Table of Contents (Click to show/hide)
Monthly
Active User Rate
Daily
Campaign Budget
Increase
Click-through Rate
Growth
Return on Investment
Customer
Segmentation
Prioritisation of
Limited Resources
Competitive
Responses
Consumer
Change
A Frequently Asked Question
Content creators often can't resist their excitement to demonstrate the newly created masterpiece. One of the most frequently asked questions from my clients is How long it takes to get my page indexed? How long does it take for Search Engine Optimisation to work? (I guess there are two questions after all, but you get the idea).
"You snooze, you lose" - creators understand it perfectly and often feel unsettled when they can't find their pages in SERP (Search Engine Result Page). However, there's only one answer to these loaded questions.
There's no timeframe for how long it will take to get results with SEO
Don't worry. No time frame doesn't mean being a sitting duck and going with the flow. There are a few tricks you can do to speed things up. In a nutshell, you need to act like a PR person and spread the word about your new page. Here's how
How To Make Indexing Faster
A newly published page can take anywhere from several hours to several weeks to be indexed. But most of the content should be picked up & indexed within about a week.
However, Google won't index your page if it is:
- Low-quality, duplicated content
- Showing 4xx or 5xx status code
- A blank page
Moreover, you might encoutner a scenario that Google shows a page was "crawled but not indexed" but actually be indexed. This might be a lag in Google Search Console Indexing Report. The best way to confirm this is to use Google advanced search operator to check the real search result. Take this page for example, if I want to make sure it's indexed by Google, I will use the search term below.
"site:https://www.deanlong.io/blog/get-google-index-page-sooner-faster"
If a week has passed and your page is nowhere to be found in the SERP, use the inspection tool in Google Search Console to investigate further. I won't disclose too many details as it's not the topic here. But remember, Google bot gets busy as well. So you might be the lucky one that on the Google bot's long-waiting list.
Speed Up Crawling And Indexing
Let's break it down into two parts: A good server foundation and spread the word internally & externally.
Server Capacity
Make sure that your server can handle a reasonable number of requests in a timely way. HTTP status codes help you to understanding the page crawling experience. For example:
- Soft 404 will show when the page load time > Google bot Timeout (status code 202)
- 5xx and 429 server errors prompt Google's crawlers to slow down with crawling temporarily. Already indexed URLs are preserved in the index but eventually dropped.
Spread The Words
Optimise your internal links and external links to make sure your page can be found in many places.
Internal
- Find relevant, good-quality pages that are already indexed and link to your new page.
- Put the new URL in a prominent position. Such as the home page that has low crawl depth for Google bot.
- Clean unnecessary URLs. Suppose there are many hyperlinks in an article. Think twice -- only attach the relevant links that matter.
- Add the new URL to your site map.
External
- Use the inspection tool in Google Search Console
- Post your new page on your social media
- Make your new page visible on other domains. In short, get some citations & backlinks.
What's more, there are many aspects to consider when making new pages visible in Google Search. But low-quality content surely won't get indexed, or it can drop out of the index over time.
Lastly, allow me to wrap this up with a slide directly sourced from the Google Search Central Youtube Channel:
In most cases, SEOs need four months to a year to help your business first implement improvements and then see potencial benefit
But don't worry, SEO will never die, and it'll continue to evolve --------- "It depends" 4ever. 🎉
Happy SEO!
Related Articles
Google Passage Indexing and BERT
How To Prepare Your Site For Google Mobile-First Indexing
How HTTP Status Codes & Network Impact Your SEO - Technical SEO Audit
Reference
https://www.deanlong.io/blog/technical-seo-audit-http-status-codes-network-issues-and-dns-errors
https://youtu.be/6xtYk8optLc
https://www.searchenginejournal.com/google-on-how-long-seo-takes/412081
