You’ve created a brand new website page and finally put it “live”. It looks great, and the content is unique and optimized. You’re so excited, that you immediately go to Google to search for your new site. You search for your business name, but the site doesn’t show up. You search using your URL, but it’s still not there. You search for some of the text on your site, but Google just isn’t finding your page. What happened?
What did you do wrong?
The answer is: nothing. The results will come. You just have to be patient. Google isn’t instantly updated with every new website page that goes online.
“Web crawlers”, also called “Googlebots”, are software programs that are constantly scanning the web for new pages and new content, and when they find new content, they pass it off to another program that indexes every word on every page, catalogs each page in a huge database, and determines the value of each site. Of course, all of this happens a lot faster than any human could do the job, and thousands of pages can be indexed simultaneously, but it doesn’t happen instantly. Before your site is indexed by the web crawlers, it’s not going to show up on Google.
How long does it take to get indexed?
Truth is, it could take as little as a few hours, or it could take a few weeks. There’s nothing you can do to make it happen instantly, but there are a few things you can do to make it go a little faster:
- Make Sure Your Content is Unique & Searchable – Your site needs text on it—if it’s nothing but images and Flash animation, the Googlebots won’t be able to read it. And it can’t be text copied from another site or another page, or Google won’t see it as unique (and you could also get in trouble for copyright violations if you weren’t the original creator of the content). You should also make sure you have a sitemap, so the Googlebots can see all the pages on your site and how they are linked together. If you have a WordPress site, you can install the Google Sitemap Generator plugin to automatically create and update your sitemap.
- Get Links – As the Googlebots crawl through the web, they look for links to new pages that should be added to Google’s database. If your new site or new page has some quality links pointing toward it, it may get indexed faster. Start with social media profiles—add a link to your new page or site on your company profiles for Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, YouTube, etc. You could also send out a press release about your new site or write a post for an off-site blog that links to your new page.
- Submit Your URL – While it’s no guarantee that your site will get indexed faster, you can increase the odds by submitting your URL directly to Google.
- Set Up Google Analytics – This is another way to give Google the heads-up that you’ve got a new site. Visit http://www.google.com/analytics/ to get started.
How long did it take for your new site to get indexed? Did these tips help? Let us know in the comments!
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WordJack Media provides a wide range of website design and online marketing solutions to clients throughout Canada and the US, including Collingwood ON, Ottawa ON, Barrie ON, Miami FL, Lakeland FL, Orlando FL, Charlotte NC, Hickory NC, Asheville NC and more. Contact WordJack Media today for more information about how we can help your business win on the web!
