Proven Techniques to Index Backlinks and Webpages

As an online marketer or website owner, you already know the importance of backlinks for the success of your website.

But simply acquiring backlinks isn’t enough, as they need to be indexed by Google to pass on their full value to your website’s ranking. Fortunately, several proven techniques can help you index your links in Google and boost your website’s search engine visibility.

Proven Techniques to Index Backlinks

1. Create High-Quality Content:
   Search engines favor high-quality, relevant content. If your backlinks come from content-rich and authoritative sites, they are more likely to be indexed quickly.
2. Use Social Media Platforms:
   Share your content on social media platforms. This increases visibility and the chances of your content (and the backlinks within it) being indexed.
3. Submit to Directories:
   Although not as powerful as they once were, directory submissions can still play a role in backlink indexing, especially for new websites.
4. Utilise Ping Services:
   Ping services like Ping-O-Matic can notify search engines about your new content with backlinks.
5. Build Tier Two Backlinks:
   Create secondary backlinks that point to your primary backlinked pages. This method can help in drawing search engine crawlers to your primary backlinks.
6. Use Internal Linking Wisely:
   Linking to your content with backlinks from your own site can help in getting them indexed.
7. Consider a Backlink Indexer:
   There are tools available that claim to help in indexing backlinks. However, use them judiciously and research well as some methods they use might not be favored by search engines.

Regular Monitoring and Patience:
Indexing doesn’t happen overnight. Regularly monitor your backlinks using tools like Google Search Console and Ahrefs. Patience is key in the SEO game.

Whether you’re a beginner or a seasoned SEO professional, these techniques will help you ensure that your backlinks are correctly indexed.

PS: If you are looking for the steps of Instant Indexing then check out this guide: https://marketinglad.io/instant-indexing-for-wordpress/

What Is Google Indexing and How Does It Work?

Google indexes a webpage when its content and meaning are analyzed by the Googlebot crawler and stored in the Google index.

As long as they adhere to Google’s webmaster standards, this enables indexed pages to appear in Google Search results.

Although most pages are crawled before being indexed, Google can still index backlinks or pages without access to their content, such as those blocked by a robots.txt directive.

In simpler terms, indexing is the process of adding a website and its pages to Google’s extensive database, enabling them to appear in search results. It’s a crucial aspect of how Google search operates.

To start, Google employs a method called crawling to locate new web pages. This involves following various hyperlinks, including inbound and outbound links, to discover fresh content on a website.

When it discovers these pages, they are included in Google’s vast database and officially indexed.

The Best Way to Check whether Google Has Indexed Your Website

Concerned that Google may not have indexed your website? There are two simple methods you can utilize to determine if your site has been indexed by the search engine.

The first approach is to conduct a Google search for your website or a specific webpage and observe if it appears in the search results. If it doesn’t appear, it indicates that your site has not been indexed by Google.

To perform a more targeted search for this purpose, you can use Google search operators. For instance, you can input site: www.yourdomainhere.com to search for your website, or you can add the URL of your page with the search operator to see if it has been indexed:

site: www.yourdomainhere.com/your-web-page.

An alternative method to determine if your webpage has been indexed is to utilize Google Search Console.

To do this, you can insert the URL of your webpage into the URL inspection tool within Google Search Console. If your page has been indexed by Google, you will receive a notification indicating that the URL is on Google.

If your page has yet to be indexed, you will receive a message stating that the URL is not on Google. Using this technique, you can determine whether your pages have been indexed.

How to Quickly Index Webpages

1.  Use Google Search Console

To request indexing, the simplest method is to use Google Search Console.

Google Search Console is a collection of free tools provided by Google that enables you to examine your website’s presence on Google and resolve any related difficulties.

• Go to Google Search Console.
• Navigate to the URL inspection tool.
• In the search box, paste the URL you want Google to index.
• Wait for Google to check the URL.
• Click the “Request indexing” button.

You should adhere to this process each time you publish a new post or page.In essence, you’re encouraging Google to visit your site since you’ve recently added something fresh.

Requesting indexing won’t likely address the fundamental issues, though, that prohibit Google from indexing outdated content.

If you haven’t created a Google Search Console account, you will need to take the following steps:

• Sign in with your Google account
• Add a new property (which is your website) to your account
• Verify your ownership of the website.

2. Generate a Sitemap and Submit It

Google generally index backlinks via XML sitemap file. This informs Google that these pages are significant, assisting crawlers in locating your primary pages more quickly.

The XML sitemap generally appears in the following format:

To locate your sitemap, you will likely discover it at this URL: https://yourdomain.com/sitemap.xml.

If you do not have a sitemap, generate manually with the following steps:

1. List Your Website’s Pages:

Create a list of all the pages on your website that you want to include in the sitemap. This typically includes your main pages, blog posts, and any other content you want search engines to index.

2. Organise Your Pages:

Structure your list into a logical hierarchy, considering the navigation and organization of your website. This will help search engines understand the relationships between pages.

3. Create an XML File:

4. Save the XML File:

Save the file with a .xml extension, such as “sitemap.xml.”

5. Upload to Your Website:

Upload the sitemap.xml file to the root directory of your website using an FTP client or your web hosting control panel.

6. Notify Search Engines:

To ensure search engines are aware of your sitemap, you can submit it through Google Search Console (if you have an account) or Bing Webmaster Tools. Both platforms offer sitemap submission features.

7. Test Your Sitemap:

Before you submit it to search engines, you can validate your sitemap using online XML validation tools to ensure it’s properly formatted.

8. Regularly Update Your Sitemap:

As you add or remove pages from your website, update your sitemap accordingly and resubmit it to search engines.

By manually creating and maintaining a sitemap, you provide search engines with a structured list of your website’s pages, which can help improve indexing and SEO performance.

After obtaining the URL of your sitemap, proceed to the “Sitemaps” section in Google Search Console, which can be found under the “Indexing” category in the left-hand menu. Enter your sitemap’s URL and select “Submit.” It may take a few days for Google to process your sitemap.

When completed, you should see a link to your sitemap and a green “Success” status in the report.

Submitting your sitemap can help Google identify all the pages you consider essential, expediting the indexing process.

3.  Internal Links Should Not Use Nofollow Tags

Occasionally, your web pages may not be indexed by Google because the search engine cannot crawl them. This can occur if you have internal links with a rel=”nofollow” tag, which prevents search engine bots from crawling the link and accessing the linked content.

As a result, no information about your website is sent back to Google’s computers for indexing. And the page won’t show up in search results.

Therefore, you should check for and eliminate nofollow tags from your internal links. By removing the nofollow tags, you will enable the search engine to follow the link and discover the linked pages. Before moving on to other pages on your website, start by looking at the ones that Google has not yet indexed.

Nofollow links are links that have a rel=”nofollow” tag, which prevents the transfer of PageRank to the destination URL. Google also does not crawl nofollow links.

According to Google, using nofollow causes them to remove the target links from their overall web graph. However, if other websites link to the target pages without using nofollow or if Google receives the URLs in a Sitemap, the target pages can still show up in their index.

In a nutshell be sure to follow any internal connections to indexable sites. Use Ahrefs’ Site Audit tool to crawl your site to achieve this.

Look for indexable pages with “Page has nofollow incoming internal links only” issues in the Links report. Remove the nofollow tag from these internal links to allow Google to index the page. If not, you should either noindex the page or remove it.

4. Remove Misplaced Noindex Tags

Occasionally, your web pages may not be indexed by Google because the search engine cannot crawl them.

This can occur if you have internal links with a rel=”nofollow” tag, which prevents search engine bots from crawling the link and accessing the linked content.

As a result, no information about your website is sent back to Google’s computers for indexing. And the page doesn’t show up in search results.

Therefore, you should check for and eliminate nofollow tags from your internal links. By removing the nofollow tags, you will enable the search engine to follow the link and discover the linked pages.

Before moving on to other pages on your website, start by looking at the ones that Google has not yet indexed. 

Nofollow links are links that have a rel=”nofollow” tag, which prevents the transfer of PageRank to the destination URL. Google also does not crawl nofollow links.

According to Google, using nofollow causes them to remove the target links from their overall web graph.

• The target pages, however, can still show up in their index if other websites link to them without employing nofollow or if Google receives the URLs in a Sitemap.
• Make care to follow all internal links to indexable pages, in order to summarise. Crawl your site using Ahrefs’ Site Audit tool to do this.
• Search the Links report for pages that have “Page has nofollow incoming internal links only” issues and are indexable.
• Take away the nofollow attribute from these internal links if you want Google to index backlink or a web page. If not, noindex the page or remove it.

5. Delete any rogue canonical tags

The canonical tag informs Google which version of a page should come to the Google Serps. It is usually a self-referencing tag or not present at all.

However, if a page has an incorrect canonical tag, it may direct Google to an incorrect preferred version, leading to the page not being indexed.

To check for a canonical tag, use Google’s URL inspection tool. If the canonical points to another page, you’ll see an “Alternate page with canonical tag” warning. If the page should be indexed, the canonical tag should be removed.

However, canonical tags aren’t always negative, and many pages have them for a reason. If a page has a canonical tag, it should be checked to ensure it’s the preferred version of the page. If it is, and there’s no need to index backlink or the page in question, the canonical tag should remain.

Use Ahrefs’ Site Audit tool to crawl your website and rapidly find any errant canonical tags.  It detects pages with non-self-referencing canonical tags in your sitemap.

It’s critical to find out if this filter produces any results since you would want to index the pages in your sitemap. These pages might not belong in your sitemap or may have erroneous canonical tags.

6. Take crawl blocks off of your robots.txt file

If you’re having trouble with Google not indexing your website, one possible cause could be a crawl block in the robots.txt file. To check for this issue, simply go to your website’s robots.txt file at yourdomain.com/robots.txt and look for any of the following code snippets:

• User-agent: Googlebot

Disallow: /

• User-agent: *

Disallow: /

These code snippets indicate to Googlebot that it is not going to crawl any pages on your website. To resolve this issue, simply remove these lines from the file.

In addition, a crawl block in robots.txt may also be the cause of Google not indexing a specific web page.

Find any “disallow” rules pertaining to the page or its part in your robots.txt file and remove them as necessary to remedy this.

7. Post Your Content on Social Media

By sharing your content on platforms like Twitter, you can send a positive signal to Google and improve your chances of indexing.

Twitter is particularly effective for getting up-to-date news and information, and Google regularly crawls the platform and even displays tweets in its search results.

If you create a tweet with a URL to your blog about a trending topic, Google may crawl and index your tweet, which could lead to your content being indexed more quickly.

8. Create Effective Internal Links

Google discovers new content on your website through crawling. If you fail to create internal links to a specific page, it may go unnoticed by Google.

Add internal links to the page from any other pages on your website that Google can crawl and index to solve this issue quickly.

However, if you want Google to index the page quickly, it’s best to link it from a more authoritative page. This is because Google is likely to recrawl high-authority pages faster than lower-ranking pages.

To accomplish this, you can use Ahrefs’ Site Explorer to access the Best by Links report after entering your domain.

By using Ahrefs’ Site Explorer and accessing the Best by Links report, you can view a list of all the pages on your website sorted by URL Rating (UR), which indicates their level of authority. The most authoritative pages appear first on the list. To find relevant pages from which to add internal links to the specific page you want Google to index, you should skim through this list.

9. Block or Redirect Low-Quality Pages

The quality of your website’s pages is a significant factor in how Google indexes your site. If your website contains hundreds or thousands of posts that do not add value, Google will gradually reduce the frequency of crawling and indexing your site.

This decrease occurs because Google has limited server resources, and if its crawler consistently finds low-quality pages, it will delay the discovery of new content.

To prevent this issue, you can create 301 redirects for low-quality pages and redirect them to a high-quality page or delete them from your website.

By doing this, you can not only improve your site’s indexing time but also enhance its overall health. If your website has a large number of low-quality pages, it wastes the crawl budget. Google warns that this can cause a significant delay in finding valuable content on the site.

Although Google states that most publishers do not need to worry about the crawl budget, removing low-quality pages from the website is always a good idea.

This action can positively impact the crawl budget. To identify low-quality or irrelevant pages, you can use a content audit template.

10. Get High-Quality Backlinks

To improve your website’s indexing, it is beneficial to acquire high-quality backlinks as the Google crawler follows links to your website.

Pages with high-quality backlinks carry more significance for Google than those without as they provide a vote of confidence for your content. As your website gains links from authoritative websites, Google will perceive it as trustworthy and may start indexing your content more quickly.

There are several ways to obtain quality backlinks, such as creating infographics, guest blogging, and finding broken links.

Although Google does not solely index web pages with backlinks, it considers pages with high-quality links as more valuable and is likely to crawl and re-crawl such pages faster than those without. Consequently, this leads to faster indexing.

11. Be Persistent

If Google’s algorithm deems your backlinks to be valuable for indexing. They will be indexed accordingly. In such cases, you may need to exercise patience.

However, if your backlinks breach Google’s Webmaster Guidelines, they may not be indexed at all. In this situation, it is recommended that you take steps to eliminate any harmful backlinks from your backlink profile.

12.  Make Sure the Page is Worthwhile and Different

Google doesn’t to index low-quality pages since they do not hold any significance for its users.

• If technical problems are not the cause for the lack of indexing, then the absence of value could be the reason.
• It would be worthwhile to examine the page with a fresh perspective and question yourself whether it provides genuine value.
• If a user were to click on it from the search results, would they find any value in it?
• If either of the responses is negative, then you must work towards enhancing your content.

13. Integrate Your Site with IndexNow

IndexNow is a ping protocol that rapidly notifies search engines of updates made to a website’s content.

Whenever there is a modification to a page on the site, whether it’s a new addition, removal, or modification, IndexNow will send a signal to search engines instantly to reflect the change in their search results.

IndexNow is a popular protocol used by millions of websites, and integrating it with your website is effortless through services like CloudFlare, IndexNow Plugin, RankMath Plugin, and All In One SEO Plugin.

14. Ping the URLs

If your backlinks haven’t been indexed and the Google Webmaster Tool is not functioning. You may need to ping the URLs containing the backlinks to remind Google about the update to your webpage.

This is essentially a request to Google to check the update on your webpage, and if everything is in accordance with Google’s policies, the search engine will quickly index those webpages.

Fortunately, there are numerous pinging tools available on the internet that you can use to achieve this. A simple Google search will provide you with a list of the most helpful and sophisticated pinging tools.

15. Using Web 2.0

Web 2.0 refers to a collection of online platforms that are available for free and enable users to create their own accounts and share content across these platforms.

By creating new articles on these platforms and including your backlinks within them, you can increase the chances of your backlinks being indexed by Google.

By taking action and implementing these strategies, you can expect to see positive results in a short amount of time.

How to Search Backlinks on Google?

To search for backlinks on Google, you can use specific search operators and tools. Here’s a step-by-step guide:

a. Using Google Search Operators

Link:URL: You can use the “link:” operator followed by the URL of the website you want to check for backlinks. For example, to find backlinks to example.com, type “link:example.com” in the Google search bar.

Site:URL: Another method is to use the “site:” operator along with the domain name. For example, “site:example.com” will display a list of pages on other websites that link to example.com.

Intext:YourKeyword: You can also use the “intext:” operator followed by a specific keyword or phrase related to your content. This will help you find pages containing your keyword and potentially linking to your site.

b. Google Search Console

If you own the website, you can use Google Search Console to view a list of websites that link to your site. Log in to your Google Search Console account, select your property, and navigate to “Links” under the “Search Traffic” section.

c. Third-Party Tools

There are several third-party backlink analysis tools available, such as Ahrefs, SEMrush, Moz, and Majestic. These tools provide comprehensive data on backlinks, including their source, anchor text, and more.

Top Tools for Website Indexing

Website indexing tools play a vital role in enhancing your website’s visibility on search engines such as Google and Bing. 

These tools facilitate the submission of your website URLs to search engines, enabling them to crawl and index your web pages. With successful indexing, your website becomes discoverable to search engine users when they search for relevant keywords or phrases.

Beyond indexing, these tools offer valuable features that assist in comprehending your website’s performance, identifying possible concerns, and ultimately optimizing your website’s search engine rankings. 

Website indexing tools prove to be indispensable resources for website owners seeking to enhance their online presence and attract more organic traffic through improved search engine visibility.

A. Google Index Tool

The Google Index Tool, commonly known as Google Search Console, is a complimentary tool from Google.

With the Google indexing tool, you can directly submit your website’s URLs and sitemaps to Google, ensuring efficient crawling and indexing by the search engine.

Moreover, the Google index checker tool enables you to monitor your website’s performance in Google Search results and keep track of its rankings on search engine pages. 

Additionally, the tool provides valuable insights and suggestions to enhance your website’s search engine optimization (SEO) and overall visibility, making it a valuable resource for optimizing online presence and attracting increased organic traffic.

B. Bing Webmaster Tools

Bing Webmaster Tools, a complimentary service provided by Microsoft, enables you to submit your website’s URLs and sitemaps directly to Bing, the second-largest search engine worldwide. 

Similar to Google Search Console, Bing Webmaster Tools aids in tracking your website’s performance, identifying possible concerns, and enhancing its search engine rankings specifically on Bing. 

This valuable tool empowers website owners to optimize their online presence and attract more organic traffic from Bing’s search results.

C. Screaming Frog SEO Spider

Screaming Frog SEO Spider is an effective website indexing tool capable of comprehensively crawling your entire site to assess its content and structure. 

Through this tool, you can easily detect broken links, duplicate content, missing metadata, and other factors that might impact your website’s indexability and search engine rankings.

Moreover, this website crawler generates detailed reports on your site’s content and structure, offering valuable insights to enhance your website’s SEO and overall performance. By utilizing 

Screaming Frog SEO Spider, website owners can efficiently optimize their online presence, rectify potential issues, and improve the overall search engine visibility and ranking of their websites.

D. Ahrefs Site Audit Tool

Ahrefs Site Audit Tool is an extensive website indexing and auditing tool, regarded as one of the finest in its category. It assists in analyzing your website for both on-page and off-page SEO matters.

By conducting a thorough crawl of your website, this backlink checker generates comprehensive reports that cover aspects like indexability, technical SEO concerns, and other elements influencing your search engine rankings.

In addition to analysis, the tool provides practical suggestions to enhance your website’s SEO and overall performance. Through Ahrefs Site Audit Tool, website owners can efficiently optimize their online presence, address SEO issues, and elevate the overall search engine visibility and ranking of their websites.

DeepCrawl (now Lumar) is a sophisticated website indexing and auditing tool specifically tailored to support large-scale enterprise businesses in enhancing their website’s search engine performance. 

This advanced URL inspection tool boasts an array of capabilities, encompassing website crawling, comprehensive indexability analysis, optimization of high-quality content, and numerous other valuable features.

Final Word

Getting backlinks for your website is essential for improving your search engine ranking and online visibility. However, it’s not enough to just acquiring backlinks; you also need to ensure that Google indexes them to reap their benefits.

From using ping services and indexing plugins to creating quality content and leveraging web 2.0 platforms, these techniques can make a significant difference in the speed and effectiveness of your backlink indexing efforts.

Frequently Asked Questions

1. Does google index a page the same time ahrefs does?

Google and Ahrefs do not index pages simultaneously. Google’s indexing is a continuous and dynamic process, occurring at intervals determined by its algorithms. In contrast, Ahrefs operates independently, indexing web pages according to its own schedule to provide SEO insights. Therefore, the timing of their indexing processes differs.

2. How do i force ahrefs to crawl my site?

Submit Your Site: Once logged in, access the Ahrefs Site Explorer tool. In the search bar, enter your website’s URL and click “Search” or “Check.” Ahrefs will initiate a crawl of your site.

Monitor Crawl Progress: Ahrefs will display information about your site’s crawl status, including the number of pages crawled, the number of backlinks found, and other SEO metrics.

Use the “Fetch as Google” Feature: To further encourage Ahrefs to crawl specific pages, you can use the “Fetch as Google” feature. This allows you to request that Ahrefs crawls and indexes individual pages by entering their URLs.

Wait for Crawl to Complete: Crawl times can vary, so be patient. Ahrefs will gradually index your site’s pages and backlinks.

Regularly Update and Share Content: Consistently updating and sharing new content on your site can encourage more frequent crawls from Ahrefs and other search engines.

3. how to check backlinks in google search console?

Google Search Console provides information about the websites that link to your site. To check backlinks in Google Search Console, follow these steps:

1. Access Google Search Console:
   • Go to Google Search Console.
   • Sign in to your Google account if you haven’t already.
2. Select Your Property:
   • Choose the website property (i.e., the website you want to check backlinks for) from your list of properties if you have multiple sites.
3. Navigate to the Links Report:
   • In the left-hand menu, click on “Links.”
4. Explore the Backlinks Report:
   • Under “External Links,” you’ll find “Top linking sites,” which shows websites that link to your site most frequently.
   • You can also click on “More” to see additional reports, such as “Top linking text,” which displays the anchor text used in backlinks.
   • To view a comprehensive list of backlinks, click on “More external links.” This will provide you with a list of linking pages along with their linking sites.
5. Filter and Analyze Backlinks:
   • You can filter the backlinks data by date or export it for further analysis.
   • Review the backlinks to assess their quality, relevance, and potential impact on your site’s SEO.

Please note that the backlinks data in Google Search Console may not be as extensive or detailed as what you can obtain from dedicated SEO tools. It’s a useful starting point for understanding your backlink profile, but for in-depth analysis, you may want to consider using additional SEO tools like Ahrefs, Moz, or SEMrush.

4. Why aren’t my backlinks being indexed by Google?

Your backlinks are insufficiently worthy. Low-quality links are not genuine links as per the Google’s policy. If Google doesn’t respect those low-quality backlinks, it will significantly decrease your website’s search engine traffic, and it will severely hamper your SEO efforts.

5. How quickly does Google index pages?

For websites with fewer than 500 pages, 3–4 weeks. For sites with 500 to 25,000 pages, 2-3 months. With more than 25,000 pages, 4–12 months.

6. Instant Indexing: What is it?

Internet search engines allow users to submit information for rapid inclusion in the index using a function called instant indexing. Here is the guide for Instant Indexing: https://marketinglad.io/instant-indexing-for-wordpress/

7. Google uses “mobile first” indexing, right?

Google mostly employs the smartphone agent to crawl the mobile version of a site’s content to index and rank it. We refer to this as “mobile-first indexing.