Getting a new website up and running can be quite a daunting task, especially if you are planning to start a new venture idea. You have to buy a good domain name, install a content management software, get the site up and running, install a theme and do so many other things to get the business up and running.
It usually takes couple of weeks of work to get a new website up and running. The next part is of course start creating content and grow the readership of the site, which again is very challenging.
When you start a new venture or a new website or a new blog, how do you ensure that the site gets indexed in Google within a week? Within a day? What are the steps you should do to ensure that the site gets indexed as fast as possible? In this article I am going to write down the exact steps which you need to do to ensure that your site is indexed in Google within a day.
How I got a Niche website Indexed in Google within one day
I own several websites and online properties for my business. I keep creating new sites and venture into new opportunities from time to time. It is too risky to stick to the same business for years, that time and age is gone. To create a sustainable business online, one has to diversify as much as possible and keep diversifying to create multiple income/revenue streams.
In my quest to building one of the niche sites, I recently discovered that it took Google and other search engines less than one day to index the content of the site. I had very little content on the site but when I searched for one of the keywords, the post appeared on first page. It didn’t get the first rank on Google though but the very sight of seeing the page on first page in Google was a delight.
So what exactly did I do? And how can you do the same thing for your sites and blogs? I have shared the exact steps below, so you can use it to your advantage. Please keep in mind that it may or may not work for you. Just because it worked for me doesn’t mean it will work for you. It may not and a lot depends on how you implement various things on your website. I am just sharing what worked for me to index the site in Google within a day. I am not saying that I started getting lot of traffic from day one. That never happens. What I am sharing below is what I did and got indexed in Google and other search engines within a day. You may try to follow what I did and see what happens, it may very well work for you.
- Register a domain name. I use Godaddy for all my domains but you can choose other domain name providers. It’s upto you and it won’t make much difference.
- As soon as the domain is yours, point name servers to your hosting server. I use Bluehost and Hostgator for my sites and highly recommend you to use the same hosting provider. They are fast and quite reliable.
- As soon as you have pointed the name servers to your domain name, open your cPanel account and add an add-on domain to your account. This will add the new domain to your account and you will be ready to install the content management system into the new website.
- Once you have added the add-on domain for the new site, download WordPress in your computer and upload it to the folder of your add-on domain. Install the content management system in that add-on domain. You will need to create a database and setup WordPress in that domain to make the site live. It takes a while to setup the site, I am not going to write about it here though.
- By this time, the DNS changes should have propagated across the internet and your site should be accessible to anyone. It won’t have any content in it. That’s fine. We will create content later on. Our first priority is to set up the website for indexing so that search engines can index the content of the site as fast as possible.
- Install these plugins – Yoast SEO, XML Sitemaps, WebSub/PubSubHubbub, Simple Sitemap
- Create three pages on the site – One About me page, one contact us page, one HTML sitemap page and one privacy policy page. Use the Simple Sitemap plugin to create an HTML sitemap for your website.The plugin will keep adding pages and posts to this Sitemap page as and when you publish new content into the site.Put up decent information in the about page, contact us page and the privacy policy page. You can always add more content to these pages but for now, just put up a basic content on these pages and move on.
- Use the XML sitemaps plugin to create an XML sitemap for your website or blog. Note the URL of your XML sitemap. You will need it in the next step.
- Create a Google webmaster console account, it comes out of the box with your Gmail or Google account. Add your new website and add the XML sitemap in Google webmaster console.
- Add your website in Google analytics and integrate Google Analytics into your new website or blog.
- Create 2-3 new posts on the site, each of length 1000 words. Interlink these posts in a natural way. The content you create needs to be original and good to read, don’t create content in a hurry and hit the publish button.Take the time out and create really good content which adds value. Before I started the niche website, I actually wrote the content and saved it so I can use it without having to write it while setting up the website. So take the time out and write really good content to kick things off.
- Check your HTML sitemap – it should now have the links to those 2-3 posts and the links to the 2-3 pages you have created.
- Setup all the stuff in Yoast SEO plugin and WebSub/PubSubHubbub.
- If you have other sites, create a hyperlink other sites to the new site. You can hyperlink it from an old post or from the home page itself. It doesn’t matter. What matters is that the hyperlink should be dofollow in nature. One thing to note here is that the site which links to your content has to be legitimate and authority site. Don’t get a link from a spammy, low content site which has no authority in Google’s eyes. It helps to get link from an authority site or else have no links at all. Don’t rush to get links from a spammy site.In my case, I already had an authority site so linking a new site from the authority site wasn’t much of a challenge to me. In case you don’t have an authority site in your kitty, then it’s going to take some effort on your site. You may have to purchase links from an agency or get in touch with a blogger and request him to link to you. In some occasions, you have to pay a blogger to get that link.My advice here is that it helps to get that first link, since it flows some Google juice towards your site. It creates a channel by which search engines can quickly discover your site and index the content that you have. Later on, links will follow when you have more and more content on the site but in the initial days, since you have no content, no authority and none knows you exist, it’s going to take some time until you win that first link. So in this case, try to win that first legitimate link as early as you can.
- Ensure that the HTML sitemap of your website is accessible from the homepage. It’s best to put the HTML sitemap in the footer of the site.
That’s all you need to do. At least, that’s all I did to ensure my site gets indexed in Google within a day. It did. I didn’t get any traffic – that’s a different story but when I searched Google for relevant keywords that I used in the post, the link of the post was right up there.
Yes, I did use incognito mode in the browser and cleared all the cookies just to be anonymous.If you follow these steps and do the right stuff, it shouldn’t be much of an effort to get indexed in Google within a day or week.
Try it out and let me know your thoughts in the comments. What difficulties you face, what challenges you went through, write it down in the comments section and I will help you out.