo, follow similar procedures. Although there can be variations in the specifics as each has its own algorithm. So, what really matters if you want to index new website content in SERPs automatically?

The Key Website Indexing Factors That Matter

In order to index new website content in SERPs like Google, the first thing is to consider the most efficient index rate for your website. Meaning, you want search engine spiders to find your new content as quickly as possible after you hit publish.

You can check how often Google is crawling your pages by logging into Search Console. Not set up with Google Search Console yet? Jump down to Step 2 to learn how to get your website set up. In Search Console, click on your website. Then click on Settings > Crawl Stats > Open Report. You’ll see some graphs like this:

Google Website Indexing Factors

From the generated report (as shown above), the first graph shows how often Google is crawling your site. That graph — the “Crawl requests” one — shows how often Google is crawling my site each day. And, as a rule of thumb, the more crawling the better.

There are some cases, however, where too much crawling can overload your server resources. Typically, it’s the result of a server misconfiguration instead of an issue with Google’s spiders. This is very rare though, so you probably won’t need to worry about this.

Related Topic: Backlinks | What are they & How do you implement them?

Google allows you to change the crawl rate (only down, not up) if this is happening to you. So, how did we increase our website crawl rate? Well, we’ve been posting a lot lately and updating older content. Thus, Google is eager to get all our updates and changes as fast as it can. It’s learning to check in with us more often.

The faster your site loads, the faster Google can come in and index it! Google wants to recommend the best websites to its users. It looks for sites that offer a good user experience. While that includes many factors, quality content, and the site loading speed is highly important.

To put it simply:
  • A Faster Website = Better User Experience.
  • Better User Experience = Higher Search Result Rankings.

How often Google indexes your site is More important than how many pages it’s indexing. So, you want to ensure as many of the pages on your site as possible are indexed.

If not yet ready, don’t worry, your sitemap will take care of that, which I cover in detail in simple steps thereafter. But first, let’s start at the beginning. The following steps will guide you through everything you need to know about getting your website indexed.

However, you don’t necessarily need to do all the steps mentioned below to have a well-indexed website. But if you’re wondering how to rank higher in Google, this is the only guide you’ll ever need! So, let’s consider the following key steps in order for you to get started easily:

Step #1: Check To See If Your Website Is Already Indexed

Unless you’re starting a brand new site, your website is probably already indexed. If you’re not sure, let’s learn how to find out in detail.

The easiest way to check this is to search site:yourdomain.com on Google. For instance, we can consider the indexing of the josephmuciraexclusives.com website as a good example. If Google knows your site exists and has already crawled it, you’ll see a list of results similar to the one for josephmuciraexclusives.com in the screenshot below:

josephmuciraexclusives.com Google search website analytics

Eventually, if Google hasn’t yet found your site, you’ll get no results at all. Luckily, if your website is already indexed, that’s great, but there is likely some more room for improvement. And, as such, the rest of the steps in this guide will help you make sure that your site is indexed to its full potential.

Step #2: Install And Set Up Google Analytics 

If you’re not already familiar with these free Google tools, here’s a quick breakdown. Google Analytics: Measures stats about your website like visitors, time spent on the site, what pages they looked at, where they’re from, etc. Google Search Console (formerly known as Google Webmaster Tools): It allows you to monitor different aspects of your website.

Like when it was last crawled, any indexing errors, security issues, etc. Search Console also lets you manage some key aspects of how you appear in search results and manually submit sitemaps — you can read and learn more about it in detail. Forthwith, to set up Google Analytics, you just need to sign in with your Google account.

In that case, this would be generally [email protected] email address — or rather, [email protected] email address if you use Google’s G Suite for Business service. Then, click Sign Up. Enter your website name and URL, then click Get Tracking ID at the bottom of the page.

Fortunately, there are a few ways to install Google Analytics on your website. Next, open up the downloaded file in your text editor. Look for the </head> tag and the beginning of <body>, like this:

index website install tracking script

Insert one line of code right after the <body> tag. Copy this code: <?php include_once(“analyticstracking.php”) ?> And paste it here:

index website install tracking script

The next step is to save your header.php file, and then re-upload it to your website. That’s it, you’re done! If you don’t have a header.php file, you need to repeat this process for each php page template you have on your website, like index.php, blog.php, and so on.

Definitely, you’re at an advantage if you use WordPress — all you need to do is install the Google Analytics plugin and then set it up using the guided banner.

Step #3: Install And Set Up Google Search Console

Now that we have Analytics set up, it’s time to add our website to Google Search Console (formerly known as Google Webmaster Tools). Just click on the following link in order to go to the Search Console. And then, log in with your Google account. Click “Start now.”

After that, you’ll then need to verify that you own that domain. And, there are a few ways to do this. By default, it may show you a verification option through your web host. Just click on the dropdown to find your domain name provider. If yours isn’t on the list, you can press the ‘Other‘ button (at the bottom).

As a result, the Google Search Console then asks you to create a TXT record — it involves an edit to your domain configuration. Is this a little over your head? Not to worry, I’ve got a much easier way! If you still want to add a TXT record though, here’s how. Click on Alternate Methods at the top.

There are other two easy ways to verify your site domain with Google Search Console — for either Google Analytics or via an HTML file upload that you can also consider. To verify with Google Analytics, just select it and click Verify.

Learn More: Managing Owners, Users, and Permissions 

If done right, Google will now check your Analytics account to make sure you are who you say you are, and if you are, you’ll see a success message. But, make sure you’re using the same Google account with Search Console that you do with Analytics.

The process is still pretty easy with the HTML file upload method. But, there are two more really important things you need to do now.

Consider the following:
  • First, add both yourwebsite.com and www.yourwebsite.com versions of your domain
  • Secondly, set a preferred domain

But, why do you have to do that, you may ask? Well, since it can cause crawl errors, which we are trying to avoid!

Adding the other version of your URL is easy – repeat the same process that I just explained. In the example above, I verified the josephmuciraexclusives.com domain. So, I would go into Search Console and do the exact same steps but use “josephmuciraexclusives.com” instead.

Step #4: Set Your Preferred Domain

Once you have both “yourwebsite.com” and “www.yourwebsite.com” added to Search Console, you need to set the preferred domain. To do that, click on your website in Search Console. At the top-right corner, click the gear icon and then click on the ‘Site Settings’ button.

Hereby, you can select if you’d like your URLs to be displayed either with the “www” referrer or without. Of course, to make it even greater for you, I’m going to show you all the awesome things you can do with Search Console, later on, so keep that tab open!

That said, once you have your preferred domain set, you’ll now want to submit it to Google Search Console, which we’ll cover next below. It’s crucial to ensure your sitemap is up to date with Google Search Console. I like to go in once every 2 weeks, or at the very least monthly, and update it.

How to Submit a Sitemap to Google Search Console

In order to index new website content, you’ll need to sign in to your Google Search through the admin console first. To do so, click the URL to go to the Dashboard for that site. And then, on the left, under “Index” click “Sitemaps.” You’ll see the sitemaps already submitted to Google as well as add a new sitemap.

For the next step, you need the URL of your sitemap. If you’re using a plugin for WordPress, that information will be available in the plugin’s settings. Typically, the URL is yourdomain.com/sitemap.xml. To make your work even easier, you can also use a website like XML-Sitemaps.com to create one.

To do that, just enter your URL and choose a change frequency time. The change frequency just tells Google how often it should index your site. It’s merely a suggestion to Google, and it’s up to the spider to determine when it will come back to index your site again.

How to Submit a Sitemap to Search Console

Once it gives you the sitemap.xml file, upload that to your website via FTP. After that, as soon as you have your sitemap URL, make sure that you enter it into Google Search Console. And, once you submit it, you’ll see a status bar in the middle of the page.

Related Topic: Blog SEO | How to Increase Website Rank with Categories

Technically, once Google is finished indexing it, the Processed column will change from Pending to the date it was last indexed (or last read) as shown in the illustration.

Generally, make a habit of submitting a new sitemap at least every month. You can also use the Bing Webmaster Tools (aka Microsoft Clarity) to do the same for Bing. It’s good to cover all of your bases. Especially, since Bing is the second most popular search engine after Google!

And now, we need to get back to marketing fundamentals and talk about creating an SEO strategy for your content.

Step #5: Design A Strategic Content Marketing Plan

Now that you are set to go with Google Search and Analytics, it’s for your own benefit to have a well-written content marketing strategy that’s focused on search results. But, don’t just take my word for it. And, as such, the Content Marketing Institute has a clear definition of this. Whereby, those with a documented content marketing strategy meet certain criteria.

Considerably, “they:
  • are far more likely to consider themselves effective at content marketing,
  • feel significantly less challenged with every aspect of content marketing,
  • consider themselves more effective in their use of all content marketing tactics and social media channels,
  • are able to justify spending a higher percentage of their marketing budget on content marketing, etc.”

Surprisingly, all of the above-listed things are absolutely true. For me, I feel a lot more on track when I have a written plan of action — that I can easily refer to and track my success. Whilst, bearing in mind, our blog and other multiple businesses would not have grown as quickly as they did — without having a written plan.

Steps To Automatically Index New Website Content In SERPs

In addition to keeping you focused on your goals, a well-documented content strategy also helps you get your site’s pages indexed by creating new pages of content. According to HubSpot’s “Not Another State of Marketing Report 2020”, 60 percent of content marketers said content is very important — or rather, extremely important to their overall strategy.

One research study found that companies that use content marketing enjoy conversion rates that are six times higher. Meaning, you should always do your best to publish valuable, interesting, and useful content. And then, do everything you can to make sure that your potential customers see it.

On one side, for new or even pro bloggers, duplicate content, as you probably know, is potentially a problem for SEO. So, one solution is to use your robots.txt file to instruct search engines to ignore one of them. The other method is to use nofollow or noindex links.

Related Topic: Digital Marketing Strategy | 12 Tips & Tools To Get Started

On the other side, to quickly index new website content, you should also make a plan for updating both old and outdated content. Every time you update your website, Google wants to crawl it more often. A great way to capitalize on that is to make a plan to regularly update your old or outdated content.

For the best impact on your indexing speed, try and update your website at least three times each week. Those three things could be posting one new blog post and updating content in two old posts. All that indexing, and new information, means that updating your old posts can increase your organic search traffic by 111%!

Make sure that you also identify your key goals, target audience, content types, and publish frequency. As well as your content management system, and tools that you’ll use to publish and promote content. Let’s consider other key methods below:

1. Utilize Offsite Content 

Basically, content strategy tools such as Infographics are more likely to engage your audience on both your main website and even your partner sites. Keeping in mind, Infographics have one of the highest reader engagement rates.

There’s even been proven that most people spend longer looking at infographics than they do reading the text on the page. To this point, I am sure that you’re totally reading this, right?! So, for your information, Infographics get shared on social media about 3x more than any other type of content.

More so, since they are graphic visual representations of information, data, or knowledge intended to present information quickly and clearly. And, as such, they can improve cognition by utilizing graphics to enhance the human visual system’s ability to see patterns and trends.

Learn More: Infographics | 5 Simple Steps to Make a 1 hr Killer Designs

Likewise, when you’re putting together your content marketing strategy, blogging definitely needs to be on the list. But, you also need to factor in content that you’ll publish on other websites. For one thing, it helps grow your organic website traffic.

In addition, it also helps quickly index new website content — with superb indexing speed while obtaining inbound links too. To do on your list, below are some more examples of offsite content to go into your plan. Just make sure that you do the right stuff not to mess things up your way.

Consider the following:
  • Try guest posting on other sites in your niche.
  • Consider suitable press releases to be submitted to the sites that publish such kind of content.
  • Articles on high-quality article directory sites,
    • Note: Be careful here — the vast majority of article directories are not high quality and can actually hurt your brand, reputation, and SEO.
  • Some reputable directories are Medium and HubPages.
  • Videos hosted on Vimeo or your YouTube channel.

Of course, any content you put your name or brand on must be high quality and published on a reputable, authoritative site. Otherwise, you’re defeating the purpose of Search Engine Optimization (SEO) and hurting your traffic and brand in the process.

Content that’s published on “spammy” sites with a link back to your site suggests to Google search results that your site is also spammy. Examples of reputable sites to guest post on might be Forbes, Entrepreneur, Smashing Magazine, etc. These are well-known websites with a reputation for quality content.

Related Topic: What is a Featured Image? Why it matters & How to use it

After all, this is exactly what you want to be associated with your brand. Not so good places to post? Sites full of low-quality red flags: cluttered with ads, lots of grammatical or spelling mistakes, or unknown in the industry you’re trying to target.

I don’t want to name any names here, but your common sense should be enough to tell you what a spammy site is. For example, a site named “jmexclusivesseoadvice.tumblr.com” is probably not going to do much for you, right? A well-thought-out content marketing plan helps you avoid getting tripped up in the mad rush to publish more content.

It puts you in the driver’s seat of SEO so that you can focus on generating leads and increasing your conversion rate too. All in all, creating a written content strategy doesn’t have to be difficult. To get started, there’s a framework I use for our website that you too can utilize.

Consider the following questions:
  • What are your goals? Specify SMART goals and how you’ll measure your progress (i.e., metrics).
  • Who is your target audience? Customer profiles or personas are essential to understanding your audience’s needs.
  • What types of content will you produce? You want to make sure you’re delivering quality content type to users.
  • Where will it be published? Of course, you’ll be hosting your own content on your website, but you may also want to reach out to other sites or utilize platforms such as YouTube, LinkedIn, and Slideshare.
  • How often will you publish your content? It’s far better to produce one well-written, high-quality article a week consistently than to publish every day for a week and then publish nothing for a month. Consistency is key.
  • What systems will you adopt for publishing your content? Systems are basically just repeatable routines and steps to get a complex task completed. They’ll help you save time and write your content more quickly, so you can stay on schedule. Anything that helps you publish content in less time without sacrificing quality will improve your strategy.
  • What tools will you use? Include the blogging/content tools and technology you’ll use and how they fit in.

Once you have your content marketing plan documented, you’ll find it easier to publish great content on a consistent schedule. Overall, this will help index new website content in SERPs automatically and faster.

2. Consider Business Blogging

In this case, ask yourself, why do you need a blog for your business? Well, it’s pretty simple: Business Blogging is a hard-working machine for SEO. Keep in mind, blog content gets crawled and indexed more quickly than static pages. Blogs also bring in more traffic.

As a matter of fact, businesses that blog regularly generate 55% more visitors to their sites than those that don’t. Furthermore, blogging works for every kind of business, industry, or niche. As well as for almost all business models — even B2C and e-commerce sites. So, don’t be afraid of committing to a blog.

Yes, of course, it does require consistent effort. Meaning, you do have to write (or outsource) high-quality, in-depth blog posts on a regular basis. Moreover, the rewards, I’ve found, especially on our main blog are absolutely worth it. If you have an ecommerce site, blogging doesn’t have to be terribly complex or difficult.

Learn More: Content Copywriting | Technical Skills For Creative Writing

For example, when you create a new product page, write and publish a blog post about the new product. Add quality images of the product and link to the product page. This helps the product page get indexed more quickly by search engines. Another great blogging strategy for ecommerce is to write a post every time a customer asks you a question.

For more of a sales-oriented strategy, share that blog post link with other bloggers and influencers to get the word out. Maybe they’ll want to feature your product on their blogs. And then again, this is a great source of links and traffic — it will also positively impact your crawl rate.

3. Employ Internal Links 

As I mentioned, internal links — i.e. linking to pages on your own website — are yet another great way to index new website content in SERPs quickly. As well as increase your position in organic search results. One very obvious source of internal links is your website’s navigation.

Always remember, it’s important to structure your website navigation in such a way that it makes sense to Google. Your navigation should follow a predictable flow like Homepage -> Category -> Sub Page. All elements should be obviously related. So, if you are a web designer, your navigation might look something like this:

Homepage -> Web Design Services -> WordPress Design ->

See how those are all related and make sense? Another key factor is to structure your URLs properly. Google’s rule of thumb is for them to be as simple and straightforward as possible. So, if it makes sense to you, a human, it should make sense to Google too. You can see a beginners Overview of Google Crawlers (user agents) in detail to learn more.

Forthwith, another great way to link to your content is in blog posts. People typically link phrases in their blogs over to relevant topics, like if I wanted to offer you more information on URL structuring. Or, I could create a line like the one we normally use amidst our weblogs like this:

Related Topic: The Best Time To Post Weblogs | A Content Creators Guide

This builds links, which causes Google’s spiders to come back and crawl those pages again. Also, it positively adds to the user experience. Your readers will appreciate the further resources. But, always remember, it’s good to keep the user experience in mind at all times.

It goes hand in hand with SEO. Google has all these rules and ways it works because it’s trying to deliver the best results to its users and give them the answers they’re looking for. Thus, you should also be focused on the same thing too!

4. Promote Social Sharing

By the same token, getting people to share your content on social media is a good thing. And I am pretty sure that I don’t need to convince you more about that! Naturally, it exposes your content to new people. It also attracts them to your website, and it’s the kind of content people want to see the most.

But, sharing your posts on social media also has SEO benefits, because it creates links back to your content. Which, if you’ve been paying attention… tells Google’s spiders to go index your site. Bonus points if you already guessed that.

There is some debate out there about just how much social media links factor into organic search rankings. Even Google has mixed statements on the subject too. By saying at first in 2015 they did not factor in social media posts to organic search ranking at all. And then later saying they did.

On the other hand, Bing has been very clear about how it uses social media links in search result rankings, known as “social signals.” Many marketers believe social signals are a considerable ranking factor— and I’m one of them.

5. Add Sitemap Plugin

Undoubtedly, I am sure you’ve seen the word “sitemap” before – but maybe you never knew exactly what it meant. Or even how it relates to search engine optimization. Well, a Sitemap is a file that tells Google about the files on your website, including how they relate to each other.

As a result, this makes it easier for Google to crawl and index your site. The sitemap is basically a list (in XML format) of all the pages on your siteIts primary function is to let search engines know when something’s changed – either a new web page or changes on a specific page – as well as how often the search engine should check for changes.

Do sitemaps affect your search rankings?

Well, they can, but only slightly. But, for sure, they do help index new website content in SERPs more quickly – with a more efficient crawl rate. Perse, in today’s world of the search algorithm, there are a lot of SEO myths you need to be wary of.

But, one thing remains the same: all things being equal, great content will rise to the top, just like cream. According to the Google Webmaster Blog, sitemaps help your content get crawled and indexed fast. So that it can rise to the top of SERPs more quickly.

In Google’s own words, “Submitting a Sitemap helps you make sure Google knows about the URLs on your site.” And, as a result, it’ll make sure that it’ll automatically index new website content whenever need be.

Is it a guarantee your site will be indexed immediately?

Unfortunately, No! But, it’s definitely an effective webmaster tool that helps in that process. So, how often should you tell Google to check for changes by submitting a new sitemap? Well, there’s no set-in-stone rule. However, certain kinds of content call for more frequent crawling and indexing.

For example, if you’re adding new products to an ecommerce site and each has its own product page, you’ll want Google to check in frequently, increasing the crawl rate. The same is true for sites that regularly publish hot content articles. Or even breaking news items that are constantly competing in search engine optimization queries.

But there’s a much easier way to go about the sitemap creation and submission process. If you’re using WordPress, you can simply install and use the Google XML Sitemaps Plugin as such. Its settings allow you to instruct the plugin on how frequently a sitemap should be created. Or rather, updated, and submitted to search engines.

What’s more, it can also automate the process for you. So that whenever you publish a new page, the sitemap gets updated and submitted. Other sitemap tools you can use include the XML Sitemaps Generator, an online tool that should work for any type of website.

6. Use Robots.txt

If you’re not an expert coder or developer, you might have seen a file called “robots.txt” in your domain’s files and wondered what it is and what it does. The “what it is” part is very simple. It’s a basic, plain text file that should reside in the root directory of your domain.

Technically, if you’re using WordPress, it’ll be in the root directory of your WordPress installation. The “what it does” part is a little more complex. Basically, robots.txt is a file that gives strict instructions to search engine bots about which pages they can crawl and index — and which pages to stay away from.

When search spiders find this file on a new domain, they read the instructions in it before doing anything else.  If they don’t find a robots.txt file, the search bots assume that you want every page crawled and indexed. Now you might wonder “Why on earth would I want search engines not to index a page on my site?”

Learn Also: How to Purge Cache and Keep your Website content fresh

That’s a good question! In short, it’s because not every page that exists on your site should be counted as a separate page for search result purposes. (More on this topic later!) Your first step is to confirm that your new site has a robots.txt file.

You can easily do this by using FTP tools. Or by clicking on your File Manager via CPanel (or the equivalent, if your hosting company doesn’t use CPanel). If it’s not there, you can create one quite easily using a plain text editor like Notepad. It’s very important to use only a plain text editor.

And not something like Word or WordPad, which can insert invisible codes into your document that will really mess things up. WordPress bloggers can optimize their robots.txt files by using a reliable WordPress plugin like Yoast’s SEO plugin. The format of a robots.txt file is pretty simple.

The first line usually names a user agent, which is just the name of the search bot – e.g., Googlebot or Bingbot. You can also use an asterisk (*) as a wildcard identifier for all bots. This type of WordPress plugin is an effective webmaster tool. You can learn more about the Yoast SEO plugin in detail.

7. Social Media Channels

My question here is, do you have social media profiles set up for your site or blog? If not, now’s the time. Why? Simply, because as we learned in item 4, one component of search engine optimization is paying attention to social signals.

One thing is for sure, those signals can prompt the search engines to crawl and even automatically index new website content. What’s more, social signals will help you rank your pages higher in the search results. It’s obvious by now that a solid Social Media Marketing (SMM) plan helps SEO.

But, social profiles for your website also give you another place to add links to your site or blog. Twitter profiles, Facebook pages, LinkedIn profiles or company pages, Pinterest profiles, YouTube channels, and especially Google+ profiles or pages — all of these are easy to create and the ideal places to add links pointing to your website.

If you don’t want to create new profiles on social sites for your new site or blog, you can alternatively just add the new site’s link to your existing profiles to increase the crawl rate. I do, however, highly recommend creating new profiles for projects. Aside from being good for SEO, it will be great for branding your business alike.

8. Blog RSS Feed

By definition, an RSS Feed is an automated web content channel that’s updated when you publish a new blog post. It stands for Really Simple Syndication or Rich Site Summary, and it’s good for both users and site owners. So, how does it impact indexing and crawling?

Talking about ways to index new website content, let’s clear one thing up now: many think RSS is dead but that’s not true. The number of users has been steadily dropping since Google killed Google Reader back in 2013. From my point of view, I think RSS is evolving, rather than dying.

RSS generally helps increase readership and conversion rate, but it can also help index new website content to some length too. Whereby, to its users, RSS feeds to deliver a much easier way to consume a large amount of content in a shorter amount of time.

Users can subscribe to let’s say the jmexclusives RSS feed in their favorite RSS reader and receive your new posts automatically. As of today, the most popular and best Online RSS Feed readers include Feedly and Feeder. And, as a site owner, you get an instant distribution of new content.

As well as an easy way for your target readers to subscribe to you without having to give up their email addresses, which some people don’t like to do. Another simple way to get links to your new site or blog is through your own social status updates. Of course, these links will be nofollow, but they’ll still count to index new website content.

Takeaway,

In nutshell, as long as you want to index new website content (more so, your weblogs), there are quite numerous ways that you can achieve that. The list above is just a few mentions of what you should consider first. I know it’s a lot to take in. But, personally, I didn’t know half this stuff when I started blogging.

With my first blog, I installed Google Analytics and that was it! Of course, back then we didn’t have as many options for improving our SEO ranking or indexing as today. As well as various self-driven and complex algorithm like it is now. For this reason, that’s why I wrote this guide on how to index new website content automatically.

Other ways to index new website content fast include:

By all means, it’s so important to educate yourself on SEO and indexing when starting a new website — especially with all the competition out there. Not forgetting, it’s very possible to rank on page one and “beat the big guys”, but it takes a lot of work and research to get there.

The best advice I have is this:

Firstly, keep learning and staying on top of industry news. Now that things do change so quickly, especially when it comes to search engines. Secondly, do your research on SEO best practices and double-check any new suggested technique with your own independent research before trying it.

Next on, in order to index new website content automatically and fast, make sure you’re updating your site frequently — not just with new content, but updating old posts too. Remember, it keeps Google coming back to crawl your site frequently. It also keeps those posts relevant for new visitors.

The next thing is to make a digital marketing plan for your web-based business. Including how you’ll monitor your indexing and analytics, and how you will update old information on your site. After all, it wouldn’t have been possible for us to grow as quickly as we did without a written plan.

Finally, get professional SEO help if you need it. Not all business owners have the time to stay on top of marketing, especially since it changes so fast. SEO professionals (like jmexclusives) can often get results much faster — and actually save you money in the long run. You can always Contact Us whenever need be for more support or help.

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2 thoughts on “How To Index New Website Content In SERPs | 5 Key Steps”

    1. Thanks so much, Tehpomoshch for your thoughtful comments.
      We are glad that you loved and enjoyed reading this article. We’ll check your website as you’ve requested. And, more so, we’ll also keep you updated, every time, every day!

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