8 Methods to help you Index and Rank your pages faster

How Long Does It Take to Rank and How to Index and Rank Your Pages Faster? I published a page last week, but why is this still not on Google yet? I got to do more meditation. Now, if your main strategy for indexing your pages faster is meditation, let me show you other methods so that meditation is your last resort.

The truth is, there is no definite answer to how long it takes for your page to rank. So if you are looking for a straightforward solution for your site, sorry, there isn’t any. This is because indexing and ranking your pages depend on many factors. Competition, posting frequency, the trust factor of your overall site, and hundreds of other factors.

But primarily the posting frequency and the trustworthiness of your overall site influences the crawl frequency of your site. If your site is not trustworthy, Google and other search engines will crawl less and less of your site. It makes sense because crawling pages on the web uses up search engine resources and they have to allocate it to sites that are more trustworthy and publish frequently.

So if your site is new, it is going to take a while for search engines to assess the credibility and trustworthiness of your site and whether or not you are a good partner to them as they constantly need new content. let’s talk about the different ways to get your pages indexed faster.

Read more: How to make your site trustworthy and authorized to get better indexing and ranking?

How to Know If Your Page Is Indexed

Now, before we do anything, we need to know if our page is indexed right? And the fastest way to check it is if you use the “Site:” command on Google. So let’s say I want to check if my page is indexed, I’ll copy the URL, go to Google, type in “Site:” and paste the URL without any spaces. As you hit enter. If you see results on the search, it means it is indexed.

Now, two more methods to have an overview of all the indexed and non-indexed pages. If you are on the Google search console, just visit the “Pages” tab under “Indexing” and you will see all the pages that are indexed and not indexed.

You will know the reasons why those pages are not indexed. And if you are a Rank Math pro user, all the information is right on your website. Just visit the Rank Math’s Analytics module and on the Index status, you will have an overview of all the pages that are submitted and indexed, crawled but currently not indexed, and many others.

If you don’t see this Index status tab, go to “General Settings” and “Analytics”. If your site is connected to the search console, you can toggle an option “Enable the index status tab”. Back to the index status.

Just sort the results by the pages that are crawled but not indexed. Click on each result and you will find more details on why the page is not indexed.

The main reasons why pages are not indexed

If technical issues are blocking your site or pages from being indexed, most of the time it is because either you have selected the no index on your post robots meta, or you have selected no index in the robots meta of the entire post type, which can be found on the “Titles and meta” settings. Or you have checked this “Discouraged search engines from indexing this site” on the reading settings. Or there is something in the robots.txt that is blocking your site from getting indexed.

All right, now that we know how to identify pages that are not indexed and are not blocked by any technical issues, let’s talk about 8 Methods to help you Index and Rank your pages faster.

1: Submit Your Pages to Search Engines

We will start with the most basic. If you have not connected your site with search engines yet, please do so. Go to the search console. Make sure that you are logged into the account where you want to manage your search console.

There are two methods to add your site to it. You can use either the domain method where you need to place this set of text onto the DNS configuration of your site, or you can verify your site through these other methods through URL Prefix.

If you find these methods too complicated, let me show you a much simpler way using Rank Math. You see, this is the site I want to connect with the Google search console. And on the search console of your account, you can see that there are no properties on it.

So I will go to the site, on Rank Math’s dashboard. I want to make sure that the “Analytics module” is turned on, then go to “General Settings” and “Analytics”. You want to connect your Rank Math account with Google Services.

If you don’t have a Rank Math account yet, please create one. It is free, by the way. When you are logged into your Rank Math account, you need to select the Google account that is going to manage your search console.

Then you’ll want to give all the access to rank math so that it can perform our full functionalities. Don’t worry about privacy because it doesn’t even look at your Google and site data. Let’s click continue and that’s it.

If you go to the search console you will now see your site connected to it. Anyway, the next thing you need to do to make your pages index faster is to submit a sitemap. And if you are a Rank Math user again, you don’t need to do anything else after you’ve connected your site with the search console. You see I haven’t touched anything on the site after the connection. As I go to the search console and click on “Sitemaps”, you will see that my sitemap has already been submitted.

That’s because Rank Math has submitted the sitemap for you automatically. Now, since we are on the Google search console, if you have published or have updated an article and you want to notify Google of the change, click on the Search bar which is the URL Inspection Tool. Or you can click on the tool, place the URL of the new or updated article, and search for it. If the page is not indexed, like in this case, you want to click on Request Indexing.

If it is already indexed and you have updated or added more stuff to the page, do the same. Click on Request Indexing and Google will start sending its bots and spiders to crawl your page.

So submitting your sitemap to Search Console and using the URL Inspection Tool are two of the most effective ways to get your pages indexed faster. Now, let’s talk about the newest and most efficient methods of indexing, which are using Index Now and the Google Indexing API.

2: IndexNow & Google Indexing API

Now, I’m not sure if you have heard there is something called Indexing API as well as IndexNow which will allow site owners to directly notify search engines when pages are added or removed. These are the fastest and the newest ways to get search engines to index your pages.

The IndexNow is an initiative by Bing and Yandex, but the Indexing API is by Google both of which are available for free on Rank Math. Here’s how you can add them to your site.

Go to Rank Math’s Dashboard and look for Instant Indexing, and as soon as you toggle this on, you will see the Instant Indexing module on the menu items.

Click on the Instant Indexing module and whenever you have a new page or have updated the page, you can place those links here and hit Submit URLs.

Following that, the search engines like Bing and Yandex will be notified. You don’t need to configure or connect your site with any search engines because an API key is autogenerated for you.

If your API key is leaked to any third parties like now, you know my API key. All I need to do is to regenerate a new key. Of course, I’m going to hide my new API key now, and then to check if your API key is accessible to the search engines, just click on Check Key and if you see your API key, it means it is accessible.

That’s for the IndexNow API with Bing and Yandex. It’s so straightforward. Right now, let’s talk about the indexing API by Google. There are more steps to it, but note that Google mentioned the indexing API is currently only used for job posting or broadcast events embedded in the video objects’ websites.

But as Rankmath has tested, it works on any type of website with great results. So disclaimer

“If you’re not sure whether you want to be using this or not, don’t proceed. You should not use this indexing API on money websites as Google recommends. Proceed at your own risk.”

So if indexing pages fast on Google is something you’re interested in, let’s go through the steps.

First, you want to add a new plugin to your WordPress. Search for “Instant indexing”. You will see a plugin called “Instant Indexing For Google” This plugin is developed by Rankmath. You want to install and activate this plugin on your site.

Once done, as you go to the Instant Indexing module, you will realize some changes. You will see the Console tab as well as the Google API Settings tab. You need to get this Google JSON key in order for the Indexing API to work between your site and Google.

So the next step is to go to https://console.cloud.google.com/getting-started

Once you visit the link, make sure that you are logged into the right Google account. And if this is your first time setting things up, you have to agree to some terms of service. And then you want to create a new project.

Alternatively, you can click on Select the Project and click on New Project and it will bring you back to the same place. You will give the project a name. Let’s say it is your site name with Instant Indexing. Click on Create.

Once you have created the project, the next step is to enable the project. To access the API, click on “Next” and “Enable” the indexing API. Following that, you need to create a Service account to use the Indexing API. So I’ll expand the navigation menu. Hover to “IAM & Admin” and select “Service Accounts”.

You should be able to see a Create Service Account button here. But if you don’t see the option like what I’m experiencing now, click on the three vertical dots and you will see the option.

Give your Service account a name. Maybe your site’s name with a Service Account so that you can differentiate if you have multiple accounts later on. Give it a short description. “Indexing API Service Account” and before you go to the next step, make sure that you click on this to copy the entire Service account ID that looks like an email address.

We will be using this for a while. Next, click on Done, and your Service account is created. Now you need to create an Indexing API key to be added to your site. Expand the actions, select “Manage Keys”, click on “Add Key” and “Create new key”. We need the JSON key type, so let’s click on “Create”.

As soon as the key is created, a file will be downloaded to your computer. Now the next step will require you to add the service account as an owner of your search console property. So on your Google search console, scroll down and click on “Settings” under “Users and Permissions”.

You want to “Add user”. Remember we copied the service account information earlier. If you want to paste it here, change the permission to “Owner” and click on “Add”.

That’s one final step. Remember the JSON file we have downloaded. You want to go to the Instant indexing module, select the Google API settings, upload the JSON file, and save changes and the JSON key will be copied here.

If you want Google to be automatically notified every time you have created, updated, or deleted something, select the post types you want that automation. Save changes again and you are done. You will see this little checkmark here if everything is done properly, just like what you have on the IndexNow settings.

So from now on, everything is automated. But if you want to notify Google and other search engines manually, just paste the page URLs here, select the right action, and hit “Send to API”. Now, the search engines will be notified of those URLs. That’s how you can quickly get your pages indexed with IndexNow and the Indexing API. Anyway, let’s go to the next often-overlooked method.

3: Internal Linking

Now, one of the oldest methods for Google and other search engines to discover new URLs on the web is to follow links on pages that are already indexed. So, if you have just published a new page on your website, the thing is, you may have placed internal links from this page to other existing pages of your site.

But the problem is, that no links are pointing from the other pages to this new page you have just published. If you don’t have this action item on your publishing checklist, we recommend you do so.

What I would do every time I’ve published a new article is to visit the post list. I’ll search for keywords that are related to the article I’ve written. For example, the article we have just published is “Essential Blogging Tools”. I would search for those keywords and other related keywords on the post list, and then you see this list here.

Visit each of those articles, read through them, and place internal links to the article you have just published. It is as simple as that. This will ensure that your site has no orphan pages, and it is a really good SEO practice.

If you want to know how to use internal links to build a good site structure, you want to check out this post, because the things shared in that post inherently help search engines index and rank your pages faster. And talking about good SEO practice, the next thing you can do to help search engines index your page faster is to place external links to credible sites.

4: External Linking

Placing external links to high-quality and credible sites can help improve the credibility of your content. We are not talking about just placing links to, for example, the homepage of Wikipedia, Disney, or Amazon. We are talking about relevant links.

You need to link to content published by high-quality websites, and the content needs to be relevant to yours. If your article is about dogs and cats, you shouldn’t be linking to pages related to luxury brands.

If you use Rank Math, having external links on your content is one of the SEO checks. But how do you know if a site is high-quality? Well, we’ve got a tool for you. When you install Rank Math on your site, be it the free version or the pro version, Content AI, which is its proprietary AI system, will analyze the contents, rank on the web, and give you smart suggestions.

You see, I was researching the topic “SEO Tips for Beginners“, and as I clicked on the links, it suggested a list of external links I should add to my article.

If you have done SEO or blogging for a while, you know that these are credible and high-quality sites, so you can rest easy that all the external links suggested here are good to use. You don’t want to link to sites that are not trustworthy as it will have negative impacts on your site.

Sometimes the external links here will help you with building your content structure. For example, if we researched the “Best WordPress SEO plugin” and as we visit the “Links” tab, analyze it and you will know that we should talk about All-In-One SEO, Rank Math, Yoast, etc.

Sometimes the things suggested here are stuff that you’ll probably never think about and that’s one of the cool things about Content AI. Now, let’s go to the next method

5: Optimize the Search Appearance of Your Content

Meta titles, Meta Descriptions, and Schema Markups, all give search engines insights and help them understand what your article is about from a bird’s eye view. So the easier you make your content understandable to the searcher and the search engines, the faster your content will be indexed and ranked.

If you don’t know, we have tools to help you optimize for search appearance. First, we have the Meta Tag Analyzer. This is the link.”https://rankmath.com/tools/meta-tag-analyzer/”

This tool will allow you to see how search engines will display your content and will identify any errors in your meta tags. Just add the link to your published article and it will suggest to you the things to do to make your search results more visible on both the desktop and mobile and on other search engines.

So this task can be added to your publishing checklist to optimize the search appearance even further in your article. Depending on what you’re writing about, you can add the right schema markup by simply clicking on the schema tab of Rank Math. By default, the article schema is added and as a free user, you can only add one schema type, while pro users can add as many schema types as logically possible.

Click on the Schema generator and we have a list of predefined schema markups for you to use. If you are writing a review about a course, you can use the course schema.

Whatever you add to the fields will be marked up and that includes the review rating, which gives you the star rating on search results as well as the pros and cons of schema markup Now back to this, if you are writing about a product, use the product schema. And if you are writing about software like Rank Math, use the software schema.

Basically, the predefined schema markups should cover most of your structured data needs. If you are a free Rank Math user, just replace the article schema with the right schema type because Google and other search engines should be able to detect if your content is an article or not.

If you are more advanced and you wish to build your schema, you can customize your schema markup. And if you want to discover what schema markups your competitors are using, just click on Import. Place your competitor’s URL here and it will give you the information.

Again. Another seamless tool, right? Optimizing the search appearance will inherently help with getting your page ranked faster.

6: Content Quality

Now here’s an unspoken gauge on how to know if the content of your site is of quality. If your website has been around for a while, maybe six to twelve months or more, and you realize that you always have to rely on Google’s URL inspection tool to manually submit your pages for indexing, before it gets indexed, it’s time to improve the quality of your overall site.

By default, Google should be able to crawl and rank your content without constant manual work from you. And if you need to work hard on pushing Google to index your pages, you know the more you push people to do something, the more they won’t do it. That theory applies here.

You have better chances when you focus on the things you can control, which is to improve the overall site structure, as I’ve mentioned earlier, and optimize your content to satisfy the primary and secondary search intent. But how? Now we have a separate post that walks you through the entire process of optimizing your content to make it SEO friendly, have the highest chance of ranking, and make sure your content is of quality.

What I want to discuss now is to update and enhance your existing content by identifying the primary and secondary search intent so that your article will not only rank for one key phrase but multiple key phrases. Google and other search engines love fresh and updated content because it allows them to stay relevant. So doing this would help your overall site index and rank faster.

So if you optimize your existing content to satisfy those search intents I’ve just shown you, your article is going to be spot on, on quality. Make it a habit every year to fact-check, remove outdated information, and improve the content quality. Once you have updated your articles, resubmit them for indexing, either through the Google Search Console or using the Instant Indexing tool.

7: Remove Low-Quality Pages

Now, this applies to really huge sites. If you find that there are too many pages on your site, maybe thousands of pages, and they are not quality pages, and your new and important articles are not indexed for the longest time, then the quickest way to improve the site’s overall indexing speed is to remove low-quality pages completely.

This is because crawling low-quality pages is a waste of the crawl budget in the eyes of Google and other search engines. Google has said that if a site has fewer than a few thousand URLs, most of the time it will be crawled efficiently. And if your site is huge, the term crawl budget is going to be more important for you.

So how do you remove content from your site? Do you just delete them from your post list? Well, you can do that if you don’t intend to use any of the deleted content in the future. But if you wish to reuse or upgrade the deleted content, let me show you a better way.

Use the Rankmath redirections module right here. Add a new redirection, select the 410 content deleted, place the URL for deletion, and add that redirection.

That way, the deleted article is still in your post list. And when you have time to work on the article again, you may want to reuse or upgrade the content. But make sure that you work on a new post instead of the deleted post.

8: Optimize Site Speed

Google has put a lot of emphasis on the page experience, which means other than the quality of your sites, your site should load fast, it should be mobile friendly, and all your pages should be served over HTTPS instead of just HTTP.

Now, it is very easy to just tell you that you need to optimize your site for speed. But how? That’s the elephant in the room, right? So here it is. Read this post. We have given everything we know about optimizing for page speed. I promise that some of the things we have shared are not discussed anywhere else because it is thought of and experimented by yours truly.

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