One of the most frequently asked questions we receive at Sherwood Marketing & Consulting is about how quickly Google or other search engines will index their new website. Typically, if it is our client’s first time building a website for their new business they might google their business and wonder why their brand new website isn’t populating in the search results. The truth of the matter is, a majority of the time those results that populate on the first page of Google are paying advertising money or they are highly investing in the SEO of their website in order to be among some of the top results.
Statistically speaking, roughly 75% of people never scroll past the first page of Google when entering in a search topic. The higher your website populates on the search results, the better it is for your website and the traffic that goes there. Google ranks your website based on what they refer to as “indexing.” This indexing is based on their algorithm EAT which is an acronym for Expertise, Authoritativeness, and Trustworthiness. You see, Google doesn’t just want anyone to populate on the front page of search results. Google only wants websites that appear to be well versed in the field of their website among the top results. They also don’t want to promote propaganda or untrustworthy information.
In order for Google to rank your website through their algorithm their system will “crawl” your website. Meaning, Google will scan your website for the information present, how often it is being updated with new information, and what type of content you are posting about, and what type of traffic is coming to your site. After your website has been crawled, then your website will be indexed. A website is indexed by Google after it has been visited by the Google crawler or the “Googlebot” and analyzed for its content. Google then ranks your website based on their algorithm so when users are searching for information related to the content on your website, your website populates on the search pages.
After learning how Google discovers your website and indexes it, most website owners want to know when they will begin to show up on search pages to be found. This timeline doesn’t have a direct answer but can range from weeks to months. The waiting process can feel slow when you are ready to advertise your new business to clients or consumers and luckily, there are actionable steps you can take to increase the speed in which your website is indexed.
One of the first things you can do is submit a XML sitemap to Google. This tells Google about your new website and alerts their system about your new website and essentially it is a request for Google to crawl and index your site.
Paid advertising and promotion through social media also helps speed up this process. Paying to get in front of users or posting content directed towards your website on social media will encourage new users to go to your website. The more traffic directed towards your website will increase its visibility which also prompts Google to index your website faster.
https://www.contentkingapp.com/academy/google-index/faq/indexing-speed/
https://www.webfx.com/blog/seo/what-is-google-indexing/
https://developers.google.com/search/docs/crawling-indexing/googlebot
