When you’re cranking out great new content, you don’t always have the time to sit around and wait for Google to come and index it. Being passive like that can get your site left in the dust by more proactive SEOs and site managers.
Normal crawling is reliable – just not quick enough sometimes…very inconsistent in other words.
Being reliable is great but if you’re 5 minutes late for the train, all the reliability in the world won’t matter if you’re inconsistent – show up early some days and late on others.
So, what can you do to get new content indexed faster in the search engines?
Continue reading for four tips on getting your site content indexed faster and check out the video below for more.
Update your XML sitemap and “ping” Google, etc.
Your XML sitemap is basically a file containing links to all of the pages on your site. Unlike an HTML sitemap, it is only visible to the search engines. Updating this file with links to new pages provides the search engine spider a one-stop place for finding everything on your site. So to get indexed faster, update your XML sitemap when you post new content. But instead of waiting for the spider to come, ping them through Google’s Webmaster Tools and let them know you have updated your file. If you ping, they will come.
Use Pubsubhubbub protocol
Pubsubhubbub protocol is a server-to-server web hook-based pubsub (publish/subscribe) protocol that you can place in your site’s coding. You can create your own public or private hub that news aggregators like Google Reader, Friend Feed and Feedburner can use to find your new content. You can plug-in your WordPress blog utility and Superfeeder to automate this process. Whenever you post new content to a PSH-compatible site, these aggregators will immediately be notified of your site’s new content.
Create a “tweet” on Twitter
We recently discussed this on SEOe – Can Twitter Get a Site Indexed in the Search Engines All by Itself? While it’s not a long term solution, “tweets” on Twitter can provide your site that initial boost to get the spiders to come and index your new content. Considering Google is now indexing “tweets,” simply posting an announcement of your new content will immediately be picked up by the search engine.
Ping-o-matic
Ping-o-matic is a service that allows you to “ping” a bunch of different web services and notify them of new content on your site, much like ringing an alarm bell to alert the world to your new stuff. Ping-o-matic is linked up with different blog directories and news aggregators like PostRank, News Gator, Bloglines, Google Blog Search and more.
It’s to your advantage to find different ways to get your site’s content crawled and indexed as quickly as possible. Your competition is likely working hard to do the same thing so you don’t want to be passive and think that great content alone will bring home the bacon. If a competitor is working hard to get their content indexed quickly, they will leave you in the dust quicker than you can blink.
Check out this video SEOMoz produced on the heels of the SMX Advanced conference for more.